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YouTube video by climatecentral The Giant "Snow Cooler": Storing Snow to Save the Ski Industry

Oh my gosh. This 3 minute piece from @climatecentral.org is a huge example of visual storytelling about the LACK of winter snow for ski hills (and from there, the challenges of hosting the winter Olympics anywhere... sheesh) www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-mF... | Great @coveringclimatenow.org briefing

“These cuts are hitting the most vulnerable staff hardest.”

Sophia Woodman, @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social branch president explaining the reality of the crisis in HE to the Scottish Education Committee.

Part of students’ seminar grade is sharing a sample of their notebook so I can see how they’re engaging the material.

Others may have different pedagogical priorities, but I care a lot about developing the capacity to think well and this helps me see how that’s happening.

My pedagogical concern has always been teaching students to be slow, careful thinkers. Early feedback suggests this approach is helping. It’s also doing important work in showing students that thinking is messy, and that messiness is part of the process.

To keep AI out of her classroom, this high school English teacher went analog Forth Worth teacher Chanea Bond says sticking with pen and paper keeps generative artificial intelligence out of her American literature classes.

I’ve also gone analog in my advanced undergrad seminar on identity this quarter. Students keep reading/seminar notebooks—questions, confusions, insights—and complete several field exercises, including a “seeing identity in the world” task.

www.npr.org/2026/01/28/n...

breaking waves on a shingle beach. on a Wednesday. at lunchtime.

Feels like a Chesil kind of day. 🎧

Episode 285 - Late October on Chesil Beach (sleep safe)

32 minutes. Just the sound of the waves and the pebbles. No one else around.

> bit.ly/LenChesil3

Please Don’t Say Mean Things about the AI That I Just Invested a Billion Dollars In “[Nvidia CEO] Jensen Huang Is Begging You to Stop Being So Negative About AI” — Headline from Gizmodo - - — Guys, enough is enough. Bullying is a s...

"There’s an extremely hurtful narrative going around that my product, a revolutionary new technology that exists to scam the elderly and make you distrust anything you see online, is harmful to society."

Northfield is a town of 20,000 people in southeast #Minnesota, outside of the metro region. That 20,000 people includes two college populations. Agents in plain clothes raided a local bakery this morning, and masked agents continue to raid local apartment complexes. That's where we're at.

I read it in English, and I didn't know about the Marseilles one until you mentioned it, so 🤝

Decent homes standard for UK private renters delayed by government until 2035 Campaigners pushing for 2030 deadline said deferral was ‘denying renters the most basic standards in our homes’

Another nauseating climbdown by Starmer following pressure from rich landlords

Providing shit accommodation for a massive rent is going to be perfectly legal for almost another decade

Completely indefensible

www.theguardian.com/money/2026/j...

Is academia just a job?

We assigned this paper in our professional development seminar last week and it was quite popular.

My view: I grew up in a working class family and no one I knew considered their job "a calling". I also had a bunch of jobs that felt, well, like jobs.

Attaining Work-Life Balance in an Era of Burnout Issue 102: Many solutions to work stress fail because they wrongly believe burnout is an individual problem, rather than a collective one.

But I loved grad school from day 1. For the first time in my life, I truly enjoyed my job. And it shows--my daughter told me she wants to find a career she loves just as much as me.

I'm also a fan of work-life balance & we have a policy about it in my lab
www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/achieving-...

Very little if anything seems to have changed on the ground. ICE is still out there terrorizing neighborhoods and trying to disappear neighbors. None of us on the ground are buying this bullshit. We will keep organizing and fighting.

Heartwarming: Miserable Man Frustrated In Ultimately Insignificant Way | Defector Every day, up and down the culture, unjust things are happening. Terrible things happen to good people, while some of the most vile people this country has ever produced blithely escape any accountabi...

Feels great to finally get to write about some good news. defector.com/heartwarming...

Worst Person Makes Excellent Point files are bulging, send more files

Um pequeno pássaro de cores vibrantes repousa sobre uma rocha cinzenta. Sua cabeça e dorso são de um preto profundo, contrastando com as penas brancas na parte inferior do corpo. Uma faixa alaranjada destaca-se nas laterais, e a cauda exibe um tom amarelo brilhante. O pássaro mantém uma postura alerta, com o corpo ligeiramente inclinado para frente e um olhar atento. Ao fundo, observa-se uma folha amarelada e uma superfície irregular em tons terrosos, sugerindo um ambiente natural. Atenção: O alt da imagem foi gerado automaticamente.

🇧🇷Mariquita-de-rabo-vermelho
🌎Setophaga ruticilla
Conservação: Pouco Preocupante

A mariquita-de-rabo-vermelho é uma ave passeriforme da família Parulidae

📷 Ramsés Antunes da Luz

a cartoon of homer simpson standing in a grassy area Alt: Well known gif of Homer Simpson from the cartoon, The Simpsons. Homer, in his typical white shirt and blue pants, is standing in front of a tall hedge. He has a neutral expression on his face. Silently, he walks backwards into the hedge so you can't see him anymore. It is very comical because this happens slowly so at one point, all you can see is his belly, his nose and his cartoon eyeballs.

My classic example is this one. The automated alt-text is "a cartoon of homer simpson standing in a grassy area". Nearly everything about that is wrong.
To communicate to an audience, you actually have to use your brain and not just rely on a computer to do the work.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is amazing, but y'all should know that it employs about 200 people to make those resources happen. Serving detailed biodiversity information takes significant resources, on the order of tens of millions of dollars per year.

The best cycle lanes are wide, beautiful and completely separate from other roads. This type of infrastructure is common here in the Netherlands. They often connect cities and offer a great alternative for driving.

A stylized portrait centers on a Black woman seated against a flat, velvety crimson background. She is shown from the waist up, shoulders squared and posture upright, looking directly at us with a relaxed, yet unflinching gaze. Her features are modeled in warm amber and deep brown tones plus highlights along her nose and cheekbones as shadows collect under the eyes, cheek, and chin. Her eyebrows are strong and arched. Her lips are softly closed, neither smiling nor tense. Her natural black hair forms a rounded afro that fans outward on both sides, held back by a wide orange-red headband. She wears a dark, structured jacket with narrow collar, buttoned placket, pronounced shoulders, and thin lines that trace seams and edges like a drawn outline. Down the center of the composition rises the golden neck of a banjo, with small tuning pegs near the top. A hand wraps the instrument, suggesting control and readiness rather than performance for an audience. Simplified shapes, tight cropping, and high-contrast palette make her presence feel iconic and dignified. Made in 2021, “Afros and Banjos” pairs two resonant signifiers of Black cultural memory: the afro (as a visible claim to self-definition), and the banjo (an instrument with West African roots that became central to Black musical life in America, even as it was later distorted through minstrel stereotypes). American artist Charles Eady’s broader project draws on research about free Black communities in the pre–Civil War South, and his exhibition “The Unscene South: Charles Eady Revisits History” invited viewers to reimagine who belongs in history. Here, the unidentified woman’s direct gaze refuses spectacle while the red background feels urgent, and the instrument’s upright line reads like a banner depicting music as lineage carried forward.

“Afros and Banjos” by Charles Eady (American) - Oil on canvas / 2021 - Appleton Museum of Art (Ocala, Florida) #WomenInArt #art #artText #arte #CharlesEady #Eady #AppletonMuseumofArt #BlackArt #AfricanAmericanArt #TheUnsceneSouth #AfricanAmericanArtist #PortraitofaWoman #AmericanArt #AmericanArtist

TLDR "production" firms that some very well-known academic publishers outsource to have rolled out new "automated" processes that are not at all ready to be shipped. I knew this but one of my pubs has now been caught in a doom loop of incompetent production for almost a year.

Some academic publishing contract advice: make sure your contract specifies 1. a qualified human copyeditor will copyedit on the MS; 2. a qualified human proofreader will proofread the MS; 3. that production must have a proper system for version control (!).

Holy moly this chart: Cumulative US measles cases

The Cruel Conditions of ICE’s Mojave Desert Detention Center How immigration authorities have weaponized medical neglect to encourage self-deportations.

A class-action lawsuit notes that detainees refer to the California City ICE Detention Facility as a “torture chamber” and “hell on Earth.” An attorney said that conditions are so terrible that those held there are resigning themselves to self-deportation. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/2qOQj9

No child should live in detainment. No child is illegal. A country that jails children must be stopped.

Fiction: The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

Nonfiction:
A New Philosophy of Opera by Yuval Sharon
A Spectre Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto by China Miéville
First-Time Gardener: Container Food Gardening by Pam Farley

Cover of Anna O. Law's Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship--African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants

Me. I wrote a book. Out on OUP March 10, 2026

Someone should really write a book tracing where the location of the dividing line between federal and state authority on migration has been across US history. (Spoiler: The answer is different depending on which part of US history you are asking about.)

I was a little skeptical about another time loop story, but this is fantastic. emotionally methodical to the point of hypnotism, really loved it

ooooh! author?