Christie Bahlai

As a native Ohioan, I'm still struck by the lack of stories on SB1 as the academic year in Ohio begins. Ohio is operating under the most restrictive higher ed law in the nation but you'd never know it based on reporting from Ohio.

ladies and gentlemen, the weekend.

None planned yet, but we're now at the point in my immigration status (US and Canadian passports in hand) that cross-border activities are again possible!

Middle-aged white woman with glasses gives a thumbs up and a manic smile to the camera

Hey everybody! I'm on sabbatical next semester and I've...been utterly negligent in planning it. What I'm saying is, if you were thinking about asking me for a department seminar etc between January and May 2026, I will put on a show for you.

I'll talk about sampling theory, but cool!

Every tech update now is like: "Great news, the word processor you've relied on for twenty years has learned to juggle! Is it good at it? No! Does it help in any way? Of course not! Has it made it insufferable to use? Oh, absolutely."

Wait, it's off the market? Who bought it? Someone from the business college I bet.

We're going to be too big to fail soon enough 😀

Excellent. Soon this idea will have achieved critical mass.

Nevertheless you can buy my awesome friend @mapesgeog.bsky.social 's fantastic book at wvupressonline.com/New-American... and if she gets rich we'll be able to buy a much nicer isolated retirement commune for grumpy professor ladies.

Gave a community book talk tonight and I am reminded that people don't realize the university pays us to write books. Like, we don't write them to get rich or even make money. I wrote a book 1. to share info more broadly 2. as part of my job. One of many reasons higher ed matters.

Middle-aged white woman with glasses gives a thumbs up and a manic smile to the camera

Hey everybody! I'm on sabbatical next semester and I've...been utterly negligent in planning it. What I'm saying is, if you were thinking about asking me for a department seminar etc between January and May 2026, I will put on a show for you.

I'll talk about sampling theory, but cool!

One side says that LLMs lack knowledge of the world because they’re extensively trained on text and have no model of the real world, the other side says LLMs have PhD-level intelligence. Guys, guys—you’re both right

LOL Musgrave

"okho" I see no lies

🎉New preprint!

"TADA! Simple guidelines to improve code sharing"

tinyurl.com/8rmnwjrk

We present simple guidelines to help researchers of all coding levels improve the transparency and reproducibility of their analytical code, TADA!

Transferable, Accessible, Documented, Annotated.

Lots of (appropriate) outrage about the Brown student survey meddling but I’ve heard less nationally about what’s going on in Ohio (state inserting a required “bias” question into our surveys & requiring we be reviewed on it).

S4 Episode 3: What do non-religious scientists think about their religious colleagues? - International Research Network for the Study of Science and Belief in Society In the third episode of our new series, Dr Rebecca Catto, Associate Professor of Sociology at Kent State University (USA) who was for a decade a Principal Investigator on the Science and Religion, Exp...

A podcast interview with me on science & religion research just dropped: scienceandbeliefinsociety.org/s4-episode-3...

I'm not a regular middle-aged professor with a part time university administration appointment. I'm a cool middle-aged professor with a part time university administration appointment.

(literally actually how I teach. But I'm the real deal. I have a nose ring. A NOSE RING. LIKE REBELIOUS CHARACTERS DO IN 1998 LIFETIME MOVIES TO SHOW HOW PUNK THEY ARE.)

Okay so maybe a bit tho. Whatever, I'm still going to wear the chucks and sit backwards on the chair when I jam with my junior colleagues about radicalizing our approach to frequentist statistics.

The radicalization of the American right is THE story of US politics over the last four decades and political reporters are still not allowed to talk about it

I don't know if there's ever been a culture more in love with charlatans than ours. "Success" defined entirely by how good you are at tricking people into giving you money. An entire country of aspiring slop merchants

I've reviewed many NSF proposals, and I've been on a few NSF proposal review panels. Those experiences helped me see that while some good proposals aren't funded, bad proposals definitely aren't.

It's an insult to all scientists that DOGE is now doing additional reviews of funded proposals.

So: In 2017, Congress made this happen:

NIH: Proposed 22% cut --> 9% increase
NSF: Proposed 11% cut --> 4% increase
NOAA: Proposed 16% cut --> 4% increase

Obviously, 2025 is not 2017. A lot is diff now. But still:

💰 Congress, not WH, sets budgets.

📞 Public support & calls to Congress matter.

A mostly white cat and an all black cat spayed out like they have actual problems on a beige floral area rug

My cats' worst problem is when I get the wrong brand of roast beef. See? Dispair. I *wish* I had the wrong beef.

Call me crazy---I think everyone should be able to eat.

I knew the U.S. higher education system was a massive draw for foreigners, but I did not know the U.S. sold more educational services to the rest of the world than it did natural gas and coal combined. Great piece by @crampell.bsky.social

So excited to work with this super team!!