Hey, academics who teach and mentor...are you remembering to teach your students how to do the mundane things like use software efficiently? Using section headers (instead of *bolding* or _underlining_), making a table of contents, inserting footnotes, actually linking Zotero with word processors?

Gayle Benson (estimated net worth >$11B) could single-handedly fund the low-barrier shelter and the right to counsel program and improve lives for the most vulnerable New Orleanians without it registering as a blip in her net worth. Billionaires shouldn't exist. Tax the rich.

Verite News@veritenews.org · 2d ago

Housing justice activists pack City Hall in support of the Low Barrier Shelter, right to counsel program In its fifth day of budget hearings, the New Orleans City Council discussed the state of funding for housing… https://veritenews.org/2026/10/09/budget-low-barrier-shelter-right-to-counsel/

When House Speaker Mike Johnson filed for reelection, he declared his phone number to be a string of 0s, attesting “All statements contained herein are true and correct.” Public records are a front-line example of access to officials and government. www.lamplighter.news/p/highly-und...

‘Highly Undemocratic’: Five Louisiana Congressional Candidates, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, file for election using disconnected phone numbers

Declaring a string of 0s as his phone number, Johnson is one of eight candidates with a series 0s or 5s listed as their phone number in their bid for public office.

lamplighter.news

Lauren Jewett challenges Steve Scalise for congressional seat in a heavily Republican district Lauren Jewett, a special education teacher, believes that the ground game is her chance to topple the well-established Republican. https://veritenews.org/2026/10/09/lauren-jewett-steve-scalise-election/

Lauren Jewett challenges Steve Scalise for congressional seat in a heavily Republican district

Lauren Jewett, a special education teacher, believes that the ground game is her chance to topple the well-established Republican.

veritenews.org

The Political Economy of Fitness Data @jlcouture.bsky.social joins to discuss how digital health technologies, community, and capitalism intersect in the world of running and fitness. open.spotify.com/episode/1zlX...

Honestly I’m getting uncomfortably good at identifying bone bits vs rocks or roots as part of my current backyard project.

Excited to see that we’re replacing new housing with chatbots that tell you to kill yourself

Jason Furman@jasonfurman.bsky.social · 3d ago

This is what crowd out looks like.

RIP to the world's first software engineer news.mit.edu/2026/margare...

Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90

Margaret H. Hamilton, a profoundly influential computer scientist best known for leading the software engineering team at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab during NASA’s Apollo program, died at age 90.

news.mit.edu

"In fact, a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that the richest 25% of middle-aged and older Americans have similar mortality rates to the poorest 25% of Northern and Western Europeans."

What the World Can Teach the United States about Aging | Milbank Memorial Fund

Populations around the world are aging, and fast. Here in the United States, not only is the population getting older, but it’s doing so in the shadow of

milbank.org

Let’s talk about ethics, law & reproductive health with Katie Watson, JD, a leading scholar of medical ethics and health law, as we explore what happens when changing laws reach into the clinician-patient relationship. ✨ 📅Nov. 9 | 12–1 p.m. MT 🔗 Register: bit.ly/4rHTLCh

🔥 Our paper on techno-optimism and climate action among scientists is now published! With @colognaviktoria.bsky.social, @maiensachis.bsky.social & @jmbh.bsky.social, we studied 9,199 scientists across 115 countries. 🧵 🔗 Paper: tinyurl.com/4yb7fj97 📰 The Guardian: tinyurl.com/sy5rrbdx

The Guardian also covered the study today: www.theguardian.com/environment/... with comments from @kevinclimate.bsky.social

Scientists who put faith in technology less likely to take climate action

‘Techno-optimism’ may lead to reliance on unproven solutions at expense of societal changes needed

theguardian.com

Advice from my book group tonight: you can do anything while crying…crying and tears are just a hydration issue.

Seeing lots of academic jobs that are "[humanities or social science discipline] & AI"...while I know jobs are hard to find, I can't help feel despair for entire crop of faculty being hired to address 1 topic because of external funding pressures. How is this gonna skew fields for the next 5-30 yrs?

One thing I find endlessly funny about the rise of AI is that it has revealed that there is a large number of people who believe that the reason they wrote essays at school or university is their teachers were desperately waiting for them to provide a definite answer to “Lear: what’s up with him?”

Dr Dean Burnett@drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 5d ago

"By using AI, tasks like essays that used to take hours can be completed in minutes!" Sure, like how if I arrive at the gym and immediately go for a shower, my workout is done in record time. And if I throw my sandwiches straight in the bin, I can finish my lunch in under 10 seconds.

My part of NSF has been destroyed effectively. I don’t trust future congresses to understand and restore it given they misunderstand knowledge creation and reduce science to technology. And that’s across the ideological spectrum.

Dan Garisto@dangaristo.bsky.social · 5d ago

NEW: In March the White House released an FY27 budget request that zeroed out the National Science Foundation's directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). For months it was unclear what would happen. Now, with FY26 over, the damage to SBE is coming to light. My reporting:

I feel like a day that we are all waiting to find out if southeast Louisiana is gonna get a hurricane is a great time to suggest people write to oppose another pipeline through multiple Parishes to the much-hated LNG facility south of New Orleans. news.oilandgaswatch.org/template/bri...

Anti-Prime Day starts…NOW! 🥳 Today through midnight on 10/7, enjoy free shipping site-wide, all while supporting local, independent bookstores.

For @prismreports.org, @us.theguardian.com & @enlacelatinonc.bsky.social, our fellowship coordinator, @tinavasquez.bsky.social, investigated Florida Orange Gold’s disregard for the health of their migrant farmworkers in North Carolina and Florida. Read the story at tinyurl.om/farmworkersheat.

Thought about booking a pedicure. now I’m really thinking about the hourly rates I see academics & professionals charging for services. I don’t disagree with prices, I’m just saying…whew. Some people are over charging. Some people deserve so much more. This applies across both groups of workers.

I love how whenever I start research for a project and come across the name of an obscure right wing mega donor then Google them and learn that every time I buy something simple like trash bags I’ve been giving money to a fascist

Any one need a microfilm scanner? Our library will scrap one on Saturday. It works. All our stuff is digitized. You pay for shipping or come pick it up near Erie,PA.

HEY NERDS NEW CAVE ART SHOW JUST DROPPED www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vi...

Stone Age Masterpiece

Step into the stunning cave that’s reshaping our understanding of prehistoric art.

pbs.org

it is pretty hard to see prehistoric art of this kind firsthand, especially if you don't live near a geography where such art is preserved and presented to the public. But there are ways to do it (that I know of) both in the US and Europe.

Andrea Grimes@andreagrimes.com · 5d ago

HEY NERDS NEW CAVE ART SHOW JUST DROPPED www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vi...

“every time someone is sleeping on a subway bench in a city, the rest of america can sort of say ‘ugh, look at these cities.’ but we are holding a lot of your people who you failed to love and take care of.” 👏 👏 👏

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 6d ago

Holy shit.

Digital menstrual tracking risks creating more harm than benefit and these apps requires greater scrutiny, warn experts. Katharine Lee and colleagues argue that neither menstrual tracking nor "cycle syncing" have been convincingly shown to improve health or other performance measures

Digital menstrual tracking risks creating more harm than benefit

Katharine Lee and colleagues argue that digital menstrual tracking and cycle syncing pose risks to health as well as privacy and call for greater scrutiny of apps Digital menstrual tracking and cycle...

bmj.com

EPA systematically underestimates methane pollution from O&G infrastructure, using inventory methods that rely in part on O&G company self-reports. Based on a large body of independent measurements by third-party scientists, I estimate the US O&G industry emits the equivalent of ~1 Gt CO2 per year

Econ dorks straying way out of their lane because "economics describes everything" will apparently go on until the heat death of the universe

I feel deeply aggrieved when I’m told I MUST read something for research because it is So Important only to find the Must Read makes lots of claims and tries to define new terms with very few references or engagement with broader literature itself.

It's no accident that many proponents of "AI" are avowed eugenicists.