That's all right, no one ever notices the asian dude in the background anyways.

Oracle, Workday, and PeopleSoft are the secret robber barons of the new guilded age, but we won’t have railroads and skyscrapers to show for it in a hundred years. In fact, we’ll have nothing as their garbage dissolves into cyberspace.

Finally found a use for this meme.

‪Please every academic, let the world know, has ordering books, distributing a syllabus, advising a student club, th most basic administrative tasks, become more or less efficient in the era of millions spent on software and administrators? globecollegetown.substack.com/p/higher-ed-...

College campuses need to be liberated from their administrators

Higher ed is being strangled by absurd and costly rules. What message is that sending to students?

globecollegetown.substack.com

I wrote for the Boston Globe about the scandalous higher-ed spending on digital infrastructure that has increased inefficiency. globecollegetown.substack.com/p/higher-ed-...

College campuses need to be liberated from their administrators

Higher ed is being strangled by absurd and costly rules. What message is that sending to students?

globecollegetown.substack.com

It's scandalous that for-profit companies like SpringerNature and Elsevier rent-seek from academic publishing and profit off of our labor. I'm also convinced by @hiphination.bsky.social that it's just as scandalous that for-profit digital infrastructure companies do the same in higher education.

College campuses need to be liberated from their administrators

Higher ed is being strangled by absurd and costly rules. What message is that sending to students?

globecollegetown.substack.com

First Dolly, then Tim Curry, and now the voice of Optimus Prime. Not a good week for 80s kids.

HR trainings be like: You must score 90 or above to pass this training. (56 min to go). What is the best reason not to bully your co-workers? a) good reason 1 b) good reason 2 c) good reason 3

Just imagining what it’s like to be journeymen mixed doubles players making $100,000 a year hoping to make it $120,000 and seeing Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz across the net from you in Round 1.

What if, a philosophy journal will publish your AI-written article, but only in Gibberlink?

The name “Bruce” peaked in 1952 and declined since; it is well outside the top 500 baby names. Meanwhile, many old names for girls like “Sophia” swung back to #1 for Gen Zers. I think it’d be great to see “Bruce” be the name of a new generation. Any other old-timey names due for a comeback?

Wrote up my last skeet idea into a short post. hiphination.substack.com/p/what-if-th...

What if the Culture Wars had the Ethics of Actual War?

Proportionality, Necessity, and Legitimate Targets

hiphination.substack.com

I’m starting to think the culture wars could use some ethics of actual wars. A little proportionality and necessity, distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate targets, and defensive versus punitive versus aggressive aims…maybe people will be more responsible.

Delta faucets makes completely nonstandard sizes and threads of nuts and bolts so that a $2 repair is impossible to make. You have to buy a $50 nut from Delta’s website or buy a brand new $150 faucet. Is there a kind of capitalism I can support that says that this is bad?

I am currently watching both Suits and Reacher. Am I basic?

Maybe basing hiring policy and decisions in academia on the basis of social media trends was part of the problem and also not part of the solution.

I taught at Vassar 2006-2022, was chair in 2020-2022. My stories put Tyler Austin Harper’s to shame, and every one of my colleagues would nod in agreement. Those were wild times.

A decade of austerity measures at SLACs eased in 2020 because of George Floyd. But the top-down way admin implemented hiring forced the hand of understaffed, desperate departments. Candidates had to be everything, not just good biologists or historians. They had to be saviors. It was driven by admin

I spoked to Heather Bigley of BYU Radio about the 1960 film Spartacus, and concluded that the message of the film is that the vicious are incapable of understanding the virtuous. The motivations of the latter are alien to the former. open.spotify.com/episode/6V0k...

Spartacus: Vicious v Virtuous

Voiceover: Movies that Move Us · Episode

open.spotify.com

Watching Star Trek TNG over again, with my 13yr old. I think this show fucked up my generation because it convinced us that villains tend to concede when Picard points out the moral consequences of their plans, and their unforeseen impact on other people’s rights and dignity.

I had a dream that Alex Rails was hired as The Ethicist at the New York Times and I was his/her editor.

Hey @dieworkwear.bsky.social, do men wear v-neck tshirts any more or was that only a 2010s thing. I used to have nothing but v-necks and I noticed that I haven’t worn won for years, and when I go t-shirt shopping there isn’t one in sight at the department stores.

Everyone is talking about how men don’t approach women romantically anymore but they seems to have no problem approaching me about their religion, pest control, and solar panels and I think my rejection are much angrier and damaging to their egos.

Maybe from now on there should be two Third Place matches.

The funny thing about Asian dudes is that, since we’ve been the most populous human beings on the planet for a long time, we’ve been quietly in the background of everything.

The culture warriors were so neurotic about casting they allowed Nolan to sneak in his real revisionary message, which is about what happens to a man and his culture when he commits atrocities in war.

This piece hits the nail on its head. Young people have to purchase what a functional society should offer for free. open.substack.com/pub/becoming...

Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

Society burned through social capital and replaced it with ruinous private expenditure

open.substack.com

I'm imagining the tens of thousands of on duty E7s and O4s and above, people used to being called "Major," "Captain" and "Colonel" and "General", being forced to line up for mandatory testosterone tests, and then having their manhood questioned, and the results listed on their performance review.

Why don’t legacy media outlets create a way to pay $.25 for access to a single paywalled article that is essentially zero friction, a double tap Apple Pay that doesn’t even take you away from the page?

I'm all for pinning this problem on DOGE, Trump, Taco Bell, big ag. But I just gotta say, is there medically or epidemiologically significant distinction between "ordinary" and "explosive" diarrhea?

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Federal and state health officials are reportedly investigating whether Taco Bell restaurants played a role in one of the largest U.S. outbreaks of an illness that causes explosive diarrhea