Frank X. Vázquez

@fxvzquez.bsky.social

Theorist, usually chemistry. Assoc. Prof @StJohnsU Chemistry. Pronouns: he/him/él Mexican American. 🇲🇽🇺🇸

This is the end result of faculty handbooks. Admin try to say it’s the same as a CBA until they decide they don’t like what faculty are doing. Only having a strong union can fight against this. Especially when admin would rather burn the whole place down than negotiate with faculty. Union Forever!

But tenure norms are not laws, and *the New School said it was abiding by its faculty handbook*, which states that tenured faculty may be let go if there are
"serious financial considerations or curricular change(s)" that require the university "to discontinue an academic department/program or college/school."
Professor Reddy, who has been a faculty member for 17 years, disputed that interpretation. "They've used a very innovative and elastic legal theory, a heroic legal theory, you might say, to justify this," he said. (Emphasis mine)
Kathleen Bachynski@bachynski.bsky.social · 13h ago

Universities “are increasingly acting like other employers, finding “complicated and sometimes pretextual reasons” to fire employees, even those with tenure. “What we’re seeing at the New School is emblematic of the rising pressures on higher education as a labor market and as an industry”

Sort of un settling that one of the characters in the safety handout looks like me. It’s me figuring out the life jacket. Me making sure it’s safe to open the exit door. And me crawling my way to safety (and I guess leaving my family behind?).

A cartoon of a bearded man who looks too much like me putting on a life jacket. A cartoon of a bearded man who looks too much like me looking out the exit door. A cartoon of a bearded man who looks too much like me crawling onto the raft.

I don’t think people in NYC really understand the Sonoran hot dog. It’s not just the bacon wrap and spicy toppings. I’ve never seen pepper relish as a topping. Beans are central to what it is. This just isn’t a Sonoran hot dog. Sorry.

This summer, I finally tracked one down at Harlem Shake, the last place I'd ever think to look. The burger chain introduced a Sonoran hot dog when it opened in 2013, but these days, it returns as a seasonal special.
(Find it at both locations through
September.) It's not exactly the genuine article - the bolillo is a garden-variety hot dog bun and the jalapeño salsa, another archetypal topping, is replaced with chipotle mayonnaise. Still, the essential ideas are there: The hot dog is swaddled in crunchy fried bacon and piled with smoky cherry pepper relish. Loving the Sonoran dog is easy. Wrestling it into your mouth? Not so much.A picture of a hot dog. Text says: through September you can get a New Yorkers take on a Sonoran hot dog at Harlem shake. 

Then a headline: no beans, no bolillo, no problem. 

Note: it is a problem.

A friend and I won third place in the AZ state MESA competition where you had to get a car to roll off a ramp and get as close to the wall without touching. We taped a McDonald’s furby to an old roller skate and used a cardboard box as the ramp. We called it superkaratemonkeydeathcar.

Gail Simone@gailsimone.bsky.social · 2w ago

Okay, my QUESTION OF THE DAY is… What is your weirdest actual accomplishment? Not the biggest necessarily…but the weirdest?

the most realistic scene in Jurassic Park is when two scientists make a questionable decision — traveling to an undisclosed location with a strange man — on the promise of three years of modest funding