Shawn Burdette
@scburdet.bsky.social
Childless dog dude www.wpi.edu/people/faculty/scburdette wiki.wpi.edu/BurdetteLab/Main_Page
Everyone knows that I seldom go on social media to complain, but I'm going to make an exception today. Enshitification has historically been used to describe degradation of products and services in the digital space, but I believe it applies to everything right now
Back in my day, we hiked 10 miles uphill each way to school carrying mountaineering backpacks filled with rocks just to build our leg & back muscles. AND WE LIKED IT! apnews.com/article/scho...
School backpack overload: Heavy bags can strain kids’ bodies
Backpacks often become too heavy for kids, as students carry laptops, textbooks and more. Although 10% to 15% of a child’s body weight is often cited as a backpack guideline, pediatricians say there i...
apnews.com
I am told this stock ticker showed on the side of the university building next to the student center over the summer. Who is this for? Our undergrad students who have a stock portfolio to manage between exams?
Red Sox win 13 straight. 4 strait sweeps. From 14 games below 0.500 to 2 games over. Breathing down the Yankees' necks & in the wild card hunt. No bigger story in sports right now.
Apparently, the dilemma does not include remembering what a charisma-free douche Li'l Marco is. www.notus.org/perspectives...
Matt K. Lewis: I’m a Never Trump Conservative Who Used to Love Marco Rubio. Should I Still Believe in Him?
Marco Rubio’s stock has been rising recently, and it’s pretty clear the secretary of state is a leading 2028 presidential candidate. That may sound like good news for Never Trump conservatives like me...
notus.org
Hydrogen peroxide pKa = 11.8 Carbonic acid pKa = 6.3 quote is edited "Or that a shallow pool of hot water in direct sun grew algae, and then acidic hydrogen peroxide used to treat the algae ate away at the paint?"
McSweeney's@mcsweeneys.net · last mo.What's more likely, that a group of twisted phytoplankton enthusiasts dumped algae spores into the reflecting pool, then hacked up the paint with a box cutter? Or that a pool of shallow water in direct sun grew algae, and the hydrogen peroxide used to treat it ate away at the paint?
Reminds me of visiting Edinburgh as a grad student. Since I was at the conference alone, I ended up in a bar by myself one evening. The night ended drinking in some guys apartment with a few others I just met. This despite it getting harder to understand what they were saying as the night went on.
The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · 2mo ago“These are the friendliest people on the planet,” said one Red Sox supporter who shared a Sam Adams with a Tartan Army visitor in Boston for the World Cup.
Some venting incoming. Buckle up. On the upside, it gives some insight on *a* reason I've been less active on the socials for a while.
If you shut down the strip club in town, people are bound to pursue alternative vices
This seems bad: "Helium, for the WPI areas that utilize Helium, this is now under a force majeure. Based on WPI’s overall usage, Airgas will only be able to provide 1 tank of HE per month to WPI. Procurement will monitor HE orders and advise departments as needed."
If you have plans to commit a crime in NE CT, tonight is the night to do it, as long as it's not in Storrs. Not my video, but I saw what appears to be every cop car in the state staged on or near the UConn campus. There were +12 cars at the Mansfield gym www.instagram.com/reels/DWzoov...
Rusty Kiln on Instagram: "Storrs CT. 186 State Troopers getting ready for the. UCONN NCAA Men’s Final Game. #uconnhuskies #uconnbasketball #ncaabasketball #rustykiln"
54 likes, 0 comments - rustykiln on April 6, 2026: "Storrs CT. 186 State Troopers getting ready for the. UCONN NCAA Men’s Final Game. #uconnhuskies #uconnbasketball #ncaabasketball #rustykiln".
instagram.com
Really a missed opportunity to give us a ballroom update.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 4mo agowell, that was weird
There should be a statue next to it of Washington Irving embellishing & sanitizing history into propaganda.
George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸@gtconway.bsky.social · 5mo agoThis is so ridiculous. This Columbus guy comes here on his filthy, piss-ridden boat filled with smelly people who don't even have tourist visas, never bothers to learn English, and he gets a statue in front of the EOB? What woke bullshit.
Man who's about to turn 80 celebrates death of 81 year old.
Tom Nichols@radiofreetom.bsky.social · 5mo agoRemember all the times I said never to celebrate the death of another human being, because it just makes you look like a terrible, shitty person? Don't be this guy.
Colin Jost should start giving briefings. It would be equally valuable.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 5mo agoQ: Why are we helping Israel prosecute this war if they're going to pursue their own objectives? HEGSETH: We hold the cards. We have objectives. Those objectives are clear. We have allies pursuing objectives as well.
I guess we will have to invade Venezuela again to install a WBC champion more to our liking.
Pretty sure we could replace more than 50% of university administration with AI & no one would notice.
Tim Verstynen@tdverstynen.bsky.social · 5mo agoDo you ever notice how Silicon Valley never talks about AI replacing corporate executives? Every other white collar job seems to be fair game, but executives for some reason aren’t even discussed. 🤔
These morons are taking what could be lightly ribbing our friends to the north who have historically owned us in hockey & making it an unfunny policy justification. It's the Canadian Baconification of international relationships
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 5mo agoVan Orden: "If Canada had taken Donald Trump up on his offer to become the 51st state, the Canadians would've had gold also"
What should members of Congress do tonight? 1. Don't attend. 2. If you do attend, walk out when Trump defends ICE, or when it's clear he's not going to apologize for the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, or when it's clear he's going to ignore the Epstein survivors.
a man in a military uniform salutes with the words well done captain obvious
ALT: a man in a military uniform salutes with the words well done captain obvious
media.tenor.com
NPR@npr.org · 5mo agoAn NPR investigation finds the public database of Epstein files is missing dozens of pages related to sexual abuse accusations against President Trump. n.pr/4qTItsU
Not what everyone is latching onto, but isn't this a way to bypass barriers to let the companies LLM train on a large amount of data it might not otherwise have access to?
Ian Bogost@ibogost.com · 5mo agoIs this bad
![Comic. [Small panel overlaying large panel.] PERSON 1: What’s up with this weird landscape? PERSON 2 with ponytail: Oh, it was caused by… [Large panel is map of the United States with with red overlays denoting landscape phenomena. Mega-floods in the northwest, a plate tectonics speedrun on the west coast, volcanoes next to the west coast, water and time in the southwest, geology in the west, a supervolcano within the west, glaciers in the north, farming in the middle, rivers in the mideast, geology in between rivers and farming, ??? toward the northeast, farming on the east coast, continents colliding next to the east coast, ongoing disputes between limestone and water in the south of Florida, volcanoes in Hawaii, geology in Alaska with volcanoes and glaciers below.]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreihzjireqyhyztitogqi7khxntfzmhzmyqdfvycvl2qcf5yik4z5zm)