Sam

Just came out to my PI, about wanting to pursue a full-time organizing job post-PhD

Next-level.

NYU’s Full-Time Contingent Faculty Are Poised to Strike After trying to bargain a first contract for over a year, the union for 1,000 full-time contingent faculty at New York University is voting on authorizing a strike. Contract faculty say NYU is refusin...

"It is clear the strategy of American higher education is to sort of mimic the private sector and reduce their labor costs, all the while shooting tuition through the roof and then claiming they don’t have money for our salaries."

📰 jacobin.com/2026/02/nyu-...

Was trying to remember a Will Forte quote from Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie and accidentally figured out how to make Google’s AI tool shut up

I started going to meetings in spring 2021, my 1st year of grad school— it's been a fixture of my PhD. If we ratify the contract I'll get 3 months of benefits from it tops. But knowing how many people in the future will have their lives improved by this & be inspired to organize is its own reward :)

Graduate student union reaches tentative agreement with Penn, averting strike The agreement comes after more than a year of negotiations between the University and the union, which represents more than 3,700 graduate workers with teaching and research positions at Penn.

ICYMI: Colleagues & I successfully negotiated a 1st contract for UPenn's grad workers after 16 months of bargaining and 5 years of organizing. Proud of us for mounting a credible strike threat in order to massively improve pay and benefits for thousands of academics ✊️🟧🆙️
www.thedp.com/article/2026...

one week out from the strike deadline GETUP-UAW is turning my apartment into the house where they cooked the soap in fight club

the Bring Back Shame Popular Front is expanding

so funny that the same facial hair I was so desperate to have at 18 that I had a terrible goatee for years I am now haggling with my health insurance to get burned off my face permanently. life comes at you fast!

New York is a city of stories. Stories of the person with the most points buying the door

on the final episode of Heated Rivalry which is when I can only assume they are finally going to break the silence on Russiagate and the annexation of Crimea

Trump Sues IRS, Treasury for $10 Billion Over Tax-Return Leaks President Donald Trump sued the US Treasury and Internal Revenue Service for at least $10 billion over an unauthorized disclosure of his tax returns during his first term in office.

the notion of a settlement that gives the sitting president billions is… unprecedented is the only word i am letting myself use

Small particle dynamics in glassy polymers: diffusion, relaxation, and machine-learned softness In this work, we explore the simulated transport dynamics of small particles through a polymer melt at temperatures spanning from liquid-like behavior down to near and below the simulated glass transi...

I rarely post about my actual work here, but I'm happy to share that I have a new paper out in RSC Soft Matter. In this work we used molecular dynamics to study small penetrant dynamics in model polymer glasses and connected them to existing theory. Check it out: pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

I'm a No Limit soldier for Jerome Powell and the United Auto Workers

If she wasn't already dead, they killed her by preventing medical assistance. All the ICE/CBP officers involved should be prosecuted.

so awesome how the biblical context for the Christmas story is that Augustus was conducting the first census of the ancient world. data guys celebrating the miracle of accurately capturing the demographics of the Roman Empire

when it's New Years Eve on Pandora they sing Auld Varang Syne

All so-called "coastal elites" WILL be subjected to family viewing of the Christmas episode of The Dukes of Hazzard

I’m sorry, but it is disgraceful to be an academic who uses this technology to conduct research. It should be prohibited in all of our scholarly institutions, including universities and journals.

Bari Weiss’ much-hyped CBS News town hall with Erika Kirk was a massive ratings flop According to Nielsen, the Saturday night town hall saw a 27 percent decline in viewership compared to the network’s standard programming in that time slot year to date.

Bari Weiss has only failed upwards propped up by the oligarchs she sucks up to. The reality is that her politics are odious and people can't stand her. The political class giving her clout have their heads up their asses. No one likes this stuff.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

REVIEWER REPORT(S): Referee: 2 Comments to the Author Publish this revision as is.

From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak I fought with him, the Balrog of Morgoth, until at last I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountainside

saying “I would not have toasted him because he turned out to be a contemptible man” a full seven years after he was very publicly convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor is hilarious

How it feels knowing that Avatar 3 will gross 2 billion dollars while the least interesting critics in the world are spending all their time writing about how it has zero cultural impact

The USPS posting a NINE BILLION DOLLAR LOSS!!! sounds terrible. Certainly worse than if you said "USPS costs thirty dollars per person per year" even though that means the same thing and more accurately describes a government service

every trans person i see post about the OU suspension knows that the suspended target is trans & a grad student, & has an innate awareness that this is about purging trans employees. every cis person i see thinks the target is a rando professor & that this is about giving conservatives good grades

A formal statement from the University of Oklahoma appears on a white background with red accents. The text explains that the university is reviewing a student’s concern about grading and religious freedom. It states that college leaders contacted the student promptly, conducted a formal grade appeals process, and ensured no academic harm occurred. It also notes that the student filed a claim of illegal discrimination based on religious beliefs, which triggered a university review process. The graduate student instructor was placed on administrative leave, and a full-time professor assumed teaching duties for the rest of the semester. The statement reaffirms OU’s commitment to fairness, respect, and protecting students’ rights to express sincerely held religious beliefs. At the bottom is the University of Oklahoma logo.

It's not great that a student can turn in a bad essay but vaguely point to the Bible and religious beliefs as an excuse for not following the actual assignment and terrible writing. That's not what college is supposed to be.

The professor did nothing wrong but she was pulled off the course anyways.

#NowWatching filling in a blind spot in my tour of Cameron's filmography

Orange flyer reading: Strike authorized! 2229 grad workers votes yes, 92% yes vote, 71% participation

Last week our graduate union at Penn accomplished something amazing. In GETUP's first ever strike authorization vote, two-thirds of all grad workers at Penn turned out in favor of striking to settle the contract we've been negotiating for over a year. Back in the bargaining room next week!

DS9 scene. Rom is a Ferengi hero who has a large bald head and giant ears and lobes that sort of connect to make a unibrow and a ribbed pine cone looking nose. He's wearing a jacket that looks like those lick and stick backsplash tiles you can get at Lowe's. He's pictured here standing in a corridor, talking to someone and holding/reading a PADD. Closed caption reads, "Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains."

Alt in pic 1 Happy Labor Day