Fade

Classicist & writer. Livetweets academia. She/they. @fadeaccompli in most other places online.

If I start talking about books, it's gonna be a long thread.

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fade_at_mastodon.online@mostr.pub

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npub1xaztg325nh95n9078smxlatjftz2fzj9khlex478tulpvlvlry3smc2lyl

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Last Notes

2023-07-20 14:29:26

Periodically I buy some fancy name-brand whatever instead of the cheap generic version, to see if the Sam Vimes "Boots" Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness is at play or not.
So far it's roughly 50/50 whether the results are "Damn, yes, this more expensive thing is so much more durable/effective!” or “Huh. Well. Exactly like the generic, then," and I have not yet found /any/ way--including reading many reviews--to tell which it's gonna be.

2023-07-16 19:00:00

Question of the day: is there a community/guide for #Twitch streamers who do actual academic classes entirely through that medium? Not just "does informative streams" or “also streams the class they're teaching for some institution," but where the class /is/ “Here's the weekly schedule for sessions on Twitch” doing multi-week coverage of specific topics.
Because surely some people have to be doing that already, right?

2023-07-11 18:21:44

"You've probably heard of The Cloud before. But was is it anyway? ...when you store something in The Cloud, you store it in a server outside of your organization! Think of it as a storage unit you're renting.”
Ah, mandatory IT security training, yes, please inform me about The Cloud.
"But cloud storage comes with its own major security risk: the greatest security risk is user error!”
Yes, tell me more.

2023-07-11 13:52:50

My spider plant is attempting to spawn again, and I've carefully directed the runner down to the pot next to it which has been empty since I accidentally killed a /previous/ spawn of the same plant last summer. I feel like a realtor showing off a murder house to a happy young couple. "Ha ha, yeah, rumors of haunting, so silly! Now don't you like this east-facing view? Sunny but not /too/ sunny, right?”

2023-07-07 14:07:01

Good morning from Adverb, who has once again confirmed the patio to be free from badgers.
https://files.mastodon.online/media_attachments/files/110/673/180/638/205/040/original/d6f6b0d97377455e.jpg
https://files.mastodon.online/media_attachments/files/110/673/180/659/038/220/original/7d1a9665b3c6d4d0.jpg

2023-07-04 14:05:11

I continue to work on acquiring an article of clothing or beverage container marked up for every institution of higher education I've ever attended. Or, hm, worked at, coming up soon.
It's a pity so many of these are shirts; I want to find a way to deploy all of the logos simultaneously. Right now the best I could do would be an Austin Community College (go Riverbats!) shirt and University of Minnesota hat while drinking from an Occidental College cup.

2023-07-03 21:43:17

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@npub1mdk…aptk Of course now that I reread that post I realize that I swapped my A/B order along the way, and not in a cool chiasmus way but in a "possibly confusing to people not already familiar with both platforms" way. Oops.

2023-07-01 15:49:21

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...that said, some of the most interesting differences I've seen:
* "Here's how to make sure people know you're not a bot!" vs. "Here's what you need to do to meet local standards.”
* “Yeah, that aspect is annoying, here's how we work around it!" vs. "That's not a bug, it's a feature.”
* “We do X & Y, this is how it maps to what you're used to" vs. “You have to do X, Y, Z, A, B, C, & D, or you're a bad person.”
* “Welcome to the hellsite (affectionate)" vs. “Good, you rejected the hellsite”

2023-07-01 15:45:00

I am absolutely fascinated by the difference in tone and advice between “People on Mastodon talk to people arriving from Twitter" and "People on Tumblr talk to people arriving from Reddit," recently. Someone else should write a proper post on that.
(I'm not gonna be the one to do it: too much else to do, data too anecdata, don't want to get the Discourse on me, etc.)

2023-06-28 14:34:34

When the smoke's in the sky
with a high AQI
that's a Thursday.

2023-06-27 16:30:21

Today's edit frustrations so far:
* How do I format a citation where the “Title” should have a comma in it at the end, but the title itself ends in a question mark? "Title,” or "Title?" or "Title?,” ? Argh.
* The Oxford list of classical abbreviations does not include Truculentus. It's probably "Truc.", but, y'know, I'm guessing, because it /doesn't tell me/.
* De Melo has three different books in the Loeb published in 2011. Keeping 2011a/b/c straight is a pain.

2023-06-13 18:06:53

Okay, so it's transliteration and not translation, but I am still pretty damn tempted by this "We'll turn your 140-character bit of text into a cuneiform clay tablet we mail to you" service. Just. On principle.
https://dumbcuneiform.com/

2023-06-04 16:41:44

As I once again attempt to maneuver a little cart of groceries through the aisles of the light rail car, I reflect on how public transport can only do so much to replace private cars when it doesn't have robust cargo options.

2023-06-04 14:42:16

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@npub1j2y…ggdc Oh I see you've been to Tumblr and/or Twitter.

2023-05-26 17:18:36

This darn keyboard I use at the office is getting increasingly unreliable the longer I use it. I don't suppose anyone has a keyboard or brand they'd like to recommend? Specs:
- works with a Mac
- wired, not wireless (preferably standard USB)
- not super loud
- under 12" long

2023-05-12 17:48:13

Watching a colleague dress up in his doctoral robes for a graduation ceremony: "This makes me feel like I'm dressing up for Star Wars cosplay."
"It does look rather Palpatine, huh."
"Except I don't have a hood."
"But you'll be getting one!"
"...huh."
"My god. The Sith are just developed from an academic grad student and advisor relationship all along."
"You can only get tenure by striking down your advisor."

2023-05-10 13:35:35

Okay, weird question of the morning. If I wanted to make my syllabus and class assignments easily available to people who wanted to follow along, plus occasional small uploads--not big PDFs or video, just "here's one page from De Melo's introduction", "here's an example assignment", that kind of thing--what would be a good website for that purpose? It needs to be easy to navigate, host a reasonable number of small files, and not be covered in ads or decay quickly when not actively maintained.

2023-05-09 15:19:28

I've been trying to take more pictures of plants, because I find them pleasant (if cryptic) and sometimes friends like seeing the results. This is how I've discovered I'm bad at taking full scale pictures of trees, and my phone is helpful in the "helping like cats" sense when I try to take closeups. As such.
https://files.mastodon.online/media_attachments/files/110/339/393/267/003/075/original/5ca7c2e473f22759.jpg

2023-05-07 15:37:27

Adverb is patrolling the patio for badger incursion signs, as is traditional.
https://files.mastodon.online/media_attachments/files/110/328/139/936/736/965/original/7309c0b14f0d22dd.jpg

2023-05-01 14:46:49

Someone from Facilities has come by to vacuum the grad office today, and we are all awkwardly, deeply grateful for the help. We do try to be tidy and clean up after ourselves, but even so. There's a lot of 'eating lunch at the desk' in this office.
(And sometimes dinner. Very occasionally breakfast.)

2023-04-27 15:23:34

One of the fun things about being a grad student is that often when an email goes out about some university policy, I get the student-targeted version /and/ the instructor-targeted version. Such as the two emails I just got about the use of ChatGPT and other 'AI' in classes.

2023-04-19 17:39:59

I'm trying to find follower-tongs on Tumblr today, and not coming up with any. Annoying.
You know. When you want to stop following a particular person for various reasons, but they reblog so much good stuff you still want access to that, so you need to find someone who follows them and reblogs just the good stuff, and follow /that/ person instead.
...everyone on Tumblr is periodically in this situation where they need follower-tongs, right? It's not just me, right?
...right?

2023-04-18 20:57:19

I have successfully located the room that the Lauritsen Lecture is in this year. (Which is to say, probably the same room it's always in: the very top of Heller, the one room the History department has that can accommodate a sitting crowd without being a lecture hall.) This year's talk is on food & drink in Ancient Egypt, so I am pretty excited about that. Far enough from my field that it'll all be new to me, just close enough that I can probably follow the arguments well enough. Excellent.

2023-04-18 14:18:30

Oh hey the Vagina Museum is doing a thread on ovarian torsion! I remember when that happened to me. Ha ha. The most painful experience of my life. I missed a whole Thanksgiving, going to the ER and ending up in the hospital overnight because of the surgery.
Really nice medical people, though. Top-notch care.
Anyway, good luck to folks with ovaries, try not to get ovarian torsion. Not that there's anything you can do to prevent it, so far as I know! Ha. Ha ha. Ow.
https://masto.ai/@vagina_museum/110220200651785586

2023-04-13 20:02:20

Having a magnetic pole strong enough that we can point teeny tiny bits of metal toward it as a way of telling our direction on the planet is really weird if you think about it for too long.
<thinks about it for a while>
Okay, enough of that, back to the dissertation.

2023-03-11 19:03:21

Adverb is being extremely helpful while I change the sheets. I cannot spend thirty seconds without him placing himself, or his chew toys, right in the middle of the bed again.
Why did I make it easier for him to jump up on the bed, anyway?
(Because otherwise I'd be constantly having to go lift him up personally. Oh. Right. That.)

2023-03-11 04:03:08

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#[0] I like to pretend that the Aldi cashier isn't judging me when my weekly shopping includes a half dozen frozen chimichangas, but let's be honest, it's accurate judgment.