Data in Action Symposium, March 11, 2026, 8:30-5:00pm, Hayward Room, Hanover Inn.
Finished with my first set of proofs! Now I can be excited that @jenguiliano.bsky.social & @scottbot.bsky.social are coming to visit soon for a data extravaganza 🥰 (I planned our cluster symposium this year. Did I basically invite friends I miss? In part.) sites.dartmouth.edu/dhse-symposi...
When I first wrote Ch. 10, the layoff count in the federal government was 200K. Now that I'm reviewing my proofs, I have to change it to 300K.
I suppose we do live in a world where I have to have to include footnote that directs readers to more information about Holocaust denial because the total weight of the records used in the Nuremberg Trials is so enormous that my copyeditor thought it was necessary.
Should I be concerned that multiple people from a foundation dedicated to the legacy of a certain person from a certain company that sold a certain kind of machine to the Nazis and got an award from Hitler are looking me up on LinkedIn? That chapter was cleared by legal....
I am pretty sure I used a professional proofreader for New Digital Worlds, and they were awesome! But it was 170 pages all on one narrowly defined subject, not a 468 page monster covering 65,000 years, every continent except Antarctica, eleventy million disciplines, etc. The stuff Melissa caught!
I thought I was a good editor because a bunch of professors in grad school hired me to copyedit or proofread their books, but now that I have worked with a professional proofreader, I am blown away. So, if you need an exceptional proofreader, Melissa Rudder (Rudder Editorial).
Me giving a talk, my arms like a t-rex
“Don’t lose your dinosaur” —Stepbrothers
Apparently, I didn’t?
My beloved and I were trying to figure out why we are absolutely wrecked when neither of us have more on than usual. The multiple snow storms each week for 6+ weeks, war, cruelty, all of the above?
Struck by this description, which is textbook autocrat behavior.
Cover of The Cure’s Wish
I truly think there is no album more perfect than Wish by The Cure.
I got to see THE @jeffsharlet.bsky.social in the flesh today, and it was delightful.
Roopsi: [reading from The Boston Globe] The Patriots allegedly celebrated with strippers and hookahs
Beloved: In 1776?
R: The AFC Championship.
B: They brought hookers?
Roopsi: Hookahs. Like a hookah bar.
B: We’ve been living in Boston too long. You lost your Rs and are talking about the Revolution.
Got the shortlist for casting my audiobook and their samples, and this is the most objectively, unambiguously fun part of the whole process.
I will say, a job perk is that my place of employment can pull together an event with a group of experts on the Middle East to try to make sense of current, ahem, events in less than 48 hours.
I too find students will "confess" if I ask... I treat it as a learning moment, not a punitive moment the first time. I haven't had it be a continued problem, probably b/c having a conversation with me is punishment enough. But I hear a lot of frustration about lack of recourse to our honor system.
I am wondering how (if?) your current plagiarism adjudication systems handle violations of the policy. We’re running into the problem of unenforceable policies on the basis of not actually being able to “prove” LLM use.
Signed up for an event at work this evening called "Understanding the War with Iran"... seems like a tall order for the speakers, given *gestures wildly at everything.*
Once again, I am missing the days when a president needed to send a cabinet member to lie to Congress about why there needed to be a war.
One day, my partner is going to realize that I was right in February 2022 when I told him that WWIII had started. (Except I kept calling it WWWIV because I have some theories.)
Friend (former librarian) and I designing a hypothetical...
Friend: How many times would the librarian be willing to meet with the project director?
Roopsi: How interested are they in the topic? How much has the library budget been cut? How much of a jerk is the project director?
Friend: Word.
Supporting is way understating the case...
I totally needed this week to start with a win, and it did. (An administrivia win, but still a win.)
It’s so hard to believe and yet….
Would they have cared? Probably not, because we are all NPCs in their video game.
If these people had any understanding of even an iota of history, of the millennia of connections within the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia, they would have realized the massive geopolitical implications of what they are doing.
Family in Dubai are all safe but extremely worried and heard from family in Kashmir that the situation is pretty tense because of the war. Could not be more enraged about all of this.
Feels like a crime against humanity even minus experimenting on prisoners…
They just can’t/won’t stop being as cruel and inhumane as possible, can they.
Oh my word. This just gets worse and worse.
😂
