Laura Smithers
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laurida.bsky.social
Laura Smithers
@laurida.bsky.social
530 followers 1.2K following 61 posts
in no particular order: virgo, bagel aficionado, coffee addict, private nerd, professional nerd, pleasant enough curmudgeon, keeper of random and rarely useful facts. #content: laurasmithers.net, sunypress.edu/Books/I/Impact-Impasse
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laurida.bsky.social
Laura Smithers @laurida.bsky.social · Mar 5
In a burning world, new work exploring crisis in HE not as an objective state to be solved but as an made-objective state to reorient to, specifically here via the connection administrators strengthen between data and fear: doi.org/10.1080/1750... 1/x
Administrative life in the time before crisis: affect and the codependence of data and fear
In this article, we study the administrator at Crisis State University, a collaged actor and American institution. Affect, specifically fear and anxiety, is our entry point to unfold the contradict...
doi.org
Reposted by Laura Smithers
rincewind.run
evergreen
Tweet from @PPathole Tech enthusiasts: my entire house is smart Tech workers: the only piece of technology in my house is a printer and I keep a gun next to it so I can shoot it if it makes a noise I don’t recognize
November 22, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
travelincatdoc.bsky.social
Read the story of Nancy's Yogurt, still a family operation, and Sue Kesey, "the steady center of the operation—the one person, in that troupe of yogurt-making hippies" who made the business a success.
Who was "Nancy? How did the Grateful Dead save the company? *gift*
www.wsj.com/business/ret...
Sue Kesey, Who Helped Bring Probiotic Yogurt to the Masses, Dies at 86
As the co-founder of Springfield Creamery, maker of Nancy’s Yogurt, Kesey got her start courtesy of the Grateful Dead.
www.wsj.com
October 4, 2025 at 10:02 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
newyorker.com
“As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one’s life or one’s work,” Leonard Cohen said, in 2016.
Leonard Cohen Makes It Darker
At eighty-two, the troubadour had another album coming. Like him, it was obsessed with mortality, God-infused, and funny.
www.newyorker.com
September 21, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
tressiemcphd.bsky.social
You can add up all the enjoyable pursuits of LLMs and the work productivity hacks and none of them, separately or together, will be more important than AI’s ecological costs or political disruption.

“We” is more important here.
August 23, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
ladyhistorian.bsky.social
Every time admin talks about "future-proofing our degrees," I die a little inside and then remind them that critical thinking is the only skill that does this
laurenginsberg.bsky.social Lauren Ginsberg @laurenginsberg.bsky.social · Aug 10
THIS. It has hurt STEM students on the job front as much as it’s hurt humanities enrollments. We claim to be helping these students w focused ‘job ready’ degrees. It’s a lie. It has always been a lie.
novicsara.bsky.social Sara Nović @novicsara.bsky.social · Aug 10
(Not all, of course, but overall siloing stem students away from books and humanities, and more than that, convincing them those things are beneath them/obsolete, has done them a disservice. There just isn't really a way to learn critical thinking skills without, apart from lived experience.)
August 10, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
epikt.bsky.social
run universities like a business, they said. really open them up to market efficiencies
nathankhensley.bsky.social Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · Jul 22
very grim. as the article notes, some relevant context is that the university expanded its debt exposure by 260 percent in two decades & set up a scenario where 68 percent of total assets are tied up in leveraged debt
July 22, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
michae.lv
I can't quite believe it, but, it appears that the person responsible for this at the University of Warwick has had a Vogue photoshoot about the rebrand, explaining his 'journey from the world of luxury [goods marketing] into higher education' vogue.sg/university-o...
Universities aren’t often spoken of as ‘brands,’ but Warwick leans into that idea. What does thinking of a university as a brand unlock—and what can it achieve when done well? Seeing a university as a brand unlocks coherence and confidence. A brand is about more than design, it’s about identity and consistency. When you align your values, your story and your impact, you become more than a place, you become a movement. At Warwick, brand isn’t just a communications tool, it’s a strategic asset. It helps us attract brilliant minds, forge global partnerships and create a distinctive space in a competitive world. When done well, a brand doesn’t limit, it liberates. What drew you to the world of higher education, and how do you see its role evolving in society today? My journey from the world of luxury into higher education has been one of purpose and transformation. After years of working with global brands, I was drawn to higher education as the next frontier of influence, a space where knowledge, identity, and opportunity intersect. Universities aren’t just places of learning, they are platforms for societal impact. Their role today is to be both anchor and catalyst: rooted in rigorous teaching and research, yet agile enough to respond to global challenges and cultural shifts. How has your background in the luxury sector shaped the way you approach storytelling and brand building at the University of Warwick? Working across premium and luxury sectors—fashion, real estate, travel and beyond—taught me the value of emotion, detail, and differentiation. In those worlds, a brand isn’t just a badge, it’s an experience, a feeling, a story that lives in people’s hearts. At the University of Warwick, I’ve brought that same mindset to higher education: crafting narratives that are both strategic and human.
July 22, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
mcsweeneys.net
Hemingway's birthday is tomorrow, and we'll be posting our usual cavalcade of new and classic parodies of him and his work. To help kick things off, here's the piece that started it all. #HappyBirthdayHemingway www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/tot...
“Toto’s ‘Africa’” by Ernest Hemingway
At the airport the young man heard far-off drums echoing in the night. He imagined the young woman in the plane sitting still, hearing whispers of ...
www.mcsweeneys.net
July 21, 2025 at 1:30 AM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
defector.com
Kelsey McKinney tackles the Shakespeare play that's always troubled her most: 'Love's Labour's Lost." defector.com/shakespeare-...
Shakespeare Makes Me A Slower And Better Reader | Defector
One advantage I have always held in the literary arts is speed. I am a fast reader and an even faster scanner. I can draft quickly, churning out hundreds of words as if turning on a spigot. It’s an…
defector.com
July 20, 2025 at 9:01 PM
laurida.bsky.social
This is of course what they’re doing and also nightmare fuel
louiseseamster.bsky.social Louise Seamster @louiseseamster.bsky.social · Jul 19
Out of curiosity I wanted to know how the massive LMS Instructure (company that runs Canvas) is using the massive amounts of data it collects on students.

Oh.
(This article is nominally not a press release?)
www.forbes.com/sites/rayrav...
As more becomes known about individuals more and more data about learner journeys and the alignment of courses to skills and skills to careers, Instructure will become increasingly capable of providing optimal pathways for students. Moreover, by combining learning management system, student work repository, transcripts, and credentialling services through the integration of products such as Portfolium, Parchment, Scribbles, and Concentric Sky, Instructure will be able to provide students and prospective employers with deep longitudinal insight into capabilities and qualifications. Rather than just being able to provide information about course outcomes, as with the traditional transcript, Insturcture could make available the entire student data set leading to that outcome. This would make it possible to distinguish between the student earning a “B” in a course who started rough but was a solid “A” for the last month of the course, and the “B” student who started strong but grew progressively weaker as the course progressed. One struggles to diferentiate between such students when reviewing traditional academic records, but it will become clear as more data is available. As the data set grows, developing AI-enhanced interfaces into the data will become increasingly important to help viewers find precisely what they are looking for. One can easily imagine a world where the degrees become less valuable than the incremental steps recorded en route to the degree. This would move the ultimate stamp of approval on the finished product (students) from the supplier’s (university) quality control staff (faculty, registrar) to that of the buyer (potential employer), who could use the AI to make find exactly what they are looking for independent of the grades assigned. As this happens, students may find themselves with many more choices on how to meet a prospective employer’s requirements than simply going to a name-brand university and majoring in a pre-approved subject. The ultimate democratization of education may reside not in its universal availability but in its deinstitutionalization. If this comes to pass, we may find that the fabric of our lives is Canvas.
July 19, 2025 at 6:33 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
mattaklap.bsky.social
what if you could just lie down in a box and have your best friends slowly lower it into the earth
July 11, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
hypervisible.blacksky.app
“What if you could optimize without effort” is one of the prevailing questions of ai boosters, and I am always left wondering: what is the point of achievement without effort. www.marieclaire.com/beauty/artif...
Would you turn over your wellness to Artificial Intelligence? Before you balk, hear me out. What if your watch could not only detect diseases and health issues before they arise but also communicate directly with our doctors to flag us for treatment? What if it could speak with the rest of your gadgets in real time, and optimize your environment so your bedroom was primed for your most restful sleep, keep your refrigerator full with the food your body actually needs and your home fitness equipment calibrated to give you the most effective workout for your energy level? What if, with the help of AI, your entire living environment could be so streamlined that you were immersed in the exact kind of wellness your body and mind needed at any given moment, without ever lifting a finger?
July 11, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
nytimes.com
In a new documentary, Paul Reubens, the creator of the iconic character Pee-wee Herman, comes out as gay. Our critic Wesley Morris discusses Reubens’s relationship to being closeted, and what it means for artists to publicly come out.

Watch the full video on YouTube: https://trib.al/fnFKS5G
July 10, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
mcsweeneys.net
"The truth is simpler, and not at all alarming: your phone only seems to be listening to you because it’s collecting data about every word you type, every website you visit, and, through GPS tracking, everywhere you go in the physical world."
Calm Down—Your Phone Isn’t Listening to Your Conversations. It’s Just Tracking Everything You Type, Every App You Use, Every Website You Visit, and Everywhere You Go in the Physical World
It’s a universal modern-life experience to talk about something and immediately see an ad that seems like it must be a result of that conversation....
buff.ly
July 2, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
lainenooney.bsky.social
This is an idea as vastly dumb as every person needing to learn to code. University admin so uniformly lack the intellectual and moral courage required of this moment, incapable of making an argument for their own existence.
June 8, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
lainenooney.bsky.social
Jesus. It's so totally totally didn't have to be like this.

University administrations are fully captured by corporate interests; we will never know the full extent of the inside deals that have plugged AI into every layer of University software contracts.
hypervisible.blacksky.app Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · Jun 8
“‘Through AI Fluency, Ohio State students will be ‘bilingual’ — fluent in both their major field of study and the application of AI in that area,’ Ravi V. Bellamkonda, executive vice president and provost, said.” 😵
Ohio State announces every student will use AI in class
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Starting this fall, every Ohio State student will be asked to use artificial intelligence. “Through AI Fluency, Ohio State students will be ‘bilingual’ — fluent …
www.nbc4i.com
June 8, 2025 at 8:42 PM
laurida.bsky.social
"It’s so intensely frustrating because this prosperity people were enjoying was thanks to the New Deal taxing the shit out of the wealthy and the hard-fought union contracts, often paid for in blood, that created the conditions for the minimum wage to be an actual living wage...
June 2, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
jahorne.bsky.social
People want to ride trains.

"The Borealis train saw ridership increase by 227 percent from May 2024 to April 2025 while Amtrak Virginia saw its highest ridership recorded for the month of April."

www.masstransitmag.com/rail/article...
Amtrak state-sponsored services set ridership records in April
The Borealis train saw ridership increase by 227 percent from May 2024 to April 2025 while Amtrak Virginia saw its highest ridership recorded for the month of April.
www.masstransitmag.com
May 26, 2025 at 1:25 PM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
womensartbluesky.bsky.social
Joyous' by contemporary UK printmaker Sarah Morgan #WomensArt
Print in black and white featuring two joyously leaping white women in swimming costumes with their bscks to the viewer
May 25, 2025 at 6:00 AM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
trondbotnen.bsky.social
Skal vi bli enige om å drastisk redusere plastforbruker vårt nå, folkens? It's crunch time. wapo.st/433SbQM
On a remote Australian island, the birds are so full of plastic they crunch
Seabirds have been fishing plastic from the ocean and feeding it to their chicks, researchers say. One bird was found to have ingested nearly 800 pieces.
wapo.st
May 19, 2025 at 5:38 AM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
cyclelicious.bsky.social
"Europe Built Trains. America Built Highways and Regret" opinion piece by @danzep.bsky.social.

Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/o...
Opinion | Europe Built Trains. America Built Highways and Regret. (Gift Article)
As Europe embraces the night train, the United States seems to be sleepwalking into a transport dead end.
www.nytimes.com
May 19, 2025 at 4:31 AM
Reposted by Laura Smithers
freeblackgirl.bsky.social
Whew. “If I really am the last fat person, I’ll fight to stand tall in this body. Not as a relic, but as proof that there’s another way to exist. I’ll try my damndest to hold my ground because I’ve learned that living authentically—in whatever body you have—is its own kind of freedom.”
Am I the Last Fat Person in America? - Dame Magazine
What if I were the last fat person, walking through a world where my body is an anomaly, a relic of an era long past? Billboards and magazine covers show only one kind of figure—streamlined, uniform, ...
www.damemagazine.com
May 19, 2025 at 4:05 AM