"Jedi mind games."

One of the many ways that tenured professors are appalling is something that came up with my committee in the very last stage of my dissertation:

Sometimes, they don't keep basic track of the project across interactions, and instead just "shoot from the hip" half-formed and sometimes even ill-grounded thoughts like everything that dribbles out of their lips are these great pearls of wisdom to help you through to dissertation completion, even when the thoughts are simply bizarre or are even moving in a different direction from what they said as recently as a week ago.

And, even if the comments are unfeasible, you can't necessarily interact, since it's not really about the dissertation or the project, but it's about the professors' sense of superiority, though they don't think so since they've absorbed the message of the system so well.

So, even though our culture thinks these people are super smart and super critical, they can actually be appallingly lacking in self-reflection, and so you have to nod or act gingerly, and on top of all that pull "Jedi mind games" to get them to say the dissertation is done.

For example, a prof I know recommended that I send my complete draft out in the required final formatting done to a "T", because the committee would unconsciously react to the official-looking formatting with less feedback.

Tenured professors are just ridiculous, they're so self-absorbed.  They deserve academic freedom, but they don't deserve lifetime jobs, since it results in absolutely absurd behavior like this.

I no longer cry when I hear about universities shutting departments.

Maybe a few nice folks are washed up in their late 40s or even 50s without a good springboard to other careers, but most of them are assholes who deserve to see hard knocks.

This kind of behavior simply wouldn't fly in other sectors, as a friend of mine who's a psychology researcher now going back into academia pointed out.

"You can't keep track of the major direction of a multi-year project?", he was like.  "Give me a break."

An approach to perverts.

My one art school colleague who dresses in women's clothes really, really hates perverted people who just want you to play a script, and he especially detests people who expose themselves in public, like this one guy he saw by the lake this summer, this (old) (white) guy in very tight shorts that showed his junk, and who was sitting with his legs open for hours on this bench, so people would see his shit as he was lolling about and feel uncomfortable for noticing.

"That's what he got off on," my one colleague was like, "Causing people to feel weird that way.  He set them up to see, but if they saw, they would think he didn't know and would feel uncomfortable."

So, he did what he always does in those situations, he charged right up to the guy and and was like, "I see what you're doing, I see what you're doing, how about you just whip it out?!?!".

He says when you make what they're doing explicit like that, perverts always get scared and leave, which this guy did, jumping up and acting indignant like he didn't understand what my friend was saying, but blanching and choosing to leave anyways.

"It's funny, I forgot this is a big city sometimes," I was like.

A compliment to millennials.

Millennials are really, really awesome at identifying agendas present in communications.

I had heard Larry Lessig say this years ago, and he attributed it to growing up in the internet age without a dependably objective mainstream press.

I recently saw an instance of this at my school, and their astuteness was impressive.

On the other hand, I remember once this summer or the last talking with my parents about climate change, and they had a hard time grasping how a politically-aligned thinktank could sow misinformation in a pretty major national newspaper.

"But the study said...", they kept saying.

No source critical perspective at all.

And, it was a climate change doubter talking point meant to slow a transition away from carbon by inflating difficulties, and it reeled my dad in even though he has 2 science degrees and believes in climate change and decarbonization!

That conversation was quite shocking, because it made me realize how out-of-it older generations can be.

Odd condolences card to a former student's parents.

One of my art school students from my sex class this past term died in a very very tragic biking accident this past month, as I found out from an email sent out by the school to everyone.

I got her parents' address to send a note, but it was tough to write.

I think she was a lesbian who was experimenting with identity and was just beginning to explore trans* stuff, and she had very tentatively said the pronoun "they / them / theirs" when I asked for pronouns the first day of class, though she had a clearly female name...

All in all, it seemed like a first, gingerly step towards trying some of this genderqueer shit that's floating around nowadays.

Towards the end of class, though, she had a lightbulb go off from reading a primary source, how self-hating your gayness might make you go trans*, and I had wondered at the time where that realization would take her in life.

It was just a comment on a line in one primary source, but you could tell she really noticed herself in the text, and it seemed like some kind of breakthrough in the opposite direction from the pronoun experimentation.

Anyhow, as I wrote the card, I tried just to use her name and avoid pronouns altogether, but eventually that got too hard and I ended up just segueing into "she / her / her".

I honestly have no idea what pronouns she used with her parents, and if they'll call me out for not using "they / them / theirs" with their kid, or if on the other hand if I did that, would it be like a knife twisted in their heart, because this nice condolences card would always be a reminder of how the trans* cult took their daughter away.

A happening on the commute to school (2 of 2): Very minor bike fall.

The other week, I was biking in to school, and as I was going over the overpass over the highway past the subway stop, my book bag shifted and burst open and all these books that I was taking in to school to return started spilling out, so I slowed down and edged my bike over, and then as I swerved to avoid biking over a falling book I ended up gently falling over onto the (at that place on the street greatly elevated) sidewalk.

Immediately, I got up and started gathering my stuff, and I hear someone shouting from across the street, "Are you okay?", and I turn and look and it's a (middle-aged) (black) (male) driver stopped in traffic, who had rolled his window down to call and check on me.

I was like, "Yeah, thanks for asking!", and I gave a wave and a thumbs up.

Then, this (black) (teenaged) girl on the sidewalk stops and starts to kneel down and pick up my books, and I have to be all like, "Oh, thank you so much, but I'm good," and she smiles and nods pleasantly and goes on her way.

Can't people be nice sometimes?

A happening on the commute to school (1 of 2): Rain.

The other week, as I bike in to school, I cross 38th St., and suddenly everything is wet.

At that point I realize that the dark clouds just to the south a bit earlier in the day were actually rain, and that the rain clouds must have passed through only on the southern half of my commuting route.

Odd gym lock coincidence:

I go to the gym at school, and I get a lock with the combination 2 - 32 - 2.

The next time I go to the gym, I get a lock, and as I'm walking up the stairs towards the locker room, I start unlocking it, and I notice again that it's 2 - 32 - 2, and I see a former (black) (female) (undergrad) student of mine walking towards me, and I'm like, "You know what's weird?", and I then I tell them about how I got a lock with the same combination two times in a row.

Then, the very next time I go to the gym, I get 2 - 32 - 2 a third time!

It was only the next time after that that I finally got a different combination.