James Endres Howell

https://www.inquirer.com/education/penn-state-university-faculty-union-won-20260514.html

#laborunion #solidarity #seiu668 #pennstate #academia #highered

https://www.centredaily.com/news/local/education/penn-state/article315741700.html

#laborunion #solidarity #seiu668 #pennstate #academia #highered

@csepp Here's a little thing I made to check for message body, subject line, and attachments. Works in message-mode, tested in #mu4e, should work under Gnus and others...?

https://codeberg.org/jamesendreshowell/gists/src/branch/master/jeh-message-lint.el

#emacslisp #emacs

My amazing faculty colleagues at The Pennsylvania State University have just WON our vote to form a labor union!

The vote was historic: the biggest vote in education in Pennsylvania history. Now 5,000 plus of us are part of SEIU local 668!

Initial reports are that we won with 75% of the vote. Three to one.

https://www.pennstatefacultyalliance.org/

#laborunion #solidarity #seiu668 #pennstate #academia #highered

You know I went to the doctor
Said I'm feelin kinda rough
"Let me break it to you, son
Your shit's fucked up"

I said My shit's fucked up?
I don't see how! He said
"The shit that used to work
Won't work now"

#warrenzevon #enjoyeverysandwich #middleage

MY FUCKING FAVORITE IS THE WEB FORM PASSWORD FIELD THAT WILL NOT LET YOU PASTE YOUR PASSWORD YOU GUYS ARE SO GODDAM SMART WHAT A SNEAKY MOVE TO FOIL THE BAD GUYS I FEEL SO SECURE YOU FUCKING MORONS

#securitytheater #security #password

@peaoPerdido First, #syncthing is brilliant, paired with Orgzly Revived for years. But yes, conflicts can arise during mobile capture.

My strategy has been to have a separate capture.org file in my Org directory. It only gets written to on mobile, and it gets treated as read-only from Emacs. Then I org-refile those mobile-capture headings into my main #GTD file anytime I'm doing process/organize steps.

@ctietze @publicvoit @slackline @marlinz008

Normalize calling the ballroom "The Bunker."

#trump #bunker #uspol #ballroom

@schuemaa Gah, the Canvas API. I have not been able to wrap my brain around it. At the beginning of every term I WASTE SO MUCH TIME reconfiguring three new courses by hand, click click click, when I know it principle it could be automated.

Please share a repository showing some examples!

Meanwhile, check out this guy's approach to quizzes:

https://github.com/gpoore/text2qti

#emacs #canvaslms

@rangek As you know, "Stable" does not mean "doesn't crash," it means "doesn't change often."

#Debian #debianStable

Grew up in a lily-white small town surrounded by entitled, mediocre, uneducated men born at their empire's glorious peak. Even as they tumbled out of Reagan's, and Clinton's, shrinking middle class, they were as certain of their destiny as future millionaires as they were certain of their deserving this birthright in their very essence.

I fled.

Made my way to the wicked city and found my tribe, that global cadre of thinkers, of scientists and artists. Those who expect no handouts, who wait for nothing and no one, who create and invent and enrich and ennoble by the sweat of their brow. Passed though the Olympus of Berkeley on the way to the bucolic Ivory Tower.

And had to watch as they settled themselves, with all of their accents and skin tones and creeds, into ignominy and servility as arrogant demagogues for the status quo, as fuck chimps for their billionaire patrons, as apologists for every crime, cosplaying the ruling class and blaming everyone but the ruling class when the ruling class pushed them down an elevator shaft.

For which of these two categories of willful slaves I have more contempt is a question that depends on my mood from moment to moment.

#uspol #academia #highered #labor #class

If I said "totally novel DESCRIPTIVE ANATOMY of the human body in 2026 CE," you would say "female bodies, probably lady parts," and of course you would be correct

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.18.712572v1

#neuroanatomy #clitoris #human #medicine

Jacob Bronowski, 1953:

"Has there ever been a society
which has died
of dissent?

Several have died
of conformity
in our lifetime."

#bronowski #science #humanities #humanism

@shom I used #freesoftware to slice up and merge PDFs from various textbooks to produce reading packets. (#TeXLive's #pdfjam, also recommend @pdfarranger).

Took the trouble to get them approved by the copyright compliance police in University Libraries. Been distributing them with a clear conscience and a light heart for many years.

I hope I have students who will remember me the way you remember that teacher of yours.

https://github.com/pdfjam/pdfjam

RE: https://fediscience.org/@PLOSBiology/116459173440406385

Microbial symbiosis never ceases to amaze.

#microbes #ecology #symbiosis

"The history of #Emacs completion frameworks is a progression from monolithic solutions toward composable ones."

This is a comprehensive summary, with a thorough and fair history. A long read, but worth it.

I plateaued at #Vertico #Orderless #Marginalia #Consult years ago. Maybe time to learn the others, one at a time.

https://www.chiply.dev/post-vompeccc

@oantolin @minad

#emacs

Some interesting ideas from @publicvoit. I'm stealing the "Share on Mastodon" link idea.

"Features Added to lazyblorg (Static Blog Generator)"

https://Karl-Voit.at/2026/04/19/lazyblorg-recent-features

#publicvoit #emacs #20260419_LazyblorgRecentFeatures

@wirthy The org-static-blog package is very well done. Simple, robust, transparently legible, thus easily extensible. If you want a place to start blogging from #Emacs, it is a very solid foundation.

Not a coincidence that it has been more visible on #fediverse chatter lately.

@lobsters

#orgstaticblog

NERD DAD FRIDAY NIGHT WITH @greg

If I'm honest, there's a bit of faffing around to get #mu4e configured (see footnote¹). But golly, it sure is worth it.

Just being able to compose emails natively in #Emacs is very OHHHHHHhhhhh **THAT** FEELS BETTER

and then being able to capture Org tasks that link to messages is very UNLIMITED POWER!!!! (see figure)

and then over the next couple years gradually smoothing and polishing your email workflow with little customizations just exactly for little old you is very [wildebeest-levitating-in-blissful-meditation]

If I were to presume to provide advice it would be: consider it a gradual transition, and resolve to savor the process and enjoy each incremental improvement.

___
¹There's a separate binary, which requires a separate quirky compile-from-source installation and configuration. Like most Emacs mail clients, it relies on mbsync to sync local copies with your IMAP server. And then there are countless quirks in its UI, endlessly customizable in the good/bad way to which we are all accustomed.

@pymander

RE: https://fosstodon.org/@pymander/116381801119625280

Amen, brother! In #mu4e under #Emacs "The ability to write custom code to both process and create email is extremely powerful and a great time saver."

RE: https://mstdn.ca/@david_megginson/116381864902316642

#emacs #feast

I love #Sourcehut. Sad to see them under coordinated prolonged DDoS attack. Infuriating.

Reminder to eat your vegetables, back up your data, and mirror your repos to #Codeberg and bare repos on your own cheap VPS somewhere

But definitely not GitHub booooo BOOOOOO

https://status.sr.ht/issues/2026-04-06-ddos-attack/

RE: https://fediscience.org/@jameshowell/115028024955832856

Pro tip: put in a little time, every six or twelve months, for curating your email filters. The return on #ADHD investment is wildly disproportionate to the effort.

#gtd #email

Who else is old enough to remember Jessica Lynch?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Lynch

#rescue #propaganda #psyops

@pkal Sorry! Let's try it this way. NEW BLOG POST: "My first advice! (in Emacs Lisp)"

https://jamesendreshowell.com/2026-04-04-my-first-advice-in-emacs-lisp.html

#emacs #emacslisp

Feeling gratitude towards this community. Just wrote my first #emacslisp advice ever.

(advice-add #'package-function-has-no-hook :before #'my-little-hook-function)

A small thing, but it removes friction from my org-static-blog (recommended!) workflow.

These little steps forward are what make this hobby so much fun. And—you'll just have to believe me—the confidence to bork around like this comes from being part of this community.

[EDIT: broken link removed; see thread]

#emacs #mastodon #fediverse

UPDATED BLOG POST: Finally tracked down and fixed a little bug in "Custom sorting of mu4e headers"

https://jamesendreshowell.com/2026-01-08-custom-sorting-of-mu4e-headers.html

#emacs #mu4e #emacslisp

RE: https://fosstodon.org/@davep/116341198726756217

TIL: defconst and defvar do not set a value if the symbol is already bound to a value. Which makes sense, but would confuse an unsuspecting goober who might be REPLing their way around a buffer making changes.

#emacs #emacslisp

In the #nineties in #Pittsburgh #Pennsylvania my housemates and I ate for a month on a $100 grocery bill. One hundred dollars US per month, split four ways. Lots of beans and rice, lots of pasta and vegetables. We weren't vegan, we were just poor.

Oh, and rent was $1000 a month, split four ways.

I paid taxes on $6,000–$7,000 a year those years. It was a frugal life, but comfortable and fulfilling. Not at all degrading.

We did not know how good we had it.

@TheBreadmonkey

Be like Dr. Howell, nerds

https://liberapay.com/tarsius #magit

https://liberapay.com/fediscience #fediscience

https://liberapay.com/org-mode/ #orgmode

Find your favorite projects: https://liberapay.com/explore/

#humblebrag #rolemodel #justsayin

@zyd #emacs #mu4e

(setopt shr-use-colors nil)

THIS SETTING COMPLETELY FIXES what has been by far my biggest annoyance with mu4e. Namely the ghastly clash of awful foreground and background colors in messages that can only be rendered as HTML.

Thanks to Wouter Groeneveld for this tip and many other improvements to mu4e!

https://brainbaking.com/post/2026/01/customizing-the-emacs-email-experience-with-mu4e/

#emacs #mu4e #html #email

@ericsfraga @mstempl I learned about all three of #Emacs, #TeXLaTeX, and #literateprogramming at the same time in the late 1980s.

The first two always went together, and the third was a dream, a thing only the gods upon Mount Knuth-lympus could do.

Then, much later! Oh happy day! #OrgMode came along, and all three were baked into a warm, delicious pound cake. The tool that decisively allowed me to become a confident Emacs user was to make my config a literate Org document. Inspired by @sacha's example! Having it be a document, structured as an outline, with paragraphs of prose, was just qualitatively different from a monolithic lisp file.

Collapsing outline elements (1) allow fractal movement between a gestalt and detailed view, and (2) impose structure. There is no way to overstate how necessary are both of these for managing even as small a project as my ... HOLY SHIT, I JUST LOOKED, and my config is more than 1,800 lines of code!

Okay, point proved

Re: #Emacs for #ADHD

@marlinz's "Constantly fighting for structure" includes "constantly fighting against friction, because the slightest friction can become paralyzing, especially additively."

Conversely, removing distractions becomes a long-term exercise in continuous subtraction. Removing UI elements until only the essential is visible. Removing steps in workflows. Paradoxically, ADDING steps (single keystrokes) to workflows in order to reveal options in steps rather than presenting all the choices. Each reduction is tiny, but the cumulative effect—over years—is a huge reduction in stress and a huge increase in productivity throughout the day.

Much more of the day in focus. Much more of the day in flow.

For someone else's brain, context switching between a bunch of desktop apps might feel like the same cognitive burden as switching between #Emacs buffers. But for me, #OrgMode, #mu4e, and #magit have not just changed how I work.

They allow me to control how I work, with results that have been a binary, qualitative improvement.

@leehall Funny to see a notification that you had followed me on here, only a couple hours after I read your piece in CounterPunch. Always inspired by the creative dredging of our suppressed and falsified history.

Students laugh at me because I never quit banging on about how we are apes. I think it does sink in for some of them....

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/03/16/beam-me-up-paddy/

#CounterPunch #primates #apes

Well now this is strange. I could swear none of these books were in my suitcase at the beginning of this trip

#vacation #usedbooks

Dr. Howell says VISIT THIS BOOKSTORE

The Book Lady Bookstore, Savannah Georgia USA. You can trust me on this kind of thing: this is one of the best used bookstores in the world.

https://thebookladybookstore.com/

#savannah #bookstore #usedbooks

The neighbor kid three doors down won a national science fair. With work that is truly incredible.

https://www.centredaily.com/news/local/education/article314998319.html

#math #geometry #polyhedra

For all of her ghastly faults, Constance Garnett's translations of #Tolstoy include comically frequent repetition of the phrase "hateful and loathsome."

That's it. That's the post. It's already in the public domain, but here I give it to you anyway:

"Hateful and loathsome."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_Garnett

@srijan @jiewawa Holy crap! This looks like it can be super useful! This could transform my #PineNote from something that just allows casual passive reading for fun to a device for producing real knowledge in my #Denote database.

Thank you!

#emacs

Many thanks to my new buddy Ahmed at Penn Phone Fix, a one-man repair shop in my little town.

He went the extra mile to fix the broken screen on my Pixel 6a. Installed a new screen but #GrapheneOS is too secure (at least for me to figure out how) to install the shady Google software to calibrate a new fingerprint reader. So he ordered yet another screen for me and installed it again with the old fingerprint reader. And would not let me pay him for the extra work!

When I asked him don't other customers run @GrapheneOS, he blinked at me politely. (Prompted further, he averred that he has never before seen a nonstandard Android install.)

Recommended! Thanks, Ahmed!

https://cellphonerepairstatecollege.com/

#StateCollege #Pennsylvania #PennState

The connotations of the word "stupid" have spread to overlap with "destructive," "unwise," "immoral," and "deceptive."

All of the following numbers are stupid:

"OpenAI has raised $110 billion in [more, new] private funding. The new funding consists of a $50 billion investment from Amazon as well as $30 billion each from Nvidia and SoftBank, against a $730 billion pre-money valuation."

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/27/openai-raises-110b-in-one-of-the-largest-private-funding-rounds-in-history/

#ai #bubble #aibubble #aibullshit

Welcome to the stupid future, peons

https://hackaday.com/2026/02/19/microsoft-uses-plagiarized-ai-slop-flowchart-to-explain-how-git-works/

#ai #aibullshit

@publicvoit @sysedit As for the markup syntax itself, I prefer #Orgdown over #Markdown, mostly from habit. But Org wipes its feet on Markdown in terms of functionality, and that's even before the nightmare of Geschmacksvermehrung ("flavor proliferation," if you will permit it).

As long as you're forgiving me: do you really draw your Roman majuscule O with a clockwise stroke of the pen? Because my neurodivergent day has irrevocably been ruined

Valentine's Day Blind Date With a Book at the Print Factory, Bellefonte, #Pennsylvania.

I was born to do this. Always dreamed of having my own used #bookstore, but reluctant to lose a fortune on my own used bookstore.

Instead I volunteer at this awesome #antiracist, #feminist, and #queer-inclusive organization that supports the artistic and intellectual life of the local community. Also #usedbooks

https://www.printfactorybellefonte.org/

@tmalsburg @devalot

#mu4e #orgmode #emacs

Res ipsa loquitur

#misconceptions #teaching #biochemistry #miseducation

@totherme

"One tries out #darkmode themes. One tries out #lightmode themes."

One sings the songs that remind one of the good times. One sings the songs that remind one of the better times

RE: https://fediscience.org/@jameshowell/115028024955832856

First week of classes, highest volume of email biannually, no big deal, thanks to #emacs and #mu4e

Don't hate me because I am efficient

NEW BLOG POST: Custom sorting of mu4e headers

I love mu4e for dealing with email under Emacs: with a little Emacs Lisp you can make it do email how you want to do email.

https://jamesendreshowell.com/2026-01-08-custom-sorting-of-mu4e-headers.html

#emacs #mu4e #emacslisp