iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 02/10/2026

I’m sorry, WHAT NOW???? www.espn.com/college-foot...

With red letters WTF on top: Administrative Law Judge Janet Waguespack wrote in her Aug. 25 decision that Shanklin's initial punishment was "exceedingly harsh" and did not take into account several factors, including that he had no prior disciplinary history at LSU and that the incident "occurred only on one occasion and the time was brief."

She noted that other factors to consider were that there was "both consensual and nonconsensual activity," that there was no malice or force, and that Shanklin attempted to console the woman and expressed concern about her mental health.

"Respondent's behavior, although nonconsensual, did not exhibit a deliberate disregard for the dignity and autonomy of Complainant but was instead an error in judgment," she wrote.

Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 02/10/2026

The Cornell story is horrific, but I’d like to shine a light on what happened at LSU with a current football player on the team:

In July, the school found Shanklin responsible for "forcible rape" and issued a one-year suspension, which is a full ban from campus and activities, according to documents reviewed by ESPN. After Shanklin appealed, an administrative law judge who handles appeals per LSU policy upheld the finding that the athlete was responsible for "forcible rape," but reduced the punishment to four semesters of probation with no restrictions, which allows Shanklin to remain enrolled and on campus and to participate in activities as long as he stays out of trouble.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 16/09/2026

(Cactus was the radio host, a beloved figure here in Austin, fun!)

And I have to confess, I don’t know. Do women compete in intercollegiate sports at the university?

Darrell Royal [18:08]: We have an intercollegiate program for women that’s probably not as developed as some people would like. And I think...

Cactus [18:17]: Are you saying that women aren’t as well developed as you’d like?

Royal [18:18]: [all the men laugh] Cactus, you have a way of putting things. [Cactus laughs]

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 08/09/2026

Using an image, show an episode of Star Trek you are sure you’ve seen more than ten times.

A still from Next Generation episode "I, Borg." On the left, Geordi is looking at part of the borg's processing equipment and Third of Five (Hugh) is standing on the right looking off screen. There's another office in the background between them.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 09/06/2026

I had to read these garbage sentences three times to make sure I wasn’t not hallucinating his argument. “Which isn’t all bad”?????????

Unsold hotel rooms indicate that many will unload their seats on the secondary market. That also tells us that many overseas supporters either can’t get into the United States or fear Donald Trump’s draconian immigration policies. As a result, maybe more Americans will be able to afford to take their kids to a World Cup match, which isn’t all bad.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 13/05/2026

I googled "I once saw one baby give another baby a tattoo! They were so drunk!" because I posted it without context on FB many years ago. It's from 30 Rock (of course). Google's AI response:

AI Overview
That sounds like an incredibly surreal and, thankfully, fictional scene—perhaps from a movie or a dream!
While it makes for a wild story, it's important to remember that babies cannot consume alcohol and are certainly not capable of giving tattoos.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 06/05/2026

I WONDER WHERE THEY COULD FIND THE $1.5 million SAFE NEEDS!? HARD TO SAY

Screenshot of the City of Austin budget for 2026. It's a pie graph that shows that Austin Police receives 35.8% of the city's general fund, totaling $534.39 million.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 30/04/2026

You have to tune in for this moment alone.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 28/04/2026

I know it's too easy to take shots at these people and also WHAT what WHAT what WHAT

John, 62, Md., white, Republican, packaging specialist. "He did initiate the ending of the penny, silly as that is. And he initiated getting us out of the World Health Organization and the Paris climate agreement. Two positive things, I guess, if you really look at it on the whole. I mean, that was accounting for a lot of our budget money."

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 24/04/2026

Random 1986 article I saw today. are so many famous men shit that the odds of this kind of comparison are actually high or what

Joe Paterno cited by Gentleman's Quarterly? The next thing you know, Woody Allen will be up for the lead in the next Rambo movie.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 24/04/2026

Here my little dog, Sam, sleeping in his bed, which he somehow managed to get onto the bed of his big brother, Ralph.

A small black and white dog is curled up in a gray, fuzzy circular bed that is on top of a larger rectangular gray bed. There are toys and blankets on the ground around him.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 21/04/2026

Poor Kittens, the Kittens are Poor!!

Clip from a newspaper with the title "Kittens' Poor Play Continues." Then it reads: "Jackson, Miss. - Coach Carolyn Spears can't explain the sudden play of her Louisiana College Kittens, but she would like to play a game at home some day to see if the familiar surroundings of West Fieldhouse would as a cure."

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 21/04/2026

Incredible scientific graph from 1977

A black and white drawing of a girl on the left dribbling a basketball. On the upper right is a basketball hoop. On the right side of the image it says "Girls' Basketball Popularity" and underneath is a graph of sorts that reads from left to right "60s, early 70s, today" and there's a bouncing basketball going along the graph. It's high above "60s," very low over "Early 70s," and then in the middle over "today."

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 18/04/2026

I made Aaron take this twice so you could see the brat and not just the bun lol

Jessica standing in a field, wearing a puffy coat, tights, and cap, race number on her hip, finisher medal around her neck, smiling and holding a brat in one hand, a beer in the other.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 04/04/2026

Also, saw this puppy on our run today

Puppy with tan, brown, and white coloring up against a fence that is a metal grid to prevent them escaping. The puppy has her face and front paws through a couple of the grid squares and is looking up at us.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 02/04/2026

From Aaron's dad in Daytona Beach

Artemis II streaking across the bright blue sky on takeoff, with a big white trail of smoke behind it

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 31/03/2026

It's only a 15-hour drive. I could do it........

Screen shot of Google Map directions showing a driving route from Austin, Texas, to Phoenix, Arizona. Says it is 15 hours, 6 minutes and 1,006 miles.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 28/03/2026

Best sandwich?????? Me in between @juliekliegman.com and @reveleth.com. Video and audio for @burnitalldownpod.com coming soon!

A screenshot of (from L): Julie Kliegman, Jessica Luther, and Reo Eveleth recording a podcast. It says 58:54 in the bottom right indicating they talked for a long time.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 23/03/2026

Here’s @danny-davis.bsky.social’s write-up www.statesman.com/sports/colle...

While making 14 of her 21 shots and 10 of her 11 free throws, Booker led the Longhorns with her 40 points. With that offensive effort, Booker became just the sixth Longhorn to score 40 points in a single game. She also beat what had been the school's tournament-record totals of 32 points that Clarissa Davis scored in a 1986 game against Western Kentucky and that Heather Schreiber produced against LSU in 2003.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 04/02/2026

When we were deciding on the rewards for @burnitalldownpod.com's Kickstarter, I said that I would happily read 4,000 people's names if 4,000 people wanted to give us $100 each. We aren't close to 4,000 but it's still looking nice. www.kickstarter.com/projects/bur...

A screenshot that reads "Light a Torch $100. Backers 69. Estimated delivery Jun 2026."

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 16/01/2026

Look at this picture! This is from USC's visit to UT at the beginning of the 1985-1986 season. UT won, 94-78. They'd beat USC one more time that season, in the final.

"USC superstar Cheryl Miller soars over the pack, including UT's Kamie Ethridge." Miller is going up for a layup with her right hand. You can see every muscle in her arms. She looks like she's two feet off the ground. The players and the ref around her can only just watch.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 16/01/2026

trying to see what the final photograph ended up looking like:

Bursting magazine's bubble, Lady Longhorn center rejects Sports Illustrated's offer to pose in tub

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 16/01/2026

In early 1985, the UT women's basketball team moved into the #1 ranked spot. The local paper in Austin asked locals for their reactions and most of them were people who follow women's basketball who were excited about the new ranking. And then there's Frank:

FRANK FRERICKS, 27, marketing rep: "I don't follow women's athletics; I follow men's athletics somewhat. But it's great because it matters to them."

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 09/01/2026

What a world we’ve built. Getting emails like this… I don’t have words.

Dear Austin ISD Families and Staff,

This week, the FBI notified the Austin ISD Police Department of a threat to 14 Texas schools, including three schools that shared names with Austin ISD schools. We immediately began working with our campus leadership to ensure the safety of our students and staff and we are staying in constant contact with the FBI.

Today we received information that the threat appears to originate from outside the country. Still, out of an abundance of caution, Austin ISD Police will provide close support to Andrews, Baranoff and Barrington elementary schools.

This was a stressful event for many of our families and we understand the need for additional districtwide communications in instances that receive this level of media attention.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 12/12/2025

I sent this text like 10 minutes ago

Text exchange. Me in blue: “NOT T.A.T.U.” Friend in gray: “I KNOW.” Me in blue: “OMG THE WAY THE SONG SHIFTS JFC this show is so well done.”

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 10/12/2025

An email just now from the Austin American-Statesman, my local paper. I hate when headlines or email subject lines or whatever from news outlets should be sentences and not questions, but instead they chicken out.

Is the push to expand Turning Point USA to all campuses a political move?

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 23/08/2025

In addition to this thread of our work, here is the best award @dansolomon.com and I have ever received (scatx is my old, old, old Twitter handle)

Screenshot of a tweet from Oakman_Rules, written on August 23, 2015 at 9:50pm. The tweet reads: "The shitty journalism award for 2015 goes to Texas Monthly dan solomon and scatx" (the latter referring to Jessica's old Twitter handle)

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 25/06/2025

The Organization of American Historians (OAH) sent out an email re: the message that appeared on the National Archives’ site yesterday about access to the NA’s collections:

Yesterday, Tuesday, June 24, the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, announced its closure to the public, starting July 7, except for those with “legitimate business interests.”

The head of Research Services responded to an email query about continued access to the College Park facility saying: “Onsite research is a legitimate business need to access the facility. There is additional information on the Visitor Requirements section of the National Archives at College Park webpage."

As of 9pm last night, NARA switched the page back to what it was prior to the announcement. The banner and all the changes to the wording online had been removed.

OAH will continue to monitor the situation and share what we learn. We encourage you to contact your Congressional representatives to voice your support for NARA and continued access to NARA research facilities.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 05/06/2025

This is as close as the article gets. Sure.

A second Latino man from Las Vegas spoke admiringly of Trump and Andrew Tate, a controversial influencer who has been accused of rape and sex trafficking, as “always loved and hated, but they’re truthful, honest, to what they believe in.”

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 10/05/2025

Tomorrow's the day!!!! Hook 'em!

Jessica in her burnt orange PhD regalia, holding a basketball with the word TEXAS on it and giving the hook em sign with her other hand.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 18/03/2025

For anyone who asked, here's the abstract for my dissertation, “Desexigration and Desegregation: Gender, Race, and Women’s Basketball at the University of Texas in the 1970s”

desexigration and desegregation’s effects on a single team and in a single women’s athletics department, it becomes clear how these two forces corrected some historical discriminatory trends and perpetuated others.
Through the extensive use of primary sources and interviews with people involved in women’s basketball and women’s athletics in the 1970s at Texas, “Desexigration and Desegregation” captures how people in women’s athletics like Lopiano, Conradt, Page, Swindell, and many others built one of the most successful women’s athletic departments in the country despite the constraints under which they operated, and how their decisions, both good and bad, set women’s athletics on a path it is still on, many decades later.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 13/03/2025

He looks like an old, grumpy man surveying his front yard

Ralph, a black labradoodle, lying on his bed, one arm over the side and his paw hooked under on the ground. He is looking out the window.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 06/03/2025

I truly never know what I'm going to come across when looking at old articles about women's basketball (San Francisco Examiner, Feb 10, 1976)

Screenshot of newspaper article title, "Women's basketball isn't a sissy game" by Andy Meisler

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 06/03/2025

This is where "desexigration" comes from, in case you were like, "why did you make up that word, Jessica?"

It’s no wonder that Spurr was worrying over possible legal consequences if the university moved too slowly. In December 1973, Harry Reger, along with an attorney who also had a daughter interested in playing tennis at UT, met with Mary Teague, the Equal Employment Opportunity Officer, in Austin. “The purpose of their visit was to determine the status of women’s athletics and financial support thereof at UT-Autin,” Teague wrote to Lorene Rogers. “They feel it is extremely important that UT-Austin, as the most prestigious and powerful university in the state, take the lead in desexigrating (a word I borrowed from HEW officials) athletic programs.” After Teague informed them that the Council was working on the problem, “they indicated that they would pursue this matter, via litigation, if necessary.”

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 06/03/2025

This is the Table of Contents for what I've been working on for literal years!

Introduction

Chapter 1: Women’s Basketball in Texas and at UT Before 1968

Chapter 2: Women Demand Varsity Athletics at the UT, 1968–1973

Chapter 3: Separate and Unequal: The Desexigration of Intercollegiate Athletics at UT, 1973–1974

Chapter 4: Together but Unequal: Desegregation at UT

Chapter 5: The First Year of Women’s Basketball at UT, 1974

Chapter 6: Donna Lopiano and the Defense of Title IX, 1975

Chapter 7: Retha Swindell Enters and Rodney Page Exits, 1976

Chapter 8: The End of the Beginning for Women’s Sports at UT, 1976–1979

Epilogue

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 20/02/2025

The men's basketball coach at Queen's College in a NYT op-ed directed at other male collegiate coaches telling them to chill out about Title IX, August 10, 1975 (a couple weeks after the first official Title IX guidelines were released):

The coach who maintains the traditional attitude of "natural" male superiority will feel constantly threatened, frustrate and harassed. He will envision his public image tarnished, his goals thwarted by new economic concerns, and a seemingly ungrateful and insatiable group of women pretenders continually seeking to further erode his traditional prerogatives. What's worse, suppose the women should actually be "more successful" than he himself?

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 17/02/2025

This worked for me, FYI (in case you are anti-red bubble like I am and also refuse to use facial recognition and the set up bubble is bothering you) www.idownloadblog.com/2018/02/05/h...

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 04/02/2025

I know the saying is that history doesn't repeat, it rhymes. But sometimes it does just repeat. From July 13, 1972:

Screenshot of newspaper article: By Jeffrey St. John Copley News Service New York - "The American people are slow to wrath," observed Teddy Roosevelt some 71 years ago, "but when their wrath is once kindled, it burns like a consuming fire." The federal, state and city governments of this country are stoking the fires of racial conflict by an immoral policy of requiring "discrimination in reverse" in hiring unqualified blacks and minorities at the expense of qualified whites. Just as the issue of busing smoldered below the surface like molten lava from a volcano for some time, so the angry wrath of Americans is likely to explode in the face of politicians favoring quotas of employment for blacks and minorities. Early in June, Carl Shiffman, a senior investigator for the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission resigned his job in anger, charging the agency discriminated against him both as a white and a Jew. Shiffman specifically charges that the commission "discriminates in favor of Negroes and Spanish-surnamed Americans in hiring, promotion, and terms of employment in violation of the laws (the commission) was set up to enforce." Nor is this an isolated case. A systematic pattern of discrimination in favor of hiring blacks and minorities is actively being pushed in government agencies and intense pressure is being mounted by the federal government for private business to hire by racial quota.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 04/02/2025

"Woman, 102, Hates Water" (April 21, 1971)

Screenshot of a newspaper article titled "Woman, 102, Hates Water" PARIS - Madame Eva Kanony boarded a recent Air France flight from Paris to Toulouse to visit relatives. Except for the fact everyone made a fuss about her age – she's 102 years old – the flight was uneventful one for the grand dame, who still enjoys a glass of wine with every meal and detest soup because it contains water.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 30/01/2025

"If you are a cisgender ally to the transgender community, I want you to think long and hard about how you can make a difference in these trying times." -- @assignedmedia.org's newsletter today, written by @alyssaur.bsky.social. Support their work here: www.assignedmedia.org/newsletter

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 24/01/2025

He heard me and decided he wanted to bring his dirty butt inside, but who could say no?????

My black labradoodle, Ralph, in my office, standing in front of a small couch, looking up at the camera, his very pink tongue sticking out.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 20/01/2025

RIP Cecile Richards. This was from 2013, at the end of weeks of protesting against anti-abortion bills during special sessions of the TX lege. We had lost. I have no idea how I ended up next her and behind the banner like this. It was an honor.

Cecile Richards marching in front of a parade of people in the dark in 2013. In front of her is an orange banner with white lettering reading “In for the long run,” with a white state of Texas on the right. She has her hand raised and her fingers in a “V.” In the picture, Jessica Luther is on her right doing the same gesture with her right hand, her phone in her left. Both are wearing orange.

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Jessica Luther @jessicawluther.com · 01/01/2025

These are two women having a blast doing a half marathon!

Two women, Jessica on the left, crossing the finish line of a half marathon. Both are smiling with their hands raised in celebration.

Two women, Jessica on the right, goofing while walking in a half marathon. They are both smiling, looking right at the camera, their arms thrown out to the side.

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