iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Tomorrow night (Sept 21) in the Paul O’Regan Theatre at the Halifax Central Library, 6:30-8:00pm: a panel and then moderated discussion to talk about universities’ importance to Nova Scotia. Doors open at 6pm.

Poster for “The Role of Universities in Modern Democracies: Is a Crisis Brewing?” with four speakers: me, Katja Fennel, Debbie Martin, and Christopher Algar.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

No left turn, but please feel free to park the large truck on the sidewalk, blocking it completely. 🤦‍♀️ #Halifax

A picture of a semi parked on the sidewalk at a gas station on Quinpool in Halifax.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Now I really want to propose a course titled “To My Nightmare.”

Dalhousie’s Calendar with “Welcome” added before the course title, “Gothic Fiction.”

Dalhousie’s Calendar with “Welcome” added before the course title, “Principles of Biology.”

Dalhousie’s Calendar with “Welcome” added before the course title, “General Chemistry.”

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Woolander And, given a character’s name, … McCLOUD.

An image from the tv series McCloud, with Dennis Weaver on a horse on a city street.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Boy howdy ain’t their hashtag the truth—they “need experts” in physics and/or engineering and/or related fields if they’re going to publish on aerosols and IAQ.

The header for The conversation Uk account, with the hashtag “we need experts”

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Sharing the trail with some young ones during an after-work walk.

Two very small fawns and a doe in the woods between the trail and Belcher’s Marsh.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

AI is really making a mess of a lot of things...

a picture of the book cover for ^A Bridge Built Halfway: A History of Memorial University College, 1925-195* with press text suggesting that it's "A Bridge Built Halfway: A History Memorial University College, 1625-1650."

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

TIL that “soccer” is based on a slang version of “association.” www.britannica.com/story/why-do...

Linguistically creative students at the University of Oxford in the 1880s distinguished between the sports of “rugger” (rugby football) and “assoccer” (association football). The latter term was further shortened to “soccer” (sometimes
spelled “socker”), and the name quickly spread beyond the campus. However, “soccer” never became much more than a nickname in Great Britain.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

So, I'm curious how their terms can say that copilot is "for entertainment purposes only" and that copilot makes mistakes while they also push us to use it at work for "productivity." That seems a tad contradictory... #cdnpse #0365

An Office 365 menu (on my employer's site), offering to install "Microsoft 365 apps" or "Get More Apps" with two Copilot tabs: "Microsoft 365 Copilot desktop app / Boost your productivity with our free Microsoft 365 Copilot desktop app" and "Microsoft 365 Copilot mobile app / Take your productivity on the go with our free iOS and Android app." (It's "free" to users, presumably, not my employer.)

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Why does regular data collection and prompt distribution matter? Well, take a look at this: Halifax didn't get any COVID wastewater data for a month, and in that time the number went from among the lowest in a year to nearly the highest in a year. And now we haven't had updated info for four weeks.

A snip from the data for Halifax COVID wastewater from the Gov't of Canada (https://health-infobase.canada.ca/wastewater/), showing a steady drop from week 1 to week 2, then no data until week 6 where the line is suddenly near the previous peak at week 51 (the highest on the year-long chart), and then an upward slide to week 7, above the peak at week 51. And then nothing.

If you're looking at the wastewater to make decisions about healthcare or personal risks, this ain't useful.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

The sign was above some tram tracks; it could be possible to drop a narrow tire into the rut while biking along the roadway.

an image providing context for the sign, showing tram tracks in the road. Lots of lush greenery in the frame too.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Effective sign, with multiple applications.

A New Zealand road sign (yellow background, black image) depicting through stick figures someone catapulting off their bicycle because they tried to ride it on an uneven surface. The sky behind the sign is clear and bright.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Townhall at the Halifax Central Library, 23 February (Monday), starting at 6:30 pm: “Protecting Post-Secondary Education in Nova Scotia.” #nspse #nspoli #cdnpse

Poster for the event with the information in the post plus an image of the provincial flag and the notice “hosted by the Coalition for Collegial Governance” and the URL cocogov.org/blog/townhall

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

With all of the Bill 12, Schedule H, etc. gibberish and now a university offering to run some government work, it bears repeating: "Universities Are Not Government Departments" (my op-ed in the Cape Breton Post a year ago). www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Universities are not government departments. Recent governments in Nova Scotia seem to have forgotten that, first with Bill 100, which became the Universities Accountability and Sustainability Act in 2015, and now with proposed amendments to it. The Act was shocking enough in its overreach that the Canadian Association of University Teachers passed a rare motion in 2015 to begin a censure process against any university that invoked the Act.
Unlike departments in the provincial government, universities are not fully funded by the province—far from it. Transfer payments from the federal government funneled through the provinces are significant parts of #cdnpse operating budgets, true. But as significant (and increasingly so) are revenues from other sources, especially tuition fees and non-provincial research grants and contracts.
The principle of “the one who pays the piper calls the tune,” then, does not easily apply to univs. Federal research grants are decided by competitive, academic processes; students support programs with their course choices. But neither calls the tune—provincial governments aren’t supposed to either. Typically, under universities’ founding legislation, responsibility for academic matters falls to univ senates.
University senates have the authority and the mandate, and the subject-matter expertise, to regularly assess whether educational programs are of sufficiently high quality to continue. National and international accreditors, for some programs, also play a significant role. No non-academic party—in this case, the government of the day—would have the information and highly specialized expertise to assess these programs.
A minister’s team might have the time, given all of their other responsibilities, to look at program names and descriptions, but that would be like threading a needle with a pickaxe.
Universities have professional programs that are geared around the job market and particular professions, so ma…

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Well, this is a scale I'd like to see more often--thanks to the Cape Breton Regional Library for this!!

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

I'll just leave this here--the passage from which we take the aphorism, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's from 1887 and the full text is available at oll.libertyfund.org/titles/acton.... "There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."

"I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

This is 🎯. #cdnpse #nspse #nspoli Cutting education hurts students. I’ll also add that at least one faculty contract in the province has clauses to ensure that, in a financial crisis, the core mission of the university—teaching, research, and other public needs—will be protected.

“In short, chronic underfunding has led universities to decrease their numbers of full-time professors, which has strained students, which has led to the rise of “student support” administrative units, which costs money, which increases the pressure to reduce “expensive” professors. This is a self-perpetuating cycle.

Bill 12 does not correct these dynamics. It intensifies them by expanding the government’s authority to restructure academic departments and faculties while bypassing the administrative and managerial arrangements that shape institutional cost pressures in the first place. And while academic cuts may produce short-term budgetary relief, this only happens by weakening the very capacities that give universities their public value.”

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

As worrying as this is, it is nowhere near as worrying as the #cdnpse universities forcing installs of the US-run Microsoft InTune which can *remote-wipe* devices. Whoops, there goes all your research data, Canada! And oh gosh, student data too! 🤪

Microsoft info page (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/intune/intune-service/remote-actions/device-wipe?pivots=ios)

Remote device action: wipe
Choose the platform to run remote actions on:

Windows

iOS/iPadOS

macOS

Android

ChromeOS
In this article

Prerequisites
How to wipe a device from the Intune admin center
Remove a device from Microsoft Entra ID
Reference links
Use the Wipe remote action in Intune to factory reset a device, restoring it to its default settings. This action removes all personal and organizational data, apps, and configurations. It's commonly used when a device needs to be retired, repurposed, reset for troubleshooting, or securely erased if lost or stolen.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Your semi-regular reminder that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein is subtitled “Or, The Modern Prometheus.” These guys like sf but seem to skip all the bits about morality, social responsibility, and unintended consequences. 📚

NYT headline “Jeff Bezos creates A.I. Start-Up Where He Will Be Co-Chief Executive” with “Called Project Prometheus, the company is focusing on artificial intelligence” below.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

Some cool light effects out at Lawrencetown a few weeks ago (from the trail that goes along the coast and then up the big hill).

$Lawrencetown beach, with a blue and partially cloudy sky above and the sun behind a cloud: it caused a refraction effect, so there are triangles of light emanating from the cloud and nearly perpendicular to the ground.$ Lawrencetown beach, with the sun behind a puffy cloud in a mostly blue sky, creating a soft, diffused lighting effect.

Lawrencetown beach, with the sun behind a puffy cloud in a mostly blue sky, creating a soft, diffused lighting effect.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

Modern security: we need sophisticated ID, scanners, cameras, motion detectors, facial recognition software, multi-factor authentication… Thieves: we have a ladder.

Image of the Louvre with a ladder propped against it, giving access to the second floor.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

The sky looked really cool the other morning when I was walking to work.

A mottled cloud pattern over the King’s campus, with a large tree in the left third of the frame.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard “post-pandemic” since the WHO ended the emergency phase… I hope there are, or soon will be, studies of how that 2023 WHO statement got so quickly and widely mangled so public health can better guard against inadvertently feeding misinformation.

From https://www.who.int/europe/emergencies/situations/covid-19: “
On 5 May 2023, more than three years into the pandemic, the WHO Emergency Committee on COVID-19 recommended to the Director-General, who accepted the recommendation, that given the disease was by now well established and ongoing, it no longer fit the definition of a PHEIC. This does not mean the pandemic itself is over, but the global emergency it caused is – for now.”

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Another pic in the irregular series, “Halifax Drivers Who Think the Sidewalk is an Extra Lane.”

A picture of a stopped car, half on the sidewalk.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

Catching up on lockout e-mails, I'm *delighted* to finally announce that this was made public in August: www.k-saa.org/distinguishe... . It's an honour to join such a distinguished group of award winners, especially Professor Sha.

screenshot of the webpage announcing that the 2026 recipients of the Distinguished Scholar Award of the Keats-Shelley Assoc of America are Professor Richard C. Sha and myself (also pictured via headshots).

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

This is today, starting in a couple of hours. Raise your voices for a full and fair deal so we can end the administration’s lockout of DFA faculty, librarians, and counselors—the admin has banned us from our classrooms, our research, and our work supporting students. #LetUsIn #KeepDalStrong

Poster for a solidarity march at Dalhousie from 11am to 1pm TODAY. Meeting at the Killam library Halifax, marching down University Ave to Robie, then doubling back and walking up to Hicks and the university quad.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

Amazing work by @dalhousie.bsky.social students! Were it not for the administration’s damaging and pointless lockout, they’d be bringing that energy, drive, and creativity to all of their classes. #KeepDalStrong

An aerial shot of the Dalhousie quad, with dozens of pavement squares covered in chalk messages to the senior administration that locked out Dal faculty, librarians, and counselors.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

My lockout sweater (alas, I will always call it that…) is finished, but not the lockout. But at least now the Other Side has agreed to return to the table! 🤞 #KeepDalStrong

A blue knitted sweater that’s completely finished—it even has its buttons sewed on.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Absolutely we’re “standing strong.” #KeepDalStrong Image from video at www.ctvnews.ca/atlantic/nov....

Image of students, faculty, and union allies at the Dalhousie rally with the caption “Standing Strong”

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

We have amazing, thoughtful students who understand very well what a university should be. #WeAreDal #KeepDalStrong

Instagram post from the Dal Student Union: dalstudentunion
“Last night, the DSU council voted to affirm its support for DFA members, reflecting that the strength of the university community depends on the well-being of both students and faculty.

We are strongly calling for the Board to return to the bargaining table and engage in good faith to reach a fair deal with faculty. Students, faculty, and staff are essential to the functioning of Dalhousie, and decisions that destabilize this community threaten the quality of education and well-being of students.

We, as students, know that an injury to our faculty is an injury to us all. Their fight is our fight, and we proudly stand in solidarity with the DFA.

Stay tuned for more DSU-led advocacy efforts and action-items!”

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

I didn’t get to teach today because the @dalhousie.bsky.social admin have locked us out, but walking to campus at an unusual time of day had an unexpected bonus: I saw a deer about 3m from the sidewalk and got to show fellow picketers this pic. #KeepDalStrong

A deer with mid-sized horns nibbling on some foliage near Connrose park

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

But no information on vaccines until late September… What if NS vaccinated BEFORE the Fall surge typically begins?

Covid wastewater for Halifax up to August 17 showing an uptick—now higher than it has been in weeks, though still not as high as a year ago.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

This is a really important point. I'll add Senate can't be called back before or even soon after Pres. Brooks ends the lockout, not least because DFA members on Senate *don't have access to e-mail until she ends the lockout and IT reinstates logins*. Senate will need a week or so? #KeepDalStrong

A snip from the DFA president's Ask Me Anything on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Dalhousie/comments/1n1k8pj/im_dave_westwood_president_of_the_dfa_ask_me/): I'm replying to you but also to u/universalstargazer below. Lots to unpack but I'll address what I can.

A day or two is not realistic. Moreover, the administration does not have the sole authority to decide when work will resume. It's the subject of a negotiation, which will have to acknowledge the lost time for preparation and address necessary adjustments/accommodations (exam schedules, deadlines for assignments, etc.). This will take time. I should also note that the Senate will be involved in many of these conversations.

I can't speak for all professors or the SAC, but faculty are definitely concerned about accessibility and accommodations and worry about the challenges this will pose. Again, I can't speak for everyone, but I know this is an ongoing conversation and priority.

Not to keep pointing the finger, but we warned the administration of doing this at this time for exactly this reason. This is a direct consequence of them initiating a lockout when they did.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

I started knitting a sweater when the @dalhousie.bsky.social president locked us out on August 20. It’s about 2/3 done now—I’m working on the sleeves. I’d rather be prepping for class and getting other work done. Instead, I knit and wonder when the admin will return to bargaining... #KeepDalStrong

A half-finished sleeve on a round knitting needle (the pattern called for straight needles, but I don’t do seams if I don’t have to!).

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

I wrote this over two decades ago… #cdnpse. #KeepDalStrong #AirCanada #CUPE3912 ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/es...

‘the stimulative effects of crisis motivate a particular kind of seepage across this boundary: uncompensated labour, long instrumental to the opera-tion of the domestic sphere, is now solicited in the workplace. Thus, in the recession, employees were asked to work for less pay in order to keep their employers afloat, and now we have the more subtle extension of this strategy in increasing workloads as benefits and salaries barely keep pace with the rising cost of living and the steeply escalating cost of education. Institutions “work all the better the more they break down” because they become even more cost-effective by invoking a sense of crisis that motivates personal sacrifice to corporate need’

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

The image looks blanked for some reason…? Trying again:

"Statement of Revenues, Expenses, and Changes in Operating Surplus" showing that tuition fees dropped by about $1.6m, but Investment Income increased by nearly $2.5m. "Excess of revenue over expenses" is nearly unchanged from last year, at $54.945 million.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

The Audited Financial Statements are in this file: cdn.dal.ca/content/dam/... This page in particular raises questions. (NO page numbers on this key part of the document, which is super-annoying...)

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Siri, please give me a cautionary tale that illustrates why, five years into a global pandemic, we’re still failing to protect healthcare workers and patients from airborne pathogens with simple technologies. 💨😷🪟

From the BBC:

OceanGate's safety cultural and operational practices were "critically flawed" - with "glaring disparities between their written safety protocols and their actual practices"

OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush misrepresented Titan as indestructible, which provided "a false sense of safety" for passengers

The company's senior leadership enabled a culture allowing financial shortfalls and customer expectations to be prioritised over responsibilities

A lack of comprehensive regulations for the oversight of manned submersibles

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Part of the IMDb page for the 1985-1989 series The Equalizer.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

New reason for universities not to fall for hyped AI marking tools just dropped. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

indirect prompt injection, which involves inserting hidden white text or other manipulated fonts that tell AI tools to give a research paper favorable reviews. The prompts are only visible to machines, and preliminary research has found that the strategy can be highly effective for inflating AI-generated review scores.

“The reason this technique has any purchase is because people are completely stressed,” said Ramin Zabih, a computer science professor at Cornell University and faculty director at the open access arXiv academic research platform, which publishes preprints of papers and recently discovered numerous papers that contained hidden prompts. “When that happens, some of the checks and balances in the peer review process begin to break down.”

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Near Lunenburg. There were others nearby, but none looked like that one.

A red jellyfish with a circle and spoke pattern.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

This part of the Ottawa Declaration of the Science Academies of the G7 is relevant to Tim Houston's efforts to undermine #nspse independence, viability, and credibility:

A paragraph from the Ottawa Declaration of the Science Academies of the G7, with "institutional autonomy" underlined: "As democracies, it is critical that our nations continue to support academic freedom, institutional autonomy, the integrity of research, research security, and the responsible conduct of research in support of the public good."

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

Sounds just like a university: admin bloat and lots of turnover are no way to steer a steady course, or even figure out how things work. #chaos #cdnpse www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Text from the article: In the last decade, the report noted, the hospital, which includes Victoria and University hospitals, has had six different CEOs, six different CFOs, and 41 different executives. "Each new administration brought new structures, spending and priorities," the consultant noted.

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Julia M. Wright @juliamwright.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

When do we get to dump the fiction that Humanities and Social Sciences degrees are less relevant to 21st-c jobs than sciences? Let students study what interests them—IMHO (and experience) that’s what leads to success. It also means they get to be happier. Paging the #nspoli govt. #nspse #cdnpse

Part of a table showing unemployment rates by degree: nutrition sciences .4%; performing arts 2.7%; pharmacy 3.2%; philosophy 3.2%; physics 7.8%; political science 4.7%.

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