Eira Tansey @archivist@scholar.social

After two desk rejections in a row for a manuscript I'm trying to use to get my interdisciplinary sea legs, I'm crossing my fingers that the third submission will be a charm 🤞

Any other US academics taking Amtrak long distances outside the NE corridor to get to conferences? I took Texas Eagle last week from Chicago to Austin as I begin experimenting with reducing my professional carbon footprint. It was a heck of an experience!

Trying a similar request again: can anyone recommend a good #OpenAccess journal that covers environmental justice?

from the bird site - even if I could convince Elsevier to waive an OA APC, I'm not sure I'd trust them after reading this https://twitter.com/redlipblenny/status/1151053896204410881

It's pretty disconcerting how many energy policy journals are owned by Elsevier. If anyone can recommend any #OpenAccess alternatives, I'd be so grateful. Despite my librarian skills, I'm not finding a lot and I'm trying to avoid environmental law journals for the time being.

I love reading critiques of academic conference culture, and this is one of the best posts in ages about the trouble with conferencing from an environmental humanities perspective https://seeingthewoods.org/2019/07/03/2020-visions-for-environmental-history-the-trouble-with-conferences-part-1/

Swear to god that CHE is turning into the NYT of incredibly dumb takes and questionable priorities

Never mind the fact that public universities are being stripped for parts, the real crisis in higher education is *checks notes* that elite universities are distancing themselves from elitism https://www.chronicle.com/article/Elite-Schools-Are-National/246657

Who/what should I be reading if I need to get up to speed on Great Lakes environmental policy and governance?

Me: "omg how does anyone manage the decision fatigue of a restaurant with more than 5 entrees on the menu or a drugstore with 30 flavors of toothpaste"

Also me: "Why yes let me do a lit review for this new topic and download 200 citations, I'm sure I'll figure out the best article to start with when I return to this in 2 months"

"The Education Dept. Wants Accreditors to Compete. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" truly, when you are a capitalist every nail looks like a problem in need of a market-based solution https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Education-Dept-Wants/246658?cid=wcontentlist_hp_latest

Finally: if you want to understand why leftists are skeptical about means testing and advocate for universal programs, look no further than the failures of the PSLF program. There's ZERO reason why this system should be so complicated (the DoE can use my SSN to get my income information but not certify my public employment? seriously?) except to say a widespread problem is being solved without actually helping more than a handful of people

My loan amounts from grad school when I finished my MLIS were a bit below the national median, so even when I did my best to estimate standard repayment vs potential PSLF, it was never clear if PSLF would forgive more than a marginal amount of money. At least with standard repayment my household budget remains more consistent.

What influenced my decision to abandon the PSLF program:
-The paperwork requirements are absurd, and you have no assurance you're doing it right at any point during the 10 year period
-If yr fortunate enough to be covered by a union with a good contract like me, my payments keep going up every year which feels counterproductive to getting forgiveness
-There is no way to calculate whether you will save more in the long run with PSLF bc you never know when payments go up

Nothing would make me happier than to see the AFT take down Betsy DeVos because of the mismanagement of the PSLF program. At the same time, the PSLF program has been a mess for years. I was originally on an income-driven repayment program for a few years so I could qualify for it, but due to a lot of factors I made the choice this summer to go back to standard repayment. This whole thing is a complete nightmare. https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Lawsuit-Teachers-Accuse/246651?cid=wcontentlist_hp_latest

For anyone else who's interested, I'm starting with the Congressional Research Service report here https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/96-397.html

I'd really love recommendations for extremely basic, 101-level, nothing longer than an Oxford Very Short Introduction-size intro to US-Canadian transnational politics. Especially a guide for what USians should know about Canadian political frameworks.

Almost done with the first draft of this article I've been writing for well over a year and I feel like my brain is about to crack open, given how much legal reading it required (and I am neither an attorney nor have I ever taken a legal research methods class)