Julia M. Wright

@juliamwright

FRSC Professor in Halifax🍁. Member of @dalfaculty.bsky.social . Locked out for 30 days in 2025. Views here mine only. Rebleats≠agreement. "it is not Air / That from a thousand Lungs reeks back to thine" (Armstrong 1744). Silence=Spread🦠 #COVIDisAirborne

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Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· 2d

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· 21d

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”

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Jul 21

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Jul 16

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."

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Jul 2

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· May 14

An image from a Monty Python "nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" sketch but with the caption, "Nobody expects asymptomatic transmission."

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Apr 22

a snip from the Dalhousie main webpage (black background, white text): "Is Dalhousie just right for your future? Deadlines are approaching, find out how to apply" Above it is the facebook comment, "Sigh. There's a comma splice on the university's main page."

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Apr 7

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.)

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Mar 13

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Mar 3

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Mar 3

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Feb 10

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

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Feb 5

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…

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Feb 1

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

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Jan 31

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."

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Jan 24

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.”

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Jan 19

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Nov 17

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Nov 6

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Oct 19

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Oct 19

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Oct 5

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.”

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Oct 4

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Sep 20

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).

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Sep 19

The dog in a burning room meme: the lefthand panel says "Gosh it's hot in here"; the righthand panel has a speech balloon for the dog, "If I say 'this is fine,' it'll lower the temperature"--a reference to the attached image in which a network exec suggests that Kimmel "lower the temperature"

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Sep 12

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Sep 11

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Sep 7

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.

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Sep 5

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”

Julia M. Wright@juliamwright· Sep 3

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