Rachel Ernst

@rachelernst

Teacher and librarian Tea lover she/her

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Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jul 13

I didn't know if you had seen it but the comic artist @trungles.com has been reading Pride and Prejudice and liveblogging it for a month and it's been sheer delight. Even when there are things that don't make sense or missing context, the conversation it creates has been *fun*!

Screenshot of a recent thread of user at trungles.com, Trung Le Nguyen, liveblogging reading Pride and Prejudice.
First post, "The fantasy, the dream, of a man who loves you well enough to try again, to adjust his own behavior, after taking the effort to imagine what might have broken your heart so as to cut him so deeply when he tried to grasp its jagged edges before five crying emojis"
Second post, "I'm cryingggggg"
Third post, "Don't look at meeeee"
Fourth post, "I'm so embarrassed that I started this book like, 'UGH a canon text let's see what's the fuss,' and now I'm quietly weeping with joy to myself and filled with goodwill and optimism toward humanity and its capacity to love. How dare you, Jane Austen!!!"

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jul 13

My Kiwi friend made me sit down and watch Hunt for the Wilderpeople with her and explained all the cultural nuances, callbacks and references that anyone out of NZ would have missed. Sam was delightful in it.

Movie poster for Hunt for the Wilder-people, a NZ film starring Sam Neill. It features close up's of the main cast's face with Julian Dennison, the main character, being most prominent. Sam Neill is right below wearing a large brim hat and holding a rifle. The poster also includes mini scenes from the movie involving cars and shenanigans.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jul 10

Yet again she is spot on:

Screenshot of a Bluesky post from Tressie McMillan Cottom. Part of a three part thread about Graham Platner, this is the last part.
"every single thing a trained mercenary does to you is a threat, including letting himself into your home. Again, a trained mercenary."
Posted July 8 2026 at 6:34AM.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jul 9

This was a third of the meal and my beans 😂

A tea table covered in laminated info sheets about teas has four dishes on it. One has marinated cucumbers, another a mix of pork and veggies, a third is mystery orange stripes, not sure if they were fish or fruit. The fourth has a mass of red bean and rice cakes.

Green and purple beans that have been sautéed are on a white plate.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jul 8

Two great alternatives are: One Big Open Sky by Lesa Cline-Ransome Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park

Book cover for One Big Open Sky by Lesa Cline-Ransome. It shows a Black girl clutching a book staring up at the blue sky which makes up most of the cover. At her feet on the green grass is a dog. Behind her is a group of covered wagons with various Black people sitting inside.

Book cover of Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park. It shows an Asian teen pulling a white bonnet over her dark hair. Her dark green dress is made up of a picture of her and her parents when she was very small. Behind her is a prairie landscape and a light blue and purple sky.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jul 8

None of these men watched The Devil Wears Prada which demonstrated a luxury solution to all of this and it shows.

Screenshot from the film The Devil Wears Prada. Actors Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt play the assistants to Meryl Streep's character. All three are in formal wear at a party.
Anne Hathaway is leaning in to whisper something in Meryl Streep's right ear while looking offscreen at the same person as Meryl Streep is. Emily Blunt is on Meryl Streep's left, looking back to Anne Hathaway with a stunned expression.
In the film the assistants are required to memorize the names, faces and contexts for hundreds of party guests so that Meryl Streep's character can appear to be personable and know everyone.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jul 4

Sarah Andersen nailed this one:

Four panel comic entitled: Building Tension
First panel shows a wimpy little person lifting a tiny barbell above their head. It is labelled "Fantasy author"
Second panel shows another wimpy little person lifting a tiny barbell over their head. It is labelled "Sci-fi author".
Third panel is a close up of a person with a ponytail and enormous shoulders. It is labelled with fancy font "Romance Author" and roses are scattered around.
Fourth panel is a zoom out of the Romance Author who is super buff lifting a massive barbell with one arm easily saying to the two wimpy authors (who look a big sad) "That's cute, you guys."

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jun 30

He did bass trombone so I wonder if they did that instead of tuba. *Edit, just looked up the original musical orchestral cast and it does look like they went with bass trombone instead of tuba. The reeds are insane though.

Screenshot of the original orchestral cast of Wicked the Musical from 2003.
Helen Campo-Miller: Reed 1 performing piccolo, flute, alto flute, recorder, penny whistle in D
Tuck Lee: Reed 2 performing oboe, English horn, bass oboe
Megan Shumate Beaumont: Reed 3 performing clarinet, e-flat clarinet, base clarinet, soprano sax
Chad Smith: Reed 4 performing flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, bari sax.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jun 29

Paraguay's keeper Orlando Gill is a keeper.

It's the Rosa meme from Brookyln 99 where she has only had a puppy for a day and a half but is extremely protective and attached. The text below the picture of Rosa holding the cute puppy says, "I've only had 'Orlando Gill' for a day and a half..."

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jun 28

In 1915 San Diego hosted the Panama-California Exposition and had built several temporary buildings for the occasion. All those "temporary" buildings are still there.

Photo of the fountain at San Diego's Balboa Park with several Spanish-Colonial style buildings in the background, including one with a dome and a clock tower.

A colonnade pathway on the left side of the Spreckles Organ Pavilion in San Diego's Balboa Park. It has ornate flourishes on the top of the columns in a Spanish colonial style.

The lily pond at San Diego's Balboa park looking from the Botanical Building towards Casa de Balboa. It's a two-story building with two towers and a covered archway in between. It's the built in the ornate Spanish colonial style.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jun 25

I feel like this is a personal triumph. 😂

Screenshot of a list bot chat informing me that "blacked out username has added you to the 'Hates People Who Use VR AI Crypto Smart Glasses NFTs Bitcoin" moderation list.
If it's any consolation, I had already blocked the username as it was on an "AI Grifter" block list.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jun 17

So here's our family sauce and lasagna recipe. You can use jarred sauce just fine but we're partial to this particular palate.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jun 16

This was the first 15 minutes of Dylan Wiliam's session and you could hear a pin drop.

There is a moral dimension to teaching: it's selfish to get better at things that make the teacher feel better but have no effect on students.
Doing things in different learning styles leads to deeper, more connected learning; it's exhausting though, teaching in a varied way leads to retention
Robert Bjork: desirable difficulties in learning, smudged copy vs clear copy.
Memory is the residue of thought; if you make learning too easy, they will not remember it. Learning is a change in long-term memory.
Research shows that changing teacher practice is what brings student achievement.
Teachers don't need to be more knowledgeable; they need more support to put into practice what you already know. Changing what you do is changing a habit.
You need to change your habits to be a better teacher.
There needs to be a new model of professional development.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jun 10

This makes me teary. When I went in 2010, people were complaining about paying for a place that wasn't finished. I felt like screaming, "We get to see a cathedral built in our lifetime!" Inside it was manic & loud. I put in earplugs & stood watching artisans, suspended in air, carve the pillars.

Interior photo for La Sagrada Familia from 2010. Most of the pillars are up but completely unadorned. There's a large black crane with a platform. On the platform a worker is carving the pillar. You can see sparks flying from it. There is light coming in from the windows, bright white light on the right side and colored yellow and blue light from the left where the stained glass had been installed.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jun 6

1000% Turkish/Kurdish breakfast. There is no comparison. The fruit, veg, homemade jams and cheeses, protein, bread, spreads, all with tea!

Photo showing a wooden table full with little circular dishes. Each dish has a little of something in it from two types of olives, soft cheese, vegetable spreads, honey, jams and then two slightly larger plates with tomatoes, cucumbers, harder sliced cheeses. There's a pan with eggs that have been cooked. A glass of tea is in a traditional glass Turkish tea glass.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Jun 1

Twenty years ago? How? Anyway, I went to see a fairly unknown UK musician named Jamie Cullum and stood literally in front of the stage because no one else knew who he was. 😂 It was a fantastic show and basically set me up for 20 years of disappointing concerts in comparison.

Facebook memory post stating "20 years ago: See Your memories" and it's a blurry camera phone photo of the pop jazz artist Jamie Cullum. He's standing in front of a mic and wearing a short black tshirt with some sort of design but you can't tell because the photo quality is so shitty. He's singing with his eyes closed and he's got his hands clasped together in front of him.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· May 25

Just phenomenal writing.

Three Adrian Chiles headlines from the month of March:
"I didn't know how much I needed work until I lost it. But now I've learned to love Mondays again."
"I'll never forget the day I tasted roast chicken crisps--it changed my life for ever."
"The AI assistant was offering me any help I needed. All I wanted was a living, breathing human."

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· May 22

It's not that I didn't believe you, but...I didn't believe you.

Screenshot of my personal browser, searching the word "disregard" into Google. The response is automatically AI generated even though I'm not in AI mode. It says "Message received. Just say the word when you need something."

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· May 16

I'm sorry what???? "The doctor might think it is something" is wild.

A lot of doctors and people do not know about the problems that cocaine can cause with your spinal cord. When someone takes cocaine and gets hurt they might not tell the doctor about the cocaine. This can make it hard for the doctor to figure out what is wrong. The doctor might think it is something. Because of this a lot of people do not get the diagnosis. There are...

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· May 10

If you haven't had a chance to look at these maps, they are absolutely bonkers. My neighbor 2 minutes away from me is now in a different congressional district but my friend who lives FOUR HOURS AWAY is now in the same district as me. Her neighbor is, get this, in the SAME DISTRICT as my neighbor!

The new Tennessee district maps. The state of Tennessee is shaped like a long slanted rectangle with a sharper pointed edge at the northeast corner. The districts which used to be in clumps next to each other are now in weird, bizarre shapes. One district labelled 5 starts in the middle of the state, goes north west to the northern most border, then drops down the western edge to the farthest southwest point. Another district looks like an erupting volcano with a section just randomly shooting into the middle of the state. Several counties are cut in half or three ways so that neighbors don't vote with each other.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· May 7

Lily Zheng's excellent post today on AI. "Laying off their internal experts for a short-term stock bump and more cash to pour into AI investments is like selling your chicken to buy more birdfeed."

"AI is doing this-" "AI is doing that-" Nope. AI doesn't do squat on its own. But PEOPLE are certainly invoking AI to cover for their questionable decision-making. Our fixation on the technology, like it has agency on its own, is giving individual peoples' poor choices a free pass.

Does AI "cause" workslop? No. But people using AI certainly produce it, and a lot of it. Why? Their jobs are poorly defined. Their workplace has little accountability. Their leaders are delusional with hype and are measuring token usage, not quality. People are under enormous pressure to do more, but not necessarily better. Every incentive is aligned to pump out slop at scale, with LLMs as the heavy machinery doing the pumping: if we want less slop, we need different incentives.

Does AI "cause" layoffs? Absolutely not. Leaders could leverage the technology to do anything: identify new business opportunities, better meet customer needs, empower workers to do less drudge work and more problem-solving. Laying off their internal experts for a short-term stock bump and more cash to pour into AI investments is like selling your chicken to buy more birdfeed. Leaders who do this are self-destructing their employee morale, culture, trust, connection, talent pipeline, and more.

Does AI "cause" inequality? Not on its own. But people rushing to automate systems they don't understand are certainly making things worse. If your hiring or promotions process starts off as a bias-ridden likability contest that blatantly discriminates against qualified candidates, what do you think you'll get by automating it? A blatantly discriminatory bias-ridden likability contest at 100x scale and 100x speed, with 1/100th the transparency. Your "forward-thinking" vendor partnership and "future of HR" talk is sprinting you towards your next class-action lawsuit.

None of this is inevitable. None of this is acceptable! Whenever we hear the fatalistic sentiment that "AI is doing X" the bare minimum response must be to push back with, "why is [person using or invoking AI] choosing to do that?" Whenever we feel the push to use LLMs in ways that violate our own values, the bare minimum response must be to ask, "why would I choose to do this, and what other choices do I have?"

Our current upside-down world has put the onus of responsibility on the individual, rather than the organization or the institution or the government. It's far from ideal. If we give up this shred of accountability, we'll have nothing left. So let's do better, and refuse to accept the slop, the harm, and the cruelty as given, and hold each other accountable to better. Yes?

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· May 2

Folks, I know a lot of people aren't around 3 year olds a lot but some things you need to know, their fine motor skills are terrible because they've only been on the planet 3 years and their literal hands & brains haven't grown enough.

What can my child do at this age?
As your child continues to grow, you will notice new and exciting abilities that develop. Children may progress at different rates, but these are some of the common milestones most children reach in this age group:

Runs and jumps easily
Walks up the stairs unassisted
Rides a tricycle
Washes and dries hands
Holds crayon between fingers and thumb (not a fist) and can draw a circle
Catches a large ball most of the time
Serves themselves food or pours a drink with supervision
Unbuttons some buttons
Can concentrate on tasks for 8 or 9 minutes
Has all 20 primary ("baby") teeth
Vision is nearing 20/20
Bladder and bowel control are usually established and uses potty chair or toilet
May sleep 11 to 13 hours total and may still take a short afternoon nap

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Apr 26

Fabriano's 3x5 notebooks are so nice to throw in a purse or bag for writing lists and notes. Just beautiful paper feel and so much cheaper than Moleskine. A pack of 4 is like $12!

Fabriano notebooks in primary colors (red, blue, green and yellow). They are small (3 inch by 5 inch) but look classy.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Apr 22

I made a panicked mistake in London & followed people running to jump in an express train to Leighton Buzzard as the doors were closing instead of the overground Tube. The conductor on the way back was super understanding. He couldn't do much (Oyster card charged fully) but I didn't get a fine.

Map of the south of England. Shows a blue dot where I was at Euston Station in London and the arrow to the very small distance I wanted to go with the Overground train. In the far left top corner of the map 57km away is Leighton Buzzard where I ended up and had to turn around. It's not quite Milton Keyes but close.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Apr 22

Alt text of the graphic.

Screenshot of the Virginia state government website section on election results pertaining to the Virginia redistricting initiative.
It shows the results of three counties, the first one you can't see the name but it shows 90.14% YES and 9.86% NO.
The next county is Berkley, 95.03% YES aand 4.97% NO.
The final county on the screenshot is Campostella, 93.45% YES and 6.55% NO.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Apr 17

Ruth and Naomi are favs. Grief, immigration, prejudice, poverty, two women doing whatever it takes to save each other, all in one. My favorite icon from Kelly Latimore.

Painted religious icon from Kelly Latimore. The style is not traditional icon but has a more 3D quality to it. A deep blue almost black sky is dotted with the depiction of stars. Standing in a dark field of wheat are Ruth and Naomi. Two dark skinned women of differing ages they are clinging to each other in embrace while looking sideways at the viewer. One has a yellow veil with long dark blue gown while the other is wearing a light blue Somali style abaya. They both have sainted halos over their heads.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Apr 15

Drop your crime fighting Catholics

Screenshot from an episode of the TV series Father Brown with guest Sister Boniface who eventually got her own spin-off series.
Father Brown played by Mark Williams is in a black cassock and has a black hat. He is riding an older style bicycle down a path in the English countryside. Next to him is Sister Boniface played by Lorna Watson who is in a nun's habit including full coif and veil. She is wearing large glasses. She is also riding a bicycle with a wicker basket attached at the front. In the show, Father Brown solves an enormous amount of murders in small English villages with progressive Catholic beliefs (at least for the intended time period) and just being a really nosey person. Sister Boniface has a degree in chemistry and does early and unrealistically swift forensic science to solve an awful lot of murders with victims usually discovered by one poor little old lady who just stumbles across bodies all the time.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Apr 13

I adore fantasy comedy of manners like Goblin Emperor and the Mirror Visitor series where there's a whole host of interconnected elaborate relationships and someone having learn how to navigate them all. In real life what a horrific nightmare.

A character map from Katherine Addison's book Goblin Emperor made by Shay Shortt. It has the main character Maia Drazhar in the center and over 30 other characters mapped out by name, relationship and connection with descriptions plus additional characters just listed by group. It's masterful with labels such as "dudes Maia has to deal with" but oh my gosh is it dense.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Mar 23

Absolutely bananas story. tinyurl.com/3r2uubfk

But who are the “leading scientists” who wrote the article? Lead author Jonathan Cohler is identified by his affiliation with MIT—a well-known and highly respected research institution. Surely that means he holds a position in, say, MIT’s Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences department, right? But it appears that Cohler’s connection to the university is limited to being a clarinet instructor. Jonathan Cohler is an acclaimed clarinetist with an undergraduate degree in physics from Harvard, but to call him a “leading scientist” would, in my opinion, render those words meaningless. By the time the paper was published, Cohler was no longer employed by MIT, even as a clarinet instructor.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst· Mar 19

Watching the PYP workshops through these curriculum framework changes has been really fascinating because I think most people teaching the PYP didn't understand how complex making changes are in a global curriculum. #edsky #IBPYP