Leila Walker

New article out today! "Resurrecting Natures with Charlotte Smith and Ebony G. Patterson." On poetry, art, and the historical and geographic displacements registered in herbarium sheets, and on the nature of home. Also there are glitter vultures. www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...

"By tasking us with AI assignments, professors do us a 'favor' by removing our agency in school, rather than in our future workplace." Brilliant and depressing essay by a current college student about AI, agency, and the classroom. dailycollegian.com/2026/10/chat...

The foster cat and the resident cat have not met yet, but they are IN LOVE. They just sit on opposite sides of a closed door, sticking their paws under the door, turning belly up and cooing at each other and making love eyes into the air. Fingers crossed they still love each other after they meet.

Today I: Brought home a foster cat Ate leftover Chinese food at the kitchen counter Made vegan cheese from scratch Made 2-hour mole God give me the strength to make dinner.

I was worried about how Chester would react, but he’s just camped out outside the bathroom making kitty love eyes into the air.

Well we have a foster situation now.

2019 video of Heidi the Octopus, captured by Dr. David Scheel, a professor of marine biology at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage & aired on PBS Nature program "Octopus: Making Contact". We think the color changes are the results of Heidi dreaming as she sleeps. Let's talk about it.

Apparently I am the person my vet calls when she needs an emergency foster for a janky cat with a golden personality.

I really wish I had the text version of this lecture, but I am also in love with how much and how clearly it communicates visually.

Today in stop fucking connecting everything to the internet

NOTHING more NoCo.

delighted to announce I'm part of the 2026-7 online programme for Romanticism Across Borders! I'll be lecturing on my Scottish Romantic illustration research the evening of 9th December 💫

Researchers uncovered the graves of more than 1,000 children next to juvenile detention facilities in 29 states. At one Maryland gravesite, 230 Black boys are buried. n.pr/4zauALa

Join us Wednesday 7 October at 5:30 pm at the Institute of Historical Research, London or on Zoom, for Miles Ogborn's "Law, Violence and Empire: Understanding the Jamaican Uprising Trials of 1832". Free and welcoming to researchers, students & the public. Please register in advance. #Skystorians

Good Boy Chester reached out and touched my arm so gently 😻And he didn’t even bite me!

Do NOT vote for anti-transgender Democrats. www.erininthemorning.com/p/the-guide-...

Little (extremely well) known fact: If you just keep adding olive oil, everything is delicious.

I don’t ever want to stop hurting. But I also don’t know how to function with this level of grief.

Everyone I have ever recommend 10 Cloverfield Lane to has had this reaction. It’s a real shame that it was marketed as part of the Cloverfield franchise, because it deserves to be recognized on the caliber of Psycho Or Rosemarys Baby.

7 of the top 10 colleges ranked for ROI are CUNYs. Queens is ranked 4. And yet we can’t afford a chief librarian. All the adjuncts who were filling in for retired full time faculty have been let go. We all deserve better. Fund CUNY.

Remember in like 2007, when we were all like, "Why is the GC a cancer cluster?" And somehow didn't ask, how many of those people were here in 2001?

"Perhaps more concerningly, the TVs were capable of recording microphone audio when in standby; this continued even after the TV was disconnected from the internet, with audio files stored offline and uploaded once a connection was restored."

Can someone please tell my institution that we need to hire instructors, not another f-ing provost?

Cat hostage negotiator needs to be a thing

"It smells like burning cedar." oh my god....

There are endless studies showing this and also the financial and societal benefits of universal basic income and or housing-first policies but the U.S. never goes for any of it because it would require allowing the poor to receive benefits that the rich consider “undeserved”

Manifesting a 9-25 National Dolly Day.

New profile description just dropped.

Back in May, I made the questionable decision to begin drafting my uncle's eulogy in my research notebook. Now, as I'm finalizing the project I was researching then, I can actually, literally see how close to the surface my grief was as I was writing.

When my sister's partner came out as nonbinary, my 98-year-old grandma said, "I don't understand, but I don't have to." This is the correct answer! You don't have to understand, you don't have to feel comfortable, to treat people with basic respect. Grandma gets it.

When my godsister was maybe 6, she had a dream about Dolly Parton, and when she told us about it at breakfast, she had to pull her shirt over her face because she was so upset that Dolly wasn’t with her anymore. 💔💔 We all know how she feels.

WHAT. NO.

Why have two, when you could have three or four?

OMG.

When I was door knocking for Mamdani, the first person who answered was a girl in a Dark Crystal tee who was already voting for him, but the second was a woman who hadn’t heard of him and said, with a sigh, “You know what I want? A decent person.” And that’s what Mamdani plugs into every day.

Sick day vibes.

(What she said in her letter was that she was “tousy-mousy for women.” Because I can quote Shelley in my sleep.)