GNU SIR TERRY PRATCHETT
Signal this to all towers, not logged.
‘He’d never have wanted to go home. He was a real linesman. His name is in the code, in the wind in the rigging and the shutters. Haven’t you ever heard the saying “A man’s not dead while his name is still spoken”?’
Going Postal
The world could be such a nice place if we allowed it. It's all so goddamn unnecessary. There's no need for any of it. It's so beautiful here. It should be so cool to be alive
A reminder to the news media: “conflicting accounts” is what you say BEFORE the incontrovertible video evidence appears. After that, your job is to ask why one side is lying, not to repeat the lie and pretend no one knows the truth.
Burning candle in a glass holder, next to rosemary plant on a small patio table.
From SoCal
I think a lot of us get hope wrong. Hope, I do not believe, is an emotion. In fact, hope makes space for lots of emotions to exist alongside it. You can DO hope scared, angry, sad etc...
Hope doesn't find us. We make hope through action and struggle. It's a practice of living and is re-made daily.
I don’t want to hear anything from an elected official unless it’s a plan to defund the DHS and impeach Noem, Bovino, etc. No texts. No emails. No talk about the economy. Step up or step off.
There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom
I think the use of chatbots for stuff like this is intended to train people to use it to avoid everything that’s painful or hard. It can write the obituary, the breakup text, the complaint letter. It’s meant to separate humans from their difficult feelings. Seems bad.
Setting aside the ethical and environmental concerns of AI, I'm really offended by a bunch of elite dudes telling us our minds aren't good enough when they've had to steal everything human minds have created to create their pretend mind and it doesn't even work right!
A very cool technology that allows students to interact with John Maynard Keynes’ ideas as he develops them is called a book
I imagined the Chatsubo in 1984. 41 years later I opened its door. Neuromancer is in production.
A fantastic speech:
It's that time of year again! Drowning doesn't look like drowning; familiarize yourself with the instinctive drowning response
A white mug with the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction logo holds a spray of lavender next to a stack of the eight books shortlisted for this year's prize: North Continent Ribbon by Ursula Whitcher Remember You Will Die by Eden Robins The City in Glass by Nghi Vo Archangels of Funk by Andrea Hairston The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera The West Passage by Jared Pechaček Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson
We're thrilled to present the shortlist for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction:
What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders?
There is no such thing as "America's schools."
Don’t let billionaires convince you that creepy, problematic technologies aren’t creepy & problematic. Because once they can convince enough people of that, well… then we’ve lost. But we (the 99%) haven’t lost til then. Technology is not destiny & they KNOW it. They’re terrified we might know too.
Curiosity needs friction. Learning needs surprise. Wisdom needs mistakes. Models don’t offer that. They offer something faster, smoother, and emptier.
13/16
You can see this in high school. Not all students of course, but it’s a huge challenge for planning effective lessons.
More "personalized" searches? Just what we need to further insulate us from the wider world.
All these people who seem to have never met a child or teenager in their entire lives.
This was just posted by @tbretc.bsky.social on another platform. The Chicago Sun-Times obviously gets ChatGPT to write a ‘summer reads’ feature almost entirely made up of real authors but completely fake books. What are we coming to?
Netflix plans to air 90 hours of previous episodes, while new episodes "will also air on PBS stations and PBS Kids the same day they debut on Netflix," the report said.
This is another reason why the attempt to mass universalize LLMs in higher ed, irrespective of necessity, need or context, bothers me. We are teaching students that they do not have to reckon with, or disclose or think of, how exactly they came to write and create things.
And isn't that just wrong?
this is why I start fights with people who tell me "sometimes the curtains are just blue"
like ok maybe the curtains in YOUR books are just blue, but in my books someone had to pick the curtains and decide to hang them up or MAYBE THERE ARE NONE, and curtains can actually say a lot about a person!
the fundamental disconnect between the manosphere and reality is that they are incapable of understanding that this is - according to every woman I’ve ever met - the sexiest thing a man has ever done
I asked Wendy if I could read the paper she turned in, and when I opened the document, I was surprised to see the topic: critical pedagogy, the philosophy of education pioneered by Paulo Freire. The philosophy examines the influence of social and political forces on learning and classroom dynamics. Her opening line: “To what extent is schooling hindering students’ cognitive ability to think critically?” Later, I asked Wendy if she recognized the irony in using AI to write not just a paper on critical pedagogy but one that argues learning is what “makes us truly human.” She wasn’t sure what to make of the question. “I use AI a lot. Like, every day,” she said. “And I do believe it could take away that critical-thinking part. But it’s just — now that we rely on it, we can’t really imagine living without it.”
"I asked Wendy if she recognized the irony in using AI to write not just a paper on critical pedagogy but one that argues learning is what 'makes us truly human.' She wasn’t sure what to make of the question. 'I use AI a lot. Like, every day,' she said."
My head hurts.
It isn’t as if cheating is new. But now, as one student put it, “the ceiling has been blown off.” Who could resist a tool that makes every assignment easier with seemingly no consequences? After spending the better part of the past two years grading AI-generated papers, Troy Jollimore, a poet, philosopher, and Cal State Chico ethics professor, has concerns. “Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate,” he said. “Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.” That future may arrive sooner than expected when you consider what a short window college really is. Already, roughly half of all undergrads have never experienced college without easy access to generative AI. “We’re talking about an entire generation of learning perhaps significantly undermined here,” said Green, the Santa Clara tech ethicist. “It’s short-circuiting the learning process, and it’s happening fast.”
“Massive #s of students are going to emerge... who are essentially illiterate. Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate + having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”
This isn't the only reason AI is bad, but it's why it is bad for students.
It’s time to reconsolidate a counterculture and politics against this shit. Science, art, medicine, poetry, philosophy as the beautiful life, the fullness of human civilization, that they want to destroy. Humanism, not cynicism, not slop, not tech “””nerd””” culture
My 9th graders are hearing all about this, in detail, in our research and media literacy unit. Some clearly take it seriously while others are unconvinced.
There is a lot of money and effort behind the sales pitches and only limited time to counter them in class.
