Dr. Dawn Wiseman

This will be something that seems like a drop in our daily dumpster fire life, but mark my words, it will be cited in history books.

I get yelled at for saying this but for many hundreds of years people went to university not to get diplomas or be employable but because immersion in the humanities was considered foundational to a good life, and school must return to its original purpose: the joy of learning.

So… I've been writing for about 18 years on the idea that if you somehow manage to make meaningfully conscious machine minds & then you treat them as tools, then you're enslaving those minds, and that's pretty messed up. And this ties into something else I've re-upped recently: LLMs can't say "No."

lol as a #PhD student, I have very strong opinions (surprise, surprise) about social science findings that generalize human behavior when they only focus on white people.

I will also say that it’s a bit wild to me that no press freedom organization or professional journalistic association has tried to contact me or even put out a statement here.

I mean Jesus Christ. A little solidarity from institutions would be nice here!

To my Canadian friends, an acquaintance started a petition to allow US transgender citizens to claim refugee status here.

www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en...

If you’re Canadian please sign it.
If you’re not, please share ❤️

Don’t measure it, no problem. Easy peasy

That’s why it’s so expensive! Thank you

A text that says - Your visit could not have been better timed. They all said it was hope and light in a dark time

Our research collective went and spoke in a good friend’s PhD methodology course today. And just keep writing all the things, and sharing them, because maybe it helps other folks more than you can imagine.

Pedro Sanchez doubles down on criticism of Iran war in televised address

"This is how humanity's great disasters start ... You cannot play Russian roulette with destiny of millions... The position of the Spanish ‌government can be summarised in four words: 'No to the war'"

FFS

The cover is of a crowd of Indigenous people in orange shirts, marching down the street. What an important resource!

Former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy shreds the rationale for an attack on Iran - and 🇨🇦 support for it.

Private money cannot replace public funding of science Who should pay for American science? In the current political climate, many are looking to the private sector to compensate for cuts in public funding. At the Harvard School of Public Health—particula...

My latest:

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Next column will address needed guardrails for private funding of science, esp. in light of #Epstein/ #Summers etc.

I don’t even know anymore. War, the senseless murder of civilians, pedophiles in power, just a whole lot of fuckshit.

In my utopian vision of the future, instead of offloading all the pointless, annoying work tasks (like reports that none one will read and needlessly opaque forms) to robots, we restructure work and society so that the pointless tasks don't happen at all.

Carney remains popular, in part because Poilievre is so awful by comparison and because he gives a good speech. Eventually these cuts are going to affect his supporters directly, though, and then they may be less keen to rationalize them. Also, all it takes is the next scandal to shift things bigly.

🧪

Beauty

It's the latter kind of bravery we most need -- the kind that prevents horrors from happening in the first place. The kind that doesn't get you parades, it gets you sneers & snide remarks. The kind that's dreary & unrewarding.

Where the Dreams Begin
Bill Brownridge
n.d.

This is incredible. Surreal.

These are amazing!

Prince Andrew's Arrest Across the pond in Britain, justice and accountability is a serious matter

Never in a million years did I ever fathom when I resurrected the Epstein story in 2018 that it would lead to first arrest of a British Royal in four centuries. Not since King Charles I was arrested in 1647.
open.substack.com/pub/jkbjourn...

Ex-South Korean president found guilty of insurrection over martial law order Yoon Suk Yeol, 65, was sentenced to life in prison over his short-lived power grab, which sent the Asian democracy into political turmoil in 2024.

Former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol has been convicted of insurrection & subverting the constitutional order in connection with his attempted declaration of martial law in 2024 and sentenced to life in prison.

www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/s...

This is one of the things that I really deeply internalized working primarily with Native elders on their land rights between 2024-2025. I already believed strongly in the power of imagination, but the perspectives they so generously shared with me fundamentally changed how I move through the world.

The New School Cancelled Their Class on Global Soccer and World Politics. We Are Going To Teach it Anyway. When institutions abandon critical thinking, we build our own classrooms.

NEW:

One of the most progressive institutions in the U.S., The New School, has begun destroying its humanities departments.

They have cancelled one of their most popular classes, "Global Soccer and World Politics."

We are going to teach it anyway.

karenattiah.substack.com/p/the-new-sc...

You can't... repeal... a scientific finding. At that point it's just called lying about it.

this is a level of complicity that had not occurred to me

Land Back is not just a possibility. It is happening. Much more than people realize.