I was interviewed about AI & here’s what I said:
I believe in the idea of a writer’s voice—a unique voice that’s particular to you, that only you can write with. & I really work hard to develop that with my students. AI will never have your voice—it cannot touch that voice.
⭐️👏✊Please add your name to the letter below and join PEN America — and the hundreds who have already signed — in sending a strong message in defense of academic freedom to the Texas A&M Board of Regents.
pen.org/dont-censor-...
Happy 6th anniversary to us!! 🎉🎉
Thanks for spending time with us, old friends and new! As we celebrate this milestone, we've launched a short audience survey to get your thoughts on the show (and its future).
We would be most grateful for your participation!
Link: forms.gle/AnJSopuX8Cho...
“Technology” has a long and problematized relationship with progress, efficiency, and efficacy. Sleek trains rushing through the countryside, the blinding reach of the electrical grid, or the instantaneous messages of networked communication are its shiny avatars. Contraptions, by contrast, are technical devices that barely work. They seem too complex, too circuitous, too labor intensive. They are frequently ad hoc—as unrepeatable and unreliable as Rube Goldberg’s fantastical machines. They push the received wisdom about technology’s defining features to the limit. Like the aesthetic “gimmick” theorized by Sianne Ngai, the contraption is a category charged with normative judgment. Contraptions may work, but they don’t work right. While the contraption is commonly associated with vernacular or retrograde alternatives to high technology, many “high tech” devices reveal a contraption-like character on close inspection: AI chatbots, internet protocols, and helicopters come to seem both over- and under-engineered the more attention is paid to them. This session invites STS scholars to think with the figure of the contraption: What alternatives to popular ideas about technology do these complicated and unruly objects offer? What is it about the present moment that pushes the contraption back into public thought? How does the normativity of contraption judgments manifest in everyday life? How do people come to perceive and evaluate technical complexity in social life? Work in this area may draw on theories of gimmicks, hacks, kludges, workarounds, tricks, bricolage, and other complex or informal technical activities.
STS folks, I'm organizing an open panel on CONTRAPTIONS for 4S this year, following up on a lovely panel at last year's AAA meetings. You should submit something if you got it! www.4sonline.org/accepted_ope...
Delighted to give an invited talk about the history of public media policy in the symposium "Canceling the State: Legal and Political Backlash Against Public Institutions," at Wayne State University.
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Applications for the 2026 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) are now open!!
Are you interested in intelligence, mind, and cognition in all its forms? Early-career scholars from any discipline—and storytellers in any medium—are encouraged to apply!
More info: disi.org
Congrats to @ncaaup.bsky.social & all who fought against this surveillance policy that would've allowed admin to hijack microphones in the classroom for secret recordings.
This move would've chilled classroom discussion & suppressed students' willingness to ask questions & take intellectual risks.
Happy #AnosmiaAwarenessDay to those who don't smellebrate! www.nationaldaycalendar.com/national-day...
It never ceases to confound me just how many folks think the point of essays is to provide teachers with essays. That teachers just like, collect them, or need them for sustenance or something. Rather than the point of them being the *actual fucking act of learning how to think about shit*
“Cognitive psychology has shown that students grow intellectually through doing the work of drafting, revising, failing, trying again, grappling with confusion and revising weak arguments. This is the work of learning how to learn.”
#AI #HigherEd #EduSky
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theconversation.com/the-greatest...
I've long been unhappy at my answers to the question of whether we need cognitive/semiotic factors *at all*, to explain the history of numerical notations. My new @pnas.org paper on gradience is meant to clear the deck and respond 'if yes, this one is the most likely'.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Quick, now: which is bigger, 25234991 or 25234?
Next: which is bigger, MMI or DCCCLXIV?
Some numerical notations' conciseness indexes their magnitude well, some less so. But how does that matter cross-culturally for their adoption and retention? Check it out @pnas.org:
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide.
This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.
I just did the dumbest thing of my entire career to prove a much more serious point.
I tricked ChatGPT and Google, and made them tell other users I’m a competitive hot-dog-eating world champion
People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I’ll explain how I did it
Quick, now: which is bigger, 25234991 or 25234?
Next: which is bigger, MMI or DCCCLXIV?
Some numerical notations' conciseness indexes their magnitude well, some less so. But how does that matter cross-culturally for their adoption and retention? Check it out @pnas.org:
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
"Almost paradoxically, Sequoyah’s numerals could not succeed because they had not yet succeeded, and came into existence in a social context where a prestigious, common notation had been adopted almost universally."
OK, it finally happened! My new article, "Gradience as a cognitive principle for evaluating numerical notations", is now out today in @pnas.org. By focusing on numerals' use for communication instead of arithmetic, we have a new tool to assess their efficiency.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Speaking as a longtime DGS who has sent out hundreds of grad school acceptances over the years, and thus at least as many rejections, sending those good letters is the best part of this role, and sending the rejections sucks but is 100% necessary. And it's trite, but usually, it isn't about you.
Just sent out all the acceptance emails to our new MA and PhD cohort. I'm probably more anxious than they are. Mainly that I didn't screw it up and send someone the wrong message.
I continue to think that sociohistorical factors matter more than cognitive ones for the evolution of numerical notations. But if there is a key cognitive factor, gradience is the most plausible one, because it relies on capacities that underpin numerical cognition generally.
Thanks! And thanks again for reading over an earlier version of the paper!
OK, it finally happened! My new article, "Gradience as a cognitive principle for evaluating numerical notations", is now out today in @pnas.org. By focusing on numerals' use for communication instead of arithmetic, we have a new tool to assess their efficiency.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Very cool new article by @urvi.bsky.social, Jessica Sullivan and @drbarner.bsky.social comparing English and Hindi speaking kids' ideas about infinity, showing a subtly more complicated view of how numerical morphological opacity relates to infinity beliefs.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Wayne State beat Grand Valley State, 78-77, for the first win over a No. 1-ranked team in program history. It also snapped WSU's 25-game losing streak to rival GVSU.
Worth reading, expands on previously known extent of their relationship. Also a tough read - take it on only when ready.
I definitely need to know about "the moon’s apparent disinterest in our activities". That and recursive acronyms, but at least I know what that paper is about.
Prime Minister Carney speaks on the phone with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark.
A good call with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark today.
Greenland’s future is for Greenland and Denmark alone to decide. We reaffirmed our commitment to sovereignty and territorial integrity and discussed our ongoing work to strengthen Arctic security.
The video from this seminar is now online here: youtu.be/vJfhL_5-w-U?...
GELATINOUS CUBE AT A JOB INTERVIEWE
"A keye feature of my managemente style ys a commitment to transparencye"
