“Anthropic kept Project Panama confidential, not because it was illegal, but because it looked bad,” ISBNdb says in an article on its website. “Destroying millions of books evokes images of burning libraries”. Yes destroying libraries is ‘not a good look’ - and is much more than just a bad look

Alexander Chee@alexanderchee.bsky.social · 7d ago

‘Anthropic described the project as “our effort to disruptively scan all the world’s books” in an internal memo, which noted “we do not want it to be known that we are pursuing this project”.’

The Autumn issue of CI is 🔥 —can’t wait for essays on Anti-Fascist theory, Teju Cole, Bergman, Conrad, the fantasy of the death of the author, the idea of the plenisentient, global Maoism in Asian Amer lit, Levinas, and a cracking dog on the cover to boot.

Critical Inquiry@criticalinquiry.bsky.social · 5d ago

Autumn issue is coming soon! Vilém Flusser on cover.

Read through this. Then think of the signal Harvard is sending.

Jane Rosenzweig@janerosenzweig.bsky.social · last wk.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Wollstonecraft on forest fires & climate grief, from 1796: "The devastation must, indeed, be terrible, when this, literally speaking, wild fire, runs along the forest, flying from top to top, & crackling amongst the branches. . . the country, despoiled of beauty & riches, is left to mourn for ages."

Qui aurait pu prédire ? Who could have predicted this? Wer hätte das denn ahnen können? Condensed to ~3 mins youtu.be/1FqXTCvDLeon @thejuicemedia.com (2021) Authorised by the Department for Blah Blah Blah. #ExtremeHeat #Wildfires #ClimateCrisis #EndFossilFuels

Parents For Future #EndFossilFuels 🪧🛢️❌@parentsforfuture.de · last wk.

"Being honest would mean admitting that we're failing and we can't do that because then we'd have to stop failing. That would mean ending fossil fuel subsidies and banning all new gas, coal and oil projects. And to anyone suggesting harming our precious children like that, we say, how dare you?"

How many species affected - deaths, displacement, & burned habitat creates starvation events - is made invisible in how it’s told in the media The 2019-20 Australian bushfires: 3 billion animals dead or displaced (WWF), many species “pushed to extinction” bc endemic to a specific area (TheGuardian)

Jorie Graham@joriegraham.bsky.social · last wk.

x.com/volcaholic1/...

Wait this train stops at Naples Geneva Orkney Mont Blanc the Arctic the University of Ingolstadt and the late 18th century?

Having spent a very happy 18 months sinking into its 3,000 pages, I have written about why reading Proust is essential in the 21st century as.ft.com/r/32995bbf-8...

Proust in the age of TikTok

The French writer’s seven-volume magnum opus was a challenging choice for a book club — but its evocation of the human psyche makes essential reading for our times

as.ft.com

Excited to see the new issue of Cultural Critique! Going to start with Caren Irr on @tomcomitta.bsky.social The Nature Book and metabolic rift

@kenoma.bsky.social · 2w ago

Cultural Critique's special issue on "Marxism, Form, and Futurity" now up online, essays by @annakornbluh.bsky.social @kqandrews.bsky.social @cphiliphaines.bsky.social and then some muse.jhu.edu/issue/57283

companies are sourcing millions of printed books for AI labs that scan them for training data, then destroy them. printed books are more valuable because they're free of AI slop, and AI labs know destroying them is an "optics problem." www.404media.co/ai-companies...

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop

ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”

404media.co

Exactly: AI-less prestige in HE “All of this portends yet another split in the structure of higher education: Sooner or later, elite schools are going to realize that an analog education carries more prestige than an AI-assisted one and will retool their curricula and expectations to reflect that.”

Dennis Hogan@dennismhogan.bsky.social · 3w ago

Many faculty have been sounding the alarm about the problems generative AI poses for student learning. Strangely, some higher ed administrations seem have emerged as major AI boosters. Why? As I write in the latest @hedgehogreview.bsky.social it's a labor story: hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-f...

Reading is time-travelling telepathy. Someone in the past puts an idea in your head.

Karim Wafa-Al Hussaini@karimwafa.bsky.social · 3w ago

Reading is how I borrow other people’s brains for a while.

It’s MOTH week?!

iNaturalist@inaturalist.bsky.social · 3w ago

📣 HAPPY MOTH WEEK! 📣 From now until July 26, things are going to be extremely moth-y on this page (prepare yourself). Here's a delightful little moth face (species Xanthodirphia amarilla) to kick things off.

Natural history on canvas: Brueghel knew about bird-eating noctule bats Just published in @pnas.org, OA for all eyes Led by the one-and-only @romero-vidal.bsky.social, with the amazing @elena-tena.bsky.social and Sonia Sánchez-Navarro @ebdonana.bsky.social LINK: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Insect decline usually focuses on species we can name. But "dark taxa" like true flies kept revealing new species over 37-years of sampling a German stream, while well-studied mayflies/stoneflies/caddisflies plateaued with far fewer individuals. doi.org/10.1111/icad... @swarmofthoughts.bsky.social

Comparing species accumulation within taxonomically well‐ and poorly resolved insect groups over 37 years

Here, we used a unique 37-year (1969–2006) freshwater macroinvertebrate time-series, collected over seven sites in central Germany, to study biodiversity patterns and species accumulation over time......

doi.org

Ocean acidification is becoming a planetary-scale signal of carbon-cycle disruption. Surface ocean pH has fallen about 0.1 since the Industrial Revolution, and the sediment record may persist for thousands of years. doi.org/hcbjqp

Ocean acidification emerging as a planetary signal linking today's carbon emissions to Earth's deep-time memory

When most people hear the phrase "ocean acidification," they think of coral reefs, shellfish or declining fisheries. Those concerns are real.

phys.org

"American colleges & unis became the envy of the world in part b/c the nation understood that legislators dictating course content, or banning entire subjects outright, is tyrannical. Authoritarians always attempt to capture the institutions that provide an independent check on state propaganda."

Victor Ray@victorerikray.bsky.social · 4w ago

I wrote about Florida Governor DeSantis' getting rebuked by the 11th Circuit for his tyrannical (and unconstitutional) "Stop WOKE Act." Hopefully, this will serve as a warning to other GOP states (but I doubt it). www.ms.now/opinion/flor...

At Monks Wood, the soil temperatures this week are insane: Grass surface 45C 10 cm deep 27C 30 cm deep 22C 1 metre deep 19C Air temperature has reached 34.5C. Max concrete surface temperature is off the scale, over 50C. The sensors can't detect that high, it was not expected when they were designed.

Richard K Broughton@richardkbroughton.bsky.social · last mo.

The Met Office weather station on our Monks Wood site recorded 35.7C yesterday, 26 June. It was >30C by 10 am, and the grass temperature reached 45.2C. Imagine being a vole, hare, skylark chick, lizard or ground beetle in that heat. A foot deep, the soil was 22C.

Old telephones at the Mannheim Technology Museum. My Canadian grandparents still had the old black rotary, second shelf, second from right into the early 90s.

If frogs designed vehicles

Monday is the deadline for public comment! The Heritage Foundation has been mobilizing its members to leave comments in favor of the rule change, so every unique comment matters (don’t use a form letter or copy/paste—similar comments are batched and treated as one).

Bethany Brookshire@beebrookshire.bsky.social · 4w ago

There's an OMB rule change that would require political oversight of scientific grants, and could pull any that don't "reflect presidential priorities" Another country has tried this before! It was the USSR and it was called Lysenkoism. By @thsaey.bsky.social www.sciencenews.org/article/omb-...

futurism.com/future-socie... lol

If I were the King of Universities (which, heaven forbid), I would place this finding at the exact centre of every single policy decision from teaching to research to estates to capital investment. At every level in every process, the question would be: are we as humane as education demands we be?

Conatus believe I missed the Spinoza movie screening

Today in conversations with 9 year olds 9 yo: I don’t like fake flowers Me: why? 9 yo: they go against the IDEA of flowers

Ai Weiwei’s new philosophical graphic memoir. I saw some of the zodiac work at his Seattle Art Museum exhibition last year

Colpizen@colpizen.bsky.social · 4w ago

Oh ! J'étais passée à côté de cette sortie (Illustrations de @channeldraw.bsky.social)

“studying, analyzing, deciding & selecting…turns a mountain of amorphous material into a robust historical explanation….ask gen AI to give you a draft, or “inspiration”…[It] scrabbled around & found stuff that looks like content but isn’t bc it wasn’t chosen, analyzed, & written by a person.”

Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)@drsurekhadavies.bsky.social · 4w ago

"If we think about and feel what we experience by moving about in the world, if we mull and compare what resonates to our own knowledge and memories, if we analyze it using the perspectives and sensibilities gained from education and life experience, then what we have to say will be unique." 3/

Incredibly useful thread on AI “literacy-laundering” - and on HE’s push to claim uncritically the importance of training UGs in “AI literacy”

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · last mo.

New preprint! So honoured to have worked with Ishani Ray on providing vital critique on "AI literacy" & correctives for those interested in understanding why "just use the newest version of an LLM" is nonsense Contra Literacy-Laundering: Mechanistic Critical AI Literacy doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 1/

👇🏼”the basic ethical premise of being in conversation: that I show up…in the distinctively normative sense of bringing myself fully to conversation & assuming responsibility for what I do in it. I offload [w/AI]what I think &…say at the risk of defeating my desire to really be in conversation w/ you”

M.J. Crockett@mjcrockett.bsky.social · 4w ago

This gorgeous essay from the social-media-less Lily Hu is everything: on what it means to "do" philosophy amidst pressure to automate it (with lessons that travel much more broadly). Rhymes with brilliant insights from @biblioracle.bsky.social @janerosenzweig.bsky.social Ted Chiang & others