Professor Amanda Sturgill
@drsturg.bsky.social
Truthmonger. I write books, teach students and make podcasts about you being smarter about misinformation. #WeAreAltGov #DetectingDeception https://bit.ly/UnSpunPod
I'm a little confused by this. Why are media outlets accepting this ad? He's not a candidate, so the equal time threats don't seem like they would apply? www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-f...
New Trump-focused "Love Me" ad campaign paid for by taxpayers hits airwaves
Ads promoting President Trump and paid for by American taxpayers are now airing on network and national cable.
cbsnews.com
🧵End-of-month reminder to use your gift links if you subscribe. Here are some from my subscriptions. YOU add to the magic when you reshare. #GiftLink www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/202...
What Israel Knew Before October 7
A conversation with Vivian Salama about her exclusive reporting that Egypt’s top spy warned of the coming attack.
theatlantic.com
Answers to question NYT headlines, without context. 1. Because people let him. 2. Use a time-limit app. 3. An episode of Saturday Night Live. 4. Probably, but it would be hard and costly. 5. Beats me. (I wish they didn't.) 6. The morality of some things makes them less controversial to tax.
Hi there. You've been managed by distraction for a while now. How it works: Scandal brewing? 😲 Do something even more scandalous over there. 🤫 Problem solved! The issue: eventually, upping the stakes will get to be too much. What was entertaining outrage becomes real threats.
They essentially stopped teaching a lot of public school kids how to write legibly by hand about 12 years ago. As someone who teaches college, I can say it absolutely has mattered. Don't let your hubris block you from at least admitting that there might be unintended consequences.
Matt Ford@mford.bsky.social · 3d agoEzra Klein asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about AI making kids worse at math and reading. Huang’s reply: “Does it matter?” Then he said he doesn’t know his own address or phone number. “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...
We have news playing in my building, and I just saw a piece where a prediction market guy was trying to argue that those are better than polls. Poppycock. They are both bad. They manufacture news and don't tell you anything about what will happen. I wish media didn't commission and cover them.
It's difficult for university students to vote for several reasons. If you have a student or know people with a student, now is the time to ask them if they have a plan. For a lot of the largest graduating class in US history, this is their FIRST chance, so help them take it!
Well Well Well Brian Griffin
ALT: Well Well Well Brian Griffin
static.klipy.com
jon ben-menachem@jbenmenachem.com · 5d agoSeeing on LinkedIn that one of the early AI adopters in economics, who had published a 14-agent pipeline for producing papers and lecture slides, is now souring on the tech after being subjected to peer review requests for slop papers
Sigh. (And it's all political perspectives) www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/u...
An Army of Paid Creators Is Carpeting the Web With Political Content (Gift Article)
Unlike celebrity influencers with large followings, these creators produce a blizzard of videos for a fraction of the cost of traditional online campaigns and, in the process, shift public conversatio...
nytimes.com
Good morning! For UnSpun this week, I'm changing up the journal club a little bit to look at a book. It's a good framework for understanding why the US president thinks he can dismiss the press. You - smarter in about 20 minutes! Find it here or where you pod. bit.ly/UnSpunPod
Unspun
Listen to Unspun on RedCircle
bit.ly
Fine. Since everyone is doing it, here's mine.
The need relationship in politics works both ways. News orgs NEED politicians NEED news orgs. Particularly in election season. Will be interested to see if this works, or if presidential event coverage will devolve into influencers, Newsmax, and friends.
Scott Nover@scottnover.bsky.social · 6d agoBREAKING: TV pool will not be providing coverage of presidential events until further notice b/c of CNN's ban, pool chair and FOX News Washington Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton said. It's effectively a boycott by the fellow members — ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX: www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
Not for nothing, but there’s some pretty interesting research about this!
Learning to Like the Likes and the Hate: The Labor of Internet Fame in the New Attention Economy
ABSTRACT. How do people experience internet fame? Whereas public visibility and reputation were once tightly coupled, these can be decoupled in the new med
academic.oup.com
In Medias Malone@professormusgrave.bsky.social · last wk.I think we need to take seriously that ordinary folks aren't meant to have audiences in the tens of thousands or more. This is novel and disruptive in human experiences
Maybe someone should tell them that students making their own "content" from the material would be much more effective for learning... Even if you're not into learning theory, think about it. What's your own desire for AI content on things you don't care about? techcrunch.com/2026/09/20/s...
ScrollEd wants to turn textbooks into TikTok | TechCrunch
ScrollEd turns textbooks into a scrollable, Instagram-like feed with video, audio, and quizzes. The Palo Alto startup, founded by student co-founders (and spouses) Utsav Gupta and Rebecca Neff, pitche...
techcrunch.com
Half-caff thought: We're not always great at counting the real cost. Examples: You want your news without a paywall AND no data collected. Cost: biased information. You want low taxes so YOU don't pay for others to have things. Cost: potholes; diseases, ignorant workforce.
National security is a common trope for federal officials to get their way/avoid accountability. (David McCraw wrote about this in Truth in Our Times, talking about gov not answering journalists.) Now it's the ballroom/bunker and the like. What will the Kennedy Ctr. security piece be?
I think they could tell, but don't think the audience will care. Which says a lot about what they think/assume about that audience.
Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social · last wk.Just gonna light this bag of dogshit on fire and walk away from the doorstep, but the people in media I hear saying AI has made them "more productive" appear to be producing less than ever, and worse things than ever. I wonder if they can even tell.
I'm far from a military strategy expert, but don't you usually hide tempting targets, not put gold statues on them and place them in flight paths?
🤫This is especially hard when public opinion is crossing borders.
Social Media Lab@socialmedialab.ca · last wk.The rule of thumb is to always take what you see online with a grain of salt. "Over the last year, a steady drumbeat of polling has found again and again that most Albertans oppose separation — but based on fundraising and online chatter, you might not know that." www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Put another way, social media is good at showing what people are talking about (the direction of public attention or sentiment), but it doesn’t reliably convey how many people feel that way (intensity) or how strongly they feel it (speed/force of change).
I so want to say something snarky about some of the student work I see. I must say that although I am thoroughly trained/experienced in critical thinking, I occasionally get very close to being fooled by bad takes. It's at the point where I'm starting to pretend the repost button doesn't exist.
Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans)@iwriteok.bsky.social · last wk.This is a great example of one of the ways AI is actually going to endanger / kill huge numbers of people. Shitty chatbots cause their special sort of brain rot to the people who package intelligence for our shot-callers. They take the bad ideas from there. www.cnn.com/2026/09/18/p...
🧵I realized in writing #WeAreAltGov that the national parks have a unique ability to capture the American imagination. Information about what the 45th president was doing to protected lands and culture inspired community action like nothing else. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/19/c...
How Trump Has Disrupted National Parks (Gift Article)
Maintenance projects have been put off around the country and resources diverted to the president’s favored projects in Washington.
nytimes.com
A worthy goal could be to live your life so well that it inspires an obituary like this: www.npr.org/2026/09/18/n... I've written quite a few in my time. You put in the extra work on people who mean a lot to you, and Rose Friedman obviously did.
Editor Rose Friedman, who helped shape NPR's cultural coverage, dies at 38
Friedman was in her early 20s when she landed her first position as an editorial assistant at NPR. She became an editor and reporter, and a co-creator of the annual Books We Love reading guide.
npr.org
On the Internet, no one knows you're a bot... www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/t...
Iran and China Create First-of-Their-Kind Autonomous A.I. Influence Campaigns (Gift Article)
The countries, along with Israeli firms, combined Chinese open-source A.I. models and A.I. agents for the campaigns, foreshadowing future online manipulation.
nytimes.com
Todays adventure in thoughtfulness: Thinks - I would love to get an idea of interest in a topic Looks - To see if @bsky.app has an embedded polling tool Writes/deletes - Skeet to ask them to consider one Looks - To see for sure there is not Finds - 3rd party tool more...
Half-caff thought: Content creation is spending a lot work making things you then have to exhort people to take, even though those things are free to them. And for the great majority, the payoff is $0. What a hobby.
New UnSpun Episode on how Christian nationalists use, create and are affected by media was inspired by this video resurfacing. bit.ly/UnSpunPod (I'm not linking to the video - you can find it by searching "God made Trump." You might note who has shared it, if you do)
The visual style suggests this is NotebookLM. People have this weird, and not correct, belief that it's the "safe" AI because you upload content yourself to get things like graphics and slides. If you believe this, I'd urge you to try it with stuff you wrote and see how accurate it is.
Waldo Jaquith@waldo.net · 2w agoPlease admire this slop-guide to the U.S. government that my kid received in his ninth grade government class. “Watergsstate Impreachment Imeachment bolity Precedent”
I know the profs moving to Canada made a splash, but did you know there are quite a few countries courting top US academics? Just saw a new one today. #BrainDrain
