“The greatest danger that faces higher education,” Ken Burns said, “is this transactional tendency that everything is about an exchange that ultimately is economic.” What is lost in this game is the mission that education should be “transformational.”

Neoliberal Policy Hollowed Out Universities. Now They Are Collapsing.

Administrators treat their universities like businesses — that’s why they’re failing.

truthout.org

no one called it 'cutting off family' when these same parents threw their gay kids out of the house. wild how that works.

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social · yesterday

lol come the fuck on

The idea of a Black academic being hounded to death for alleged acts of plagiarism in an era when universities are entering into contracts with AI companies and encouraging AI use among students, while Big Tech is stealing EVERYTHING humans write...

The plagiarism machines break the chains of provenance of ideas and rest on a misconception of science as mere accumulation of objectively available facts. See: www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis... >>

Episode 31: Science Is a Human Endeavor (feat. Molly Crockett and Lisa Messeri), April 15 2024 - Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000

Will AI someday do all our scientific research for us? Not likely. Drs. Molly Crockett and Lisa Messeri join for a takedown of the hype of "self-driving labs" and why such misrepresentations also harm...

buzzsprout.com

'According to a recent Department for Education report, the UK educational technology – or edtech – market generated an annual turnover of about £6.5bn. In the US, Horvath says it is a $400bn (£295bn) mega-industry, woven into every aspect of schooling.' 1/5

‘Our children are less cognitively capable,’ says neuroscientist who wants to cut screen use in schools

Jared Cooney Horvath argues that educational technology undermines how children learn and develop

theguardian.com

Everything I do multiply it by two

The only conversation worth having is how Black people are overpoliced & over-punished & held to different standards in all aspects of life. That there is an outrage when Black people transgress that isn’t there when their non-Black counterparts do.

I would like this to be required reading for all academics in light of the harassment and bullying of Jason Arday paulddf.substack.com/p/who-killed...

Who Killed Jason Arday?

Earlier this afternoon, my oldest boyhood friend, a distinguished international lawyer who received his doctorate at Cambridge, called me to share the tragic news that Jason Arday, the Black British a...

paulddf.substack.com

I want to think about writing, because I'm not - everything's been at a standstill for months, and even writing a poetry review or putting together course notes is excruciating work. I barely even post on social media. So I'll leave this thread here.

Spoke with Rob Schmitz for @npr.org #AllThingsConsidered on the poet Wang Jibing 王計兵, who just won a Lu Xun Prize. I also shared a quick translation of his best-known poem: www.npr.org/2026/08/08/n...

How a delivery driver and poet won one of China's highest honors in literature

Wang Jibing, a writer and delivery driver, has won one of China's most prestigious award for poetry. Professor Eileen Cheng-yin Chow of Duke University explains why his work has had such huge impact.

npr.org

before the bans, the requirements for trans women to participate in women's sports leagues was typically about 2 years being on estrogen and anti-androgens. if this transphobic dipshit is committed to the bit, let her do it, she'll become dysphoric after a few months & face transphobia within a year

Sarah Spain ✨@sarahspain.com · 2w ago

Fuck these fucking fucks

"what translation itself does: it stages and performs, never seamlessly but always only ever provisionally, a brief but at times illuminating encounter across time." I really enjoyed this interview on translation with @frankgarrett.online heavyfeatherreview.org/2026/08/04/f...

“A Brief but at Times Illuminating Encounter”: Matthew Kinlin Interviews Literary Translator Frank Garrett

Frank Garrett is an independent scholar, writer, and literary translator based in Dallas, Texas. We spoke over Zoom about his projects in translation, philosophy, and specifically his ongoing work …

heavyfeatherreview.org

If you look at our pride flags and they help you decide to come in, they have done their job. If you look at our pride flags and they help you decide NOT to come in, they have DONE THEIR JOB.

Having rewatched all the X-Men movies up to The Wolverine (the Deadpools are next, that'll be the first time), it seems to me that they're trying to fit too much that's too big in there and ought to have more reasonable scripts. Maybe they should do a tv series (animated?)? Or even comic books?

A beautiful reflection on playing Metroid (specifically) that captures the magic of great videogames (generally) and what they awaken and shake up in us

Niko Stratis@nikostratis.com · 2w ago

I don't often write about video games, but i am a lifelong devotee, and Metroid was a formative game for me. For my newsletter, Anxiety Shark, I wrote a little ode to playing it alone in the basement in the 1900s. www.anxietyshark.ca/pray-for-a-t...

True, and it's especially bad because there is SO MUCH SUPPORT for helping us use AI, teach it, teach with it.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 2w ago

I think we can agree that AI detectors are out. But universities are ignoring the fact that faculty cannot really out-design assessments to meet the challenges of this moment. We need sustained institutional support to be the best teachers we can be, and we aren't getting it.

No one told me about the Pixies when they could have been my favourite band. Never listened to them, never even heard them (except for Where is my mind, I guess). And holy shit those first two albums kick ass. Teenage me would have had those on repeat.

Yes and also: some people are terrible at their jobs and they can become even worse by using AI

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 2w ago

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

New reporting from @breachmedia.ca shows that Canadian universities operated a secret national effort to coordinate surveillance and policing of anti-genocide activism and encampments. breachmedia.ca/canadian-uni...

Hey everyone, I have some news: I'm creating a new project today called @thewatchdog.ca The Watchdog's editorial mission is to protect the public and defend democracy through original public interest watchdog journalism. Sign up here as it gets ready to launch: www.thewatchdog.ca/p/sign-up

Sign Up For The Watchdog

The Watchdog protects the public and defends democracy through original public interest watchdog journalism.

thewatchdog.ca

“As a librarian, I think it’s important to see this as…helping people reclaim their autonomy over whether they want to use AI tools,” Bailey said. “It’s important, especially when it can be so difficult not to use them, and when the design seems to force adoption” Librarians to the rescue (again)

Librarians are hosting viral 'Avoiding AI' workshops for people who are fed up with Big Tech | TechCrunch

At libraries around the country, "Avoiding AI" workshops have elicited unprecedented demand.

techcrunch.com

D'utilité publique #AI #IA www.lesnumeriques.com/intelligence...

Désactivez les réponses IA de Google en une minute sur Chrome, Firefox et Safari

En ajoutant les Aperçus IA, Google ajoute de l’intelligence artificielle comme première réponse à certaines interrogations depuis son moteur de recherche. Découvrez comment vous en débarrasser sur nav...

lesnumeriques.com

"don't cite what you haven't read" remains the basic entry level academic responsibility; & if your discpline "doesn't have that as a norm" then sorry, your discipline needs reforming for this new world. Citations are structural parts of trust and knowledge building, not trinkets or optional extras

Miles Klee 🦉@milesklee.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Academics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.

Ontario jails are using an AI tool that claims to predict prisoners’ behaviour. And it’s disproportionately placing Black prisoners in maximum security. An investigation by @desmondcole.bsky.social reveals the province knew the tool would discriminate against Black people—and used it anyway.

Black prisoners are assigned harsher living conditions in Ontario jails—thanks to AI ⋆ The Breach

Ontario jails are using a program that claims it can predict prisoners’ behaviour, disproportionately putting Black prisoners in higher-security facilities

breachmedia.ca

There is no way to use ChatGPT responsibly.

I want people to understand the full impact of the devastation that First Nations in Canada are facing. It's NOT just that people and wildlife are losing their homes...it's the history that is being lost for generations to come.

The reason elite consensus switched on net zero is that the elite realized: 1) Carbon capture doesn’t work, and carbon removal is really challenging. 2) The world is facing trillions of dollars in devalued assets if we actually do phase out fossil fuels. So they decided to let the world burn.

Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · last mo.

Or much of a drop in public support. Fascinating example of elite consensus switching despite popular opinion.

futurism.com/future-socie... lol

@irisvanrooij.bsky.social just dropping truth bombs out there before most of this continent wakes up

Iris van Rooij 💭@irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Cognition cannot be measured