Incidentally, this is also what every student suspected of submitting AI slop sounds like at their viva voce...

Hadas Weiss@hadas.bsky.social · 6h ago

i asked claude if it was going to kill me

Congress should pass a law requiring a census to be taken of everyone working in and funding AI. Cause if shit hits the fan we should have a list of people responsible.

Geoffrey Hughes@geofffhughes.bsky.social · 7h ago

The idea that we're building swarms of "AI" killer robots that we may if may not be able to control does indeed seem disturbing! But again: who is really the problem here: the robots or the people?

Most plausible AI existential risk scenario I've seen so far: if you choose to wear a VR headset that could kill you, I reckon that does pose an existential risk to you, personally...

Dr Matt Lodder@mattlodder.com · 22h ago

Interesting as an art project. Fucking insane as something a real-life defence contractor actually built. share.google/3syL2zCvP4Jt...

I am crowdfunding to support Palestinian volunteers working on this historic archive. Until UK universities recruit archivists—which may not happen—volunteers in Palestine & the UK are working independently to keep the archive functional. Please donate if you can: www.gofundme.com/the-raja-she...

Donate to The Raja Shehadeh Archive, organized by Matthew Teller

PALESTINIAN ARCHIVE SAVED —But Hard Work Begins Now! An important Palestinian literary, cul… Matthew Teller needs your support for The Raja Shehadeh Archive

gofundme.com

The operative word in "Protect our women!" is not "women" but "our".

Rebecca Solnit@rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 2d ago

I think I noted during the recent Belfast riots that a certain kind of man is not really interested in protecting women & girls; he's interested in protecting the exclusive right of his kind of man to abuse and control women and girls.

People are sharing videos of Jordanians cheering the Iranian strikes on US forces and suggesting it's a threat to regime stability, but I would interpret it as something much more recognizable and quotidian: a sentiment that *someone else* should really do something about all of this...

Very funny if the secret sauce here is the same as the Oracle at Delphi: develop a reputation for problem solving, use it to entice the great and the good to come confide their secrets in you in return for advice... and then steal them...

Trevor A. Branch@trevorabranch.bsky.social · 2d ago

Millennium math problem solved by OpenAI may have "regurgitated" competitors unpublished work... also they spent more than $22 million in computing power in one week to scoop them. techcrunch.com/2026/09/08/o...

Pervasive problem globally on the center-left going back to at least Obama: none of these people want to do the actual job--they just want to be influencers!

Chaminda Jayanetti@cjayanetti.bsky.social · 2d ago

I think the worst part of Labour's response to the fascist mobilisation is Andy Burnham's absence. He's the most popular politician in the country, with social media reach and actual powers of persuasion, and he's saying nothing in public. He can actually be of use here but he's choosing not to

Smiling insouciantly as I intone, "so you consider yourself part of an in-group whom the law protects but does not bind, yet you inveigh against out-groups whom you claim the law binds but does not protect?" "Don't you understand I've won? Can't you see I've destroyed you with Facts and Logi--

Bill@bill-of-lefts.bsky.social · 4d ago

The AfD being led by a lesbian in a domestic partnership with an Indian woman is one of those facts that doesn’t really compute

Classic: lead with half measures because you assume the US and Israel will go nuclear. Yet surely they'll go nuclear anyway and then the argument for rowing this back is already right there: these are symbolic moves anyway so it's just not worth it...

Saul Staniforth@saulstaniforth.bsky.social · 2d ago

Diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams: "[The UK govt] recognises that banning a relatively small quantity of mostly agricultural products is a largely symbolic gesture, but Miliband is describing this as a major reset" A symbolic gesture.

China is streaking ahead in the global green energy transition, which raises the troubling question: can the liberal democratic state even compete, or are they destined to lose the battle for green technology? Here's the introduction to the CHINA issue of @the-breakdown.bsky.social

Columbia and NYU grad students were doing brisk business in NYC off this in the 2000s. They had flyers on telephone polls and ads on Craigslist. Likely still out there offering "model papers." Fraud isn't new. AI salesmen and their apologists just want to scale and normalize the fraud.

Geoffrey Hughes@geofffhughes.bsky.social · 3d ago

Maybe the college essay was washed even before the LLMs showed up?

Maybe the college essay was washed even before the LLMs showed up?

Kenyans Did College Students’ Homework for Years. Then A.I. Arrived.

Thousands of Kenyans made a living writing essays for overseas students. With A.I., the work has dried up, a warning for online gig work that has been a global lifeline.

nytimes.com

I love the concrete examples of how to avoid anthropomorphism in this article: artificial intelligence → probabilistic automation image recognition → image labeling speech recognition → automatic transcription shows bias → reflects bias hallucination → undesirable output goal → success condition

Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 4d ago

A good rule of thumb: If the press release (or stenographic news reporting masquerading as journalism) says that an "AI" did something, that's deliberate obfuscation. Software doesn't do anything of its own accord, but folks sure like to talk about it as if it does: >>

A question we could face ourselves: what might we do differently, if we accepted that the police are not failing to protect the public, but telling us who they believe is worthy of protection?

Kate Allen@kateallen.ft.com · 4d ago

Police are facing growing questions over how up to 500 masked activists dressed in black brought parts of Dover to a standstill on Saturday. Authorities have been accused of failure to act, intelligence failures and being ‘caught on the hoof’. www.ft.com/content/f244...

Writing some scientific workflow slides for this week’s MPTC class.

Important to recognise that "legitimate concerns" is performative, not descriptive. People are not saying "you are justified in being concerned about this real problem." They are saying "these are the things we are prepared to treat as legitimate."

Polly Pallister-Wilkins@pollypw.bsky.social · 3d ago

When I lived in the UK none of my concerns e.g. affordable housing, climate action, increases in welfare spending, scrapping tuition fees, an ethical foreign policy, were ever framed as legitimate concerns. lnstead I was routinely told to fuck off by most political parties for having such concerns.

🤔 I think I'll go with "Savage Sheep & Peaceful Predators: Villagers & animals ambivalent relationships in the Alps, 1350-1550" for now. I'll mention that it's a working title when I hand in the abstract & see if I can think of a better one. Maybe along the lines of sheep in wolves clothing? Hm...

Joschka Meier@josserme.bsky.social · last wk.

I was writing an abstract for a CfP until I've stumbled over a massive problem: Absolutely no ideas for a punny or alliterative title Its about things like misbehaving animals, peasant being very chill about predators, paranoid lords, which *demands* a title like that - but no luck so far 😔

One major aspect of white privilege (and this certainly figured into Arday's death) is that white people are allowed to fail as individuals in ways that people of color are not.

Satbir Singh@satbirsingh.bsky.social · 6d ago

Really looking forward to the hysterical media circus and endless inquiries surrounding James Orr's role as a Professor at Cambridge. Oh.

Now James Orr has stepped down as Reform UK's Head of Policy after C4's report, questions remain for Cambridge – where he is Associate Professor. Byline Times revealed serious concerns about his activities there months ago. We all know there won't now be 200+ articles on him and his life don't we?

Wrote a bit about how the Hashemites thrive off of fears of mass Palestinian expulsion and domestic unrest--and why it makes it hard to cover Jordanian politics.

The Hashemites are in their Happy Place, At Least for Now

A picture emphasizing Palestinian-Jordanian unity, personifying Jordan as a Bedouin hugging neighboring Palestine, which reads “Our Hearts Are With You” As talk of Palestinian expulsion…

notesontheconcrete.wordpress.com

A victory of sorts. We may have lost around 100 colleagues, who left ‘voluntarily’, but no one was sacked, our ballot closes on Wednesday and not all our conditions have been met (eg workloads), and we are in a very different place as staff and Union. Time to #ReclaimExeterUni @ucu.org.uk

Exeter UCU@exeterucu.bsky.social · last wk.

The University of Exeter has confirmed that it won’t proceed with compulsory redundancies “at this time”. This means colleagues do not need to complete the pro forma, and there will be no selection process.

Love it when people post on main that their epistemology is basically confirmation bias...

Wrote a bit about how the Hashemites thrive off of fears of mass Palestinian expulsion and domestic unrest--and why it makes it hard to cover Jordanian politics.

The Hashemites are in their Happy Place, At Least for Now

A picture emphasizing Palestinian-Jordanian unity, personifying Jordan as a Bedouin hugging neighboring Palestine, which reads “Our Hearts Are With You” As talk of Palestinian expulsion…

notesontheconcrete.wordpress.com

Incredible stuff from the Jerusalem Post on how Israel can fight Iran to the last American: debt peonage...

Ultimately, JD Vance's attack of El-Sayed might bamboozle the NYT but the gambit is VERY transparent. Vance is using his family (his Hindu wife, biracial children, and his working class Appalachian grandparents) to launder white nationalism. El-Sayed is right to expose the gambit for what it is.

Louis Römer@lromeranth.bsky.social · last wk.

Ultimately "model minorities" are tools that dominant groups use to hide their violence, as well as to divide and conquer the oppressed. Usha Vance is only worthy enough to serve as JD Vance's mask of innocence, but not deserving enough to be defended in her own right against white nationalism.

JD Vance's behavior follows a classic pattern of racial triangulation that we are familiar with from the War on Terror days: he is positioning himself as a White Savior of a Brown Woman from the Vicious Savage Attacks of a Brown Muslim Man. The NYT credulously adopts this framing:

Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · last wk.

JD Vance told El-Sayed to stop invoking Usha after AES said: "Do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no." But it turns out AES offered this *in response* to something vile that JD previously said about how Papaw would have viewed AES: newrepublic.com/article/2149...

It does feel like this is a genre of story/person that pops up a lot in the Trump years. Hard to know what the reader is meant to feel: sympathy? Schadenfreude? It’s mostly just frustrating and seems like a way of laundering reputations for people w/ such viewpoints www.nytimes.com/2026/08/16/u...

Years of Trump Support Came Undone in 15 Minutes in an Airport.

The case represents a new front in President Trump’s mass deportation drive: arrests at airports of people who have active immigration cases and no criminal history.

nytimes.com

Geoffrey Hughes@geofffhughes.bsky.social · last wk.

I don't know, man. A moral system where nothing can be wrong until it happens to *you personally* seems wildly inefficient and error-prone...

I don't know, man. A moral system where nothing can be wrong until it happens to *you personally* seems wildly inefficient and error-prone...

The Guardian@theguardian.com · last wk.

Deported Milo Yiannopoulos says he is ‘ashamed’ of support for Trump

People always focus on how the never-ending "Peace Process" was great for Israel, less about how it was great for the Hashemites. Both are actually in a very similar position, tho: as long as Palestinians are in limbo, they get to defer criticism and hard choices. Resolution means the bill is due...

Jordan Sees Bigger Threat From Israel Than Iran

For Amman, Israeli annexation of the West Bank looms as an existential risk.

foreignpolicy.com