Jay Varner
@jayvarner.bsky.social
Author of NOTHING LEFT TO BURN (Algonquin), first-year writing and rhetoric lecturer at James Madison University, recovering Central Pennsylvanian, studying how to write about climate change. Avid home gardener at the end of the world. Susquehanna U, UNCW.
Well I dont know if I can afford any publicity help with my new album/film, this has already been quite a project to self fund. If anyone out there is interested in writing about this one let me know, I just put together a whole press pack. Going to do my best with getting the word out on this one!
There’s an aggressively paid for influence op going on right now to defend AI slop as art and protected speech across platforms. AI execs realize they have a problem and don’t wanna get Marie Antoinette’d. The free ChatGPT trip is the tip of the iceberg. First person to nail it down gets a Pulitzer.
Sitting on the deck, drinking coffee, and watching swarms of hummingbirds. You can feel the august light slant and soften and the air thin this morning.
Austin, Texas calls itself “The Live Music Capital of the World,” but its cost of living is steep. A nonprofit helps musicians afford the city by subsidizing their insurance premiums. Other sectors and cities are watching.
Nonprofits are helping musicians pay for insurance in Austin, Texas, and beyond
A nonprofit and a local public health agency are subsidizing marketplace health insurance for Austin musicians , even as rising healthcare costs make the program more expensive.
n.pr
@philbraun.bsky.social knows what the market wants. Columbia House might be closing but music.com is relaunching! Great news for music lovers.
InfoWars@realinfowars.bsky.social · 5d agoTonight on Emergency, Phil Braun fills in for Tim Heidecker, who is dead and in hell.
universities are not run by leftist profs they are run by corporate profiteer board members siphoning public $$ to tech partnerships "An Inside Higher Ed analysis of SEC filings turned up dozens of presidents paid handsomely for sitting on corporate boards." www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...
This is why I get so annoyed with university admins who insist we must teach AI or our students will be left behind. Fine, then require one class and leave the rest of us alone. (After about two weeks in the class, they’ll be like, “shit, what do we do now?” but that’s not my problem.)
Drew McKevitt@drewmckevitt.bsky.social · 5d agoLet's assume for a moment that "the left" takes a "massive generational L" and AI is everywhere and we all have to use it. I think we'll all be ok because it takes like 30 seconds to learn how to use because it was designed so dumb fucking babies can use it
In case you are an academic who is currently being gaslit into believing that you're a caveman who wants their students to be jobless if you resist allowing AI in your classrooms... I present to you Berkeley Law's response, which can be summarized as "Fuck off directly into the sun."
Artificial Intelligence Policy
Effective Summer 2026 Purpose Future lawyers may need to use artificial intelligence (“AI”) fluently. But the current state of the technology requires that AI use be coupled with the cognitive […]
law.berkeley.edu
Exclusive: 75% of Americans Now Oppose Local Data Center Development #Climate
Exclusive: 75% of Americans Now Oppose Local Data Center Development
The U.S. public’s support for AI data centers has continued to collapse since the spring, a new Heatmap Pro poll shows.
heatmap.news
Hurricane Camille gave us a sneak peak into what the later 20/21 century climate fueled hurricanes would look like. Very similar event to hurricane Helene, with Camille dropping 30” of water in a short period of time leading to catastrophic flooding.
CBS19 News: Charlottesville News First@cbs19news.bsky.social · last wk.Nelson County remembers Hurricane Camille 57 years later
This makes me want to pull my own head off
Richard Van Noorden@richvn.bsky.social · last wk.Dean of Science at Stellenbosch University writes that although AI generates almost all the words for his articles (including this one): "AI did almost all of the writing. I remain the expert and the thought leader behind the piece." www.nature.com/articles/d44...
Keep it up!!! The people say this is all inevitable make me want to jump out a window. It’s not inevitable. Fight and fight and fight against this horseshit.
Axios@axios.com · 6d agoForget energy. Forget chips. Forget China. The most clear and present danger to AI and any AI-related economic boom is rapidly rising public opposition to U.S. data centers. The backlash is sending Republicans and AI CEOs into full panic mode.
Writing an article or essay is so fucking easy. If it is hard for you or you dread it enough to use AI I suggest you remove from your to-do list “writing articles and essays.” I do not, for example, enter golf tourneys or work at a mechanic’s shop because I am not good at those and don’t like them.
Seems the Blue Ridge saved us from the worst… at least this round. Seems there’s more to come.
@traviskoshko.bsky.social Afton right now…. Oh my. Been baking in the sun. Intense lightning starting…
And giving… Figured I’d harvest before the storm hit and wow. Every time I pick tomatoes I’m like, thank you, plant. These have been in my life since March, as I planted from seed in a greenhouse. So everything is me, and that’s a multi-month commitment. I digress. Gardening is awesome. Recommend.
Jay Varner@jayvarner.bsky.social · last wk.The garden just keeps on giving!
Yep. Tech oligarchs are broadly unpopular, and I think people intuitively understand the degree to which tech oligarchs will capture any benefits of data centers while externalizing costs. We should take advantage of that shared understanding.
pretty sure this is why they insist on using disability as a cudgel in the discourse around gAI, so they can push the tech and evade criticism using this line. A deeply cynical ploy.
Bryan Edward Stone (שָׁלוֹם)@bestonetx.bsky.social · last wk.I was told once by a tech consultant that access to AI is a civil right.
Tech companies have put themselves in a curious political situation. They've insisted that LLMs are going to kill off entire categories of employment (maybe not true, but it's their claim), and LLMs are contributing to price hikes we see across utilities and consumer electronics.
This and cost of attendance are by far the biggest genuine problems affecting universities and they are not in any way reducible to ‘DEI.’ Neoliberalism is killing higher education.
