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

I once worked at a university that gutted an entire (very popular and useful) learning center and replaced it with two guys who would teach you how to host blogs. every student had to have a blog. Every single one. Our syllabus had to mention blogs. We had to teach WITH blogs.

Rachel Ernst @rachelernst.myatproto.social · 11h ago

I cannot begin to count the amount of technology tools I have been told in the last 20 years that I need to teach my students how to use because they were the future. 95% of them are gone. A tool is a tool.

If you’re a white man in academia and you think your problems come from EDI/DEI/woke, you’re failing on observational skills, research methods and critical thinking.

Not usually a go-to pianist for me, but what I so love about the wonderful Andras Schiff is how his personality, speaking style, cadences, feel to me one and the same with his playing style. No wall between himself and his music. That's probably (?) a good way to be! app.idagio.com/albums/rober...

Robert Schumann: Geistervariationen

Listen to Robert Schumann: Geistervariationen by Sir András Schiff, Robert Schumann. Stream now on IDAGIO

app.idagio.com

The plover and the clover Can be told apart with ease By paying close attention To the habits of the bees, For entomologists aver, The bee can be in clover, But etymologists concur, There is no B in plover. Robert Williams Wood, How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers (1907)

Merriam-Webster@merriam-webster.com · yesterday

People who don’t know the difference between ‘entomology’ and ‘etymology’ bug us in ways we cannot put into words.

This reminds me of my favourite story about Bletchley Park recruitment: Geoffrey Tandy was recruited for his supposed expertise in cryptograms. It turned his expertise was in 'cryptogams' i.e. mosses, ferns etc. (BTW it ended well, as a he became an effective Head of Naval Section VI.)

Merriam-Webster@merriam-webster.com · yesterday

People who don’t know the difference between ‘entomology’ and ‘etymology’ bug us in ways we cannot put into words.

You know, I would love it if the people in this thread with access to large audiences and the ears of policy makers could shadow a uni admissions team and/or the lecturers responsible for bringing first-year students’ skills up to a reasonable standard across the cohort. 1/

Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · yesterday

Really good piece this. I will be candid, I haven’t watched this documentary because it feels like it is calibrated to depress me, combining the rise in the number of issues where I go “what business is it of yours?” with the number of people who want to undermine our excellent school system.

This is going to have been an exceptional summer for aerial archaeology.

National Trust Archaeology@nattrustarch.bsky.social · 17h ago

Unusually dry conditions have uncovered a hidden chapter of Llandeilo's wartime past at Dinefwr in Carmarthenshire. Marks revealed in the landscape by the prolonged dry weather have exposed the outlines of former Nissen huts that once stood within the historic park. 🧵 @nationaltrust.org.uk

Also? If you're seriously teaching the bible *as a piece of literature*? You should be teaching students to recognise literary choices and techniques within the text itself, which means treating it as something with a history of authorship (and interpretation).

This right here: 👇👇👇

Elly@ellyzoe.bsky.social · 2d ago

INSIGHT IS AN EMERGENT PROPERTY OF DOING THE WORK

oh my god, it's real

Linden@emilytheslayer.bsky.social · 2d ago

youtu.be/PCY0aeUx-Ns?...

"It is easier to serve the hate-gods because they thrive on the worship of collective fanaticism. To serve the hate-gods, one has only to be blinded by collective passion..." Thomas Merton

It's a difference of fidelity. Transporters operate at the highest resolution in order to transport people. This takes huge amounts of computer processing power and energy. They're set to lower resolutions for transporting cargo, to save power.

the rule continues to be: if you couldn't be bothered to write it, I can't be bothered to read it

I think after they've done trans people and neurodivergent people they'll probably stop though, right?

Jack@jackinpogform.bsky.social · 2d ago

Just saying, the trans community told everyone that once The Guardian had successfully dragged trans rights into the mud they'd move on to the nuerodivergent. And they were right.

At last, the truth is beginning to come out. As far as I am aware only the Byline Times has reported on Orr and the creation of a far-right pipeline at Cambridge. Why did NOT ONE SINGLE OUTLET perform due diligence to check which people were behind the accusations against Arday?

Timnit Gebru@timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 2d ago

I don't think people understand the extent to which this has been a decade plus long billionaire funded campaign (obviously Thiel is involved). We've tried to ring the alarm about these eugenicists but it is too easy for them to get parroted by the mainstream media. bylinetimes.com/2026/08/18/t...

It’s not just helping kids either. My inhaler use has plummeted since ULEZ was implemented. I can’t draw any causal links but either way I’m happy for me and happy for the kids!

Prof Christina Pagel@chrischirp.bsky.social · 2d ago

ULEZ has to stand as one of @london.gov.uk Sadiq Khan's finest achievements www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This stopped me in my tracks. An independent study by @qmul.bsky.social has found that after ULEZ was introduced, children’s lungs grew faster in Central London and have now caught up with children outside of the capital. Incredible.

Queen Mary University of London@qmul.bsky.social · 2d ago

Air pollution stunts children’s lung growth. New Queen Mary research found that improvements in air quality after the introduction of London’s ULEZ are associated with accelerated lung growth in children. Read more: shorturl.at/Jx86o

Deep breath. I never met Carleton Gajdusek, but in 1969–72 I was close friends with one of the boys he brought from the Micronesian island of Fais to be educated in the US. Rachel Aviv mentions them as a group in her article in The New Yorker, but doesn’t write about any of them individually. 1/?

The difference in utility between the use of ML to tackle big data problems that would otherwise be intractable & the use of LLMs to produce pointless slop is so large they cannot both be usefully described as “AI“. The first is making real progress, the second is dragging us towards the abyss.

Dan Silverman@dmsilverman.bsky.social · 3d ago

I‘m far from an AI doomer, but it is amazing how many serious voices — on LinkedIn, no less! — are sharing stories about how AI slop is quickly becoming one of the top problems they see in academic writing and research “AI will 10x our research!” doesn’t seem to be surviving encounters with reality

Ok, time for a thread about what I saw yesterday at #CrystalPalace. As you can see, just about everything has been repaired and re-painted, and in places (like the previously misidentified Xiphodon) re-positioned. It looks fantastic and you have to check it out, even if you've visited before...

"AI" has existed in its current form for barely four years and the fact that it's jammed up the cognitive development of an entire generation that fast (and that there's a specific overclass of techofascists who are deeply thrilled about this) is a big damn red flag. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/u...

What Do Students Lose When They Stop Writing? (Gift Article)

Educators are worried that many students can no longer write essays without A.I. And it’s costing more than just grammar skills.

nytimes.com

NEW: Human rights groups @afsc-org.bsky.social @ccrjustice.org @hrw.org and @open-society.bsky.social sued the Trump administration over its executive order imposing sanctions on the International Crim Court. They're asking a judge to "enjoin the EO and the sanctions regime as a whole," per counsel.

SFF worldbuilding advice--quick and dirty way to make your fictional religion seem real is to give it contradictions, and if there's a text involved, put in a few jumps of logic between scripture and actual belief and practice. It's like adding perspective to a drawing, BOOM 3D.

My teenage boy got his shot, HPV can cause head and neck cancers in men! Make sure your teens get updated on HPV and meningitis vaccines, those are the ages to get em. #MedSky 🩺

Liz Szabo@lizszabo.bsky.social · 3d ago

Amazing news! People vaccinated against HPV have a 92% lower risk of a type of head and neck cancer (oropharngeal cancer) caused by HPV. These cancers—which affect the throat, tonsils, base of the tongue—have been increasing in recent decades. www.ijidonline.com/article/S120...

Aglow by Vasily Kandinsky, 1928 https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137229

The guy who opened fire at Comet Pizza because he'd cooked his brain online and believed they were a child sex trafficking hub was exactly as confident the people he was aiming at deserved it as Luigi Mangione, which is just one reason it's a bad idea to lionise vigilante murder.

Every single person who challenges equality, diversity and inclusion is doing it because they firmly believe one or multiple marginalised/excluded/oppressed groups in society should be marginalised/excluded/oppressed. It's as simple as that. It is never in good faith. Ever.

No, silly Adobe AI, I don't want you to summarise the contract. I need to read every word.