Earlier this year, I made the grounded case for why we should still believe in the promise of America. Today’s America is something we inherited. But tomorrow’s is still for us to make. America’s problems are solved problems. The blueprints exist. Better days are ahead.

The Wall Looks Permanent Until It Falls

On the optimism of preparation in a time of democratic decay.

open.substack.com

Really love the headline graphic for @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social's article here: I keep coming back to *taste* and *accountability* being core (human) contributions to knowledge work, and they map pretty perfectly onto "decide" and "deliver."

Why AI hasn’t replaced software engineers, and won’t

Coding agents as normal technology

normaltech.ai

Dave Eggers, on NPR's Wildcard with Rachel Martin: www.npr.org/2026/06/11/n...

CDOT lost the best of our team yesterday. We're heartbroken. In memory of Riley O'Neil, please refer to these bike racks as "Riley Racks". He led Chicago's bike parking program for several years. Our hearts are broken, but we want to make sure his legacy lives on 💙🚲 Please spread the word

more commonly known as "grades" in "classes that they took"

Inside Higher Ed @insidehighered.com · 2mo ago

Microcredentials Give Grads Edge in Tough Job Market While not all are of equal value, a new survey from Coursera found that the vast majority of employers are inclined to offer higher starting salaries to candidates with microcredentials. https://bit.ly/4ogezPW #EDUSky #HigherEd #AcademicSky

Good corollary to @randomwalker.bsky.social's "AI as normal technology" - when AI is a finite, well-defined, useful part of a thing that delivers value, you can engineer around a lot of its downsides (also known as "engineering")

Tim Carmody@tcarmody.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Apple gets a lot of crap for not going big into AI (and for trying to install AI for people who don't want anything to do with it, but its on-device models for the latest OSes are really capable. They don't do spectacular things like the latest & greatest cloud models, but most apps don't need that.

We need Ronnie's energy in every higher ed classroom like yesterday

Celeste Ng@pronounced-ing.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"It’s going to be people with substance versus people with shallow knowledge. It’s going to be mastery versus faking it. It’s going to be people with good taste versus tacky. I trust you will put in the work necessary to be on the right side of those battles.”

"Claude Code does not have a professional reputation! It can’t take accountability for what it’s done." Can't repeat this enough to my students - Claude doesn't have a reputation (in the same way you do), but it also can't learn or communicate or be relied upon like you can.

Simon Willison@simonwillison.net · 3mo ago

I was talking with Joseph Ruscio on the @heavybit.com podcast the other day when I realized that vibe coding and agentic engineering have started to blur a bit in some of my work - I published some extracts from the transcript simonwillison.net/2026/May/6/v...

There's a PhD thesis worth of things to unpack here within the "self hosted" ecosystem - so many software projects that don't have the engagement imperative behind their development, and I find that they can be a little harder to use but are infinitely more respectful of my intentions.

Mezentine@mezentine.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Importantly: there is no app! There is a web portal that we can use to remote into the drive plugged in in the basement if we want to go in and review something, but there are no push notifications, no sleek interface designed like everything else to encourage “engagement” with your security system

My proposal: as the first project, students groups would propose different policies for ChatGPT use in their final project, including radically restructuring the final project. Because things might have to change, deeply. And then they would argue, and vote, and I would do whatever they said.

This is going to hurt American competitiveness and result in fewer scientific advancements, fewer chances to train the next generation of scientists, and a lower quality of life for everyone. We need to reverse these harmful changes to our critical scientific infrastructure.

Science Magazine@science.org · last yr.

Exclusive: National Science Foundation staff were told today that the agency’s 37 divisions—across all eight directorates—are being abolished and the number of programs within those divisions will be drastically reduced.

This is one of the worst violations of research ethics I've ever seen. Manipulating people in online communities using deception, without consent, is not "low risk" and, as evidenced by the discourse in this Reddit post, resulted in harm. Great thread from Sarah, and I have additional thoughts. 🧵

Sarah Gilbert@sarahagilbert.bsky.social · last yr.

The mods of r/ChangeMyView shared the sub was the subject of a study to test the persuasiveness of LLMs & that they didn't consent. There’s a lot that went wrong, so here’s a 🧵 unpacking it, along with some ideas for how to do research with online communities ethically. tinyurl.com/59tpt988

One of the many reasons to fix things here in the USA rather than search for greener pastures.

David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · last yr.

Cute, but unless these other countries are willing to spend as much as the US on science, the brain drain will be to other professions (some completely unrelated to science).

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

While I can see LLMs in general as being potentially useful for CS education, copilot-style autocomplete is unequivocally harmful to learning. Reading this paper feels like watching a horror movie, where I'm screaming "turn it off! just turn it off!" at the screen constantly

Academia isn’t perfect, but it offers a rare space to pursue knowledge for its own sake. If research were fully privatized, only profit-driven questions would get asked. Yet many of the most transformative discoveries began as curiosity-driven inquiries whose value wasn’t clear for years.

A lot to chew through in this fantastic piece by @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-a... The models exist now as "Normal Technology," how we use them and how society adapts to them is where the impactful and interesting work is happening.

This is the best metaphor I have seen that may actually resonate with the students I teach re LLM usage.

Sam Halpert@samhalpert.bsky.social · last yr.

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

RETVRN

Devin Gaffney@devingaffney.com · last yr.

Having direct ownership over a space the way a custom feed allows affords control over one’s slice of the attention economy that was not possible before due to cartel-like control over attention on legacy platforms. That is the central cause of enshittification,…

The Aussies understand this - probably one of my favorite takeaways from a Bluey episode

Bluey Season 3 Episode 3 " Promises" Episode Clip | @disneyjr @BlueyOfficialChannel

YouTube video by Disney Jr.

youtube.com

Tobias Wilson-Bates@phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · last yr.

A lot of things are breaking right now, but possibly most alarming is the straining to breaking of this otherwise invisible net of social trust that is as necessary as the road, power lines, and water pipes. Indeed, it is the implied social contract infrastructure of all of those tools.

“From April 14-18, select UBC graduate programs at UBC Vancouver will re-open their applications for US citizens to be considered for Sept 2025 or Jan 2026 entry - they are ready to provide quick admissions decisions for these applicants“ #gradstudent #gradschool www.grad.ubc.ca/us-applicant...

The advice I'm hearing is that students on visas should be checking SEVIS daily. Ideally, students' colleges & universities could do that for them - if they have the capacity.

Fantastic work by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social as always www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/o... reminds me of the @authorjmac.bsky.social quote: I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.

Opinion | The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes (Gift Article)

A.I. is just what we need in the post-fact era: less research and more predicting what we want to hear.

nytimes.com

if a computer is a bicycle for the mind, LLMs are zero gravity for the mind: seems magical, allows you to do things you never thought possible, causes massive muscle atrophy if you don't religiously exercise, and over the long term causes irreparable bodily harm

More Dr. Xiaofeng Wang details. Here is a timeline document that’s been going around the community.

New information about XiaoFeng Wang from this CNBC article: * IU terminated his tenured faculty position * Wang contacted IU's AAUP president as IU conducted what had first appeared to be a “routine” investigation over a grant application and how he reported a publication of his curriculum vitae.

Indiana U. fired cybersecurity professor XiaoFeng Wang on day FBI searched his homes: Union

XiaoFeng Wang's research at Indiana University focused on security and privacy issues in mobile and cloud computing, and privacy issues in human genomic data.

cnbc.com

@matthewdgreen.bsky.social We (privacy/FoE folks) talk a lot about the "chilling effect" of certain policies on citizens, but this is an unwelcome case study. I know some academics at IU, but I don't want to ask what's going on, *in case answering lands them in trouble that could cost their job* 1/2

If any Chicago FOIA/Pacer enthusiasts can help out with this - developing story in my research community where we really don’t know what’s going on: talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/sketc...

Love this framing - the million dollar question is really, how do we keep the baby and throw out the bath water?

Anthony Moser@anthonymoser.com · last yr.

i feel compelled to remind everyone that chatgpt/LLMs are functionally the *opposite* of an actual expert. the more your problems are unusual or novel, the more likely LLMS are to be wrong. they are least helpful when it's most important

"The mythology of founders and Silicon Valley too often obscures the indispensable role of American taxpayers in the innovation economy"—my recent remarks to @bloomberg.com about the critical importance of federally funded research. www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Trump’s Big Gamble on the Future of AI Development

The new administration rethinks public funding for research, leaving it to private companies to chart the path ahead.

bloomberg.com