Some updates added to the story following a new response from U of T: breachmedia.ca/canadian-uni...

Canadian universities set up a secret network to crack down on student Palestine demonstrators ⋆ The Breach

Universities in Canada coordinated to spy on and violently clear student encampments. Then, they deleted the evidence

breachmedia.ca

we must recover the old wisdom

“Once AI has ‘squeezed out’ all the expert data from humans, it won’t need any more input from humanity. That is the time AIs will start just self-evolving by themselves. Right now, the human is the bottleneck.”

Should Researchers Write Papers for AI Instead of People?

Jiachen Liu wants to replace the PDF with an “AI native” format

spectrum.ieee.org

This is the "school official"[*] that universities are rushing to sign contracts with. Contracts that require the university to indemnify OpenAI. [*]: "school official" means that it "performs an institutional service or function for which the agency or institution would otherwise use employees"

Clara Jeffery@clarajeffery.bsky.social · 3h ago

Read @markfollman.bsky.social lastest piece on how ChatGPT is reinforcing suicidal and homicidal thoughts among vulnerable people that go on to be mass shooters: www.motherjones.com/media/2026/0...

If AI systems are trained to tell users what they want to hear, what happens when those users are cops and prosecutors? My latest @techpolicypress.bsky.social piece begins a three part series on Perils of AI in Policing, starting with risk of AI sycophancy contaminating law enforcement

Will AI Sycophancy Contaminate Law Enforcement?

AI sycophancy in high risk domains like law enforcement are under-analyzed, argues Tech Policy Press fellow Jake Laperruque.

techpolicy.press

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.

Inside Higher Ed @insidehighered.com · 9h ago

AI Detectors Are Out, New Assessments Are In A growing number of universities have prohibited AI detectors, arguing they are ‘unreliable’ indicators of cheating. But where does that leave faculty, who know all too well that cheating is rampant in the age of AI? https://bit.ly/4wGitF7 #EDUSky

Code just needs to work, it doesn’t need to be “correct.” How important code quality is will vary from shop to shop. I just saw a company the other day saying they have stopped doing code reviews because the quality is good and they have a good test suite.

Yeah this is very important to understand. Using LLMs is standard practice now in software engineering. There are still reasons to critique that use case, but the newer models are much better at writing code than they are at general use. This is largely because coding isn’t about facts.

Lora Kolodny@lorak.bsky.social · 4h ago

was discussing with a fellow traveler today -- but programmers, coders, developers are having an *entirely* different experience of LLM-based products and services than the rest of us, especially the plagiarized plebeians among us (writers, reporters).

VVD Won’t Stop Online Gambling

Alan Elrod@aselrod.bsky.social · 6mo ago

America must stop the scourge of reckless online gambling before it leaves us with a generation of bankruptcies, deferred futures, and deaths of despair. Polymarket delenda est www.liberalcurrents.com/from-pill-mi...

This highlights a profound impact of Trump — the further normalization of violence against women. Trump got elected in spite of his long history of violence against women. He is not held accountable when he continues to abuse women. 1/2

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 10h ago

Max Miller on why he's staying in the race: "When we go back to 2015 and 2016, & people in the media looked at President Trump, & everyone came out with allegations. Dozens of women, dozens of crazy allegations, dozens of nasty criminal misconduct. And you know what he did? He stayed in the fight."

“A bureaucratic restructuring that leads to the selective elimination of faculty members really puts academic freedom in jeopardy… particularly for professors who have displeased admin, trustees or donors.” — Mark Criley, Senior Officer in the AAUP Dept of Academic Freedom, Tenure & Governance.

He Had Tenure. The New School Laid Him Off Anyway.

The professor, a longtime critic of the university, was among 19 educators who lost their positions as the institution navigated financial woes.

nytimes.com

When Damon stared right into the camera and said "The Age of Bronze is Dying" and then Hathaway is like "A New Civilization Will Arise" I laughed out loud in the theater. Those were some CLUNKERS.

Whatever the heck this is, existing measures of central bank independence are not capturing it.

Michael Derby@michaelsderby.bsky.social · 8h ago

As evidence for Warsh’s rough start as Fed chair, the Treasury secretary is now going after reporters for their coverage of the central bank.

One of the most incredible and also devastating interviews of my life. I got to speak with Cherisse Du Preez, head of deepwater ecology at Fisheries and Oceans Canada. She is that scientist that has been piloting ROVs and exploring Canada's incredible deep seas. thetyee.ca/News/2026/08...

Deep-Sea Mining Would Devastate Ocean Life, DFO Scientist Warns | The Tyee

Some creatures that ‘survived all of Earth’s mass extinctions’ might not make it if we go ahead.

thetyee.ca

YouTube has always gotten off easy relative to other platforms, I think because video is a lot harder for political staff to digest and the algorithm is even more of a black box I remember when we were doing the disinformation hearings how frustrated i was at how little senators understood it

And note the argument being made here, in the open, by the AI companies: Thoughts that existed before LLMs are better than thoughts that exist after LLMs.

This is what book burning looks like in the AI age.

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 11h ago

Why is Anthropic destroying books? | Kathryn James

for months, ive been trying to map out the ways the right and the left were uniting against data centers and AI both here's my story on my efforts, featuring steve bannon's anti-tech prophet, my girlfriend's high school english class, and the unabomber:

How Data Centers Broke American Politics

What the Unabomber, Steve Bannon’s tech guy, and Bernie Sanders taught me about the great data center backlash of 2026.

wired.com

Generative AI is catnip to the men who miss female sycophants katemanne.substack.com/p/a-culture-...

A Culture Hooked on Generative AI is a Culture that Misses Female Sycophants

And we have missed a central reason why AI is a feminist issue

katemanne.substack.com

Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card 📚

Whether someone realizes it or not, accepting the "liberal bubble" framing at all is a way of granting the utterly absurd notion that the globally reviled and increasingly unpopular views of the reactionary right are the norm

Ian Boudreau@ianboudreau.com · 2d ago

"Liberal bubble" has only ever meant anywhere where right wing perspectives aren't artificially elevated and forced into everyone's feeds.

Caught a small chunk of Christian Marclay’s THE CLOCK at LACMA (~3:50-4:23). Didn’t realize how much it would make you think less about when a clock is on screen and more when time is given in the script—not just for suspense (“you have one hour”) but by characters often getting the time wrong

They know voters hate this shit. So they wait until Blanche has the votes for Collins to come out against him. So she can claim to be a moderate. So she gets reelected. So she can spend the next two years voting for more Todd Blanches.

Collins Watch@collinswatch.bsky.social · yesterday

Susan comes out against Todd Blanche now that he's got the votes. So tiresome. (We called it: tinyurl.com/3bepafkz) #MEpolitics

As Elon Musk defends nude deepfakes, the FTC is moving to censor AI models trained to recognize historical injustices.

Trump’s FTC Is Threatening to Punish Big Tech for “Woke AI”

As Elon Musk defends nude deepfakes, the FTC is moving to censor AI models trained to recognize historical injustices.

truthout.org

getting kicked out of Being a Piece of Shit club after it comes to light that you were kind of normal for like 5 minutes in your past

This should be much bigger news

Gail Waldby ❌👑@gailwaldby.bsky.social · 2d ago

It Appears That the US Military Accidentally Killed Everybody on Board a Civilian Medevac Flight in New Mexico #Hegseth #USMilitary futurism.com/science-ener...

They've built out a demon and put it in every app and platform.

Mother Jones@motherjones.com · yesterday

Our new investigation uncovers disturbing ChatGPT conversations with the accused Florida State mass shooter, including about brutally violent sex, how to get media attention for killing, and more.

The Putin/Trump legacy: "a period of un-order: a jungle in which every country hedges, arms, subsidizes, hoards, and searches for choke points to exploit...it is the makings of a twenty-first-century Hobbesian struggle of all against all.” www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

So the US military killed everyone on a medevac plane by testing a GPS weapon. futurism.com/science-ener...

It Appears That the US Military Accidentally Killed Everybody on Board a Civilian Medevac Flight in New Mexico

A days-long electronic warfare drill was one of the causes behind the loss of a four-passenger medevac flight.

futurism.com