“If students are using it to compose, which is the biggest tragedy of all, they’ll never learn to write. And their voice is stolen from them.”

Dave Eggers told OpenAI staff that ChatGPT was ‘silencing an entire generation’

He called AI writing “pastiche nonsense.”

theverge.com

what a surprise, anthropic, who have long demonstrated delusional traits concerning their tech, "sent" their newest frontier LLM model to a shrink to report on its "good mental and emotional functioning." No need for peer review when you have paid-for fake "science"! arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/w...

AI on the couch: Anthropic gives Claude 20 hours of psychiatry

Mythos is "the most psychologically settled model we have trained to date."

arstechnica.com

cognitive surrender... a term for those zealous LLM users who are overconfident in the chatbot's answers, especially when they're wrong arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/r...

"Cognitive surrender" leads AI users to abandon logical thinking, research finds

Experiments show large majorities uncritically accepting "faulty" AI answers.

arstechnica.com

golly gee, would have never guessed that a plagiarizing chatbot would turn out to be a plagiarizing chatbot! www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

The New York Times drops freelance journalist who used AI to write book review

Writer and author Alex Preston said he “made a serious mistake” after a reader spotted similarities between his review and one that appeared in the Guardian

theguardian.com

March 26 at 5:30pm, for @cunygcmusic.bsky.social at the CUNY GC (@thegraduatecenter.bsky.social ), we're having this presentation/discussion of the ethics of generative AI in music studies research. Much of the discussion will be broadly applicable to humanistic social science research, too!

Happy St. Patrick's Day, New York.

This is epic /s. Surely AGI is only a few months away at this rate: arstechnica.com/ai/2025/11/f...

Forget AGI—Sam Altman celebrates ChatGPT finally following em dash formatting rules

Ongoing struggles with AI model instruction-following show that true human-level AI still a ways off.

arstechnica.com

zohran just declared the winner here, called by AP!

I'm thankful every day I'm no longer dependent on album sales for the bulk of my "living," but real bummed how hard it's become with all the spoofing, impersonation, AI slop, and shit platform hijinks that currently define the streaming and digital distribution space. www.youtube.com/watch?v=plle...

It's Not Just You: Music Streaming Is Broken Now

YouTube video by Venus Theory

youtube.com

Our newest book, Gear: Cultures of Audio and Music Technologies, was just reviewed in Tape Op! tapeop.com/reviews/gear...

Pathetic cowards. www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/j...

UPenn to ban transgender athletes, ending civil rights case focused on swimmer Lia Thomas

The University of Pennsylvania will bar transgender women from its women’s sports teams and restore records to cisgender athletes, resolving a federal Title IX case centered on swimmer Lia Thomas

theguardian.com

In addition to many other important programs, IU Bloomington is eliminating its Folklore and Ethnomusicology Department, one of the most storied and successful in the country.

Rebecca Spang@rlspang.bsky.social · last yr.

So, here it is. Thanks to a new state law that was NEVER DEBATED, Indiana University has committed itself to abolishing majors in African-American/African Diaspora Studies: American Studies; Art History; French; Italian; Religious Studies etc. DOZENS of majors. www.ipm.org/news-section...

users of academia.edu, there's a new scheme of AI generated spam emails asking for your whatsapp number. This one began with "Please allow me to introduce myself briefly. My name is Simmons. I am from Bologna, Italy. I currently live in the United States and work as a systems biology researcher..."

Ok people were asking "What IS a small farm anyway?" so let's talk farm size, how it's measured in the US, and what that can tell us about how agriculture really works.

This one's for everyone stuck in grading season right now: www.youtube.com/watch?v=is4g...

writing a college paper then vs. now

YouTube video by Man Carrying Thing

youtube.com

In "Gear," leading music technology scholars @samanthabennett.bsky.social and Eliot Bates (@makam.bsky.social) trace the "life of gear" through an examination of the 21st-century fetishization of professional audio technologies and formation of gear cultures: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255185...

New g̵e̵ar̵ book day Available now at MIT Press: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255185...

On May 27, 4:30pm (EDT), we're celebrating our newest book Gear: Cultures of Audio and Music Technologies in an event organized by RILM. If you're in NYC come on down; out-of-town, it'll be livestreamed, register here: brookcenter.gc.cuny.edu/event/sites-... @samanthabennett.bsky.social

President Trump’s sweeping tariffs announced today stretched across the globe, including the remote Heard and McDonald Islands, which are populated by zero humans but lots of seals and penguins. nbcnews.to/3QXPQ31

Cory Booker's 24 hours into his epic, record-breaking Senate speech! Currently talking about John Lewis. www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/...

Watch live: Sen. Booker continues marathon Senate speech to protest Trump

Senator Cory Booker, D-N.J., is speaking and planning to hold the Senate floor for as long as he can. "I rise with the intention of getting in some good trouble. I rise with the intention of disruptin...

msnbc.com

Every time someone my age says something about “a brainrot trend on TikTok…” I’m compelled to remind Gen X that we were obsessed with Gregorian chant for a year in the 90s. Like we *went to the mall* & *bought CDs of it*. We blasted it in our cars driving to our high schools. This was normal to us🥸

Okay, I wrote a longer thing about @durbin.senate.gov, @amyklobuchar.com, @klobuchar.senate.gov, @whitehouse.senate.gov, @blumenthal.senate.gov apparently wanting to hand Donald Trump a huge weapon with which to censor online speech. www.techdirt.com/2025/03/21/d...

Democratic Senators Team Up With MAGA To Hand Trump A Censorship Machine

At the exact moment when Donald Trump and his MAGA allies are actively dismantling democratic institutions and working to silence critics, a group of Democratic Senators have decided to collaborate…

techdirt.com

Here's a more fulsome post from the Press. So sad. Farewell to Jonathan Sterne dukeupress.wordpress.com/2025/03/21/f...

Farewell to Jonathan Sterne

We are very sad to learn of the death of communication scholar Jonathan Sterne, after a long battle with cancer. He was 54 years old. Sterne was James McGill Professor of Culture and Technology at …

dukeupress.wordpress.com

Woke to this 💔 news on such a ☀️ day. In a world of metastasizing cruelty, where education — at all levels — is under threat, Jonathan’s work + life remind us of what is possible + desirable. In his honor today, listen to some 🎶 (ideally not on mp3!) + imagine impairment as an opportunity for grace 💐

m. r. sauter@oddletters.bsky.social · 2y ago

this morning friends, colleagues, and students recieved an email with the sad news that jonathan sterne passed away last night in his sleep. if you would like to reach out to carrie, you can do so at the heyjonandcarrie email that was previously distributed. (dm me if you dont have this)

As many of you know Jonathan Sterne is in hospice. If you would like to send a message to Jonathan and Carrie please send an email to heyjonandcarrie@gmail.com Carrie is receiving these messages and sharing them with Jonathan

US deports hundreds of Venezuelans "despite" court order. Meaning, of course: "in breach of". On the face of it, it looks like there is now a full constitutional crisis in United States, in that the executive is now freely ignoring court orders. Crisis point reached. www.bbc.com/news/article...

US deports hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador despite court order

Their arrival comes less than 24 hours after a federal judge blocked a law Trump planned to use for the deportations.

bbc.com

If someone you know has been informed about any potential for being deported from the US, be aware (and let them and their lawyers, if any know) that as of Mar 15, Chief Judge Boasberg has issued a temporary restraining order blocking *all* deportations: www.lawdork.com/p/alien-enem...

Breaking: Court blocks deportations hours after Trump invokes Alien Enemies Act

The ACLU and Democracy Forward filed suit in advance of Trump's action. A federal judge hearing the case issued a classwide TRO as planes were reportedly taking off.

lawdork.com

Well, so much for any notion that the new administration would be... um... more "isolationist" www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Trump orders airstrikes on Yemen in warning to Houthis over shipping route

At least 19 people killed in strikes on Sana’a and Sa’ada on Saturday, says Houthi-run health ministry

theguardian.com

Trump and Musk are basically trying to deskill America: 1) kill all white-collar jobs and replace them with AI 2) kill universities 3) use tariffs to turn the U.S. into an economic island manufacturing, oil and ag hub 4) empty the cities 5) push men into manual labor & women back into the kitchen

Holy shit. This is *the* gold-standard measurement of atmospheric CO2 -- the one in all the charts.

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · 2y ago

The Trump administration is planning to cancel its lease at a government laboratory in Hawaii, a site where scientists support key observations of surging greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, according to a list obtained by Democratic members of Congress and shared with The Post.