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Mark Vukovic

@markvukovic.bsky.social

IT Teacher/Programmer/Ally He/Him #blm I'm an advocate for anything that keeps my family and students safe.

749 Posts361 Follower258 Folgt
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 23h ago

An Iranian friend told me about their sorrow when American bombs fell on their universities. But then, my friend explained, they looked at what was happening to US universities—and realized they got off easy by comparison.

Michael Clemens@mclem.org · yesterday

The US President's new proposal to tax international students has been approved by the White House for release this week. It's an unprecedented $100,000 tax on int'l grads who stay to work after graduation on Optional Practical Training (most grads do), a crucial bridge to remaining by any channel.

Mark Vukovic@markvukovic.bsky.social · 5d ago

So the powers that be blocked Duckduckgo.com at school. At first I was going to argue on their behalf that students need AI free search as an alternative to Gemini at Google. However, with DuckDuckGo using AI as well, I don't think they'd listen. So I guess it's gonna be " -ai" at Google.

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 3w ago

I hope everyone caught this Lancet study confirming that Elon Musk & DOGE are responsible for genocidal levels of suffering & death.

Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis

USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the a...

thelancet.com

Admirable Women@admirablewomen.bsky.social · 4w ago

Computer scientist Margaret Hamilton coined the term “software engineer.” She directed the Software Engineering Division at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab & led development of the on-board flight software for NASA’s Apollo Guidance Computer. She was born #OTD in 1936 & turns 90 today! #WomenInSTEM

Two side-by-side black-and-white photographs of pioneering computer scientist Margaret Hamilton (born August 17, 1936). The left panel features a mature, close-up portrait where Hamilton gazes directly at the viewer with a serene, confident, and reflective expression, framed by her long, dark, slightly silvering hair. The right panel is a famous archival photograph showing a younger Hamilton standing indoors next to a towering stack of bound paper binders containing the Apollo Guidance Computer source code, which she led the development of at MIT. She is smiling broadly and wears a striped, long-sleeved mini dress with dark Mary Jane shoes and glasses, resting her hand proudly on top of the massive column of printed code. The overall composition contrasts her youthful triumph with her enduring legacy, capturing an optimistic, intellectually rigorous mood that highlights her monumental contributions to space exploration.
Charlotte Lydia Riley@lottelydia.bsky.social · last mo.

Heartened to see that my university is ending its contract with Turnitin before the next academic year, because Turnitin is going to use student submissions to train AI models. Institutions can and should resist this stuff!

Jeremiah McCall (he/him)@gamingthepast.bsky.social · last mo.

Anyone who is seriously critical of AI, not least of all in Humanities and Education (my particular wheelhouses) -- critical btw, not dismissive, not ignoring -- needs to give this a look. Pg 1.

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 2mo ago

New preprint! So honoured to have worked with Ishani Ray on providing vital critique on "AI literacy" & correctives for those interested in understanding why "just use the newest version of an LLM" is nonsense Contra Literacy-Laundering: Mechanistic Critical AI Literacy doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 1/

Critical discourse on large language models (LLMs) has bifurcated between epistemic dismissal that invokes some form of the stochastic parrot metaphor to puncture hype, and pragmatic accommodation that treats LLM capability improvements as grounds for updating the critique. We argue that both misdiagnose the problem as the issue is not whether or not LLMs work, but what kind of working is happening and at whose cost. Drawing on meta-theoretical frameworks of cognitive science, feminist labor analysis and critical pedagogy, we propose a conceptual reorientation. We develop this claim through registers of (i) the cognitive, examining what is forfeited when statistical pattern-matching substitutes for the iterative, grounded processes that constitute thinking; (ii) the pedagogical, examining how “AI literacy” as currently deployed is itself a symptom of the confusion it purports to address; and (iii) the political, examining how the infrastructure framing of AI naturalizes asymmetric labor displacement, particularly of feminized cognitive and reproductive work. The stochastic parrot, deployed with mechanistic precision rather than mere rhetorical convenience, specifies what is forfeited when cognitive labor is delegated, who bears the cost, and why a literacy adequate to this moment must begin from the epistemology of those most harmed by the systems it describes. We conclude with underlining that critical AI literacy, which this paper embodies an instance of, is the only sensible way forward.
AltYellostoneNatPar@altyellonatpark.org · last mo.

How about a law that all Data Centers must operate entirely off grid using renewable energy. And another requiring their cooling mechanisms use only closed loop cooling systems. How about if taxpayers don't end up paying the bills.

Pronghorn Buck showing those famous horns that shed annually, have forks and a boney core.
Gregory A. Wilson@gregoryawilson.com · last mo.

Cc @olivia.science "Teaching children about smoking cigarettes is a 'moral imperative,' said Jan Janson, the Protect Children Union president. "And without outside funding, it was a choice between taking big tobacco's money or doing nothing." I renew my call for @rweingarten.bsky.social to resign.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · last mo.

“Teaching educators about AI is a ‘moral imperative’, said Randi Weingarten, the AFT president.” “And without outside funding, it was a choice between taking big tech’s money or doing nothing, she said.”

Adam Rawnsley@arawnsley.bsky.social · last mo.

Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.

Drew Harwell@drewharwell.com · last mo.

New: We found 50 cops who misused Flock cameras and other license-plate readers for personal purposes, often to spy on their girlfriends or ex-wives. He "watched every single move I made. ... Who do you turn the chief of police in to?" wapo.st/3S6rTuo

She left her ex. He secretly tracked her through a network of policing cameras.

Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.

wapo.st

Mark Vukovic@markvukovic.bsky.social · 2mo ago

At the Ohio BMV- the registration line where people type their info in is so slow! Remember when we used to have a proper society where humans would help other humans? Instead we make old people type one character at a time into a touch screen trying to remember their phone number