Just got back from the new Spider-Man movie! I enjoyed it overall. Felt like it really lived up to the potential promise of movies set in a cinematic universe and also several moments and characterizations felt like they followed nicely from the last film. With that said… (SPOILERS IN NEXT POST!)

Update on CCCC 2027 I just got off a call with Antero Garcia and Emily Kirkpatrick. 1/21

Thank you to the leaders of @rhetsoc.bsky.social for their Letter of Solidarity with the members of CCCC. Read it here: mailchi.mp/rhetoricsoci...

It often feels like institutions of higher ed are slow to make progressive change but very quick to go forward with bad & harmful changes. Anyway, here’s the sticker I was buying at an art fair when the news dropped that NCTE voted to de-charter CCCC

A new project educators can use to teach the many ways AI resistance takes shape: "Now people around the world are mobilizing to resist the empires of AI and to nourish visions of the future that work for all of us. Amid an onslaught of negative news, this project centers hope."

hating ai is a pro-social activity

Anthony Moser@anthonymoser.com · 3mo ago

Photo by @nicolehester.bsky.social for The Tennesseean www.tennessean.com/picture-gall...

singlecatlady23.bsky.social@singlecatlady23.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The Sargent at Arms blocks Representative Justin Pearson from Memphis from entering a committee meeting about redrawing the map specifically for the district he represents.

The Sargent at Arms blocks Representative Justin Pearson from Memphis from entering a committee meeting about redrawing the map specifically for the district he represents.

i am not 100% sure whether @wesaketchak.bsky.social is the original maker of this mash-up but i am 100% sure that it is brilliant and was crafted for my enjoyment particularly

Lots to appreciate about this piece. Among them, a careful answer to the question of what in God’s name university administrators are thinking in the headlong, apparently suicidal rush to embrace AI. +

Dan Greene @dmgreene.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I was lucky to write the lead article for a special issue of Academe on AI in the Corporate University. In "What does AI do?" I offer a provisional balance sheet of this technology's effects on our work, our finances, and our management, in a moment of rising fascist attacks on higher education.

amazing that our own small creations connect us directly to the moment of our universe erupting out of nothing and the unfathomable power of existence itself and yet we look at our drawings or stories and are like 'this is bad.' bud it is not bad it is the leading edge of a billion years of beauty

Went to Korean BBQ for birthday dinner and saw one of my favorite things in the world: inexplicable signage

make bad art

Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness@tangledwilderness.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I will say one thing for AI slop; it has radically increased my appreciation of shitty art. Like maybe it lacks creativity, maybe the execution is unskilled, maybe the motivation for making it was commercial, but damned if a human being didn't think of and create it with their own mind and body.

moby-dick, his eyes enormous: from hell's heart you STAB at moby? for hate's sake you spit your last BREATH at moby? oh! oh! the great shroud of the sea for ahab! the great shroud of the sea rolling on as it rolled five thousand years ago!!!!

#TalkAboutHumanities We need scholars across the humanities, because these are the fields where we study what it is to be human, to inhabit different identities, and to connect with each other, to be human together. youtu.be/T7Lc6QNxolQ...

Resisting Dehumanization in the Age of "AI": The View from the Humanities, Emily M. Bender

YouTube video by Simpson Center

youtu.be

Appeal to romance readers! My gift to Romancelandia is this:

privateideation.bsky.social@privateideation.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I've been saying it for years: pro wrestling's growth market isn't casual sportsball fans. It's figure skating fans, gymnastics fans, people who watch soaps, folks who watched Project Runway or Drag Race, folks who get excited about the MET gala. The selling point is exhibition, not competition.

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

In my opinion, the main task of exploring propaganda is not demonstrating that it works, it's convincing people who are assured of their own intelligence & free will that it could work on people like them

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Not dunking on Zack or this post, I’m just always struck by how easily American journalists will admit that the media shapes public polling and political outcomes when they’re not talking about America.

Games are a unique art form. They are direct instructions, with an audience primed to follow them. They are unlike music. Unlike graphic arts. Unlike fiction. Game design is about how instructions focus us, inspire us, outrage us, motivate us, reveal us, help us connect to each other.

and it is still infinity times better to be the kind of person who loves monarch butterflies, and the mosaic tilework on an ancient mosque, and kids whose names you'll never know running around a field kicking a soccer ball, than the kind who views them with indifference, but it is also painful

"To Asia, Africa and Oceania, we are looking back at you. We hear you can look up and see the moon right now. We see you, too. Ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.” Artemis II Astronaut Christina Koch 🌕🌎

Red States: We're going to cut all the programs that don't support our theology Blue States: We're going to cut the same programs, but because they don't support the business school

Rob Townsend@rbtownsend.bsky.social · 4mo ago

"The affected majors include Classical Civilization, Digital Humanities, German, Russian, and Middle Eastern Studies, among others...no jobs are currently slated for elimination, though teaching assignments and workloads may be affected." bit.ly/47oHkm9

this is art

Audre Lorde's speech can be read here awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/communicatio...

This is an essential read, and the closing on credentialing versus engagement and "centering the people for whom the stakes are highest" in particular. (H/T @peachfleurr.bsky.social @robin.berjon.com)

On The Enshittification of Audre Lorde: "The Master's Tools" in Tech Discourse

🖼️Cover Photo: Train at the Nairobi terminus of the Mombasa–Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway. It runs parallel to the Uganda Railway that was completed in 1901. The first fare-paying passengers boarded ...

tarakiyee.com

wouldn't it be funny if EVERYONE blocked this Attie AI account @ bsky.app/profile/atti... before they could do anything with it

Sarah Perez@sarahp.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Bluesky leans into AI with Attie, an app for building custom feeds

As one of the authors of this thought I’d share a bit about how we got here and how you can do what we’ve done at you institution. Over the two years I’ve been at the University of Edinburgh I’ve grown increasingly concerned by fellow academics uncritically using LLMs, especially OpenAIs’s ChatGPT.

Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 5mo ago

So a great thing about contracts is that they usually have and end date and/or means of ending them. If your university or other organization bent the knee to OpenAI or any of the other chatbot providers, when a contract is up, there is an opportunity for pressure: forms.gle/ZGn5brEGU4t9...

The push to make syllabi “public” is not about transparency. It’s about creating conditions for outside intimidation and manufacturing pretexts for censorship.

AAUP@aaup.org · 5mo ago

Requiring instructors to post their syllabi empowers censorship in North Carolina & campuses nationwide. “This new directive is an effort to intimidate instructors whose research and teaching delves into subject matter that some politicians don’t want to see explored.” @ncaaup.bsky.social