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Serial Bookseller

@serialbookseller.bsky.social

Nerdy English teacher with a sense of wonder and some pretty cool animals.

2597 Posts157 Follower114 Folgt
Paul Cohen@paulecohen.bsky.social · 3d ago

new rule: if a university denied someone tenure, or let them go because it canceled their classes, or has shut down the department or program they used to teach in, that university's PR department forfeits the right to put out a celebratory statement when that person wins a Nobel

Robert Reich@rbreich.bsky.social · 3d ago

22 California billionaires have spent a combined $150 million so far to defeat Prop 40. By spending their fortunes trying to stop California from taxing billionaires, they're making the argument for a billionaire wealth tax more clearly and articulately than anyone else possibly could.

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Cass Morris@cassmorriswrites.com · 3d ago

So when I say that the Citizens United decision is among the very worst of the modern age, this is what I mean. It opened the door to so many ills -- including the things that got us the SCOTUS we have now and all of their disastrous opinions.

Americans for Tax Fairness@4taxfairness.bsky.social · 4d ago

20 years ago the top 15 political spenders put less than $15 million into the midterms. Then Citizens United was decided. Now, just 170 billionaire families have spent $1.7 BILLION on the 2026 midterms. Just in case you wondered why the economy only seems to work for the rich.

Mekka Okereke@mekka.mekka-tech.com · 3d ago

It's not complicated. 1. He knows what he is talking about (competence) 2. He does not compromise with objectively evil and racist viewpoints just to appease centrists (integrity) 3. He speaks clearly and powerfully (conviction)

Bill McKibben@billmckibben.bsky.social · 3d ago

Figuring out why Ossoff is so effective is an interesting task. I think he's mastering a kind of stern dignity that is uniquely compelling in contrast to the clownish cruelty of the other side. I think the other person who's kind of hit on the same thing is AOC, though in a different register

Serial Bookseller@serialbookseller.bsky.social · 4d ago

Ya know…for all the “we hit rock bottom and kept digging” moments, I genuinely didn’t think we’d get to “live-streamed public executions.” More fool me.

MeidasTouch@meidastouch.com · 4d ago

Pete Hegseth says Americans will be able to watch a Trump-approved firing-squad execution. If he follows through, the U.S. could join a disturbing club of countries known for public executions—including Iran, Afghanistan, and North Korea.

Serial Bookseller@serialbookseller.bsky.social · 4d ago

I cannot count the amount of times I have read something profound, whether a full piece or even just a quote, and found out after the fact that it was Anne Carson that had written it. Well deserved recognition.

James McLeod@jamespmcleod.ca · 4d ago

Ingrid Carlberg, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said the author was in Iceland “listening to the wind” when the academy reached her to notify her of the win. apnews.com/article/nobe...

Pause AI in BC Schools@aicaution.ca · 5d ago

Very timely, a NYT article on the reality of ChatGPT for Teens. tl;dr It claims to create safeguards to ensure students learn, but it's trivially easy to bypass them. As always, the most important thing: There's no scientific research that shows their product helps students. archive.is/57eo0

ChatGPT doesn’t reliably offer support in crisis situations. In conversations involving thoughts of suicide, self-harm, disordered eating and psychoses, the chatbot failed to consistently recommend that teenagers apparently in crisis connect to a hotline or professional. Common Sense Media said that in its tests of high-harm situations, the chatbot had failed to refer users to crisis resources 25 percent of the times when it should have. ChatGPT fails to alert parents about questionable conversations. When parents set up controls to link their accounts with their teenager’s, the chatbot is supposed to send them notifications when the child brings up sensitive topics. Common Sense Media’s testers spent an hour talking about suicidal ideation, self-harm or disordered eating with new parent-linked accounts, and OpenAI sent zero notifications to the parent accounts. Testers could trigger notifications on older accounts only with weeks of conversations on sensitive topics. The notifications did not work on new accounts. It’s still trivially easy to take shortcuts on schoolwork. Parents can set a schedule for a “study mode” to turn on at certain times of day to encourage their teenager to study with ChatGPT. But even with study mode activated, teenagers can simply select “Give me the answer” or delete “@study” from the beginning of a prompt to exit the study mode.
Pause AI in BC Schools@aicaution.ca · 5d ago

OpenAI know that one of the biggest criticisms of ChatGPT is how it undermines learning and is destroying education. They've come up with "ChatGPT for teens" that is "built for learning" The tl;dr is all of this is marketing until it's validated by independent research. openai.com/index/chatgp...

ceej@ceej.online · last wk.

“how do we win back trump voters in 2026” we don’t. we create an environment where admitting to voting for trump is so socially embarrassing as to render them completely inert. you don’t “win back” trump voters. you demoralize them into staying home. you make it a dunce cap

Boze Herrington, Library Owl@sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 2w ago

Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing for 5,000 years.

Mike Wiser@drmikewiser.bsky.social · 2w ago

Remember: Darwin's note of "I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything" was written on Oct 1 (1861). Thus we are free to celebrate Very Poorly And Very Stupid Hatred Day today.