“Imagine you’ve been a functioning adult since before 2024. It’s simply not possible”

Ayo@darrylayo.bsky.social · 23h ago

Guys like this don’t realize that they are the freak

If you left Twitter in or before 2024 and have ever found yourself wondering, “whatever happened to James Lindsay?,” the answer is “nothing”

huck mason@tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 7h ago

for reasons that only make sense if you're insane, a TPUSA kid complaining about burrito costs on xitter has the GOP's biggest divas going for each other's throats.

I don't love the language of "content" (I think it leans into an idealization of productivity that justifies the genAI applications being criticized here) BUT the three minutes or so from 2:55 should speak to anyone involved in creating things with their brains and hands, scholars very much included

Mike Bithell@mikebithell.bsky.social · 14h ago

The specific focus in this video on the way these tools get under your skin and train you to depend on them is an aspect I personally find existentially terrifying. youtu.be/TtvICev9sBE?...

a tenuous claim to the privilege of "protection" from the otherwise unrestrained violence of the state you fund and serve is how you know you're a Real American one for the "American Civ" profs to chew on, assuming they're all protected

The Associated Press@apnews.com · 10h ago

President Donald Trump’s administration has detained more than 50 spouses and parents of U.S. troops as it rolls back immigration protections for military families, an AP investigation has found.

what a pity we automated writing when ours was at its weakest

History is fact jenga and AI is glue forklift. game changer

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · yesterday

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

Charles Simic, Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell (New York: NYRB, 2006), plate 7 and page 56

online bears news of old family friends gone fascist curious (just asking questions), colleagues leaving red states in various shades of urgency, fifteen-second clips from movies you saw as a kid reframed as nostalgia for an audience of space aliens, all of it bobbing in a sea of cheap and vile slop

Make America Once-Great Again

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 2d ago

Is there a connection between opulence and the decline of empire? Who cares, suggests Chad Mizelle, Trump's 2025 former Deputy Attorney General, as he comments on the tourism draw of gilded statues and the "opulence of the epicenter of once-great civilizations," without a shred of self-awareness.

hey my footnote trick worked

I think it’s hard to argue either that lockdowns were bad policy or that learning loss wasn’t real. We just have a society that makes no allowances for emergencies and affords no chance of making up. A lot of people are very mad about the effects of that without having any inclination to change it.

Steven Thrasher, an assistant professor and the Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting, accused the university of breaching his employment contract, including alleged violations of his academic freedom, denying his tenure appeal and terminating his chair position.

Denied tenure and alleging discrimination, Northwestern University professor sues school and government officials

chicagotribune.com

new game: genius or just main character

Comfortably Numb@numb.comfortab.ly · 4mo ago

These are very special bois

meh. been done

The Associated Press@apnews.com · 5d ago

A SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the moon after launching a pair of lunar landers last year.

New reporting from @breachmedia.ca shows that Canadian universities operated a secret national effort to coordinate surveillance and policing of anti-genocide activism and encampments. breachmedia.ca/canadian-uni...

look. nobody here likes paying consultants. but the only alternative is paying *instructors*

Asheesh Kapur Siddique@asheeshks.org · 6d ago

“Harvard paid McKinsey & Company at least $250,000 to consult on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ staff restructuring efforts, according to internal documents obtained by The Crimson.” www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

in general, too, these guys' view of "humanity" is only "expansive" if by "expansive" you mean "really big numbers." There's no vision of human possibility except as mediated by their own tech and no interest in human difference at all. The dream is pizza joints, labor farms, and revenue without end

Joel S.@joelhs.bsky.social · 5d ago

This is from the editor of the "Economist," and with all due respect, I do not think this is a surprising conflict at all. It's just typical fascist reactionary modernism, going back to Marinetti and the Italian Futurists.

IMPACT: that company that was offering to buy books for AI companies’ training data — and probably destroy them in the process — says it will no longer offer this service following 404 Media’s exposure of it www.404media.co/ai-company-t...

Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage

Citing backlash, ISBNdb removed its webpages about training AI, denied ever buying, scanning, or selling a book for AI training, and said the site was a "test of market interest."

404media.co

“bring history to life”? have you seen a single horror movie

Doremus Schafer@doremus-schafer.bsky.social · 5d ago

Google put out a five-point bullet list of supposed use cases, it is, uh, not wildly convincing. My 'favorite' is 'have the stochastic parrot show your students what historical sites looked like in olden days'. blog.google/products-and...

I imagine there are people taking jobs at the various right-wing Western Civ-in-a-Basket Institutes pustulating US academe who started out believing in academic freedom I wonder what they make of the fact that their jobs are not only in the same places as these firings but part of the same agenda

Lincoln Michel@thelincoln.bsky.social · 6d ago

A college professors is fired for teaching an Ottessa Moshfegh story that causes "mild discomfort" for one student. Implication is that DeSantis government was involved in the firing. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/u...

academic terms turned culture war pejoratives: preliminary list intersectional (usu. with "-ism") lived experience (opp. facts or, esp., statistical data) performative (opp. sincere) postmodern (usu. with "-ist" or "-ism") social construct/-ion (opp. real) theory (fmr. "French"; stimes "Critical")

making a list of which conditions are genuine and which are social constructs so I know who needs medicine and who needs to be removed from society

the people who think government is a scam are running government like it’s a scam again

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 5d ago

NEW: The State Department finalized a rule implementing a "visa bond" program for tourist/business visitor visas, to be imposed on a list of countries to be announced. Applicants for B1/B2 visas from those countries will have to pay a $10k, $15k, or $20k bond, to be paid back once the visa expires.

A told B, and B told C let’s make a nest in the huluppu tree

Le Neve’s manuscript Vindication of Judiciary Astrology (Bodl. MS Ashmole 418) could be the greatest anthology film ever made

Matt Gabriele@profgabriele.com · 5d ago

ok let's do a discourse: what historical text absolutely needs the big budget film treatment, AND will create the need for a review by a scholar in a prestige publication? for medieval Europe, either: -- Song of Roland -- Book of Margery Kempe

“social” is not the opposite of “real”

Scott Bryan@scottygb.bsky.social · last wk.

Channel 4 has announced documentary “The Great ADHD Myth?” It “seeks to determine whether ADHD is a genuine neurodevelopmental disorder, or a social construct.”

there are a lot of philosophical concepts that get egregiously misused out of the seminar room (and in the seminar room, to be fair). but in terms of sheer pernicious misuse "social construct" has gotta be top 5 somewhere and it's not number 5

Scott Bryan@scottygb.bsky.social · last wk.

Channel 4 has announced documentary “The Great ADHD Myth?” It “seeks to determine whether ADHD is a genuine neurodevelopmental disorder, or a social construct.”

who keeps looking at the Plateau and thinking: what's missing here is one more place where people line up around the block for eggs or a sandwich

AI is democratizing ignorance and the elites can't handle it

Eric Geller@ericjgeller.com · 6d ago

"A US government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a global conference in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attenders who took screenshots and posted them online."

“AI will supercharge government”

Eric Geller@ericjgeller.com · 6d ago

"A US government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a global conference in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attenders who took screenshots and posted them online."