wendy norris
@wendynorris.bsky.social
Assoc Prof | Information Science Ex-investigative reporter and editor Crisis informatics nerd Makes good trouble Tell your dog I said "hi"
The experience of being chased by a murderous kamikaze drone, a flying machine that behaves as if it were alive, is not one that humans are equipped to understand: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The Dystopian Future Dawns in Kherson
Putin’s human safari in Ukraine is the beginning of a grim new normal.
theatlantic.com
Read this brilliant thread. And keep this handy description of the process in my mind the next time the LLM/GPT/RAG anthropomorphism gets too thick. “compression of text = loss of context = loss of "control”
Eryk Salvaggio@eryk.bsky.social · 3h agoWe're doing "rogue AI" discourse again so here's my live read / rant of the AISI report with the ominous title "Security Incident INC-2026-07-28-01." Link to the full technical report: www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/inciden...
Trying out the features in Claude for education. Join me as I see how it "helps" me write a research paper. My chosen topic: "AI and education". /1
Nice overview of the long history of small-scale data centers in Milwaukee. Some thoughts from me included. www.jsonline.com/story/money/...
Not all data centers are created equal. One might be in your neighborhood.
The rise of hyperscale data centers has raised alarm in communities. But smaller data centers have provided services to dozens of clients for years.
jsonline.com
I deeply identify with this. I never loved marking but in the last 1.5 years I have gone from 'net positive love of teaching with some serious caveats' to ... some new normal that is barely tolerable.
AI causing ‘moral injury’ to lecturers trying to police its use, Trent University research shows
Some in writing faculty are overwhelmed by task of spotting AI in students’ work, paper says
theglobeandmail.com
Small drones are killing more civilians than ever before - and we need to act. Here’s my thoughts on what we need to do, like establishing a center dedicated to evaluating and investigating drone attacks, training investigators, and explaining how IHL applies to self-defense against drones:
What Can We Do About Drone Attacks on Civilians? Some Thoughts
Lately, I've been spending a lot of time analyzing, reporting on, and researching the horrifying global uptick in the use of small, cheap, short-range drones to intentionally target and kill civilians...
little-flying-robots.ghost.io
"Type designers have created a free font that 'poisons' #AI": www.creativebloq.com/design/fonts... #ethics #tech #design #internet #data
This free font "poisons" AI
Hate AI? Then you might want to try ShieldFont.
creativebloq.com
A retired friend was remembering when there were departmental secretaries at universities who basically project managed the departments. You could give them handwritten documents, and they would type them up. He was shocked when I said it didn't work like that for female academics.
Kate Manne@katemanne.bsky.social · 22h agoGenerative AI is catnip to the men who miss female sycophants katemanne.substack.com/p/a-culture-...
I wrote about what to do when you find a coding error in your published code in 2022 @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41.... "Labs that have a culture of 'people who are smart and careful don't make mistakes', are setting themselves up for being a lab that doesn't admit their mistakes."
How to fix your scientific coding errors
Software bugs are frustrating. Adopting some simple strategies can help you to avoid them, and fix them when they occur.
nature.com
New: Police are being told to hide the fact that they're using Flock to pull people over and arrest them in both encounters with citizens but ALSO in their official police reports: www.404media.co/do-not-menti...
‘DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE’: How Cops Are Trying to Hide Their Use of Flock
“DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE TO THE OCCUPANTS OF THE VEHICLE. DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE IN YOUR REPORT OR COMPLAINT."
404media.co
Reposting to follow replies because Moodle and I are mortal enemies.
Kyle Riismandel@kyleriismandel.bsky.social · yesterdayHas anyone found a useful alternative to Canvas for an individual class? Did some digging and didn't see anything compelling or easy to access.
Great episode of John Oliver focused on surveillance tech - and it features a shout out to Andrew Ferguson's @profferguson.bsky.social book YOUR DATA CAN BE USED AGAINST YOU www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnBP...
Police Surveillance Technology: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
YouTube video by LastWeekTonight
youtube.com
More cops have been arrested for using flock cameras to stalk women than there are transgender athletes in youth sports.
He cites users' ability to mute & block folks as a positive, which is good. It's also why right wing chuds thankfully can't get a foothold here - b/c they violate community norms & get nuclear blocked out of normal people's timelines. Bluesky isn't a *liberal* bubble - it's a *decency* bubble.
The Verge@theverge.com · 2d agoBluesky's new CEO Toni Schneider on the platform's reputation for being a liberal bubble: "Yes, we definitely want that to change. It is already changing. It certainly wasn’t designed to attract one specific group of people."
T-minus 30 days until the start of the semester. Lemme take a quick peek at my calendar …
“ChatGPT purchases appeared in at least 71 House member offices — roughly 1 in 6 — while Democratic offices spent more than three times as much as Republican offices on identifiable AI tools.” www.cnbc.com/2026/08/03/o... via @cnbc.com
ChatGPT dominates early AI spending in Congress as lawmakers weigh regulation
At least 70 House offices used identifiable AI tools in early 2026, with Democrats leading visible spending and broader use likely undercounted.
cnbc.com
What is PBS Kids doing telling 3rd graders to use Ai to write a poem???
Many things are complicated. "Don't use technology that's built on the blood of child slaves if you have alternatives" really isn't. A marginal increase in my quality of life isn't worth a child's life, actually.
I've noticed several kinds of carelessness in critical thinking-related education, especially on social media, that may do more harm than good:
Should students be allowed to use AI on assignments? What about on tests? Who should teach AI literacy? About 100 teenagers got together to try to decide.
Adults have struggled to set rules for AI in school. These teens figured it out
ebx.sh
The NYC Gay Men's Chorus in 1993. The men in white were the only original chorus members to make it out of the AIDS crisis. We lost SO many young people.
ɪᴍᴍᴀɴᴜᴇʟ ᴋᴜɴᴛ@soberthots.blacksky.app · 4d agoHearing Jennifer Lewis talk about the losses she experienced during the AIDS crisis really contextualizes how bad it was. She said that every day she would get a phone call saying at least 3-5 people passed away, and this is just within her immediate circle - think about it nationally.
"When the first of August came round, the Professor realized he had pleasantly trifled away nearly two months at a task which should have taken little more than a week." -Willa Cather (from The Professor's House, 1925)
Science isn’t only about solving problems, it’s also about the random process of coming up with new ideas while working on a problem. By solving math problems for us, AI takes away this random element and the theory-building process that happens behind the scenes. 1/3
Anyway, since I’m always annoying my own brain by trying to come up with clearer and more specific wording for my own opinions: I reject the notion that LLMs can be deployed “responsibly” at scale and believe that anybody claiming otherwise is fooling themselves, conning you, or possibly both
For me, LLMs are clearly powerful machines, but everything about their construction and deployment in society by the people constructing them appears oriented around achieving a political project that deeply conflicts with my values or a vision of a future I want to live in and dont have a choice in
NERV IRB Coordinator@professormusgrave.bsky.social · 4d agoThis is what is driving me nuts. So many posters around here keep haw-hawing about R’s in strawberry and clearly have NO idea that these are extremely powerful machines *already* that we have not yet figured out how to utilize fully. If we stopped development today, they’d still be astonishing
Going to do a thread, using some of my own (incl. older) work, to clear up some of these relevant concepts. Hope it helps builds conceptual hygiene and immunity to hyped claims about “AI” capabilities. 1/🧵
Iris van Rooij 💭@irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 4d agoIn my work, as in theoretical computer science, we distinguish between (exact) algorithms, heuristics (no guarantees), and approximation algorithm (approx. guarantees) Clear distinctions is relevant in many contexts, for instance this one in cognitive science link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Disgraceful actions by @harvard.edu - destroying their writing program at a time when it's needed more than ever as "A.i." undermines everything. Deepest shame on this institution and all the best to @janerosenzweig.bsky.social. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...
In Defense of the Harvard College Writing Center | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson
As current and former Harvard College Writing Center tutors, we write to condemn the dissolution of the Writing Center as an independent entity and the laying off of its director, Jane Rosenzweig.
thecrimson.com
