The Realtime Techpocalypse Newsletter is two months old! We've covered: the TESCREAL ideologies, Silicon Valley pro-extinctionism, the AGI race, AI slop and AI bloopers, etc. If these topics interest you, please subscribe, share, and recommend! :-) www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/p/the-right-...

A great book relevant to this: A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers

Happy international observe the moon night! 💜

but all of this is about finding messages that reach people who don't have a lot of context *to help them understand why they shouldn't use it* harm reduction, in this context, is *use reduction*

Dartmouth response to the Trump Administration Compact president.dartmouth.edu/news/2025/10...

How it "started": Productivity gains are coming (June 2025) How it's going: AI Adoption Rate Trending Down for Large Companies (September 2025) Left image: www.apolloacademy.com/productivity... Right image: www.apolloacademy.com/ai-adoption-...

New preprint 🌟 Psychology is core to cognitive science, and so it is vital we preserve it from harmful frames. @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I use our psych and computer science expertise to analyse and craft: Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. doi.org/10.31234/osf... 🧵 1/

We are here because policing in the U.S. has been this way for generations. This is why ICE acts with impunity. They know they can act this way.

Today's the day for my anti-AI zine volume 2: "Human Perspectives on the Latest AI Hype Cycle" 🎉 Enjoy the fruits of my focus these past few months and learn from many great people! Scanned zine to print your own and the full text and references are available at padlet.com/laurenUU/antiAI

I'm finalizing 2nd anti-AI zine and I want input on title. Currently workshopping "Further Misadventures in the AI Hype Cycle" - suggestions welcome! This one has pages uplifting @anthonymoser.com's "I am an AI Hater" essay, work on CAIL by @olivia.science, book club by @ali-alkhatib.com [1/3]

The world has lost its most powerful advocate for nature and hope. Yet many remain who will continue her legacy and I know she will continue to inspire generations more.

A very successful visit to @schulerbooks.bsky.social this morning! I have been wanting to read The AI Con for a while and now that @ali-alkhatib.com picked it for a new book club this feels like the right moment. And I went to three different game stores last month to find Bomb Busters with no luck.

I have loved living in Michigan since moving here a decade ago, and this is a great opportunity! (Hopefully this post gets seen by my astro network, which is smaller here than it was on that other site many years ago.)

"You don’t have to panic. You don’t have to burn all the bridges and retreat. You can make a principled stand for what you believe while welcoming in alienated voters looking for hope and community." This was a really great read.

If mil leaders don’t buy the message, they can keep quiet or self-select out. Those who don’t want to be part of politicized military (or agree w/ the ideology) leave. This aims to weed out committed professionals who strongly adhere to norms of nonpartisanship. 6/

I also loved this observation. The tech’s true “innovation” is its utter disregard for efficiency. It “works” bc it accepts the most irresponsibly resource-intensive production method imaginable. What matters is not what it costs but *who* pays. The apotheosis of a culture built around disposability

We covered, briefly, climate change in my intro astronomy course last week along with solar system overview. Over the weekend, students selected from many different project options related to last week's content. One involved Amanda Gorman's Earthrise poem. [🧵: 1/8]

My brother-in-law and his wife are Disney adults and they have shared with us they're uncomfortable ever going to the Parks again.

hey, i'm gonna say more tomorrow, but i'm starting a reading group for "AI skeptics" - it's called "AI Skeptics Reading Group" i am not great at names; please suggest alternatives if you're creative. i'll be sending an email tomorrow, but here are a few things to get you started

someone on here the other day said it feels like we’re watching a baseball game where one team decides every inning to not take their turn at bat

Scoop: Trump lost the legal battle over halting the offshore Revolution Wind project after Orsted, its developer, brought reams of evidence to court alleging the government was lying about military security concerns. It’s a sign truth can empower companies Trump targets. Via @heatmap.news

“AI” isn’t a tool or technology or even a cluster of technologies with a misleading name. It’s the infrastructure at the foundation of a form of capitalism dependent on data brokering. We should be teaching our students about this and not teaching them about “responsible” use.

OpenAI's rapid rush into education has been achieved by habituating users through training programs, institutional lock-ins, strategic marketing partnerships, and third party integrations that together are helping it become infrastructural to teaching and learning. It's going to be hard to get out.

Let's not forget the stack of sharpie-and-photocopier sheets that literally just said "No Kings" in all caps that were found in the car of Melissa Hortman's assassin which were used to try to stop the rallies in Minnesota.

My latest column for the Chronicle of Higher Ed is now live. It's an argument for including AI-critical voices in campus conversations and policymaking workgroups, and I'm proud to get this dissenting piece into the mainstream genAI/higher ed discourse. Please read and share if you're so inclined 🙂

eat their frame. like Kirby.

With alt text from Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

From The Handbasket 9/22/25 from @marisakabas.bsky.social : "things are actually getting materially worse each day, and the human brain is unequipped to notice, let alone process, all of it." Reminds me of the difference between shocks and slides. It feels like a slide of shocks, both at once.

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for very wealthy, privileged people who are capitulating to fascism and/or staying silent because they’re “scared.” People are being dragged out of their homes and people who could be next are *still* speaking up. Silence won’t protect you but it emboldens them

"A clown car with tank treads." ⭐️ Allowing your fear to run your decisions gives the clowns more power, and they aren't in an unsinkable battleship (yet). Hold on tight to all the examples that show you how brittle this phase is. Write them down in a journal if you need to. Remind your friends.

we have gone from a world in which we were told not to cite wikipedia because it was unreliable to a world where wikipedia might be the only reliable source left on the internet and we all owe a lot to the pedantic nerds who got us there

TODAY is Sun Day! ✴️ Thousands of people are coming together at 469 events across the U.S. and beyond to celebrate the power of clean energy. Today shines a bright light on the future that we all want - a cleaner, fairer, future for all. ☀️ Join an event near you today: sunday.earth

See this quoted thread for highlights from the lead author of this important paper! My own key thoughts and connections will be in a thread right here, too. 🧵

Yep, @dropout.tv is the only streaming service I pay a subscription for. So much great content from so many fantastic people. And separate from the quality shows themselves, and the excellent anti-capitalist message Hilary mentions, they also have such a phenomenal behind-the-scenes culture of care.

"We can and should reject that AI output is ‘good enough,’ not only because it is not good, but also because there is inherent value in thinking for ourselves.” zenodo.org/records/1706... 39/🧵

lol

I love learning new quotes and getting source verification, too! I learned that Ignazio Silone wrote "La scuola dei dittatori" which was translated into English by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher as "The School for Dictators" in 1938.

This evening I went to a local bookstore where I know the owner, her husband, one of the artists being displayed for ArtPrize, and one of the attendees of the opening event. It was so good to be surrounded by good people. Plus, Lea had copies of An Almanac of Birds by Maria Popova 😍 now I do, too!

As you cancel streaming services, here is a casual reminder that only 16% of Americans read for pleasure anymore, and your local library has hundreds or thousands of books you haven't read. They would love to see you stop by and renew your library card.

Spent time today reading "What Does 'Human-Centered AI' Mean?" by @olivia.science and I keep having the sad thought about how many folks would use a tool to generate a tidy "summary" of a paper this size instead of reading, reflecting, connecting, wondering, etc. Anyway, such a solid framework.

Reminds me that we have "Columbus Day" next month, a holiday where we all have the opportunity to collectively come together once a year to remember what a cruel and nasty person Christopher Columbus was.

Purchased a copy this afternoon. When an authority cannot allow criticism, it knows its power is too brittle to withstand scrutiny. Try to be brave in this era of brittle, sad, angry power.

they don't have the capacity to compel obedience by the process of law. they don't have the capacity to compel obedience by violence. the only lever by which they can obtain obedience is fear. do not offer it to them.

We don't know what's going to happen so might as well fight for better. That's really my basic political orientation.

Pythagorean Triple Square Day, as one man affectionately calls 9/16/25, is a day like no other this century.

I loved her book and I appreciate her ongoing voice. This new post is powerful and valuable reading for all. "...this game of forced choices has been an exceedingly powerful means of communal control: 'Just keep silent on this one issue and there are so many other kinds of good that you can do!' "

If you do feel ready to do the deep, difficult, but rewarding work of exploring how we might get out of this mess with our humanity intact—first, I want to express my gratitude to you, because it's honestly shockingly fucking hard to push past the anger enough to do this. Most people are not ready

I got my flu and covid vaccines from CVS, very simple process to make an appointment and very fast to complete the shots on location. If you're in a state that currently has no road blocks, don't put this off for later! 🩹

Violence is bad. Beware those who decide that someone's years of *verbal violence* weren't an issue. That was real harm. Beware those who are itching to find an excuse to use yesterday's *physical violence* to enact MORE physical violence. Don't let power define violence narrowed to their goals.