Why do we refer to these entities as generative AI and not, as would seem more appropriate, extractive AI?

Reminding myself that it's ok (natural even!) to struggle w the transition from frenzied academic year to summer. Every yr I forget how much time it takes to unwind physically & emotionally. Resisting the urge to berate myself for feeling blue/adrift & instead give myself the space to make the shift

An Embedded Pedagogies update as I go through and sort out images and rights releases now. Sounds like a rough estimate will have the book in the world sometime in Fall 2026. 🎉🎉

In the space below, please list the ways in which you have found that Pepsi is the taste of a new generation. Examples include Pepsi being refreshing, delicious, invigorating, and/or awesome

I'm so sorry, science friends. The Humanities has seen a much slower dismantling over the past few decades, but I would not wish the same devastation on anyone. I think we all, regardless of specialty, need to figure out ways to protest and advocate for our profession and our research.

I’ve yet to see a grad speech where the speaker says “don’t you think it’s bullshit that higher ed has been turned into mere job training & now they’re shoving something down your throats that will make your jobs worse, take them, & immiserate u forever? Let’s end vocationalization!” Waiting for it!

Note, this does not just apply to STEM. It is all federal research, including whatever is left of humanities, arts, museum, and library research via NEH, NEA, and IMLS 🗃️

"What this office is doing is taking the parts of the federal government that touch you directly, your prescription, your voter registration, your passport, your federal login, out of the agencies that legally own them and rebuilding them on White House infrastructure."

Wake up babe, new level of surveillance capitalism / dataveillance / quantification of the personal just dropped

I am not trying to dunk here and also if library workers had been truly listened to in the last 10-15 years or so, the libraries being in danger would not be coming as a surprise to so many academics. Perhaps they would not be in as much danger, even.

Please check out & share this incredible new digital humanities archive w/ interactive map, the Black Church Burning Project. blackchurchburningproject.org It exists to identify & document every Black church & congregation that was burned, bombed, or otherwise attacked during the Civil Rights era.

Subskeeting MIT news but it could be any number of places. 📚

Did you know that Animikii Indigenous Technology has built a learning management system (like Canvas but not) governed by Indigenous data sovereignty principles? animikii.com/services/lea...

I stepped off the library dean path when it became clear that this would be the job--managing the end of academic libraries as we know them. Please know that these changes are just a result of defunding. They do not herald some bright digital future. There will just be less access to knowledge.

This sounds like noble stuff until you learn MIT just gutted its libraries. To quote, uh, Sally Kornbluth, without basic humanistic research, the pipeline will run dry. In daily life, people may not feel the effects right away, or even in 10 years. But we will feel it. fnl.mit.edu/may-june-202...

Libraries and librarians > Expensive, pedagogically questionable (at best) edtech

You aren't future proofing a library while eliminating library jobs.

Faculty: libraries and librarians need your advocacy BEFORE our collections are shuttered and our workers are fired. Whether you think your library is in trouble, and it almost definitely is, write to your provost and tell them how essential the library and library staff are to your work. Right now.

Library work is deeply relational. Our work is collab + people centered. The library is the ❤️ of the uni. Lib folx are the ❤️ of the uni. The relationships we nurture span the disciplines + bridge research & teaching. Libraries have never been needed more. Library folx have never been needed more

A university that does not understand the value of physical libraries staffed with real librarians is a university that does not understand how knowledge is kept.

Awful news. This isn't just a loss for the staff, it's a loss for the entire community. Dozens of people out of work and those who remain will be forced to do more work. Researchers, students, and faculty will lose access to information. Others will lose access to ILL material.

“I believe these decisions represent the most strategic path to preserving the MIT Libraries for our full community” is a hell of a thing to say about, among other decisions, removing staff from that community.

The official reason seems to be that use of printed materials is declining - which even if true doesn’t necessarily mean that one should close libraries and fire staff. MIT has amazing humanities programs; shouldn’t an institution this rich be able to support them? libraries.mit.edu/about/vision...

All (library) managers need to read this and, if resistant, ask themselves: "What do you gain by positioning yourself in opposition to your workers? If you cannot imagine changing your management style, then for the sake of your employees and the profession we urge you to consider a career change."

A splash of color to brighten your day

Catching up on my reading, starting with this gem from Dec: "Care in Uncertain Times." It calls for a people-centered and trauma-informed management approach as a corrective to the workplace culture of toxic resilience 🔥 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Altman casually commented that GenAI blurs the border between the authentic and the artificial, so that soon we won’t be able to differentiate between the two, which btw is the goal. Art, history, science, & democratic societies cannot function without truth, reality, expertise, and facts.

I was trying to explain what ChatGPT is to my mom (she thought it was a messaging app) and after my explanation and some thought, she volunteered, “Oh, so it’s the magic mirror in the beginning of Snow White when it only tells the queen what she wants to hear.” Perfect analogy.

Finally finished filling out my ballot for the California primary. It took a lot of research (as always). Did I love all of the choices? No, no I did not. But I’m nonetheless grateful for the right to vote, and even more grateful that our state supports voting by mail for all registered voters

I am clumsily saying that while I appreciate what is being said in this document I wish it was being said by other organizations with real power and concerns for social justice instead of, you know, the Vatican. This is what humanities departments should be doing! And media! Literature! The arts!

The paper in question: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

If Anthropic and OpenAI both made corn chips, Anthropic would have a flavour called "French Onion and Soured Cream" while OpenAI would call it "RANCHMAXXXING" in case you wondered how it is going marking these student exams

Sunday bouquet, courtesy of our garden

We live in a world with bears, so we need to teach kids how to live in a world with bears. This doesn't mean we need to teach kids to live in a room with bears. This post is about Generative A.I. in education.

Only if we show up and support them and their work—they are not our heroes or saviors. They are humans.

The sand here is glittery✨

(*I really really need folks to re-examine and question what people mean by “progress” because humans and animals and plants dying to make AI or tech or space travel possible is not progress fyi)

Was chatting w some colleagues re the CSU OpenAI contract last night. They interpreted the cost to be *per month* (the email claimed the next closest vendor would charge $8/user a month) for an unspecified length of time. Assuming 18 months, that would be ~$20M (original contract was $17M).

Hands down these are the coolest stickers ever 🤩@literaturegeek.bsky.social @wolfproofpress.com

Many highs this week to match other very hectic lows. Find your people, y’all. It matters. Life-giving chats this week with @grubstreetwomen.bsky.social @jajrk.bsky.social @plach.bsky.social @katinalynn.bsky.social @winnieepm.bsky.social that made everything make sense for a bit.

I'm not a big or terribly active account. I just got 50+ random followers in a matter of minutes. From what I can see, they're all new accounts, all with pet avatars (mostly cats and dogs), no bios, and no posts. I assume they're bots and I'll start blocking. Anyone else seeing this?

Now that I've signed the contract, excited to share my first book "Embedded Pedagogies: Digital Humanities Teaching and the Infrastructure of Change" is forthcoming with @openbookpublish.bsky.social! Much more info about it on the publisher site here. www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

I had to sit through an ed tech product pitch today so for all my #academicsky followers and comrades, here's what Turnitin is currently selling (stick around for what's on their product roadmap) so you can prepare yourselves to strenuously reject it. 🧵

Just saw prelim 💰 for Cal State's renewed OpenAI contract. Per the systemwide VC for Academic Affairs' email: $1.60/user up to 675,000 users = $1,080,000 Length of contract not specified That's $1M (not to mention other contracts) that could have been invested in hiring, raises, and scholarships

Oh my god I almost fell out of my chair when a senior colleague told me he was using ChatGPT to evaluate a tenure file as an external reviewer because he wanted to help the candidate but didn’t have the time to read all the work.

Provosts used to be the elected representative of the faculty to the university administration. In this sense, the provost functioned as the faculty's strongest advocate against administrative oversight. Now they're glorified hatchet men, empowered to execute the will of corrupt administrators.

"...if we continue to let our most experimental and interesting institutions fail in favor of administrative scale, we will find ourselves with a higher education system that is larger, more efficient and entirely devoid of the vibrancy that so many other countries are struggling to emulate."

On the one-year anniversary of EMPIRE OF AI, I am so, so excited to announce The AI Resist List, a new project that documents examples of resistance to the AI empires around the world 😍 airesistlist.org

Rule 1: don’t be a shitty boss Rule 2: if you are a shitty boss, quit Rule 3: if you’re a shitty boss and refuse to quit, don’t be stupid enough to put your shittiness in writing

remember when Google offered unlimited digital storage to colleges and universities and then when adoption reached the right levels rescinded that promise, capped everything, and started pricing those services without the subsidies? idk man just something I think about a lot