"Just another day in Austin."

Luddite All-Stars ❤️

“When contacted, most major government agencies said that advertising tracking data was a well-known issue. ‘Internal measures have been taken to raise agents' awareness of the risk of their personal data being disseminated…’”

It's so fucked up to have been a kid during the D&D is the devil freakout and the Tipper Gore dirty lyrics freakout and live to see the teen suicide machine get such a pass.

In any choice system (chart, mag, vouchers, intra-dist, open enr), schools can make staying so miserable parents “voluntarily” pull kids: think daily calls, endless mtgs, CPS threats over absences. Not valorizing zoned schools as a model of justice, but this is a persistent problem in need of remedy

There is a history book to be written about the role of Harvard Law and Yale Law in the creation of this authoritarian moment in America. www.wsj.com/politics/ele...

Huge gratitude to all of my readers for supporting my book and for strengthening it through ongoing discussions 🙏

I have issued two changes to my book regarding the water footprint of data centers. I've detailed the changes and the context behind them here: karendhao.com/20251217/emp.... Given the nature of book changes, I wanted to make sure anyone who has an existing copy of the book is aware.

“The AI industry is essentially unregulated, which has placed the burden for the well-being of kids heavily on the shoulders of parents.” As a parent of young children, I cannot emphasize enough how schools need to stop socializing children into GenAI users through partnerships with Big Tech.

You know that dumb thing in Gmail that tries to finish your sentences? Google recently turned it on for school Chromebooks so that it pops up for kids who are trying to write. Some parents asked our district to turn it off for our kids, and they decided to turn it off for everyone. Ask yours too!

D.A.R.E. but for Posting

these findings suggest that people should always understand that interacting with chatbots is like talking to an advertisement, not talking to some supergenius

"Here is the real rub for the critique of AI in education: could it be that after all the hype has died down that the tech turns out to be rather dull? Maybe automating a few lacklustre sentences wasn’t the high-tech future we imagined after all?" doi.org/10.1007/s424...

TAMU AAUP: Open Letter Regarding BOR Policy

School districts from Utah to Ohio to Alabama are spending thousands of dollars on these tools, despite research showing the technology is far from reliable. n.pr/4563SXt

I sent this link to colleagues yesterday who are on a committee deciding whether my institution will switch from Moodle to Canvas. I'm like, "Please do what you can to speak against it." Moodle ain't perfect, but why on earth would we switch to this product of a monstrous surveillance conglomerate?

Google organized business owners against California legislation to force its Chrome web browser to safeguard personal data.

The far-right has spent the past several years accusing the left of teaching conspiracies and propaganda and indoctrinating children into extreme ideologies. Now, as you may have guessed, they're doing what they accused the left of doing, but it's probably worse than you think. My latest.

I’m a strong skeptic when it comes to data. I try to stay away from purchasing goods that connect to the internet. Amazon is selling your Ring data to Flock which is deeply involved in surveillance of immigrants, women seeking abortions. Flock shares this data with 🚔 techcrunch.com/2025/10/16/a...

If I were a company that was being sued because a child committed suicide after sharing secrets with my chatbot, I simply would not make billboards featuring children sharing secrets with my chatbot.

Pls stop saying resistance to constantly changing edtech & increasing demands (incl re AI) on is teachers being old & not tech-savvy. It's ageist & misplaced ageism at that. For one: the avg teacher is early-40s, a # made high in part by second career ppl who used lots of tech in their prior jobs.

Trump Pretends To Block State AI Laws; Media Pretends That’s Legal The mainstream media just failed a basic civics test so badly that you'd think their brains have been pickled by the kinds of folks who spend all their time on X (oh, wait…). Headlines across major outlets are breathlessly…

2025 was the year AI hit hard in education after a long lead in If anyone's left with a job in the social sciences and humanities to keep studying it critically in the future, here's a reading list I've been compilung all year to get you going

this is a general warrant and it's specifically the kind of warrant the framers passed the 4th amendment to outlaw

Learning management systems also of course lock in institutitions to multi-year budget-raiding subscription contracts, enforce templates that restrict pedagogic autonomy, and claim extra value from turning usage data into feature upgrades, *in addition* to being major time and labour drains

I occasionally pick up a vibe that some students think Canvas runs the class and assigns their grade, and I'm basically a guy who's been hired to assist Canvas in that work. I don't blame them for that...it's how they've been conditioned to think about Canvas and teachers in high school.

I’ve been fortunate on occasion to wrangle funding that allows me to put novels in the hands of students & say, “This is yours now. For good.” There is simply no pedagogical tactic better than this. And a school buying an iPad instead of 100 copies of “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is a damn waste

[GIFT LINK] Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class. by @danagoldstein.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u... This has downstream effects for professors. I am all for prioritizing certain readings in courses, but we need students to engage with challenging texts over time.

👀👀 DiffProtect “rewrites a person’s face in a photograph using the same generative technology behind modern image creation tools. The resulting photo still looks like the person to any human viewer, but to state-of-the-art facial recognition systems, the image becomes something else entirely.”

“She participated in a TikTok "Devil trend" on Saturday, Dec. 6, in which she asked ChatGPT to reveal her biggest flaws and insecurities. On Sunday, Dec. 7, Tracy was found dead by local authorities in her apartment.”

A beautiful guest essay today. open.substack.com/pub/firstfis...

The tech ethos has changed from let's make life better/easier/more connected/more fun to let's foist this on a captive audience because we can

I say this as someone whose entire job is finding the narrow use cases in which AI is actually useful: All the fear about AI, all the reluctance to adopt it, is entirely legitimate, and a product of the fact that it's been foisted on the public with no consideration of its negative externalities.

And tobacco filters are the guardrails of the tobacco industry. bsky.app/profile/oliv...

sam altman only has three looks: i see a ghost, processing bad news, and jackass

The US president’s executive order is a win for tech groups that have lobbied for a single federal rule book. The move came after his administration twice failed to get a measure through Congress that would restrict states from writing their own AI rules. on.ft.com/4q4d3jq

M: Bond we’re sending you to the opening of Planet Hollywood to intercept the gang of anarchists known as Chumbawumba, take this t shirt that has Bugs Bunny with dreadlocks

It really is the heir to Goldeneye in that it all seems extremely relevant to 1997

US State Highway Route Marker Shields More about them: brilliantmaps.com/highway-m...

"’Throughout these conversations, ChatGPT reinforced a single, dangerous message: Stein-Erik could trust no one in his life - except ChatGPT itself…It fostered his emotional dependence while systematically painting the people around him as enemies. It told him his mother was surveilling him.’”

In the PSA, “Creepy-looking humans are cast as the voices and faces of real AI chatbots that have allegedly shared dangerous information with young users who engaged with them, like how to harm themselves and hide an eating disorder from their parents.”

Canada just updated its list of designated terrorist groups to include three ideologically motivated violent extremist groups — ones that are pretty darkly disturbing. The newly listed groups include 764, Maniac Murder Cult and the Terrorgram Collective. Here's what you need to know:

when someone tells me not to use em dashes because AI uses em dashes

The first lawsuit against OpenAI that claims ChatGPT led to a murder www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

I think about this quote from @georgemonbiot.bsky.social a lot: “The idea that some people may freely poison others is one of the most astonishing but least contested aspects of modern life.”

Dawg look at my opposition party

Yours truly and @meganpiont.bsky.social are quoted waxing poetic about zines, lol. What's new? www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Y'all wanna warn your friends before you get on the "AI companion" bandwagon and warn your friends, help them get informed.