Earlier this year, I made the grounded case for why we should still believe in the promise of America. Today’s America is something we inherited. But tomorrow’s is still for us to make. America’s problems are solved problems. The blueprints exist. Better days are ahead.

Really love the headline graphic for @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social's article here: I keep coming back to *taste* and *accountability* being core (human) contributions to knowledge work, and they map pretty perfectly onto "decide" and "deliver."

Dave Eggers, on NPR's Wildcard with Rachel Martin: www.npr.org/2026/06/11/n...

CDOT lost the best of our team yesterday. We're heartbroken. In memory of Riley O'Neil, please refer to these bike racks as "Riley Racks". He led Chicago's bike parking program for several years. Our hearts are broken, but we want to make sure his legacy lives on 💙🚲 Please spread the word

more commonly known as "grades" in "classes that they took"

Good corollary to @randomwalker.bsky.social's "AI as normal technology" - when AI is a finite, well-defined, useful part of a thing that delivers value, you can engineer around a lot of its downsides (also known as "engineering")

We need Ronnie's energy in every higher ed classroom like yesterday

"Claude Code does not have a professional reputation! It can’t take accountability for what it’s done." Can't repeat this enough to my students - Claude doesn't have a reputation (in the same way you do), but it also can't learn or communicate or be relied upon like you can.

There's a PhD thesis worth of things to unpack here within the "self hosted" ecosystem - so many software projects that don't have the engagement imperative behind their development, and I find that they can be a little harder to use but are infinitely more respectful of my intentions.

My proposal: as the first project, students groups would propose different policies for ChatGPT use in their final project, including radically restructuring the final project. Because things might have to change, deeply. And then they would argue, and vote, and I would do whatever they said.

This is going to hurt American competitiveness and result in fewer scientific advancements, fewer chances to train the next generation of scientists, and a lower quality of life for everyone. We need to reverse these harmful changes to our critical scientific infrastructure.

This is one of the worst violations of research ethics I've ever seen. Manipulating people in online communities using deception, without consent, is not "low risk" and, as evidenced by the discourse in this Reddit post, resulted in harm. Great thread from Sarah, and I have additional thoughts. 🧵

One of the many reasons to fix things here in the USA rather than search for greener pastures.

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

While I can see LLMs in general as being potentially useful for CS education, copilot-style autocomplete is unequivocally harmful to learning. Reading this paper feels like watching a horror movie, where I'm screaming "turn it off! just turn it off!" at the screen constantly

Academia isn’t perfect, but it offers a rare space to pursue knowledge for its own sake. If research were fully privatized, only profit-driven questions would get asked. Yet many of the most transformative discoveries began as curiosity-driven inquiries whose value wasn’t clear for years.

A lot to chew through in this fantastic piece by @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-a... The models exist now as "Normal Technology," how we use them and how society adapts to them is where the impactful and interesting work is happening.

This is the best metaphor I have seen that may actually resonate with the students I teach re LLM usage.

RETVRN

The Aussies understand this - probably one of my favorite takeaways from a Bluey episode

“From April 14-18, select UBC graduate programs at UBC Vancouver will re-open their applications for US citizens to be considered for Sept 2025 or Jan 2026 entry - they are ready to provide quick admissions decisions for these applicants“ #gradstudent #gradschool www.grad.ubc.ca/us-applicant...

The advice I'm hearing is that students on visas should be checking SEVIS daily. Ideally, students' colleges & universities could do that for them - if they have the capacity.

Fantastic work by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social as always www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/o... reminds me of the @authorjmac.bsky.social quote: I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.

if a computer is a bicycle for the mind, LLMs are zero gravity for the mind: seems magical, allows you to do things you never thought possible, causes massive muscle atrophy if you don't religiously exercise, and over the long term causes irreparable bodily harm

More Dr. Xiaofeng Wang details. Here is a timeline document that’s been going around the community.

New information about XiaoFeng Wang from this CNBC article: * IU terminated his tenured faculty position * Wang contacted IU's AAUP president as IU conducted what had first appeared to be a “routine” investigation over a grant application and how he reported a publication of his curriculum vitae.

@matthewdgreen.bsky.social We (privacy/FoE folks) talk a lot about the "chilling effect" of certain policies on citizens, but this is an unwelcome case study. I know some academics at IU, but I don't want to ask what's going on, *in case answering lands them in trouble that could cost their job* 1/2

If any Chicago FOIA/Pacer enthusiasts can help out with this - developing story in my research community where we really don’t know what’s going on: talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/sketc...

Love this framing - the million dollar question is really, how do we keep the baby and throw out the bath water?

"The mythology of founders and Silicon Valley too often obscures the indispensable role of American taxpayers in the innovation economy"—my recent remarks to @bloomberg.com about the critical importance of federally funded research. www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Matt makes some great points here, but disappearing messages ARE available by default - you just have to speak them into the voice messages feature. They even get delivered with speech to text nowadays, and have a “$user kept a message from you” notification if someone chooses to save your message.

We already have the technology for better toasters, we just need the willpower to make them m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ofx... (courtesy the always amazing @techconnectify.bsky.social)

yolo indeed! Not only did Bluesky introduce an awesome video scrolling feature, anyone that wants to can deploy their own swiping video feed, check out mine: bsky.app/profile/kayt... great launch @hailey.at and team!!!

Got that swipe through videos itch that you can't scratch anymore? On @mcuban.bsky.social's advice I built TikTok... but using videos posted to BlueSky. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be! mvp.foru.page This is totally an MVP - slow and a bit buggy but usually works!

days like these really make you pine for a city charter, don't they! @joefergchicago.bsky.social

I just want to take a second to appreciate YouTube railfans. My son and I watch your trains all the time and not once have you tried to hawk factor or surfshark vpn, you just show us trains, which gives me hope for the internet

I made yet another link-in-bio app handle.place, but you can use your link as your Bluesky handle! Based off of the awesome librelinks by github.com/urdadx. ⚠️⚠️⚠️NOTE: if you change your bsky handle, someone else can claim the original, so be careful and register it with a backup account if you do!

Homework is basically "do this thing, because the process of doing it leads to skill acquisition." Now that "do this thing" is functionally equivalent to "ask ChatGPT to do this thing," we have to go back to the drawing board for assignment design (in CS, but probably also everywhere else too).

what no I haven't become overly reliant on LLMs why would you say that

I'm writing a book on secure full stack web dev, would love feedback: 484.cs.uic.edu/readings/

Confused by the docs for the @atproto/oauth-client-node library? I was. Here's a minimum working example: github.com/kaytwo/atpro...