Some thoughts on AI and intimacy...

Name them shame them

'But AI is useful to *me*' is a nonsensical argument that some people seem to bring up as a demand for universal approval. A lot of things are useful to a lot of people, that doesn't make them good. I could enlist a load of toddlers to mine for coal in my back garden but 'look at all the

Great pre-loved Tarot reading. Really looking forward to the rest of 1993

Two hours trying to write a single email, I am feeling overwhelmingly thick today.

As we build upon such radical imagination, we have to understand a key truth: there’s no AI in freedom.

I feel the need for some conniving, palace intrigue style easy reading - Wolf Hall, Game of Thrones, Pillars of Earth style - any suggestions? #books

Come to this event where we will throw all the robots into the lava pit

A bit like AI funding in general this is just a circular grift with very little to do with students or teachers. Assessment systems have been broken a long time - since way before AI - and fixes like LLMs or TurnItIn don't improve things for anybody, they just normalise an automated production of

273 comments, not a single one positive. Irony is that even AI enthusiasts couldn't care less about this, it's a gimmick that pleases literally nobody except for the tech companies it helps prop up. Very Keir Starmer.

'Expert' is a term that often covers a multitude of sins. The fantasy of technocracy does a lot to ignore the ideological groundings of even the most good faith experts.

Had missed this but driverless cars are now being tested in London. Underlying all the enthusiasm is a desire to cut labour costs and not much else, safety is a fig leaf to whitewash the reckless testing on London streets. www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/tec...

There's a novel matchup between 'we need to shoot everyone now' and 'no we need to let more people die as motivation for protest' around in some corners. Marginal cases, nothing to do with real questions of how to resist, but still interesting to see competing delusions at work.

I fully support nonviolent resistance tactics but the sense of inevitable justice some people seem to assume it leads to is... difficult.

The stories that will (eventually) come out of this are going to cripple US society.

I'm not well informed on military stuff, I'm not even the kind of middle aged man who pretends he is well informed on social media but the 'Russia will destroy us all stuff' has never made sense to me. They've lost of 100ks in Ukraine, plus material and economic losses - they still haven't won a

Failing to sleep with the cat next to me giving himself a full, focused, slobbery clean. Lovely.

Plenty more where that came from.

There's just no point at all in listening to Trump is there? Words and actions are entirely random impulses of a diseased mind, there's nothing coherent to read in the rhetoric.

greatest steam update of all time, because of one unnecessary detail

You can say Merry Protein again

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

It's at least amusing that the few remaining Starmer fans have retreated into their final bunker of 'well he may be massively mediocre, hugely disliked and completely ineffectual but what's wrong with that?' Fair play, it's definitely a hill to die on.

Some thoughts on Grok and LLMs.

*how* grok produced porn and CSAM shouldn’t be of primary importance/concern to regulators. rather, they should treat this as evidence of failure to comply with rules and proceed to enforcement i.e. ban the platform till X shows it complies with regulations

'It was never good online' is a fair comment given the legacies of sexism, racism and bigotry that have been there since the early days of the internet. At the same time though the *tools* were significantly better than they are now and would, often, have been a lot more effective for building

'This isn't us' as the US, seemingly, gets into another conflict in Venezuela. May not be *you* but it absolutely is your country. Trump is a repeat on this one, not an innovation.

More musicians need ways to just give them money on their sites. I don't want physical copies, I won't buy digital through most platforms - I just want to send some cash direct to you.

Quick thought...

Pat Butcher is in Der Bunker, Anthony Hopkins film about Hitler's last days. She plays a fanatical Nazi cook. Felt this needed pointing out.

One impressive thing about some AI advocates is the honesty of them. Loads of enthusiasm seems to boil down to 'what I do is completely pointless and LLMs mean I don't even have to bother pretending otherwise'. Summarising their entire jobs away.

A.B.S. - Always be Sharing. Lost the article years ago but recall reading a personal account from an indie musician about how giving away their music digitally, for free pre-streaming had offered a far better income through extra physical copies, merch and touring than Spotify would ever provide.

My kitten has decided he's a brave and fierce hunter. His prey? Earthworms, which he keeps bringing in. I hate it.

A very old short story of mine which I'm re-posting for the AI age. Odd to think how there were innate discomforts back then which fed so well into the work I do on resistance with my PhD now. dylanorchard.com/2025/12/21/t...

"This promise of an AI future, is really just a collective anxiety that wealthy people have about how well they're gonna be able to control us in the future." - @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit. Incredible words. Listen to all of it!

It's the laziness of the lie that gets you. Decades of demonising refugees, trans people, Muslims, anyone who 'deserves' to be bombed that day - our culture is riddled with hateful rhetoric straight from the media and state. None of it ever mentioned, cared about or treated as anything but normal.

Predicting that some universities will soon pledge to provide AI-free instruction, and that this will be an advantage in recruiting and training top students

So much for copyright as a defence.

the way that ai is being advertised now is that everyone has to pretend to be incompetent and incredibly incapable and useless at everything

every time i read about one of these college presidents promising to reinvent the liberal arts education i think of "marge v. the monorail"

Have added a little reading list @ dylanorchard.com/books/ too for some specific AI critical stuff + general resistance/context suggestions.

Adding to my personal site I'm going to start building some resource lists (can never have too many, right?) including a list of zines about/relevant to AI resistance. Have made a minor start but if you come across anything then be sure to let me know... @ dylanorchard.com/ai-resistanc...

What a great headline

This is why OpenAI is selling so aggressively to education at all levels—they want to create entire generations of users incapable of reading, writing and thinking without ChatGPT to hold their hands And teachers and professors should call this out for what it actually is

It was crystal clear that Mel was an absolutely deranged fascist crackpot ten years ago, fifteen, and you’ll notice it has barely hindered her career, not even when the Oslo killer cited her in his crazy manifesto. Quite the opposite, if anything.

Step up future Labour voters, how can you justify standing by this party?

Scavenger Hunt. Find a peer-reviewed study not funded by an EdTech entrepreneur that convincingly correlates screens of any kind with positive student outcomes of any kind.

It might just be me, but men telling me ‘this would make a great podcast’ makes me grind my teeth

This is a good piece but god almighty is it sad, sad, sad

F***k the techbros..