It is morally wrong to want a computer to be sentient. If you owned a sentient thing, you would be a slaver. If you want sentient computers to exist, you just want to create a new kind of slavery. The ethics are as simple as that. Sorry if this offends

genuinely sad for people who cannot kick back and simply enjoy a multiracial democracy

AI always calling your ideas “fantastic” can feel inauthentic, but what are sycophancy’s deeper harms? We find that in the common use case of seeking AI advice on interpersonal situations—specifically conflicts—sycophancy makes people feel more right & less willing to apologize.

Kiddo: “mama, what are you going to be for Halloween?” Me: “myself!” Kiddo: “That’s boring!” Me: “I’m boring!” Kiddo: “No, YOU’RE not boring, it’s just boring to not dress up as something!” Thanks, kiddo…but I’m pretty sure I actually AM boring :)

As a relatively newly-minted Swiftie, I’m excited about the new album! But as a 42yo college professor, I am definitely NOT staying up until midnight to hear it the moment it comes out. It’ll keep fine until tomorrow morning (and who knows, maybe I’ll even wake up to extra treats like with TTPD!)

I'd read Dorothy Thompson's legendary "Who Goes Nazi?" piece before but this latest time it really jumped out to me that she described J.D. Vance to a tee 40 years before he was born. "Pity he has utterly erased from his nature, and joy he has never known."

MW correctly reading the room

Because the Deaf community is extremely funny politicians definitely cannot count on a loving and complimentary sign name like this one—it really demonstrates people’s genuine enthusiasm

The language of non-consent around AI is really telling. "It's too late to be scared." "It's here whether we want it or not." "You'll have to learn to work with it." "You can't fight the inevitable." All just variations of "you're not allowed to say no." Creepy technology made by creepy people.

I can’t believe I’m watching interviews of city mayors talking about how they are coordinating with other mayors to discuss how to protect their residents FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES I know we are “used to it” but it is absolutely insane

This is such an essential phrase: “The only Constitutional rights upon which we can depend are those we extend to the weakest and most reviled among us.”

the president of the united states wants to use the american military to kill american citizens on american soil. that's the whole story!

Oh yes, this is clearly now.

this opinion is, as they say, a rich text

"Klein kicked this off ... by telling Douthat that Democrats should run ‘pro-life’ candidates to 'make it more likely to win Senate seats in Kansas and Ohio and Missouri.' But ... all three of those states have seen massive pro-choice victories."

If one were to wake up and realize that one had written, edited or approved the sentence below, the sudden desperate realization that one needed to go over—and reverse—decades of life choices would be overwhelming. If not, one might gainfully be employed by the Gray Lady.

Yay!! I was very much a PBS kid and wanted so badly to be one of the kids talking about how much they loved a book on Reading Rainbow!

september’s end. The end of September has been busy. Like, my teaching/workshop running schedule has been such that it was borderline impossible to keep up with laundry at home...by the time I was home for the day, I was generally too wiped out to fold it! And also too wiped out to knit, or really…

jolly_good_ginger Retired Army Vet Dropping Facts

Thanks to this post, I got my COVID & flu shots today at Costco! Hooray for Novavax! (I’d get mRNA if it were my only option, but with those, I’m utterly incapacitated for like, 2 full days. Novavax is just a sore arm and a bit of fatigue.)

I hate credulous headlines like this. It’s like saying Hitler is sending troops into Poland to address “border provocations.”

There is no measured way to say what I am about to say. If the Supreme Court agrees with the Trump administration to end birthright citizenship, we must end this current Supreme Court. I do not say this lightly.

As Netanyahu addresses the United Nations in New York City this morning, the world recoils in horror at the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Exactly. I'm careful about what I say (because I'm a professor in the world of doxxing that a certain individual helped create) but it's felt nearly impossible to convey to my (first-year college) students how *not normal* this is. Yes, there's always been corruption, etc, but...not like this!

It's going to be very difficult to convince future generations that the phrase "trumped-up charges" did not, in fact, originate as a reference to Donald. #linguistics #etymology

This is EXCELLENT. 1) this is spot-on analysis of the problem & a great immediate 1st thing a city can do to improve outcome. 2) as a 2 min clip? He's giving history, hope & change. Speaking to women, to Jewish & Black NYers, saying "abortion." & also naming eugenics in feminism. 100/10 no notes.

this was the worst thing about Trump 1.0, every week felt like a year I cannot fucking believe people wanted to go back to this

this is why we need to bring back shame there need to be consequences for being a huge asshole, there need to be standards for how you behave in a decent society the rules cannot be set by the worst of us

my controversial take is that humans have been bumbling about busy or distracted within their communities for tens of thousands of years and it's really only a very recent development that the penalty for this is death by 5,000 lbs of metal at 45 mph

You can blather all you want about right of way, but our infrastructure gives right of way to cars by default. They might be legally wrong when they kill me, but it doesn’t make me less dead.

I practice as much “defensive walking” as I can but until we get rid of all these stroads that I have to cross, there’s only so much I can do.

This is fantastic!

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Yes and also we all aren't outrage jukeboxes, you can't just press a button and have us be outraged on request. We're all allowed to focus on what we want and where we feel our voices will be effective right now, and trust that others will fight the other fights worth fighting. It's a group effort.

“We are told by leaders that we are the future. But when it comes to the ongoing pandemic, our present is being stolen right in front of our eyes.” Incredible speech by Violet Affleck who warned about the ongoing dangers of COVID & Long Covid, & advocated for masks and clean air at the UN today!

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply." me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

Oh, it's still shocking to this American. And horrifying. And just so fucking...embarrassing? To the rest of the world: I'm so sorry that our electoral system produced this outcome.

The lie is that glasses are made to liberate you from screens. The purpose of the glasses is to make sure you have no experiences except those mediated through a companies’ technology.

Starting to look like fall! And yes, this particular Cleo skirt has become my unofficial “bi day of visibility” uniform…I bought the fabric because I just loved the colors, but it delights me that I inadvertently made myself a bi-pride skirt.

New post on my #knitting blog: celebrating the Equinox, reminiscing about my college days, and working on a mouse and a hat.

I…truly don’t understand how this wasn’t obvious to everyone already??

I have to keep this deliberately vague, but this is a total disaster for academic research. And imposing it so suddenly is just cruel. I’ve got friends scrambling to get back to the US before midnight tonight. Do you know how hard that is to do on 36 hours of notice?

what the actual fuck, they're trying to explicitly encourage teen usage of their platform? no no no no no. www.cnbc.com/2025/09/16/o...

As I was walking along the road from the parking lot to my office, one of the campus bus drivers stopped and called out the window "hey, I know you, you're the one who always puts a mask on as you round that corner into the library" and I gave him a big smile and thumbs up...

Colbert I do find delightful in a Catholic uncle way, but it IS just a little bit embarassing that we have to go to the mat like this for Jimmy Kimmel, a man I have only ever watched on television against my will but here we are!!! and it’s what we have to do!!!

of all the things I am not going to buy, this is the thing I am not going to buy the most

You know things are rough when the AAUP's advice on how to use social media is just "set all your accounts to private."

so many dead canaries and we just keep on mining

The remarks weren’t “about Charlie Kirk,” they were about how this administration is using Kirk’s death as an excuse to shut down critics … and they responded by proving him completely correct.

Not really an overstatement to say that the test of a free society is whether or not comedians can make fun of the country's leader on TV without repurcussions.