My supervisor, Bhuta, monitors the bottling of the Scottish Heavy. His face is on the bottle, so he has much at stake in the quality control process. I was aiming for a lighter red than the reddish brown. Not that this color is anywhere out of style, I just wanted a prettier red.

In a rigidly hierarchical society like this one, people on these machines are barely a rung above pedestrians in the eyes of drivers and urban planners. But every time I see a person riding one, I think, they probably have no idea how hip they would be in Brooklyn. #BanCars

"AI" made the shitty singularity even shittier. #ShittyFuture

We committed the original sin with Napster. And not because of copyright.

Admitted to my students that my publication in my school's undergrad research journal could be found in the bowels of the internet, and everyone promptly pulled up Google. 😬

Those of us who care about efficient and just transit systems for a liveable yearn for the 1890s. #BanCars

This technology is so clearly designed to profit off cheating and struggling students--its insidious. And yet universities keep announcing how they're allowing this company into its midst, to exploit and incapacitate our students even more

Reminder @theguardian.com has a partnership with OpenAI; which explains this thinly sourced excuse of an article that relies on ONE Masters student and OpenAI's International Education Lead countered by measly words of "caution" from ONE university admin.

Really the name alone should have gotten us talking about digital sovereignty.

Second such vacuous article from the Guardian in as many days. I'm at the point where the student most on track for an A is the one obviously just freely associating about the reading. The associations may be off base, but at least they're thinking about it.

If knowledge is a zero sum game where only one of two mutually exclusive views can prevail, we are all already losers. *Ahem,* speaking as a former high school debate captain.

The students are on to us.

Called it on the surveillance and lost touch with reality, missed on racial and intercultural harmony.

𝗨𝗻𝗶-𝗦𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗿 𝗯𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 Dozent: Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träu- Studentin: Moment, Moment, WIE FRÜH morgens? Student: Ich frage ChatGPT! 𝘈𝘭𝘭𝘦 𝘬𝘭𝘰𝘱𝘧𝘦𝘯 𝘣𝘦𝘨𝘦𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘵 𝘢𝘶𝘧 𝘪𝘩𝘳𝘦 𝘛𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘩𝘦.

Speaking tomorrow on atmosphere and the longer history of #CliFi at Jamia Millia Islamia.

All in a day's work.

Lunar eclipse over Delhi.

Course prep done right.

Teaching "Faust" tomorrow and Mephisto has a message for me.

they’re so close

As Thomas Pynchon reminds us, it is ok to be a Luddite.

I don't like to be one of those wave things around professors, but I did wave my handwritten draft of an article I'm developing at students yesterday, suggesting they consider it.

Hello it’s me Sam Altman I have a zillion dollar idea it’s a chat bot that tells teenagers to kill themselves and you can generate csam with it and it poisons the air and water and it’s wrong most of the time and we’re going to put it in your refrigerator and stuff 👍 I need more money for this btw

Höchste Zeit, love to see it.

After hitting the heatwave in Turkey during my #OttomanEmpireTour2025 cycle tour, and another in Italy that made international news in 2023, I don't know if I'll plan another summer cycle tour south of the Alps ever again. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

This is amusing but the real Road to 270 goes through banning LinkedIn jargon ❌ maximizing ❌ optimizing ❌ influencer ❌ thought leader ❌ synergize ❌ content creation ❌ circle back ❌ drill down Get on it, Dems 😄

Recalls this essay, one of the more worthy pieces of tech nostalgia I've read. "Perched on a single, wide paw, the machine looks perky and attentive, as if it’s there to serve you, rather than you it." www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

But seriously, #BanCars.

Joseph Goebbels had a PhD in philology, MechaHitler is a PhD in your pocket!

A dean big on "project-based learning" wanted me to assign mock press releases for the German culture ministry in my survey course, "German Society and Culture." Considering the governments Germany has had these last 200 years and how they defined "German society and culture," I declined.

Goetheborg

"Project-based learning" might be all well and good, but writing is the coin of the realm. It's how knowledge is made and spread, and it is why the siren song of AI is such an intractable problem. Giving up on writing means selling the farm.

And to think we laughed at Grampa Simpson for piecing together American history mostly from the back of sugar packets.

«History», you know, that thing where stuff from the past is mindlessly scrambled around and synthesized by #genAI into something that looks like a random game map from a Civilization clone

I will be trying out some of the AI-proor assignments.

But seriously, #BanCars.

"Death in Venice" is #CliFi.

2003 was the last good year on the internet. #ShittyFuture

One of the more minor awful things about having a media-savvy right-wing demagogue for a president is that when non-Americans find out I'm from the US, they'll say "Trump" just to see my reaction. Like teasing a sea anemone.

I was told to read Arthur C. Clarke's novelization of "2001: A Space Odyssey" before watching the film (yes, the novel is an adaptation of the film) so that I would "get" the ending. Lesson learned: revealing an ending is nowhere near as much a "spoiler" as explaining an ending.

Farewell, Istan-/ Catstanbul. #OttomanEmpireTour2025

Me, a lit major. (Except then I went to grad school).

And a free MP3 of this song, in which the singer imagines her body falling off a cliff, was bundled with Windows 98! That is how I discovered Björk.

I'd ask "AI" if it's Team Moby-Dick or Team Middlemarch, but I believe drinking water should be for drinking. (And salt water is for 🐳.)

The current crisis of the German constitutional court nominations process is based on the far right successfully selling the nomination of a very mainstream female law professor as an attack on the Basic Law and German society so that they can effective choose an alternative.

I might be totally wrong but “AI literacy” sounds like a Russian reversal joke. With any other form of literacy, they do the prompting and you do the learning. With AI, you’re tasked with the prompting, and the companies learn (from) how you use the bots.

Today is Tridi the 23rd of Thermidor in the year 233. Thermidor is the month of heat. Today we celebrate lentils.#JacobinDay More information on lentils