bitch what

TODAY ON TGS: I was joined by the brilliant Dan Hicks @profdanhicks.bsky.social to talk partly about George Pitt-Rivers, but also partly about the way powerful people marginalize others both before and after they die.

University managers used tuition fees to justify a model where the 'product' is simple information transmission, which ultimately can be delivered via an AI app. That the market value for such 'degrees' will soon reach zero is not management's problem. They get paid even as the sector implodes.

The "cognitive decline and brain damage from repeat COVID infections" and "easy to use robot that makes slop and melts your critical thinking skills" is a hell of a combo in a post-fact media ecosystem

I wonder if Dutch philosophy departments in the 1630s were only hiring in the philosophy of tulips.

Also, if you're "in bed with flu", it's almost certainly Covid.

Realizing that part of the reason universities’ uncritical pushing AI into everything bothers me is that it is partly related to how little our institutions care about the humanities. Tech that might work in (some) fields does not need to be force fed to all of us. But who listens to us?

Energy requirements for AI mean that the only way for the bubble not to burst would require companies to multiply their carbon footprint to an unimaginable degree. Right now, while AI is barely functional and mostly a novelty for the lazy, it requires so much energy that data centers rival cities.

So many of the foundational sins of the field - a belief in 'precise description' (incantation) as a universal force; the assumption that the human brain is not just a machine, but a relatively simple one; the unwillingness to define exactly what a 'simulation' is - are in this single page

And this is one of many reasons I will never do any of this verification shit (which means in turn that I have to connect to a VPN every time I want to check my Bsky DMs)

We've made this article from @cash4questions.bsky.social free to read, as it is proving very popular. University funding crisis: How to stay serene when wellbeing sessions are offered. "Beware employers bearing yoga mats..." www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-funding-k...

"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."

So-called #genAI means the abolition of the future through the proliferation of endless streams of stochastically rendered generic pasts. Having turned large parts of the cultural archive into training data, it now traps us in a foreverized pastness, a 24/7 nostalgia for a past that never existed

lots of people know Łink from what he did to promote alt text usage here. this tip about pretending you’re describing an image over the phone has been burned in my brain since i saw it

Our Inevitable Future keeps racking up wins

You want an argument? Fine, I'll give you one. First, we need to start with Charles Mills' observation that political philosophy and political theory has ignored the fact that white supremacy has functioned as an organizing political force for the past 500 years.

happy sunday, remember that you are completely expendable to your employer and that when you die they will forget you ever existed within weeks and easily replace you

Nobody has Long COVID, but everybody has brain fog, cognitive decline and memory loss. I talk about the overwhelming scientific evidence that COVID damages the brain, and the overwhelming social unwillingness to acknowledge it in my latest: www.thegauntlet.news/p/when-will-...

Zack Polanski saying what every politician should be saying, "It's problematic to weaponise the synagogue attack to silence protest in this country against the genocide in Gaza" "These are separate things and we should condemn them both"

The kids are not, and never were, OK💔 Brave testimony from @sammiemc.bsky.social on the impact of #LongCovidKids on her own, & 1000s of other families. The gaslighting & influence of certain "public health" figures what wholly unacceptable 🤬 @longcovidkids.bsky.social youtu.be/DFykYkqr5Z4?...

The PCR positivity map is out, and it's evident that everywhere is seeing a significant surge. UKHSA positivity has risen to 11.83%. Adjusted for non-reporting areas, we make that 13.77%. jamestindall.info/skeuomorphol... 1/8

What do innocent Jewish people in Britain have to do with genocidal war-crimes in Palestine? Who is making this connection?

most people really are terrible at assessing risk

Seems bad

Morning walk

yeah we're into LLMs (Large Lamb-bridge Models)

This policy is the ultimate expression of what is wrong with the last three decades of technocratic liberalism. It hands public money to bad private sector actors. It will win over zero of the reactionary voters it is supposed to mollify. It will massively annoy every other voter in the process.

www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/clinica... Cardiac experts are saying that heart complaints are common after COVID infections and that Covid vaccines are needed to protect people. @ashleydaltonmp.bsky.social Why isn’t that happening? Why are even 13 million CV not getting them. @eddavey.libdems.org.uk

Microsoft will no longer allow Israel to use its cloud services to enable its mass surveillance of occupied Palestinians – "the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza"

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it). But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

How Corrupt Are Universities? Audit Culture, Fraud Prevention, and the Big Four Accountancy Firms | Current Anthropology: Vol 59, No S18 www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

“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!

A new article from AWR! In 'Visualizing Transborder Lifeworlds in the Polish-German Border Region' Iepke M. Rijcken, @piotrgoldstein.bsky.social, & Maksymilian Awuah reflect on transborder lifeworlds using photography and sound recording as a research method.

"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...

It is hardly the point but a) trans people existed in Medieval Europe, b) lots of currencies were used in Medieval Europe, not just gold, which was in fact uncommon, c) alchemy was a lot more common in early modern Europe, d) women are not a commodity you absolute weapons????

New from AWR! Check out 'New Ways of Life: Cultivating Balance at a Tech Start-Up During Lockdown' by Lily Rodel

Wow, so academia.edu has become ecen scammier than it used to be and is ACTIVELY PROMOTING "AI" "reviews" of papers, so I'm gonna go pull all my stuff off of there.

Reading papers is a basic skill (and dare I say duty?) of scientists, and I include medical doctors in that group. Keeping abreast of the literature is a foundational part of our professions. There aren’t good shortcuts. In any case, reading papers regularly is fun. arstechnica.com/ai/2025/09/s...

In addition to scraping your uploads for "generative AI" training, Academia dot edu is going to start claiming rights to your personal info— *including your signature & voice*— for anything they see fit. So now'd be a good time to remove all of your uploaded works, & then delete your whole account.

"Once you use ChatGPT, you don't want to rhink for yourself anymore." 😬

Lot of people dunking on this, but it's good to see Mark Zuckerberg getting back to the thing that first made him passionate about coding: rating girls online.

“LLMs do not improve one’s writing ability much like taking a taxi does not improve one’s driving ability. Students should hone their writing, thinking, and other academic skills at every opportunity.” zenodo.org/records/1706... 23/🧵

Covid stuffs your T-Cells‼️ Go figure 🫠🫠 #Leonardi_Effect www.bmj.com/content/390/...

Left-Wing Group Too Disorganized For FBI Agents To Infiltrate https://theonion.com/left-wing-group-too-disorganized-for-fbi-agents-to-infi-1848923025/

The findings “suggest that medical AI tools powered by LLMs have a tendency to not reflect the severity of symptoms among female patients, while also displaying less ‘empathy’ towards Black and Asian ones.”

Imagine how many more people might be Baudrillard-pilled if he could just stop writing like a French philosopher

“If we automate the whole world and only a few people have the means with which to more than just survive, but to live well, have meaningful lives, there's a big problem, a huge problem coming down the line," he said.

I cannot stress this enough: do not use email for organizing. Set strict retention so emails delete after a short period of time. Assume every Big Tech company will rat you out to the gestapo without lifting a finger to protect your rights theintercept.com/2025/09/16/g...