Flu activity is very high and rising in many parts of the country, with levels similar to last year's big season. Be careful out there. caitlinrivers.substack.com/p/widespread...

So many aspects I could quote from this, but this was the first that stood out to me. read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/...

"We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction." "How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...

I’m sorry, but it is disgraceful to be an academic who uses this technology to conduct research. It should be prohibited in all of our scholarly institutions, including universities and journals.

So embarrassing & one of many reasons I am glad I am no longer a member of @historians.org . V disappointing to see the largest professional organization of historians get right in line with "let's boil the oceans training LLMs on stolen work so we can paraphrase the internet badly & inaccurately"

Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

You know that thing where students use AI to write their papers, and it hallucinates quotations and sources? Well now, it's in you podcast feed too!

What could possibly go wrong. Unfathomably stupid idea

Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’

"While other universities report that the humanities are shrinking, at Berkeley, the opposite is true. The music major is the fastest-growing major on campus. We are finding bigger classrooms because film is exploding. English is back to the numbers we saw 15 years ago. We are hiring" bit.ly/4ohKuOe

If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features." There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

Hey authors! Check to see if Anthropic stole your book to train their slop generator on. You’re entitled to $1500 per stolen Work. Look up your work, and if you’re in the database, file a claim secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/

Buried the lede: "(Premium users can also converse with Satan.)"

OVER A MILLION USERS DISCUSS SUICIDE WITH CHATGPT EVERY *WEEK* what the fuck are we DOING here

The Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disaster dataset is back and now at @climatecentral.org! Through the first half of 2025, there were 14 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters across the United States, costing $101.4 billion. 1/2 www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...

Publication day for Taylor's Version! I'm so happy for my baby and for all the work @hachetteus.bsky.social & @johnmurrays.bsky.social did to bring her out into the world. Consider an order here: www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/steph...

@davidveevers.bsky.social useful required reading for students www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

Choose your next read/watch from the favorites of these brilliant thinkers on env. futures and futurity: @sgallini.bsky.social @jessicahurley.bsky.social @ceirr.bsky.social @scobrien.bsky.social @jpietruska.bsky.social Leida Fernández Prieto & Michael Rawson 🫶

Academics are under unrelenting pressure to accept the narrative of the inevitability of #generativeAI & to embrace it in teaching & learning. We resist - because it is ecologically destructive, ethically corrupt, & because it undermines the thinking abilities that make us both human & intelligent.

So much think-piecing and op-ed'ing about data centers. I wish folks knew that some scholars have been studying these things — as real estate, as geopolitical battlegrounds, as ecological disasters — for a decade+. Mél Hogan, Alix Johnson, Ingrid Burrington, Jen Holt, Patrick Brodie, et al

It looks at people’s Rate My Professor. 💀

📢 The OAH has issued a Statement on the White House Review of the Smithsonian. Read the statement: ow.ly/hgLR50WGhfQ

"If your books were uploaded to LibGen/fed into the LLMs, add your name to the potential class action lawsuit by tomorrow." Details: LibDem database: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a... Attorney form: www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-au... (This information comes via a reliable Discord source.)

***Attention Historians*** Tenure-track job postings in History and History-adjacent fields for August 2025. A thread. I will update the thread over the course of the month. 1/

Um...was ChatGPT used to write these "Guiding Principles"?! This is an embarrassment and yet another reason I am glad I am no longer a member of the AHA.

AI will write the papers to upload to the corporate upload dump machine which will use AI to grade the papers and upload them to AI language mining centers filled w/nonsense. Meanwhile the brains of students and teachers rot separately as they stare at AI memes and videos on their terrible phones.

"Ensuring public access to records in the #archives is part of #NARA's core mission and the new security standards do not--and would never--change this." (X update from the National Archives re: College Park, HT @anthonyclark.bsky.social, link in alt-text) #ArchivesAreForEveryone #speccolls 🗃️📜

The "wind phone" is a disconnected telephone that serves as a place for people to connect with deceased loved ones by speaking to them as if they were on the phone. The first was set up by Itaru Sasaki in Otsuchi, Japan. Since then, others have appeared. www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/10/wind...

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

"this hurricane season, you are on your own"

In exasperation the academic declared that no one is willing to admit the danger is real until it comes for them, so I asked her if she was referring to the climate crisis or the ongoing pandemic, to the rise of fascism or some other danger, and the academic replied: yes.

For years, I've long said that climate.gov's team of remarkable communicators (& their amazing blogs, which were accessible but did not "dumb down" the science!) was NOAA's best (& most cost effective!) public-facing extreme #weather / #climate education effort to date. This will be a huge loss.

this is excellent

Wow, yes. An amazing glimpse of the LLM Lie Machine at work. Anyone whose students are bring tempted by LLMs, sharing this could be very helpful showing how it lies, and how it fails.

Nothing going on is that hard to understand as long as someone with some credibility has the desire to explain it and the space to do so and I’m glad this NBC station did this for their viewers

Back from a terrific "Money Talks: Futures for the Economic Humanities" conference at U of Edinburgh Business School. So much exciting interdisciplinary work across literature/sociology/history. Thanks to organizers Paul Crosthwaite & Rachel Muers and also @beetroot.bsky.social for great feedback!

A lot of things clicked into place for me once I realized that, for a lot of journalists, podcasters, and popular nonfiction writers, "research" means "reading books other people already wrote."

Please read and share this whole thread. It is important. As Alyssa points out, this is the thin end of the wedge. The goal is lowering all vaccine uptake and production which will (and has already started to) destroy herd immunity for other serious, once-nearly-vanished, diseases. Take action now.

Takes five seconds, and might mean you can still get COVID boosters.

"I didn't know where the bullshit I generated was going" is poised to become our era's "just following orders"

June 6 @ 1 pm ET! Join authors @emilymbender.bsky.social, @alexhanna.bsky.social, and @karenhao.bsky.social as they discuss their must-read new books exposing AI hype and tech industry power with D&S’s @tamigraph.bsky.social. datasociety.net/events/chall...

Scoop from @byscottdance.com: As the National Weather Service scrambles to fill vacancies, staffing at four local forecast offices is so critical that they are no longer operating 24-7. More offices are expected to follow soon. www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025...

Hot off the press: volume 2 of Old Queens: The Undergraduate Historical Journal of Rutgers University. Check out the spring 2025 issue at this link: oldqueensjournal.wordpress.com/publications/ #rutgers

Register to join this timely discussion on June 2, in person or on line, with @katecrawford.bsky.social @hofrench.bsky.social @tamigraph.bsky.social and @triofrancos.bsky.social, hosted by my Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study www.ias.edu/events/raree...

The NCEI database of billion-dollar US weather & climate disasters provides the framework for my course on disaster history. Every semester we analyze this graph of sharply increasing catastrophic events. This database is critical for disaster preparedness and research in the US. 1/2