Yesterday the Royal Society held a series of panels & keynotes in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Turing Test. The unanimous critical takes on AGI, big tech's power concentration & the call for urgent action left me w hope things might be turning Watch here m.youtube.com/live/GmnBTCK...

One of the loudest bells tolling for social science right now is that the decade of abundant data on humans is coming to a close. Whether you work on digital trace or surveys, LLM pollution is a serious problem, even while the wide roll out of LLMs creates an urgent need for social science.

Oh no. I think I hate everything

For over 60 years, Jane Goodall was a force for research about our precious planet—and climate change action to protect it—while breaking glass ceilings along the way. I'll so miss her courage and commitment to help expand what we know about our world and preserve it for the generations to come.

The real generational divide is people who refuse to watch a video if it could be an article versus people who refuse to read an article if it could be a video

something very spooky is coming this week 🎃

A lot of people think that every international student admitted means one fewer spot for domestic students, when the opposite is more likely true - the tuition revenue international students bring allows public universities to provide substantial discounts to domestic students, improving access.

After two days of reading, thinking, and reading again, I think there are two possible ways to interpret the Yunxian cranium (note that @johnhawks.net and others have already shared some great, and often overlapping ideas): (1/4) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

you probably need to be of a certain vintage to understand the absolute hilarity of ken starr being in the epstein files

It's Don't Argue Inside Your Head With Other People Friday. Today, if you find yourself arguing inside your head w/someone who's not present, or whom it's not safe or not fair for you to argue with, gently move your mind away. Do this as many times as you need.

Gonna be real with you, this feels like an advertisement for spiritual death

AAAAAAAAAAAH

ugh

Toboggan team

People don’t like it when I say it, but the main place you’ll be pressured to participate in fascism is work. Especially if you work in a battleground space like government or academia. None of your weekend organizing can ever make up for active participation in the fascist project at your day job.

Important to note that, when discussimg the things that protect you— steganographic watermarking, getting your consent to use your data, removing your data from their models— "AI" companies have shifted from saying that they're "impossible" to complaining about the expense & hassle. That is to say…

Shout out to everyone only now learning that "Albert Einstein was reclusive at the end of his career, shunning public engagements." Really meant, "For the last *20 years* of his career, Einstein opposed US racism by only speaking publicly at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

Welp. I officially Don't Wanna

We must stand resolutely against political assassination and political violence of all kinds, and just as resolutely against everyone who exploits acts of violence as the pretext or excuse for political repression of political opponents.

I read ahead and...shit's getting real

an important PSA from @atpota.to for moments such as these

Overthinking should at least burn some calories.

"Empirical research [...] is like an adversarial collaboration with reality." I come back to this chapter every so often, and always pick up a different aspect of it. www.danielnettle.eu/2017/09/25/h...

“When it comes to the AI technology industry, we refuse their frames, reject their addictive and brittle technology, and demand that the sanctity of the university both as an institution and a set of values be restored,” the authors, led by @olivia.science, write.

"In a recent paper, Emami-Naeini found that many users wrongly believe ChatGPT is HIPAA compliant, creating an unwarranted sense of trust in the tool. “I expect some therapists may share this misconception,” she says." AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH arxiv.org/abs/2507.10695

Want change? You need a different HEC frankly. Vote for @matthewbarnard.phd in the current casual vacancy elections.

It's hard to choose a favorite Zevon song but Lawyers, Guns and Money might top the list for me

My neighbor in Orlando mentioned this EXACT concern to me last night!

Ashy red colobuses (Piliocolobus tephrosceles), also called Ugandan red colobuses, are native to the forests of western Uganda and Tanzania. They forage near other primate species; each reacts to the others' alarm calls. Threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation. Endangered.

I respect Anil so I want to talk seriously about harm reduction and public health messaging. First let me acknowledge that yes, many regular, not-super-online people are trying out AI tools. Of course they are! It's been aggressively pushed into everything and given heavy institutional support.

Ah yes. It's September, so British house spider season is upon us. Every year I forget...

LLM is software running on computers. Writing about 'humility', 'reasoning', 'honesty about uncertainty' and 'hallucinations' is an unacceptable anthropomorphisation and can only be intended to deceive users. @irisvanrooij.bsky.social @olivia.science openai.com/index/why-la...

I'm so glad I just happened to see this post; I'm teaching a new (to me) psychology class this semester about the mind and to frame it we briefly talk about this. Can't wait to learn more!

"The Department of History invites applications for an assistant professor who will make enough leftist remarks to annoy conservative talk radio hosts but whose politics will ultimately support the neoliberal mission of the university." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hon...

ANSWER: 0 (yes, ZERO!) This is a result of an analysis done by a student in my grad seminar, using a large dataset (N=307,313). What this result might mean: Nobody's personality is truly "average," and people's personality profiles (at least Big 5) might be more "jagged" than we think. (🧵 1/5)

My university just instituted a new workload model that explicitly states external service work, like journal editing, is not to be considered part of paid workload allocation. Yet such service is still listed on promotion guides. When will academics get fed up with working for free? Join #UCU

I just need every liberal, progressive, feminist man to understand deep in their bones that every woman—including the most accomplished woman they know—is belittled at their job REGULARLY. Even now.

My rant from a few years back about the cursed little histograms isn't about this but of course it is a side-effect. ideophone.org/a-rant-about... Elsevier benefits from the SEO juice of uni domains and gives nothing back, enshittifying pages with fluffy management-bait like SDGs & Fingerprint

had to tell this little pal that it's not super safe under the bin.

"Simply, it cannot go on like this." #AcademicSky #REF2029

These are desperate attempts to embed AI technologies into schools and recruit lifetime users and I urge my fellow educators to see these attempts as such and refuse to be bought by Big Tech and this fascist government.

A simple way to improve American downtowns: Make one-way arterials bidirectional. Doing so will improve safety, boost retail sales, and attract pedestrians. Me, in Bloomberg 🧵

Glad to be able to share new preprint on how to make supervising dissertation projects more open and efficient with secondary data, open data, and evidence synthesis with Ashley Robertson, @amcreaven.bsky.social, Elayne Ahern, and @katebutton.bsky.social 🔗 osf.io/preprints/ps... #AcademicSky

A conversation I keep having with teachers who add genAI to their curriculum (as opposed to those who are required to use it from top down mandates) is what is the learning goal? They give me a bunch of jargon, but when you sift out the hype you're not left with much. 1/

the best thing about open offices is that they demonstrate that employers are willing to sacrifice both productivity and employee health in order to have a slightly fancier address and maybe 0.05% discount on rental costs

seems bad

Attention publishers: Announcing the Guidelines for Indigenous Data Governance in Scholarly Publishing Join this session to learn more about the recently published Guidelines and how you can help! nisoplusglobalonline.cadmore.media/Home

oh no. I think my post-dinner tea was not decaf... what do I do with this midnight energy?

This is happening!