@jwhoopes2.bsky.social @robertosaezm.bsky.social @norabar.bsky.social @mjofiguerero.bsky.social www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...

‘Researchers uncovered 20 columns of previously hidden text covering more than a metre of charred papyrus without physically unrolling the scroll. The work discusses stoic philosophy on ethics, art & human behaviour & dates to the second or late-third century BC’ www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

occasionally i gaze into conservative Christian YouTube

it's genuinely fascinating how the big sort of content basically means that mainline Christians and secular/non-Christians never realize that this is basically the online evangelical lifeworld

I don't wish him dead. I wish him confined to a cell where 24/7 there is endless footage playing of children dying from his cutting of USAID. The screams of parents and family.

An astonishing expose of the secret directives Tulsi Gabbard received throughout her political career. They appear to have come from the leader of the cult to which she belonged.

My nine year old asked for a Rosetta Stone cake for his birthday

Wait people are mocking mutual aid? WTF is wrong with them. We all give what we can when we can how we can because we are all together against the evil around us... and if you have been blessed with abundance, it is a 400,000 year old code written in us to share with all.

#HillfortsSaturday 🤔 Exploring the incredible tor enclosure at Creugiau Gwineu at Rhiw on the Llyn Peninsula this morning with Dr Kate Waddington A complex & unusual defended summit springing from a natural wall of rock 🤯 Incredible views this morning across Bardsey to the Wicklow Mountains 📷 TD

The fantastic thing about this particular Roman roof tile is that as well as the kitten’s pawprints it also bears the tile maker’s mark where they dragged their finger through the wet clay!

Kitty paw prints on a Roman clay tile! 😻 🐾 A tiny moment in time preserved in clay some 2,000 years ago when a kitten walked across this wet clay tile which was lying out to dry before firing. Lullingstone Roman Villa, Kent 📷 by me #Caturday #Archaeology

Y'all this seems legit (I read it). It is INSANE. On par w ancient Egyptian etc.

Lots of skepticism is warranted, but someone has made an apparently credible claim to have deciphered Linear A

*laughs nervously* what the fuck? www.wsj.com/lifestyle/fi...

A whale-detecting AI often compared to “Shazam for whales” has identified the source of a mysterious sound that has long baffled scientists in the Mariana Trench. www.iflscience.com/in-2014-scie...

Percy joins Opportunity in being the only robots to complete a marathon on another world. www.iflscience.com/perseverance...

This might be the greatest sports victory speech I've ever heard youtu.be/YFPJq_y7ZGI?...

She really has bad lapses of judgment www.theguardian.com/business/202...

I finally figured out why AI causes such a visceral reaction in thinking humans: I am writing my book chapter on PLAY, and AI is the opposite of play. We play for the joy of the process, not for the outcome. Yes it is nice to win, to have the art/ poem, but the point of life is to play.

A music video from the Secretary of the Interior.

This is cool. 😎 www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

“When I asked if I would receive any disciplinary action if I chose not to wear the pin, I was told, ‘Yes,'” a Park Service employee said. “I chose not to continue the conversation after that.” www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

I just realized something amazing. After the World Cup, we are going to get ranch dressing in Europe. There’s no way those fans will be able to come home and go cold turkey off it.

Graham Hancock’s been getting a lot of sympathy these past few days but he’s still a problem. This article features the best bibliography on pseudoarchaeology you can find. Apocalypse Not: Archaeologists Repond to Pseudoarchaeology onlinedigeditions.com/article/Apoc...

Date of earliest fire pushed back even earlier, perhaps 1.07-1.7 million years ago. An amazing paper and fantastic science. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Oh my god

At the end of the term I asked my college creative wriing students to submit anonymous thoughts on AI. No real surprises: Mood ranges from resignation to despair, capitulation from embittered erosion of standards to total, feelings of betrayal from deep to furious. 1/

This is at Dartmouth College, where our president cut a deal with Anthropic--which stole the books of 133 faculty--without faculty consultation. Soon, there'll be a Claude for every student. They're already there. They feel like there's no escaping it. & they don't like it.

I wish I could tell you the responses thrummed with defiance. Instead, some read like substance abuse testimonies. A student whose use of AI grew until AI "wrote" all assignments sophomore fall. Got caught. Crushed by shame. Swore it off. But it's creeping back, & they don't know how to stop. 3/

(To be clear: I asked for anonymous responses so students could speak candidly & I could share comments.) A number of students wrote of their hate for AI, their disdain for friends who use it to do all their work, & then they said they "only" use it summarize readings or do research. 4/

Nobody used the term "arms race," but that's what they're describing: enormous pressure, including from some professors, to use AI or fall behind those who are. Many say they hate it, don't want to use it, but they feel like now it's submit or fail. 5/

Another student wrote with deep fury about AI taking over their education and wrecking mental health. They used to not touch it. Now, they use it to "supplement" their work in econ & math classes. They feel betrayed by the college and their teachers and themselves. 6/

I just learned that the term "carbon footprint" was developed by BP to offload responsibility for climate change onto individuals. Something like that's happening in higher ed with AI. Institutions capitulate or dodge; students are submitting; & they believe it's their individual failing. 7/

One student wrote of the belief among their classmates in another course that their professor had turned to "robograding," outsourcing evaluation of their work to AI. So why not use AI to write it? This student knows how cynical that is. It doesn't feel good. They wish there was another way. 8/

Several students wrote of the moral confusion implicit in a college that promotes AI and says don't cheat but makes it really, really easy to cheat. One said they don't pay attention to AI policies because they don't think the college really wants to know what's going on. 9/

One student, who wrote of trying and sometimes succeeding at cutting AI out of their life, wrote of watching a parent who is a lawyer turn over all their legal writing to AI. Almost every student wrote of how much AI is present in everyone's love lives. 10/

In winter, I spoke at a faculty event about AI. I was alarmed by the range of faculty awareness. Some believe our students are so "good" they'd never cheat. Yes, cheating's wrong. But systems that explicitly or implicitly incentivize cheating--AI does both--will produce cheating. 11/

I gave a period of my intro digital arts studio to an AI discussion. Gave them a vaguely anti-AI article + a vaguely pro-AI article. Everyone read, discussed in groups, and reported back. Consensus was hugely anti- except most agreed they liked Grammarly. Maybe not surprising for a studio course.

FTR, the anti article: jskfellows.stanford.edu/theft-is-not... And the pro article (pretty cool project imo): www.itsnicethat.com/articles/ann...

Provincetown, MA 🌞

I'm attending a digital humanities event in Montreal. There was a keynote on AI and something about the talk made me wonder if it had been written by Claude. I said as much in the Q&A. As I posed the question, the speaker shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. What he said next shocked the room +

In fact, the speaker admitted to "working very closely with Claude", to the point where he's currently "writing" a book entirely written by AI. People in the amphitheater gasped. The speaker - a scholar from France - then shared that his "experiment" has led him to feel useless as an intellectual.

There's so much to say about this, but what is particularly striking is that the keynote speaker said absolutely nothing about using Claude to write his academic work until I intervened in the Q&A. It appears that he was not going to share this fairly important detail unless asked..

The moment was shocking for us in the audience. I was surprised at the level of anger expressed by colleagues - many of whom are experts in digital humanities - who came up to me afterwards, appalled to have sat through a keynote in which the speaker belatedly confessed to "authoring a book" with AI

I could scarcely believe my intuition was right. I sort of said it as a joke -- "How do we know your talk wasn't written by AI?" But in truth, something in the rhetoric, argumentation, possibly even the tone, felt AI-ish. When he shifted in his seat, I thought he was offended by the implication..

Perhaps he was uncomfortable with being clocked. After all, he did not share at any point in the talk that he "works very closely with Claude". But I notice that he strangely encouraged the audience to work with AI as much as possible, romanticized "getting better" with prompts the "more you use it"