It’s that time of year: what was the piece of writing about AI that stuck with you the most this year, pop press or academic? A few of mine in the thread. ⬇️

The American president is a racist.

New in The Important Work, Maggie Boyd writes about working with colleagues to create a tool to help students think about the choice to use AI and shares her experience using the tool to help Writing Center tutors talk to students about AI. theimportantwork.substack.com/p/pause-befo...

columbia sportswear is running an ad campaign challenging flat earthers to send them a picture of the edge of earth

In the spirit of Giving Tuesday, it seems appropriate to donate five bucks for the courtesy of having an honest-to-goodness physical newspaper that I can get on my own street. We need clear-eyed local media these days.

I wrote about the private, intimate, often ridiculous agonies of working for a man who think you’re a monster nymag.com/intelligence...

I wrote about the dirty, demeaning, absolutely booming business of turning something like a shitty bigoted college essay into a shitty public career as a bigot, and also estimated how old Marine Todd would be today. defector.com/the-conserva...

“AI is clearly sticking around so you have to get used to it” wrong. I don’t have to get used to shit. I am a practiced hater and I can keep this going for decades if I am required to

Understanding Generative AI: A Primer for College Writers docs.google.com/document/d/1...

The CCCC Special Committee on Generative AI in College Composition & Writing Studies is pleased to share two docs that have been in the works since this past summer: Academic Integrity, Plagiarism, & Generative AI: Guidelines for Postsecondary Writing Teachers docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Has Mark Kelly heard of the "everyone is 12 now" theory?

Started playing Fallout 76 this morning. One of the first players we've encountered is someone dressed like Santa Claus, a level 400-plus veteran of the game, who was cool enough to give my newbie Level 8 person a few modest bits of swag.

Booooooooooooooooo

So Fresno State ends year one of the Matt Entz era with eight wins and a bowl bid. Not bad overall. In retrospect, though, kinda weird the 'Dogs got smoked at home by Colorado State. Imagine what this team could look like in the renewed Pac-12 with an actual quarterback.

New Mexico to the 'ship or Butlerian Jihad

If you're going to blow up conferences only to change the rules in the new expanded ones when the results become inconvenient to the desired narrative, then what was the point of conference realignment?

One thing I've learned from periodically volunteering for trash pickup events in south Baltimore over the last couple years is that, on the whole, Ravens tailgaters leave the impression of being lazy and gross individuals.

New Mexico's run to the Mountain West football championship game makes me wish I still had the time to write about it.

the stadium DJ hitting Knuck if You Buck mid-fight is incredible work. you spend all season working to be prepared for that moment

Today, in No Shit:

No, it won't.

I gotta somehow let 1994 me know this will exist one day but I’ll be too tired to play

This has become one of my favorites.

Ah, yes, just what Fresno needs: Even more single-family home-driven suburban sprawl that benefits local developers and probably no one else.

🎶 I wish I knew you when I was young We coulda got so high Now we're here, it's been so long Two strangers in the bright lights Ohh, and I hope you don't mind You can share my mood, yeah Two strangers in the bright lights I wish I knew you I wish I knew you Oh, I wish I knew you when I was young 🎶

And Trump likely sees in Mamdani what he always wanted himself: to go from being a Queens outsider to a Manhattan insider. (2/2)

Related: If AI products are so great, the current federal government wouldn't be doing everything in its power to shift the responsibilities of education back to the states while also restricting the states' abilities to regulate such products, which are being forced into education at every turn.

Fresno is big enough that it would be the most populated municipality in 28 US states

Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..." https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1

“I want their morale as low as possible because a team with low morale is ineffective.” Meet the veteran who chases ICE on a scooter

squirrel: *points gun* me: what do you want me to do? squirrel: *gestures at sign* me: alright, i get it *opens book drop* squirrel: *makes hurry-up motion* me: NOT A SQUIRREL! squirrel: *disappears into book drop* me: *whispers* forgive me, keith

This is why you invest in the humanities.

Wait, what

Five years ago, I brought this ham home for the first time after adopting her. My life has been immeasurably improved ever since.

For as often as I say that I believe Baltimore is better than Fresno overall, public transit woes appear to be one thing the two cities have in common.

STRIDER

I wonder if this is a tacit admission that AI products aren't making money. Wasn't AGI defined as "when the product is good enough to earn $100 billion in profits" or something like that earlier this year?

everyone should have a walkup song to their desk at work

I've definitely gained a deeper appreciation of Calvin and Hobbes' overall sophistication as I've gotten older, but this one still remains one of my all-time favorites.

*extremely Ralph Barbieri* Go Sharks.

Putting aside all the horrible shit in them: I cannot believe the global elite composes emails like fucking horses who somehow learned to crudely type. My emails read like Shakespeare compared to the lowercased, unpunctuated screeds written to the worlds biggest pedophile. Fucking write like adults!

A Year of Refusal refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/11/12/a... @nobugsnous.bsky.social, @rcmeg.bsky.social and I wrote a lil anniversary post as it's been *a year* (in more ways than one!) since we first posted the Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies Quickstart Guide

Seen a few of the epstein emails now, all with different people and it's not the main issue here but is everyone illiterate

I notice everyone is posting photos of the northern lights, and that's cool and all, but the other night, I saw a fox casually settle in for a late-night mouse (rat?) snack on the Broadway median in Upper Fells Point, about five feet from where I'd parked my car. Only in Baltimore.

What the fuck, man.

Oh fuck off

I cannot wait to hike the Camino.

SOCRATES: No god is a philosopher or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. PLATO: Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom. DARRYL, SOCRATES AND PLATO’S FRIEND: well well well if it isn’t the blowjob brothers

It shouldn’t be forgotten that a big piece of Mamdani’s campaign was simply “cities are cool and lots of people enjoy living in them” which in and of itself dismantles alot of rightwing talking points

The long-running ideological war on libraries, education, and government workers is not separate from AI boosterism. It is the same ideological war on human knowledge and expertise. In some cases AI is being used to directly supercharge this effort: www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...