UC Berkeley Law creates new AI policy that bans AI for "conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit" or exams because "thinking remains the sine qua non of good lawyering (and of a quality legal education)." That's what I'm talking about.

The toxicity this policy will introduce in both students and faculty will be off the charts. But most of all I worry about how this will impact vulnerable graduate student teaching fellows who do the bulk of the teaching & grading at Harvard. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

This bandcamp Friday I am jamming out to Chariots Overdrive’s _The End of Antiquity_, a charmingly retro tribute to old-school metal by some very talented Chinese students in Atlanta. chariotsoverdrive.bandcamp.com/album/the-en...

Don’t miss this. “ASU Atomic is the first to combine verified university content with adaptive AI that builds learning modules unique to each learner.” It figures that profs’ materials were harvested and used by ASU - without their consent - from… Canvas.

Meet “ASU Atomic,” a subscription platform that claims to offer customized learning modules for fee-paying users. None of the ASU faculty whose course materials were harvested for the module I generated were aware that their image, lectures, lessons, or other teaching materials are being used.

Colleagues, Skidmore’s Religious Studies department is looking to hire a 2-year VAP in American Religions on a very short timeline. I’d appreciate your help in getting the word out to your networks! Happy to answer any questions, just send an email or DM. eodq.fa.us6.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Colleagues, Skidmore’s Religious Studies department is looking to hire a 2-year VAP in American Religions on a very short timeline. I’d appreciate your help in getting the word out to your networks! Happy to answer any questions, just send an email or DM. eodq.fa.us6.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Reading Mir’s poem about his favorite cat, one realizes that toxoplasmosis is perhaps the only human cultural universal.

It is very fun to get google alert hits for my own name now that reveal completely fabricated statements / quotes thanks to reliance on chatbots. Absolutely wild how the choking pollution of our information environment is being powered by literal choking pollution from fossil fuelled data centres

I am broken-hearted at the terrible news that my alma mater, @hampshirecollege.bsky.social, after 56 yrs, is closing. Its death is a victory for conformism, for corporatism, for higher education's dull love of hierarchy & status. It's a grievous defeat for imagination & experimentation.

Just sent off edited page proofs and the index to SUNY Press. Monograph is one step closer to reality! sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-...

Currently, the all-time most blocked accounts on Bluesky are: 1. JD Vance 2. The White House 3. ICE 4. Bluesky's AI app that was announced 24 hours ago

Oberlin students showing how it’s done!

After binge-watching Heated Rivalry with my partner over Spring Break I kept wondering why the show was hitting all the ladies of my generation so hard. And then I had a realization.

Smith College just posted a 2-year lecturer position in Buddhist Studies: apply.interfolio.com/182632

Is this bad

My colleague @rhcraig.bsky.social is in the next issue of JAAR with a fascinating comparative study of Early Christian preaching manuals, African-American homiletics, and early Buddhist preaching: academic.oup.com/jaar/article...

Just learned that the monograph drops in August! sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-...

The remains of Sᴛᴇᴘʜᴇɴ Cʀᴏsʙʏ A.M. A Gentleman of virtuous morals, And highly eſteemed, Who died On board yᵉ letter of mark brig Vᴇɴᴜs, Near port, July 19ᵗʰ. 1780. Aged 28 Years. Are here deposited till the reſtituſion of all things. “Thy way is in the Sea, thy footsteps are not known”

Discord wants to know how you feel about AI. Go tell them: discord.sjc1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Just subscribed—gotta support awesome writers writing about games!

Ignoring the news and engaging in the most wholesome shenanigans today: watching the Massachusetts poet laureate kick off the Moby-Dick marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. pixelfed.social/p/overbey/91...

Robert H.N. Ho has passed away. His foundation helped the field of Buddhist Studies in the USA survive and thrive during a time of tough headwinds in the academy. Forever grateful for the fellowship that established my position at Skidmore College. www.rhfamilyfoundationglobal.org/media/pdf/ob...

Fifty different problems in the world just locked into one big uniform piece like a Rubik's cube in my head.

Data Workers’ Inquiry continues its excellent project of amplifying voices of the human labor too often overlooked in debates about genAI. This latest report from Michael Geoffrey Asia is an essential read.

Reading Olivelle’s translation of the Yājñavalkya Dharmaśāstra, I find myself genuinely curious whether, if these rules were ever taken seriously, the combination of verse 1.68 & verses 1.78-79 mean that the wife having sex with a brother-in-law completely slathered in ghee was nearly inevitable.

My employer, Dartmouth College, today boasts it's 1st Ivy "to launch AI at an institutional scale." It is doing this by partnering--"more than a collaboration"--with Anthropic, a company that stole the books of many faculty, me included, which many of us are suing.

Abu’l-Fazl trying real hard to flatter the idiot Mughal emperor Akbar in the _Akbarnama_. No real gamer would ever say Parcheesi “contains much wisdom.”

Elsa Marty on Bitcoin faith as ritual imagining of freedom and dignity. #aarsbl25

@smhedgecock.bsky.social with a super smart talk on prayer closets as contemporary evangelical gendered practice. #aarsbl25

There’s a certain irony to the fact that in order to make it to the Sheraton for this wonderful talk, I had to leave dirty breakfast dishes in the sink. #aarsbl25

Today’s #aarsbl25 was so good. Buddhism unit panel on teaching Buddhism in a fascist regime, followed by two panels excavating fascist roots and fascist æsthetics in the academic study of religion.

Here’s my super secret #aarsbl25 lifehack. Instead of waiting in long lines to get shitty Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks, order a 4-pack of canned cold brew from Treehouse Brewing for pickup in the Prudential Center. Share a can with friends for extra social capital! treehousebrew.com/visiting-pru...

Wondering if Princeton University Press pays royalties to their author “The Buddha,” writer of the books _How to Lose Yourself_ and _How to Feel_. #aarsbl25

On the train to #aarsbl25 watching this video to fortify myself for the coming onslaught of tasteful shawls and scarves www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLNW...

Starting #aarsbl25 off right with curry pan using proper Hokkaidō flour at Komugi, a lovely new Japanese bakery in Union Square bakerycafekomugi.com

Q. Who aligns the aligners? A. alignmentalignment.ai Today I’m humbled to announce an epoch-defining event: the launch of the 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀.

You'll never guess who funds Hallow, the prayer app recommended by the White House. (It's Peter Thiel and JD Vance).

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

JAOS 145.3 is out: doi.org/10.7817/jaos..., articles on: autobiog of becoming, Ming women's anger, an old term for foreigners in China, cuneiform word lists, neo-Babylonian chronicles, the epic of Aqhat, Tabari's poetic license, bustling Buddhist monasteries, the aims of Sanskrit doxography, & more!

As we boot up the semester, here’s a useful link for your syllabi statements on the use of LLMs. anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/h...

Darian Donovan Thomas’ new album _A Room with Many Doors: Day_ just dropped today. Go get it! It’s ridiculously gorgeous. ddt93.bandcamp.com/album/a-room...

Goodbye Frankfurt, hello Boston! After getting bumped from flight yesterday, it’s good to finally be back home.

15 year-old me will never recover from the fact that I’m taking Flight 420 from Gate 69.

Heidelberg —> Mannheim —> Frankfurt —> Boston via streetcar, S-Bahn, high speed rail, and airplane. As much as Germans complain about the Deutsche Bahn and its increasingly frequent delays, I keep telling them how amazing it must feel to have transportation infrastructure worth complaining about.

As we approach Fall, my annotated genAI bibliography continues to grow. Hope this can be of some use to AI-critical scholars as they watch their deans, colleagues, and administrators falling prey to the Sales Guy snake oil. Feel free to request additions or corrections! codeberg.org/overbey/genA...

teachers! excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone. take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE against-a-i.com

Post-IABS decompressing in Heidelberg is the best way to end this summer break. pixelfed.social/p/overbey/86...

Leipzig —> Mannheim—> Heidelberg. #IABS2025 was a blast. See y’all in Vancouver in 2028!