“The biggest US-listed companies keep talking about artificial intelligence. But other than the ‘fear of missing out,’ few appear to be able to describe how the technology is changing their businesses for the better.”

This piece argues we’re in not one, but three AI bubbles: 1. a financial bubble with inflated valuations, 2. an infrastructure bubble with overbuilt data centers, 3. a hype bubble where AI can’t meet its promises. Honestly, all three seem highly likely to me.

ICYMI, on Saturday the USDA cancelled its food security survey. I'm certain there are depths of stupidity left to plumb, but ignorance about hunger has yet to be proven a path to ending it.

Paging NL's Education Accord

"With the global rise of fascistic regimes and growing threats to academic freedom (ALLEA 2025; Brennan et al. 2025; KNAW 2021, 2025; @danmcquillan.bsky.social 2025), safeguarding the integrity of scientific knowledge is more important now than ever.” zenodo.org/records/1706... 33/🧵

“Technology companies are not shy of falsely claiming that students are lazy or lack writing skills. Such a mantra serves only to sell products (…) We condemn those claims and reassert students’ agency vis-à-vis corporate control.” zenodo.org/records/1706... 19/🧵

“We are not here to obsessively surveil our students — education is based on mutual trust. Therefore, our duty is to build mutually shared values with our students and colleagues.” zenodo.org/records/1706... 17/🧵

“university leaders … must act to help us collectively turn back the tide of garbage software, which fuels harmful tropes (e.g. so-called lazy students) and false frames (e.g. so-called efficiency or inevitability) to obtain market penetration and increase technological dependency” 3/🧵

“In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Those affected receive a small apartment & counselling with no preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected make their way back into a stable life. And all this is CHEAPER than accepting homelessness.” It costs a lot less to house people.

Dreadful to see this - Farhana Sultana is a stellar academic, with a commitment to social justice. She repeatedly said she was being targeted on this platform & on others. I note her account is deleted. Shame on Syracuse for not standing up for colleagues ⬇️ solidarity to her & Jenn Jackson

Our faculty has been approached by an "ethical [sic] AI for learning" platform. "technology companies have rushed to invest in ‘AI ethics’ or ‘AI safety’ to ethics wash their claims, thereby “laundering accountability” ... and “distracti[ng] from real AI ethics”. Yes - 💯!

Excellent piece on higher education and the ongoing AI hype game.

The findings “suggest that medical AI tools powered by LLMs have a tendency to not reflect the severity of symptoms among female patients, while also displaying less ‘empathy’ towards Black and Asian ones.”

If you’re canceling subscription services with giant companies with ties to terrible people, you should think about replacing them with a library card. Many library systems give you access to physical media (some of which you can’t find on streaming!) as well as other great stuff.

What's free and has 37K items available? Look you don't get much for free anymore and you can get a library card for free and have it mailed to you. You don't even have to go in person. It's an introvert dream.

cherries, painted by deborah griscom passmore, 1897

Yes! I just spoke to a librarian and they are spending time trying to find fake citations - they are being given pages of fake references to find via inter-library loan Again, digital asbestos - quick to produce, but so much cost and labour to clean-up.

I don't think pointing out the fascists' 'hypocrisy' is a good use of time. It's not hypocrisy, it's hierarchy. They actually do believe that they have the right and obligation to dominate you because they are superior to you. They are using their power not being hypocritical.

I think, every so often, about how the student protesters in South Korea figured out there was a finite supply of tear gas, and then staged retreating marches that caused police to burn off most of it, before the big "bring your auntie and kids" marches that ultimately toppled the dictatorship.

The weekend was good Blueberry pie for breakfast

Important thread on public universities and private consultants 👇

Alt text: news broadcast screenshot "Chinese soybean purchases from U.S. (source: American soybean association) Q2 2024: $3.16 Billion Q2 2025: $0 News Nation: U.S. Loses Out on Billions in Soybean Sales." Image in the background includes a Chinese flag fading to a bunch of red barns.

Cool "Burke questioned the authority of academics who spoke with Radio-Canada on what was an AI reference, saying they didn't teach in the Faculty of Education." www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

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.

More bleak news from the flotsam and jetsam of LLMs and chatbots in a sea of AI crud.

This. Anyone who honors and wants to protect human freedom can start with trans people, who dare and risk so much just to be themselves and find their place in the world

A good thread on policy and process. Worrisome that a) no one has taken responsibilty, b) the Accord's call for AI use is general, anodyne and uninformed. c) the gravity of manufacturing citations had been dismissed and diminished d) no one has taken responsibility

“My former colleague Rebecca Parsons, has been saying for a long time that hallucinations aren’t a bug of LLMs, they are a feature. Indeed they are the feature. All an LLM does is produce hallucinations, it’s just that we find some of them useful." Indeed, sometimes reality aligns with correlation.

Blueberry Season

Digital asbestos at work. Major report on provincial education policy advocates for AI. Major report on provincial education policy cites 12+ hallucinations. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

The 20th century is calling and it wants its fossil fuel, climate destroying "nation building" infrastructures back A complete failure by Carney to imagine a more just future www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

The 20th century is calling and it wants its fossil fuel, climate destroying "nation building" infrastructures back A complete failure by Carney to imagine a more just future www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

I encourage people to watch this video. The selected footage shows the professor doing nothing even slightly out of line, whereas the student misinterprets the law and hopes to impose her religious beliefs on the material. Administrators caving to this is terrifying.

Industrial animal agriculture's bleak news feed never ceases to deliver “Pig Livability Conference targets 35% mortality crisis" www.feedstuffs.com/swine/pig-li...?

Today I turned "Increase the Font Size" years-old.

I just really fucking love being queer, actually

Probably should’ve posted the Ai statement separately - not sure how it displays with the rest. It’s not so different from what I originally posted, but prefer people get the final version. Have at it & hope it’s useful to you in your classes. All on my site here spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...

2. the strange but often repeated cultish mantra that we need to "embrace the future" — this is so bizarre given, e.g. how destructive industry forces have proven to be in science, from petroleum to tobacco to pharmaceutical companies. (Section 3.2 here doi.org/10.5281/zeno...) 4/n

IMO the biggest differences between universities are: - does the library have books (not only digital subscriptions) and a budget - are there staff for support/admin work or is it someone’s second job - do students have time to study and faculty time to teach No big names or tech matter as much.

Shameful that @dalfaculty.bsky.social has been locked out by its employer. Full support for my comrades at Dal! ✊

Today, over 600 food, nutrition, and agricultural scholars, students, workers, practitioners and organizations signed a letter demanding immediate escalation of Canada’s response to Israel’s use of mass starvation as a tool of genocide against the Palestinian people foodstudies.info/wp-content/u...

A letter to Mark Carney and Anita Anand condemning the Canadian government’s response to the Israeli government’s mass starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza and the military violence and forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank. foodstudies.info/resources/co...

Signed As scholars, students, workers & practitioners related to food, nutrition and agricultural work ... we call on the government of Canada to act against Israel’s deliberate and systematic weaponization of food & water against the people of Palestine. tinyurl.com/2zv4yapx @

“Ecocide operates through the creation of permanent dependency and vulnerability. By destroying the biological foundation of Palestinian food sovereignty, occupying forces ensure that resistance cannot take root — literally — in future generations.” - Ilā Ravichandran truthout.org/articles/isr...

i'll say more later when @tisjune.bsky.social has given her talk at 4S, but something about AI people pushing linguistic contrivances as solutions to material problems like food insecurity, policing, etc... reminds me of cereal companies insisting that frosted flakes are part of a complete breakfast

Concentration in grocery retail in Canada is a big problem; one of the key challenges for newcomers, including non-corporate entities, is that the big food retail chains also own much of the wholesale and distribution channels @keldonb.bsky.social (see CAMP's work) www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Voluntary breakup of one of the biggest food mega mergers in the past decade - KraftHeinz - illustrates that the Curse of Bigness is a real thing! We need more small, local, dynamic firms in the food system to bring real competition and choice www.ft.com/content/326f...

What a bunch of creeps www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

“I became a hater by doing precisely those things AI cannot do: reading and understanding human language; thinking and reasoning about ideas; considering the meaning of my words and their context; loving people, making art, living in my body with its flaws and feelings and life.”