To put this in scale, Elon Musk's salary from Tesla alone could fund the SNAP program for the entire country into 2034.

This was self evident from the beginning; and why I find universities' uncritical relationships with OpenAI and Microsoft CoPilot etc so very problematic--we know what the long term goals of these projects/companies are, and their imbrications within technofascism. How can you reconcile this?

University finances are precarious, but leading institutions are swallowing the pedagogic promises of Anthropic & OpenAI just at the moment when the AI bubble looks ready to burst. Beyond fees and the attrition of skilled staff, will AI trigger the collapse of the entire sector?

The blueprint for winning big on climate also came out last night. No more technocratic, policy wonk approaches. People showed they care about utility bills, free buses, affordable housing, etc. These are all climate issues. Talk about climate in terms people understand and experience.

Again, this precise use case is why these systems exist-to proliferate people’s racist (transphobic, misogynistic…) imaginary at scale. This should not be seen as a “misuse” but rather the product being used exactly as intended.

do folks have any idea how much cops cost?! it would be less expensive to just feed people.

once again posting The Chart

They literally ruin everything they touch

"these arrangements are not 'partnerships' or 'collaborations' but contracts that bring profit and publicity to AI firms, while making universities complicit in the continued empowerment of tech oligarchy and expansion of their 'AI Empire' (Tacheva and Ramasubramanian, 2023; Adams, 2024; Hao, 2025)"

Same, girl, same.

Deeply worrying for the US financial system Two big US companies underpinned by hinky and massive loans go under in the last few months Private finance w/ lots of sloshing-about capital looking for places to land leads to billions of unsecured loans www.ft.com/content/165f...

Deeply worrying for the US financial system Two big US companies underpinned by hinky and massive loans go under in the last few months Private finance w/ lots of sloshing about capital looking for places to land leads to billions of unsecured loans sphinx.acast.com/p/acast/s/be...

I've built a socioeconomic system that depends on everyone to do useful work and act ethically except the people at the top, who get unimaginable rewards for being antisocial frauds and criminals. And I think it will stand the test of time

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

Superb piece on higher ed, labour and AI an "effort to snatch away decision-making power over teaching, learning, and research from subject matter and pedagogy experts and give it to donors and administrators." @munfaculty.bsky.social defector.com/higher-eds-r...

Excellent discussion of the animal ag industry and how it obstructs climate policy with @amywestervelt.bsky.social @profsecchi.bsky.social and Kathrin Lauber @drilledmedia.bsky.social podcastaddict.com/drilled/epis...

It's sauerkraut time! 🥬🫙

NL gov't hires education consultants to consult. Hallucinations, er correction, mistakes occur. Consultants side step responsibility and blame gov't. NL gov't hires new third party to correct/review the report? What a mess www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

A Bard College student was kidnapped by ICE and Bard’s administration is advocating for his release and has created a website to assist the rest of the community in joining them. That’s what academic leaders should be doing for their students right now. www.instagram.com/p/DQKSTDJkeF...

“Sonneborn + KKR appear to be typical of an investment strategy whereby donors, aided by university administrators + regents, circumvent faculty governance in order to treat uni’s like incubators or, worse, as click-farms to inflate the user data seemingly keeping the AI investment machine humming.”

I’ve long argued that, if you want to know who a PM/Premier/Minister served during their time in office, look at where they wind up after leaving politics 👇

CBC Fifth Estate investigates millions of dollars of Canadian tax deductible charitable donations funding the military occupation and illegal settlements. youtu.be/-4eOsVAxCTM?...

Still mad

This woman is in a nursing program & the entire textbook for her anatomy class is wrong because it was written by a professor who used chatgpt to generate the images & possibly the text. She complained to the prof, then the university— they’ve done NOTHING about it. www.tiktok.com/t/ZTM5T3CxW/

The only thing that scales in an AI is its costs, directly above its revenues, always outpacing them. Your most passionate users are your most expensive. The more curious they are, the more they cost you. LLMs will go down as one of the single-worst business models of all time.

Excellent thread

And from image events, we get POLYSEMIC images that carry multiple forms of ideology into the present. Here, we have the convergence of Shepard Fairey's iconic HOPE poster for the Obama campaign with the frog icon from #NoKings. The is how you visually dismantle fascist iconography.

In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.

"One of them told her he had consulted ChatGPT to find tide times before deeming it safe to venture out to the island early on Wednesday. He said: “I made the mistake of using ChatGPT for research to see when the low tide was" The death toll from this tech is only going to rise

Happy Thanksgiving from the edge of the North Atlantic

Tech people really do not seems to get that creative people generally don’t want to take credit for stuff they didn’t do

“One of the negative consequences AI is having on students is that it is hurting their ability to develop meaningful relationships with teachers, the report finds. Half of the students agree that using AI in class makes them feel less connected to their teachers.”

weird -sounds familiar... Paging the Education Accord "a dozen bogus references and footnotes ... although officials insist the "substance" of the report remains intact." www.theregister.com/2025/10/06/d...

It’s boiling in October because you’re using ChatGPT to write your emails, Janice.

College radio stations are seeing a surge in student interest. Stations that once struggled to fill airtime are now overflowing with student DJs.  I spoke to 7 college radio stations across the U.S. to understand what is driving the revival: emwhitenoise.substack.com/p/gen-zs-col...

PSA: when critiquing a person’s ideological positions, just… don’t bring their physical appearance into it? Just… say nothing about how they look. It’s literally that easy.

In food history, we notice how super-refined foods--gelatin, vienna sausage, white bread--lose class and become horrifying once they become industrialized. Suddenly, fingermarks in bread dough demonstrate skill, not clumsiness. Post-chatGPT, I'm feeling this about writing. Smoothness feels gross.

AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring. The reliably good Bloomberg Green connects the dots between AI and the war on the poor www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

they are destroying US climate science on purpose, and it hurts my heart. but take it from an MIT-trained nerdass: all most of us need to know is that we have to stop burning stuff stop burning stuff for heat stop burning stuff for make car go stop burning stuff for power we have the tools

🤷🏽‍♀️ Yet another way LLMs damage the social fabric hbr.org/2025/09/ai-g...

We have allowed the lazy, grifting Silicon Valley charlatans into the front door, & in doing so, we have learned just how many of our own colleagues & administrators simply are not interested in the actual business of education. It's incredibly demoralizing. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

It is, far and away, the most challenging thing I’ve encountered since entering the academy. And that is saying a lot. I might be working on this but I keep putting it aside because I’m not medicated enough to describe how demoralizing it all is.

Students may end up being the only real bulwark against what is happening. But, I know that not all students have the same power — the same exit threat. Student resistance will fall along institutional lines of privilege. Could hasten the marketization of non-elite schools. The elites win.

*The AI boom = one of the costliest building sprees in world history * Past 3 years' commitments are greater than the cost of building the U.S. interstate highway system * Consumers must spend $800 billion on AI within a few years, to justify investment from 2023-24 www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-b...

I have a grad worker who's "Secretary of Grievances" for his union for the 1st time. He's learning fast. Him: So wait, the university would rather pay a mediator than settle what's basically a clerical error? Me: Yes. Him: I'm starting to understand why you're angry all the time.

Hey @mark-carney.bsky.social, you know what would be a great national-building project? POSTAL BANKING in all the small rural communities across this nation your corporate banking buddies have abandoned.

Now do wage theft.

“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.