“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” James Baldwin

Unflinching refusal to use or allow the use of A.I. in reading & writing should be the uncontroversial, default position of teachers from K-12 to colleges & universities. If our administrators tell us we "have to" we tell them to eff off. We will not kill the planet's water for systemic plagiarism.

Remember back in the day when Congress used to be in charge of appropriations?

"iS tHeRe a tEcHnoLoGY tHe leFt Is eXcItEd aBoUt" yeah, renewable energy, mRNA vaccines. Lots of cool stuff like that! Probably not the one whose main promise was cutting payrolls

What’s so weird about men in power is how when they face scandal and should step down the world acts like no one else can do their jobs. Bottstein, Wasserman, these aren’t irreplaceable men! Stop with this delusion.

This is literally what CURRENT LAW requires. It’s in the Constitution! www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

As the feds distribute photos of victims while veiling their abusers, "These photographs are both emotionally overwhelming and politically shallow. It looks like the system is exposing everything when really it is exposing the harm and hiding the hand." www.instagram.com/reel/DUV9_tP...

BREAKING: The Senate just blocked a bill that would have renewed ICE's budget without real, enforceable changes. This is a direct result of hundreds of thousands of people across the nation demanding that our Senators vote no.

‘They are no longer strategizing for voluntary adoption by those who come to recognize the technology’s utility by electively applying it to the problems they face. They are planning how to cross the chasm by forced adoption.’ By @mattseybold.bsky.social

*This*. It cannot be said often enough that Trump's 5th column in the UK is planning precisely the same fascist makeover. In broad daylight, and with "democratic" politicians being silent onlookers. And I wonder if Brits will have the courage of Minnesotans when it comes down to it.

My first Nerdy Book Club post is up! I'm starting with Kate Manne's now-classic work Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny. Whether it's your first time or a re-read, come think with me for one chapter per week #booksky nerdy-book-club.ghost.io/preface-kate...

It needs to be said that it is extremely telling of what role ICE is ultimately playing in society that schools respond to it as though its a horde of potential mass shooters.

It's like a substack, but it's not substack lithub.com/the-case-aga...

Doing a thing 🫣 Subscribe for weekly-ish reflections on smart books by smart people, placed at ~1 chapter a week. No AI, no rush, no homework. Just turn up as you are & think with me. nerdy-book-club.ghost.io

“When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets.”

beestung is now open for new work by two-spirit, genderqueer, and non-binary writers! beestungmag.com/about/

Directed against the United States. I spent 35 years as a US diplomat abroad and at the Department of State, often working closely with our NATO and European allies. We prepared for all sorts of contingencies. Except this one. I have no words.

Unarmed woman executed by state may have been on committee to fight against unarmed women being executed by the state

maybe I'm just jaded from spending my entire adult life watching sexual abuse committed with impunity, but i dont think X will suffer any consequences. society likes to pretend it cares about sexual violence, but actually doesn't.

We are doing new eps but just at a glacial pace - this one I'm super excited about! We've got the brilliant @fourfootedbeasts.bsky.social joining us to talk all things PERICLES!

This is one of the reasons I remain horrified by seeing @historians.org suggest "ways to use gAI" that included this:

Two victims of previous school shootings — Mia Tretta, who was shot in the stomach in 2019 at Saugus High School, and Zoe Weissman, who survived the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — are now at Brown. Gun violence is out of control in this country.

Stop it because why am I tearing up at a cartoon wolf in a supermarket ad 🥹🥹

FACULTY GREW TOO POWERFUL excuse me while I laugh myself off this cliff

This entire grift relies on convincing people that they don't know how to do the things they have always known how to do, and ironically, if it works, we will, in a very short amount of time, forget how to do all the things we have always known how to do.

People expect miracles from medicine, but refuse the miracle that would let them avoid needing emergency care in the first place

if you gut higher education successfully, it will take decades to recover. Subject experts, skilled pedagogues, and experienced research leaders don't pop off a factory line for next-day delivery. Once it's gone, it's going to be very hard work to get it back, even if everyone decides we want to.

The people driving the dismantling of the sector seem to believe that academic capacity is easily replaceable. Maybe that's understandable, when they're currently getting hundreds of applications from over-qualified mid-career scholars for paltry part-time and fixed term contracts. But --

I have a lot to say, including that it's despicable to drop this news 3 weeks before Christmas. I am devastated for my friends and colleagues. Butchering 20% of the university's staff poisons the working environment in ways that will linger. www.bbc.com/news/article...

I don’t know if anyone else notices or cares, but when I see a presentation in which the speaker uses obviously generated-AI images to illustrate their slides, it makes me immediately less confident in whatever other content they’re presenting.

Canonical Misogyny is currently 50% off, direct from the publisher Edinburgh University Press. That makes the ebook just £10 all weekend! edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-canonic...

Fab thread. Truly nothing beats the moment when you're so surprised by executing something you've been working on that you lose it mid-stream and fall over/start crying or laughing/drop everything/however your body reacts 🤸🏻‍♀️ 🤸🏻‍♀️ 🤸🏻‍♀️

Exactly one woman has won the Booker in the past six years www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Open AI loses copyright case in Germany. Judge Elke Schwager summarized the case saying that if you want to build something and need components, "then you purchase them and do not use the property of others."

Here's Keir Starmer before the general election promising Ukrainian refugees that he will stand with them "as long as it takes". Now his Government's own policy is that "the era of permanent protection [for refugees] is over" www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ra9...

As the great-granddaughter of a refugee, fuck this all the way into the sun.

I have so many questions for the man biking down an unlit country road at 9:30 last night, in the pitch dark and pouring rain, wearing all black with no lights or reflectors.

I wonder if the United States can learn anything from the last time a major industrialized country decided to isolate itself from the rest of the world? Almost a decade after the Brexit vote, GDP in the UK is around 6-8% lower relative to peer countries. (Source: www.nber.org/papers/w34459)

Check the thread for more 😄🎶

Never ever speak to me about "cancel culture" and "ruining men's lives" because if that's true, wtf is Andrew fucking Cuomo doing all over my feed still

Amazing to feel politically hopeful in 2025. Go Zohran!

Thank you, Izzi!! We had such a great audience last night-- thanks for coming out 🥰👑💀💐

BIRTH OF MERLIN LOBBY, ARISE!

When a chatbot gets something wrong, it’s not because it made an error. It’s because on that roll of the dice, it happened to string together a group of words that, when read by a human, represents something false. But it was working entirely as designed. It was supposed to make a sentence & it did.

I am SO disappointed not to be present for this!!! A great play for spooky season 🧙🏼‍♀️ 🐕 🔥

I've seen so many people fall into the trap of ceding ground on immigration by agreeing that "illegals" shouldn't be allowed. But it's never about a legal pathway. It's about racism and white supremacy. "Culturally coherent" isn't even a dog whistle ffs -- it's loud and clear.

the aws outage should be evidence that running half the internet on a single company's servers is a terrible idea but i fear nothing will change

"Too high" for what? "Too high" for whom? Not everyone needs or wants to go uni, but everyone should have the opportunity to do so. Think about who gets cut out by reducing participation in HE. Spoiler: it's usually not the children of the wealthy and the powerful.

Andrew Cuomo: taxpayers should pay for $60 million in legal bills for my sexual harassment allegations Also Andrew Cuomo: $60 million is too much money to spend on a pilot program to deliver cheaper groceries

You know what tool existed when I was in high school that no one ever taught me how to use? Excel. A thing I use all the time now, mostly self-taught, existed in the late 1990s and no one was upending the curriculum to make sure I knew how to use it.