Jane Schmidt

A Letter to Home from a Weary ICE Agent Dearest Beloved, I received your missive of Thursday last with the greatest of gratitude, as I and my brave compatriots have five hours now awaited...

"I received your missive of Thursday last with the greatest of gratitude, as my brave compatriots and I have now waited five hours for the orders to approach a moderately busy intersection in the shopping district of a mid-sized American city."

Slide about media literacy showing four recent examples of how media companies are run (AI slop, TikTok in US, Bari Weiss and CBS, Bezos and Washington Post layoffs)

Astonishing how easily this slide came together for me.

It just keeps giving...

"It is a visceral moment where audiences, around the world, will begin to taste the boot that the American establishment so blithely licks."

"To call Melania vapid would do a disservice to the plumes of florid vape smoke that linger around British teenagers."

How amazing a 2nd edition of Bullshit Jobs: The Post-lockdown Era would have been.

Who’s who at X, the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter A look inside Elon Musk’s big tent

There we go. That there’s a headline.

Even worse: I've witnessed a student in the library outsourcing their prompt generation to a DIFFERENT bot.

Using a bot to talk to another bot.

But sure, GenAI was a great idea. Revolutionary.

A digital poster in the style of a World War II propaganda piece. Isolaed on a yellow background, a normal, squarish, 20-something guy with glasses is sitting working on a laptop. A ghostly figure of Hitler has his arm around the guy and is grinning and shaking a fist triumphantly looking at the laptop screen. On the lid of the laptop where an apple might otherwise be is an openAI logo, bright green, and dripping green ooze down the lid. Text on the poster, in combinations of sans-serif type and brush script reads: Using Generative AI? You’re prompting with Hitler! GenAI is a Fascist Project! Try using your brain instead Don’t surrender your creativity to the tech billionaire’s control

New awareness campaign

PLSN AI Statement + Best Practices (October 2025) PART I: AI Statement PLSN realizes that generative AI, in the form of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, may feel routine or even necessary for many tasks requiring internet searches. Neverthe...

Forever grateful to work w/ an org like Prison Library Support Network that makes our decisions collectively, and makes sure they are grounded in our values. Hence, we decided that our AI policy for volunteers was gonna be a big ol' NOPE. We noped all the way out. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Woman is invited to do a peer review - within her area of expertise - she declines because the journal is too woke.

WTAF.

I've been working on content related to citation justice and systemic issues with peer review. The whiplash that has just presented itself with this nonsense is truly mind-boggling.

Why I no longer engage with Nature publishing group My response to a recent invitation to review a manuscript for Nature Communications

This is a real comment that I just read:

"As it stands, social justice itself is contested (not the principle, but the implemen-tation), and until that gets sorted out, I think science and scientists are better off without it."

What a time to be alive.

hxstem.substack.com/p/why-i-no-l...

Also happening in the academic monograph supply chain! A screencap from GOBI, the supplier used by a lot (most?) academic libraries.

In retrospect, I think it was a bad idea to take the meanest, dumbest, and most selfish person and also make them the most powerful person.

America’s top companies keep talking about AI — but can’t explain the upsides FT analysis of hundreds of filings suggest the S&P 500 businesses are clearer about the risks than benefits

“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.”

I had a similarly life affirming experience at the Oasis concert with my old friend from uni. I had dreaded it, thinking I’d made a huge (expensive) mistake. But it turned out a singalong with 50,000 ppl was exactly the right kind of fun I needed!

I wanted to go to this show, but I knew the timing would be bad for me! Glad it was a banger.

It definitely soothes my soul. If you squint hard enough, you can see still the kid in them!!

I only heard snippets but Greek mythology was invoked.
And one problematized meeting the dolphin in the water.
I just loved it. It was the Scholastic series Who Would Win in an undergrad context. 🥹

Adolescent boys/young men are in the media a lot these days for awful reasons.

But I just overheard the best conversation between three 18/19 yo boys talking about who would win in a fight between a grizzly bear, a titan and a dolphin … and the fight is in the water.

Amazing.

I admit that I don’t like them in restaurants! I want to look at a paper menu. But I get it. Reluctantly.

Links to the material we are using in class (slides, journal articles).

I think the pandemic really made them relevant. Because I do remember thinking that the way we were trying to use them was a bit of a reach. But hey, the world changes! Glad we have them now!

Once upon a time, it was fashionable to rip the shit out of QR codes.
Today, I just created TWO of them for a class I’m teaching this afternoon.
Life comes at you fast. 🙃

N.L.'s 10-year education action plan cites sources that don't exist | CBC News A major report on modernizing the education system in Newfoundland and Labrador is peppered with fake sources some educators say were likely fabricated by generative artificial intelligence.

Very cool that the province’s new roadmap for education was written using generative AI. Really inspires confidence 🫠

Millions and millions of cats!

“I was gonna fight for liberation but we didn’t get the grant :(“ pin

professional activists and institutional intellectuals be like:

The argument that critics of GenAI are just in a moral panic, and that this is just the new calculator, Wikipedia, etc just sort of falls apart when you see stories about the bots as sycophantic therapists and caregivers in LTC homes, no?? Just me?

This is the same trap that non-profits fall into: they have to spend resources "telling their story" in order to maintain grant funding or raise funds, which diverts $ from the people/situation they are trying to help. It's a vicious cycle.

🙋‍♀️