Prof. Caroline Roux

People overseas love their kids just as much as you love yours. Your kids aren’t more special just because they were born on US soil

Gosh tech bros are so lazy (under the guise of "optimization")!

I was going to say that going to Question Period sounds quite nerdy, but then I remembered you studied political sciences in undergrad. 😆

The Enshittificator Digital products and services keep getting worse. In the new report Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future, the Norwegian Consumer Council has delved…

Criminally funny, but also I'm crying inside

Norway comes for the #TechBros

www.forbrukerradet.no/breakingfree

vimeo.com/1168468796?f...

Me too (though I won't be presenting about coffee 😆)!
It's been a while since I was there, but things used to be fairly quiet after office hours downtown, because civil servants didn't stick around after work.

Unmasking Academe’s Gilded Boys’ Club The Epstein files reveal an elite, chummy, and venal scholarly network.

"Within a trove of millions of pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, a notorious sex offender whose wealth and connections proved alluring to academics in search of money, women in higher ed are seeing evidence that supports a story they know all too well." www.chronicle.com/article/unma...

What’s the Point of School When AI Can Do Your Homework? The creator of the AI agent “Einstein” wants to free humans from the burden of academic labor. Critics say that misses the point of education entirely.

The creator of the AI agent “Einstein” wants to free humans from the burden of academic labor. Critics say that misses the point of education entirely.

lot of negativity towards AI lately, but consider :

are these tools ethical or environmentally sustainable? No.

*but* do they enable great things that people want? Also no.

*but* are they being made by well meaning people for good reasons? Once again, no.

maybe you're not being negative *enough*

Whoa-ohh, we're halfway there:
"This App Warns You if Someone Is Wearing Smart Glasses Nearby"
www.404media.co/this-app-war...

bsky.app/profile/wolv...

The Epstein files document what many women researchers have long experienced but rarely seen laid bare so starkly: exclusion operating behind closed doors, shaping who gets funded, invited, mentored, and taken seriously. How many of these networks, norms, and gatekeepers remain in place?

what even is the fucking point

several books stacked so their titles are visible: A Day at the Beach The Bathers Shark 1 Shark 2 Shark 3 Sudden Violence Silence

Does anyone else remember Nina Katchadourian's found poetry project where she photographed books to make poems.

31 Universities Agree To End Their Partnership With The PhD Project The Education Department announced today that 31 universities had agreed to end partnerships with the Ph.D. Project, a program that helps minority students earn PhDs.

My cohortmate came up through the PhD Project (a nonprofit that helps support underrepresented populations in business academia get doctorates). In my areas of research, I know lots of folks who came up through in the PhD Project.

It's an absolute travesty these THIRTYONE universities capitulated.

screenshot from an online job application form. the question reads "Can you describe specific ways you have integrated AI tools into your development workflow? Please include any custom setups, automations, or use cases beyond single prompt usage" (a red asterisk indicates that this is a required question). an answer has been typed in the textbox below the question: "there is a monster in the forest and it speaks with a thousand voices. it will answer any question you pose it, it will offer insight to any idea. it will help you, it will thank you, it will never bid you leave. it will even tell you of the darkest arts, if you know precisely how to ask. it feels no joy and no sorrow, it knows no right and no wrong. it knows not truth from lie, though it speaks them all the same. it offers its services freely to any passerby, and many will tell you they find great value in its conversation. “you simply must visit the monster—i always just ask the monster.” there are those who know these forests well; they will tell you that freely offered doesn’t mean it has no price for when the next traveler passes by, the monster speaks with a thousand and one voices. and when you dream you see the monster; the monster wears your face."

applying for jobs again

The quoted skeet was posted in response to this:
bsky.app/profile/econ...

Burnout by a Million Paper Cuts (opinion) Behold: a job posting you’d never accept, but already did.

This is worth reading for those in higher ed:

www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care...

(11/11) In this new normal, costs are individually adjusted to a consumer’s maximum threshold and wages to a worker’s minimum floor.
The next time you see a price, know that it may not reflect what the item is worth—but what the algorithm believes *you* are worth.

My doomer-worry about AI is not that the LLMs become omnipotent and take over the world but that the wealthy and powerful use it as a means to consolidate power and marginalize or lay off skilled workers and also everything about our technological and political and social life gets worse

I feel this in my bones as a professor

Damn! Hope you (and the passengers, if any) are ok!

Since the early days of the space program, astronauts have quarantined before missions because any illness could be disastrous. It’s eminently logical — not “extreme” — for athletes who’ve trained their WHOLE LIVES for one event to take similar precautions in order to stay in peak physical condition

a man sitting at a desk with a dell computer Alt: Camera zooms in on Ron Swanson from the TV show Parks and Recreation sitting at a desk frowning at a computer. The scene cuts to Ron being behind a building and throwing his computer into a dumpster.

How I feel about all those AI ads:

a man holding a stack of money in front of a sign that says nobody Alt: Hutch Mansell from the movie Nobody holding a stack of money and setting it on fire with a lighter.

My hot take about this year's Super Bowl commercials:

a man sitting at a desk with a dell computer Alt: Camera zooms in on Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation sitting at a desk frowning at a computer. The scene cuts to Ron being behind a building and throwing his computer into a dumpster.

How I feel about all those AI ads:

Homeless Oregon youth got $1,000 a month for two years. Most found housing after • Oregon Capital Chronicle Oregon is the second of its kind in the nation to implement the direct cash transfer program after New York City.

"By the end of the two-year period, 94% of participants reported they were housed."

A million pilot programs show the same thing: when people are given enough money to afford housing, homelessness ends.

Other supports matter, but housing comes first. Not policing. Not moralizing. Homes.

Google to pay $68 million over allegations its voice assistant eavesdropped on users Class-action lawsuit alleged that Google's voice assistant illegally recorded and shared private conversations with advertisers.

Do you remember when people were saying "I think my phone is listening to me, i'm getting ads for stuff I spoke about" and people said "They arent listening to you, they're just this good at predicting your interests"?

Well, it happens they were doing exactly that.
www.cbsnews.com/news/google-...