Vance Ricks

I wasn't prepared for the conversation with a recent graduate who was going to apply to medical school but decided that they could have a bigger effect, on more people, by..."pivoting" to work on solving the existential risks posed by AI.

Screenshot of The New York Times' 04 August 2025 "Spelling Bee" puzzle, featuring the letters "D", "E", "G", "I", "L", and "T" on the outside and the letter "U" in the center.

What? It doesn't accept "Luddite"??

Stolen valor

Some Things Need to Be Grown, Not Graded, and Definitely Not Automated The very real frustration teachers have over rampant AI usage in classrooms is growing.

"AI fluency frameworks in higher education advocate for teaching responsible usage of AI, but none of them talk about the impossibility of our current situation."

substack.com/@marcwatkins...

Did you try rebooting? :-)

i think a lot about how zotero is actually one of the technologies academia actually should be pushing on students and faculty versus the lake-guzzling, town poisoning, and labor exploiting chatbots

I'm making my students read a book A physical book!

Also see @hchoi.bsky.social's recent post about her course: theimportantwork.substack.com/p/im-making-...

This fall, I'll teach from/with @karenhao.bsky.social 's _Empire of AI_ in an undergrad/grad course on "responsible AI". @hchoi.bsky.social is also going to teach that book in one of her courses. If you will, too, then let's talk: we'd like to compare notes! +

I'm still a little grumpy that it's not still in production.

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”― Zora Neale Hurston

Ah, okay - thanks

I think the link isn't working (?).

YouTube video by Electric Mountain Bike Network How To Wheelie Your eBike

www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4yX...

Their Water Taps Ran Dry When Meta Built Next Door

"When Ms. Morris said she was afraid to cook with the tap water because of the sediment, the Meta employee suggested that she try boiling the water before using it. The company has denied that its employee said that."

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/t...

"Under the guidelines, each department must establish a minimum expectation for external grant funding." This is a good time to establish rock-band expectations; no?

Tech to protect images against AI scrapers can be beaten ai-pocalypse: Data poisoning, meet data detox

"Asked how he sees the impasse between content creators and AI companies being resolved, Zhao said these tools were not designed to be the ultimate solution."

www.theregister.com/2025/07/11/d...

Why Big Tech is threatened by a global push for data sovereignty Countries are forcing tech giants to store citizen data locally, challenging the standard business model of harvesting data abroad while keeping profits at home.

restofworld.org/2025/big-tec...

YouTube video by JamesBrownVevo James Brown - The Payback

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cBZ...

Support Global Voices as we launch our donation campaign Sharp cuts to foreign aid by a number of governments are shrinking the available funds for nonprofits, with digital rights organizations like ours taking a particular hit.

🗣️Today we're launching a campaign to raise $250,000 to keep Global Voices alive and thriving.

👉🏿We’re ad-free, paywall-free, and community-powered — but funding cuts and a tough media landscape are putting us at risk.

#KeepGVStrong🌱
globalvoices.org/2025/07/09/s...

And Timex/Sinclair :-)

Foundations & Futures of HCI: a teach-in with Professor Kate Starbird As part of HCDE’s 2025 graduation events, Professor Kate Starbird delivered a special teach-in exploring the foundations and future of human-computer interaction. Starbird traced how the technologies ...

I teach a "Foundations of HCI" class covering the history of Human-Computer Interaction going back to Vannevar Bush's Atlantic article in 1945 & explaining how U.S. gov funding for science catalyzed this field. Here's a public lecture I gave summarizing: www.hcde.washington.edu/news/article...

I'm rooting for that elephant behind them.

Economic Research Rescue Fund The National Science Foundation (NSF) is dramatically reducing its vital support for basic science.  Principal Investigators who were conducting or facilitating economic research under a grant termina...

www.ssrc.org/programs/eco...

Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brat_an...

What Makes Us Free? : Throughline What's the role of government in society? What do we mean when we talk about individual responsibility? What makes us free? 'Neoliberalism' might feel like a squishy term that's hard to define and und...

haha "This episode originally ran as 'Capitalism: What Makes Us Free?'"

www.npr.org/2025/07/10/1...

It's too bad that "useful" and "not useful" are the only options!

"Miasma"

YouTube video by John Bowie Lanford The Graduate: Plastics

Alternatively/additionally: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dug-...