Atilla Hallsby

EdTech LLMs reinforce racism and forecast the death of education.

Stay tuned for upcoming book events in Spring 2026 and check out her new books network interview, just released this week!

newbooksnetwork.com/back-alley-a...

From the JHU Press blurb: “How did three words come to carry the weight of America's abortion debates? In Back-Alley Abortion, Emily Winderman examines how this phrase shaped American reproductive politics and health care standards across generations.”

Back-Alley Abortion A Rhetorical History

So very proud of Emily Winderman, whose book is out in the world as of this October!! The cover is AMAZING and the book is INCREDIBLE. Pick up a copy for yourself or your library!!

tinyurl.com/Back-Alley-A...

I have a book chapter I wrote about this!!

More specifically, it's about how tools like web templates help conspiracists move away from traditional visual markers such as wild color templates and mismatched fonts.

Of course LLMs are making it worse.

www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781...

Thank YOU!

They Knew FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE “Every sentence delivered. The pathos of truth-seeking left me thinking of Herman Melville."—Timothy Snyder...

With the Epstein emails at a new fever pitch, please read @sarahkendzior.bsky.social’s 2022 “They Knew” (as well as her prolific other writings) — it is a window into the past about things that seem only to be “discovered” now. Strongly recommend, I owe a lot to her thinking/writing.

I also found the Epstein-Altman bubble analogy compelling:

“… in a week in which Sam Altman shat the bed and Epstein’s secrets have started to leaking out, these old airlocked systems cannot hold.”

"A circular economy of loans and debts and froth and hype…all entirely dependent upon one another. This emperor has $1 trillion and not a stitch to wear.

Wiley Coyote at the edge of a cliff doesn’t fall until he looks down. When are people going to look down? The finances don’t make any sense."

One of those “I spent x year writing a book and they just … tweeted it” moments, only, my entire feed, everyone, forever moments.

Feels validating, honestly.

Fair

Reading Between the Lines on Compact Responses Universities that rejected the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education emphasized merit in their responses and highlighted core values in turning it down.

… But I ask from the point of view of someone who has found the critical vocabulary of second-/third-generation psychoanalysis, genealogy, deconstruction useful.

But yes, lots of depressing news regarding the future of higher ed from the top down (see below). Trying to see the cont phil connection

Can you say more re: “withering and unlikely generational renewal of continental philosophy”? If it is about the way that poststructuralism has been weaponized against the humanities & the left (again, cf. Alan Sokal) I agree, and even more strongly agree with the criticism of encroaching AI …

This is literal iconoclasm, no?

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.

Thanks, Bethany!!

Suffice it to say there’s a long history of the university of Chicago engaging in racist land grab efforts at the expense of the surrounding community, which from the looks of it is what many of the other quote-reposts also draw attention to.

Out of time to post more right now, but these details and more in "Sovereign, Settler, Leaker, Lie," specifically the chapter on "The Dog Whistle" and the use of Saul Alinsky as a coded racist epithet during the Obama presidency.

bsky.app/profile/atil...

... that the organization sought “to rub raw the sores of discontent and rouse dormant hostilities.” The Maroon, the University of Chicago’s student newspaper, labeled TWO as a “hate group” in cahoots with the Archdiocese. 7/x

In Spring 1961, The Christian Century, “a well-known religious periodical,” allied with the University of Chicago’s Public Relations Office to attack TWO, claiming ... 6/x

This initiated the coordination of TWO, a Woodlawn community organization created (at least in part) to resist UC's encroachment. This was also the beginning of Saul Alinsky (and the IAF's) involvement with Woodlawn.

The South East Chicago Commission (SECC)—once described by UIllinois urbanologist Pierre de Vise as “UChicago’s own CIA”—proposed sweeping gentrification to enhance appeal for faculty and students.

Fish, Black Power / White Control. Harvey, “Disorganizer” Chicago Defender. 5/x

Efforts to organize the community against white flight and UC expansion were hampered by damaging urban renewal plans, and groups “organized primarily in opposition to the United Woodlawn Council,” which preceded Saul Alinsky's appearance in the neighborhood... 4/x

... units in Woodlawn were substandard according to the 1960 census. For this housing the new residents paid more than the median rent city-wide out of a median family income of $4,400 as compared with the $7,200 median for white families in Chicago.

Fish, Black Power / White Control, 12–13. 3/x

After World War II, the neighborhood underwent significant white flight as white residents moved out and Black residents, many from the American South, moved in:

"Between 1950 and 1960, Woodlawn changed from 86 percent white to 86 percent black. Nearly half (48.7 percent) of all housing ... 2/x

Some fun* facts:

1. Woodlawn, one of the neighborhoods that became the UC South Campus, was built as temp housing for the Columbian Exposition in 1893: a “white city” w/ the original Ferris Wheel, a “military encampment,” & German/Turkish “villages”

Beck, Unfair Labor?, Burg, Chicago’s White City

Ilyasah Shabazz didn’t want to look at the AI-generated videos of her father, Malcolm X. The seemingly realistic clips — made by OpenAI’s new video-maker Sora 2 — show the legendary civil rights activist making crude jokes, wrestling with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and talking about defecating on himself.

“It is deeply disrespectful and hurtful to see my father’s image used in such a cavalier and insensitive manner when he dedicated his life to truth,” Shabazz, whose father was assassinated in front of her in 1965 when she was 2, told The Washington Post. She questioned why the developers were not acting “with the same morality, conscience, and care … that they’d want for their own families.”

ai is a fascist tool. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Thanks to @clancyny.bsky.social for sharing the table of contents!

bsky.app/profile/clan...

Please reach out via dm if you are interested in desk copies upon release (contingent on first come first serve availability).