Melanie Walsh

Heroes. Quite the effort and dedication on this one. Unfortunately, not an easily repeatable process for most researchers looking for access, but can hopefully inform lawmakers.

I didn't even include the lawyer's best burn!

Lawyer: You say you have an understanding of what DEI means and when I ask you, you say you need to reference the Executive Order [EO].

Do you need to reference EOs to define every word you use in your everyday life?

Opposing Lawyer: Objection.

Photocopier : Xerox :: DEI : "gender fluidity and um like promoting subsets of LGBTQ+ in ways that alienate me"

😆

bsky.app/profile/char...

Video of ICE shooting of Texas man raises questions about government claim An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said Ruben Martinez “intentionally ran over” an agent before being killed by another agent in south Texas last year.

We know about the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. But there was a very similar killing of a young man named Ruben Martinez in which immigration agents claimed he attacked them with his car before they shot him. New video suggests that too may be a lie. www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

True. But on a side note I hope people don't replace names with things like "DOGE Boy" moving forward; we should know exactly who these people were.

Good point!

These people are, to be blunt, substantially less intelligent than they believe they are.

New “what’s a photocopier” just dropped

EXACTLY.

And then they labelled a grant that was preserving Pittsburgh's industrial heritage as DEI 😆 It makes absolutely no sense.

bsky.app/profile/dmim...

High School English and the Making of American Readers Abstract. The high school English classroom is the most influential literary institution in the United States, and the most overlooked by literary scholars

"Recent attacks on specific works of literature by Republican state legislatures and conservative orgs...pale in comparison to the large-scale divestment from literature to which liberal and conservative forces alike contribute."

so good, @manshel.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/alh/article/...

This is absolutely hilarious and deserves a Veep-style TV adaptation.

This is a fascinating connection: AI personas are confusing, but perhaps no more so than fictional characters once were.

Related, I couldn’t understand the complex ambiguity around Greeks mythology until a classics prof compared it to the many contradictory myths surrounding Santa Claus.

Two Working LEGO Printing Presses | LEGO® Ideas The development of mechanical printing changed how ideas move through the world. Once text and images could be printed rather than copied by hand, knowledge was…

Hi #EarlyModern Bluesky - did you know that someone brilliant has built working printing presses using Lego and they are trying to get enough supporters so that Lego will release it as a kit?

They look so cool!

beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

call for submissions

PLAGIARI[S]M
edited by @benlibman.bsky.social

opens 16/03

oleada.io/publication/...

"Yes. The restoration of the Carrie Blast
Furnaces preserves and interprets
Pittsburgh's industrial heritage, promoting
diversity, equity, and inclusion by providing
free access to a historic site for thousands of
visitors each year."

Oh my god I *cannot* believe that's real.

Yes that's an interesting example, too! It's definitely the emotional part that matters.

I do think there's something particularly apt about fictional characters, especially since that's how Anthropic describes their models, or how Character AI markets itself, etc.

Your piece is great, Aaron! I just read it with my lab group. Thank you for sharing. So helpful for thinking through these connections between LLMs and fiction.

Yes she suggests that they were getting confused in earlier moments, though @nushpowell.bsky.social and @friede.bsky.social offered helpful skepticism/reframes and emphasized the emotional appeal, which is the part that really matters!

bsky.app/profile/nush...

bsky.app/profile/frie...

read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/...

there is a macroeconomic reason novels are not written in the third person anymore and it is not good

www.versobooks.com/products/303...

Though it is day, the sun cannot be seen in Tehran today because of all the smoke following the US and Israel bombing Tehran's oil refineries. People on the ground describe it as armageddon. History will not forgive Reza Pahlavi, Masih Alinejad, Nazanin Boniadi, and all other "leaders" who tricked Iranians into thinking this war would set them free.

Oh my god: this is *daytime* in Tehran.

this is insane

bsky.app/profile/numb...

The best thing to read on this is Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan by Teri Silvio.

Other / Non-western models and modes of thought useful to understanding what's going on are available.

I think that confusion is overstated. Readers were generally adept at picking out histories from True Histories. And yet still they had feelings about their reading.

Haha yes! I want to hear their thoughts.

“The characters’ very fictiveness had a strong emotional appeal” is an unsettling and timely observation.

We are headed into strange waters because language has emotional and social power. That power depends less than one might think on belief that it represents a conscious subject.