Steph Brown

It will also disconnect students from each other—and in a world fractured by various flavors of technofascism, I cannot think of a more disastrous thing (which is likely partly why AI fetishists are pushing for AI in schools and universities)

“In reality, the “compact” is a maximalist document, demanding a near-complete surrender of core academic freedoms of the university. “

Please - stop doing the screenshot no link thing on Bluesky. This platform does not punish you for posting a URL. You picked up the habit from Meta apps? Stop doing Mark Z's bidding. Link ESPECIALLY to authors, reporters, bloggers, etc. where you quote the work.

The endgame for all of this is constructing a military that will obey orders when ordered to fire on citizens. That's the throughline to half of what Trump is doing.

reminder that one of the first things Hegseth did was end DOD recognition of Black History Month.

Smart move by two young upstate NY reporters: they filed a FOIA for body cameras worn by the sheriff’s deputies at an ICE raid. These are almost always civil raids so there’s no ongoing criminal investigation that would require that footage to stay confidential. Replicable by any media outlet.

of all the dumb shit that sucks these days, the dumbest and pettiest shit that sucks is the way people fetishize debate. i would like to revert to the old roughly agreed-upon cultural understanding that debate club is for boring friendless nerds

Who wants to put "Stall. Slack. Loaf." on a t-shirt for me?

...Would definitely read a sustained consideration of all the ways individuals are trying to protect ourselves/each other when faced with the combo of institutional refusals to lead and tech illiteracy.

At my uni, we're being told not to put things in writing, but then my dept head insists that we use AI transcription for all of our meetings...

Absolutely. They've been great.

Not an expert on this one, but I would say that anyone contracting someone else to store/access that footage should read their terms of service carefully (and pay attention to changes in those terms).

They didn't tell us they were going to slash the post office because they knew we wouldnt vote for that. Ergo, they shouldnt be doing it.

👀

🧵 This might be the aspect of surveillance that ppl who aren't obsessed with this stuff are least aware of: the line between corporate and state surveillance no longer exists, and legal rights (to privacy, etc.) don't matter when the police can contract out violations of those inconvenient rights.

I spent the week at the police surveillance convention and let me tell you my biggest observation: The name of the game now is consolidating as much information as humanely possible from surveillance devices, the internet, other governmental data, and literally a million other places. 🧵

For no reason at all thinking about the time someone asked Margaret Thatcher what her greatest accomplishment as PM was and she responded “Tony Blair.”

the post office is a public service. it doesn’t need to make money. public transit doesn’t need to make money. the library doesn’t need to make money. some things exist for the public good and we desperately need lawmakers to stop thinking about them in terms of capitalism. these are not businesses.

Cuts to and closures of university presses are 100% part of the separation (or as @mattseybold.bsky.social has called it "unbundling") of research and teaching in the humanities and the devaluation of both quite frankly--in this case at the expense of the career training admin claims to care about.

For whatever reason I'm seeing more Arizona slander than usual on the timeline & I just want you all to know that it only makes us desert rats stronger.

Never forget who is making good things happen and never let your administrators forget.

photo of paulina borsook

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it).

But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

JA Westenberg @Daojoan@mastodon.social My 9 year old and his classmates have started using “that’s AI” to mean “I don’t believe you.” Me: we’re having dinosaur meat for dinner Kiddo: that’s AI Sep 24, 2025, 07:36 AM

They've lost the 9yos

Like, what kind of life are you living that Isaac Chotiner feels the need to interview you????

A life of sin, I tell ya!!!

Abortion bans making pregnancy more dangerous, shaming women for using tylenol, making the world more dangerous for babies: this is all pronatalist because pronatalism is about recreating mandatory childbearing, not making childbearing easier.

Humanities professors cannot, in anything like significant numbers, get jobs in other countries.

Lemme spell it out. Trump's only leverage over Jimmy Kimmel and ABC came from FCC regulation. His direct power over H1-B visas gives him similar leverage over tech, higher ed, and others.

Despite being texted by democrats for donations nearly on the hour every hour, I refuse to give that party another single dime of my money. On the other hand, if there are viable candidates willing to run against Schumer and Jeffries, I will reconsider. I may even volunteer to canvass.

What really gives the game away is that the events include shooting and "lawn bowls" but zero track and field events.

See also: the Commonwealth Games, formerly the "British Empire Games."