William E. Ketchum III

i think i am pretty good at tiktok style vertical video. i speak extemporaneously and coherently in a way that flows quite naturally. you might even say i am “authentic.” this is 100% the product of constant practice. you have to *work* at translating your feeling and belief into a message.

It's my favorite album by him at this point, which says a lot considering how much I love Black On Both Sides. But I really think that The Ecstatic captures who Yasiin really is more than any of his other works. His global perspective, his freewheeling spirit while still being focused

@joelanderson.bsky.social yeah, he's intentionally taken it off of DSPs. He spoke about it this last year too IIRC, in an interview with Cutting Room Floor (same interview where he had the controversial Drake comments). Paraphrasing, "certain stuff I'll put on DSPs, but that one is too dear to me"

this is such an important point. i do not think that the typical american understands that for most of their lives, someone like james madison or george washington or thomas jefferson was *surrounded* by black people.

YouTube video by Jayson Rodriguez Joey Bada$$ vs The West Coast aka New Joey City. Jayson Rodriguez & William Ketchum talk the 20 v. 1

Had a quality chat w/ @weketchum.bsky.social about regionalism in hip-hop, the stakes of rap battles (real or not) + aftermath of Joey Badass v. The West/Field/20 whatever nomenclature you choose. Check out this clip. Link to listen in the next skeet #blueskyhiphop

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

Sarah, a freshman at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, said she first used ChatGPT to cheat during the spring semester of her final year of high school. (Sarah’s name, like those of other current students in this article, has been changed for privacy.) After getting acquainted with the chatbot, Sarah used it for all her classes: Indigenous studies, law, English, and a “hippie farming class” called Green Industries. “My grades were amazing,” she said. “It changed my life.” Sarah continued to use AI when she started college this past fall. Why wouldn’t she? Rarely did she sit in class and not see other students’ laptops open to ChatGPT. Toward the end of the semester, she began to think she might be dependent on the website. She already considered herself addicted to TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Reddit, where she writes under the username maybeimnotsmart. “I spend so much time on TikTok,” she said. “Hours and hours, until my eyes start hurting, which makes it hard to plan and do my schoolwork. With ChatGPT, I can write an essay in two hours that normally takes 12.”

Teachers have tried AI-proofing assignments, returning to Blue Books or switching to oral exams. Brian Patrick Green, a tech-ethics scholar at Santa Clara University, immediately stopped assigning essays after he tried ChatGPT for the first time. Less than three months later, teaching a course called Ethics and Artificial Intelligence, he figured a low-stakes reading reflection would be safe — surely no one would dare use ChatGPT to write something personal. But one of his students turned in a reflection with robotic language and awkward phrasing that Green knew was AI-generated. A philosophy professor across the country at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock caught students in her Ethics and Technology class using AI to respond to the prompt “Briefly introduce yourself and say what you’re hoping to get out of this class.”

Whenever Wendy uses AI to write an essay (which is to say, whenever she writes an essay), she follows three steps. Step one: “I say, ‘I’m a first-year college student. I’m taking this English class.’” Otherwise, Wendy said, “it will give you a very advanced, very complicated writing style, and you don’t want that.” Step two: Wendy provides some background on the class she’s taking before copy-and-pasting her professor’s instructions into the chatbot. Step three: “Then I ask, ‘According to the prompt, can you please provide me an outline or an organization to give me a structure so that I can follow and write my essay?’ It then gives me an outline, introduction, topic sentences, paragraph one, paragraph two, paragraph three.” Sometimes, Wendy asks for a bullet list of ideas to support or refute a given argument: “I have difficulty with organization, and this makes it really easy for me to follow.”

Once the chatbot had outlined Wendy’s essay, providing her with a list of topic sentences and bullet points of ideas, all she had to do was fill it in. Wendy delivered a tidy five-page paper at an acceptably tardy 10:17 a.m. When I asked her how she did on the assignment, she said she got a good grade. “I really like writing,” she said, sounding strangely nostalgic for her high-school English class — the last time she wrote an essay unassisted. “Honestly,” she continued, “I think there is beauty in trying to plan your essay. You learn a lot. You have to think, Oh, what can I write in this paragraph? Or What should my thesis be? ” But she’d rather get good grades. “An essay with ChatGPT, it’s like it just gives you straight up what you have to follow. You just don’t really have to think that much.”

Don't have anything new to say about AI here. One thing I will say is that higher ed has long been broken. If elites had spent more time thinking through the point of education and how well we really do it than stoking woke panic, maybe we wouldn't be staring at this abyss. nymag.com/intelligence...

Golden toilet guy thinks your kid has too much.

the thing about this is...like, it's grotesque and ridiculous, but it's also like as normal as trump gets in terms of spin.

it's clumsy spin, but it's just spin. if this was the worst trump's lying got, we'd be so much better off. 1

😭😭 I miss working with you too!

the trump administration, obviously concerned with racial equality, thinks its illegal discrimination to spend federal dollars protecting a predominantly black community from raw sewage

Sigh. Yup

I've been in this industry for 20 years, and the experience is consistently, "I would love that job...oh wait, that job doesn't exist anymore."

YouTube video by The Company Man Miller to Mos Def: Album Reviews We Regret w/ @fantano @toureshow & WEKetchum

From Mac Miller to Mos Def: Album Reviews We Regret w/ @toure.bsky.social @afantano.bsky.social @weketchum.bsky.social

youtu.be/RJUQiS45tO4?si…

They won't read.

Abandoning trans people is 'fascist logic', says leading feminist philosopher Leading feminist philosopher Judith Butler has declared that abandoning trans people or any minority is operating within 'fascist logic'.

“Once you decide that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed, you’re operating within a fascist logic,” they said. “That means there might be a second one you’re willing to sacrifice and a third, a fourth. Then what happens?”

Attention is his currency more than anything. Laughing at him and laughing with him are functionally the same thing

It isn’t “gun jumping.” It’s capitulation to an authoritarian. Again, if this keeps up, they should all resign. There was nothing untoward or unethical here. It was basic video editing. Admitting to anything else would be journalistic malpractice.

also, seeing that there's an appetite for collective action is Good, Actually, and making it accessible, widespread, and effective, while explaining it in simple terms, is empowering and a great place to start.

rather than "this is stupid, won't work" say "this is great, and the next steps are..."

Give me watermelon, pineapple, and red grapes, and I'm good forever

you know, as far as Black tastemakers go, I wanna shout out @deephunk.bsky.social @djtara.bsky.social and the whole rare form crew.

they should make vitamins for men. vitamen

New jazz fellowship honors the genre's elders and gives them each an unrestricted $100,000 grant The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Jazz Foundation of America on Tuesday announced the Jazz Legacies Fellowship -- a new $15 million program that will give 50 artists who are 62 years or older a ...

A new $15 million jazz fellowship is granting 50 artists over the age of 62 a $100,000 grant, professional support and performance opportunities

What movie is this?

👀

Shit like this is just one element of why I hate the death penalty so much. Imagine if this dude was executed before this new evidence came out

Opinion | Trump, Again, Chooses Loyalty Over Leadership The firing of the nation’s top military officer is the latest example of the president prioritizing fealty over sound policy and expertise.

"Friday's purge at the Pentagon isn’t an isolated maneuver — it’s indicative of an administration intent on reshaping itself around the president’s personal network," writes the Times editorial board.

Genie.

😭

Donate to EMERGENCY! Facing Eviction After Assault, organized by Nataki Whitten Hi everyone, I never imagined having to ask for help like this, but ri… Nataki Whitten needs your support for EMERGENCY! Facing Eviction After Assault

My Loves, please help a survivor avoid eviction after sexual assualt by a client. Please share or donate. She needs to raise $2400 by February 28. 🤲🏽

#mutualaid #blacksky #support

gofund.me/2e650495

watched some reacher on the treadmill today and i do love that we have a whole franchise whose central premise is “what if a man were really big”