Below are posts associated with the “Donald Trump” tag.
🔗 linkblog: Noem Announces Military Will ‘Liberate’ LA From Democracy, Then Watches Security Throw Senator To Ground
Finally read the full quote from Noem and it’s so bad. Scary times.
🔗 linkblog: Funding Cuts Are a ‘Gut Punch’ for STEM Education Researchers
What’s happening at the NSF is a tragedy, and I’m upset about all of these cuts. That said, I’ve long been skeptical about how the NSF has been used to promote STEM education at the expense of other worthy (but less economically productive) causes in schools. If Trump’s petty—and often cruel—cuts are a warning sign about how government can distort research priorities, there’s a deeper issue lurking in the background that we also need to wrestle with.
🔗 linkblog: Amazon’s Behavior Makes Walmart’s Earnings Call Look Like a Profile in Courage
Depressingly illuminating.
🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk’s apparent power play at the Copyright Office completely backfired
None of this is good, and I think there are dangers in using copyright as the bulwark against AI. Conversely, I will take a bit of pleasure in administration infighting, especially if it gets in the way of the AI companies.
🔗 linkblog: Multiple Trump White House officials have ties to antisemitic extremists
More reporting like this. Anti-semitism is a genuine problem, but there is nothing genuine about the Trump administration’s supposed concern about it.
🔗 linkblog: Trump Picks Deputy Attorney General as Acting Librarian of Congress
My workflow for pushing linkposts to my website requires me to include at least two words in each description, which prevents me from posting just a single eyeroll (or vomiting) emoji. [gift link]
🔗 linkblog: Trump administration poised to accept 'palace in the sky' as a gift for Trump from Qatar: Sources
What a petty, selfish president we have.
🔗 linkblog: UK launching social media campaign spotlighting NIH-funded research
NIH funding is an important part of my employer’s budget, so I think this kind of advocacy is important. However, it rubs me the wrong way that we’re speaking up publicly about potential funding cuts and being largely silent and “well, gotta follow the law” when our marginalized students are being targeted.
🔗 linkblog: Pentagon Furthers Crackdown on DEI With Order to Review Library Books
So, arguing that people of color are genetically less intelligent is fine, but criticizing that argument is radical woke? What a dumb, dumb world we live in. [Gift link]
🔗 linkblog: The AI Slop Presidency
My feelings toward generative AI are strong and negative, and I try not to share everything critical I read so that I’m not beating that drum over and over. This is worth a read, though: Generative AI is a great tool for trolling and Bannonesque “flooding the zone,” and the Trump administration’s use of it in these petty ways is arguably just as worrying as DOGE’s irresponsible appeals to AI. I just don’t like what these tools are doing to us—and as its supporters point out, this is the least powerful they’ll ever be.
🔗 linkblog: Trump Admits He Could Get Abrego Garcia Back, But Angrily Insists Non-Existent Tattoos Are The Reason He Won’t
I finally read about the whole tattoo thing. It’s so dumb that it makes me angry. I don’t want to think about it, but I’m bookmarking it because if I don’t, my brain will refuse to remember that Donald Trump made such a dumb assertion. It will get drowned out by so many other dumb things.
🔗 linkblog: Trump Officials Renew Opposition to Ruling on Maryland Man Wrongly Deported to El Salvador
What moral bankruptcy. Gift link.
🔗 linkblog: They’re putting A1 in the classrooms.
This video has been on my mind all morning, and it makes me so sad.
moral surrender, the environment, and generative AI
Last week, I blogged about how the purported inevitability of generative AI gets used to sidestep moral concerns about it. Earlier this morning, I shared a link to a story from The Verge that illustrates that perfectly, and so I wanted to write just a little bit more about it.
First, let’s quote some more from Jacques Ellul, whom I referenced in the last post (and whom I’ve just been referencing a lot in general recently).
🔗 linkblog: Trump administration’s attack on university research accelerates
I don’t personally need research funding, but I work in an academic ecosystem that’s highly dependent on it. Things aren’t looking good.
🔗 linkblog: Trump says the future of AI is powered by coal
This sort of thing reminds me why I’m so entrenched in my skepticism of generative AI. There’s an uncritical insistence that the world needs AI, that America should be first in AI, and that we’re just going to have to increase energy production instead of ask ourselves if that’s worth the cost. Credit to Trump, I guess, for illustrating just how dangerous all these attitudes are.
🔗 linkblog: Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic
I appreciate Masnick’s roundup of all the stupid things going on re: tariffs.
🔗 linkblog: Trump’s new tariff math looks a lot like ChatGPT’s
Well, if he’s going to ruin the economy, at least he can come by his strategy in the dumbest possible way.
🔗 linkblog: Trump’s Secret Police Are Now Disappearing Students For Their Op-Eds
Masnick’s writing has never struck me as inflammatory or rushed. If he’s using this language, we should all be worried.
🔗 linkblog: The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
Where does one start with how wild this story is?
🔗 linkblog: No DEI allowed for US mergers and acquisitions, says the new FCC chair
What a dumb, petty administration this is.
🔗 linkblog: Etats-Unis : un chercheur français refoulé pour avoir exprimé « une opinion personnelle sur la politique menée par l’administration Trump »
C’est du n’importe quoi, ça. Quelle honte, ce pays.
🔗 linkblog: UK ends relationship with nonprofit amid Trump admin investigation
On one hand, if the university’s connections are tenuous, I can understand making the easy move to get the administration off our back—especially when I’m confident that UK is pushing back against NIH indirect costs and other issues. On the other, I certainly hope that our response to every attack isn’t going to be to roll over and wash our hands of things.
policy and the prophetic voice: generative AI and deepfake nudes
This is a mess of a post blending thoughts on tech policy with religious ideas and lacking the kind of obvious throughline or structure that I’d like it to have. It’s also been in my head for a couple of weeks, and it’s time to release it into the world rather than wait for it to be something better. So, here it is:
I am frustrated with generative AI technology for many reasons, but one of the things at the top of that list is the knowledge that today’s kids are growing up in a world where it is possible—even likely—that their middle and high school experiences are going to involve someone using generative AI tools to produce deepfake nudes (or other non-consensual intimate imagery—NCII) of them.
bike cowardice and bike infrastructure
I ran some errands yesterday morning, visiting two stores and a library that were all relatively close to where I live. I regularly bike a much longer distance to get to work and back, so by any right, I should have done the same for these small errands. If there had been some bike racks at the shopping center where two of the errands were, I almost certainly would have done so, but faced with the (relatively minor) inconvenience of not having anywhere to lock my bike while in a grocery store or optician’s office, I took the coward’s route and drove.
🔗 linkblog: NASA, Yale, and Stanford Scientists Consider 'Scientific Exile,' French University Says'
I mean, I’ve always wanted to live and work in France, but I’ve never wanted to feel like I would have to.
🔗 linkblog: Bluesky Deletes AI Protest Video of Trump Sucking Musk's Toes, Calls It 'Non-Consensual Explicit Material''
Honestly, I get the original call, but I’m glad Bluesky backtracked. Content moderation is hard.
🔗 linkblog: Trump State Department official has called for mass sterilization of ‘low-IQ trash’'
It’s all bad right now, but it’s still important to call out the particularly bad stuff.