Below are posts associated with the “link” type.
🔗 linkblog: Teachers Are Not OK
Bookmarked this a while ago and am finally reading it. So infuriating.
🔗 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: A Texas Cop Searched License Plate Cameras Nationwide for a Woman Who Got an Abortion
So scary, so gross. Lexington needs to ditch Flock now.
🔗 linkblog: Doing Justice by Providing Sabbath for Others
Lots of interesting ideas in here. Certainly a different approach to “Sabbath” than the one I grew up with.
🔗 linkblog: ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows
Flock sucks, and I’m so mad that Lexington drank the Kool-Aid instead of resisting local surveillance. Just wrote my city council representative, the vice mayor, and the two at-large representatives.
🔗 linkblog: The Internet of Consent - Anil Dash
Lots of good observations in here, and I need to think through the implications for digital methods research.
🔗 linkblog: Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry
The sheer hubris of this attitude! The AI industry must exist, even if it means that it will put others out of business, and therefore any moral standard that would put the AI industry out of business must be abandoned. Very Ellulian.
🔗 linkblog: Kentucky’s Bitcoin Boom Has Gone Bust
I somehow missed a lot of this history, so I’m bookmarking this for future reference.
🔗 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: Researchers Scrape 2 Billion Discord Messages and Publish Them Online
I confess that I would have found this interesting in an earlier part of my career. Now, though, I’m reminded that I built that career on a methodological approach that’s uncomfortable close to surveillance, and I don’t love that.
🔗 linkblog: VPNSecure Lifetime Subscriptions: Now You Didn’t License What You Licensed, Either
After seeing a few headlines, this is the first thing I’ve read on this fiasco. What a mess.
🔗 linkblog: Duolingo CEO says AI is a better teacher than humans—but schools will exist ‘because you still need childcare’
I hate everything in this article.
🔗 linkblog: Chicago Sun-Times Prints AI-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don't Exist
We live in a dumb future.
🔗 linkblog: Amazon’s Behavior Makes Walmart’s Earnings Call Look Like a Profile in Courage
Depressingly illuminating.
🔗 linkblog: How Miami Schools Are Leading 100,000 Students Into the A.I. Future
There are some critical perspectives in this piece, but certainly not enough in my book. [gift link]
🔗 linkblog: ‘Hyperscale’ data center project drawing resistance in rural Oldham County
Data centers are coming to Kentucky, and that has me worried.
🔗 linkblog: xAI posts Grok’s behind-the-scenes prompts
The “You do not blindly defer to mainstream authority or media” system prompt is raising questions already answered by the system prompt. Also, lol that they have to explicitly tell Grok not to call it “Twitter.”
🔗 linkblog: Grok’s “white genocide” obsession came from “unauthorized” prompt edit, xAI says
Aside from the headline-grabbing parts of Grok’s recent freakout, this story does a really good job of emphasizing that AIs don’t “think”… and that “truth” isn’t really a valid concept either, no matter Musk’s marketing.
🔗 linkblog: The Simulation Says the Orioles Should Be Good
Listened to Jason talk about this story on the 404 podcast while doing dishes last night (interspersed with watching clips of Moneyball, which I’ve never seem), and so I came back to skim the original article.
I don’t really care about baseball, so maybe I’m not allowed to have this opinion, but this all seems like a hellscape that Jacques Ellul’s technique explains pretty well.
🔗 linkblog: American Schools Were Deeply Unprepared for ChatGPT, Public Records Show
Fascinating piece that underscores how often cheerleading voices are the only ones valued in edtech—and also how much education has been forced to respond to big tech companies simply releasing their products into the world wirhout input from those it will effect.
🔗 linkblog: License Plate Reader Company Flock Is Building a Massive People Lookup Tool, Leak Shows
Wish I’d done more to resist Flock adoption in Lexington.
🔗 linkblog: The House GOP Quietly Slipped In An AI Law That Would Accidentally Ban GOP’s Favorite ‘Save The Children’ Laws
Interesting point from Masnick.
🔗 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: Oklahoma education standards say students must identify 2020 election 'discrepancies'
Ryan Walters continues to be shameful.
🔗 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: Nintendo warns that it can brick Switch consoles if it detects hacking, piracy
Gotta keep asking ourselves whether we truly own our computers.
🔗 linkblog: Republicans Try to Cram Ban on AI Regulation Into Budget Reconciliation Bill
That this is coming out of Kentucky only makes me more upset.
🔗 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: Behind Bars, My Tablet Is More Than Just Tech
Prison tablets are such an exploitative use of technology. It’s a clear example of using technological development to oppress ratger than liberate. I highly recommend Cory Doctorow’s The Bezzle for its (fictional) riffs on prison tech.
🔗 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: Pope Leo XIV names AI one of the reasons for his papal name
Again, more of religious commentary on AI that emphasizes labor issues.
🔗 linkblog: Pope Leo tells cardinals they must continue 'precious legacy' of Pope Francis
I haven’t done all the homework on the new pope, and I don’t know how much it makes sense as a non-Catholic to have a take on the new pope, but I’m here for religious leaders who express skepticism about AI specifically as a labor issue, not just in vague spiritual terms.