nerd with narrative disorder • humanitarian • sociopunk • evidence-based creativity • speculative resistance • predictive fictions • INFOMOCRACY • THE MIMICKING OF KNOWN SUCCESSES • …AND OTHER DISASTERS • GlobalVoices.org • ASU-CSI • opinions my own
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also the extraness of an ad for an "AI" "research assistant" presumably trained on the content of this journal embedded in the article about how someone used "AI" to compose an article about my book that included false quotes and citations. I'll just be over here screaming for a while.
I am wondering a lot about how this came about - did the person who submitted it have an idea about my book and not bother to follow through? have they even read my book? how did they choose it/hear about it, if not?
Where it really got to me was the false quotes attributed to my books. That feels like an attack - if not on me, then on the idea of publishing as a way of marking our thoughts. So appreciate that @lkonstan.bsky.social was able to keep them out of the academic record, still feels incredibly creepy.
this gave me a fizzy, unsettled, questioning of reality feeling similar to the first time I read Borges, but without the excitement of discovering Borges
lol get their pasty no-chin-having asses
"In mid-2024, a study of 2,500 workers found that 77 percent reported decreased productivity and even higher workloads when using AI. Just under 40 percent of workers reported increased workloads caused explicitly by AI's sloppy mistakes."
When management introduces automation under claims that it will create more free time or somehow lessen the workload, it’s either: 1. A lie 2. To be filled back up by other work 3. Both.
Tomorrow @rasmusschmokel.bsky.social will defend his PhD dissertation “The Impact of Algorithms on News Consumption. The Power of Social Media as Democratic Infrastructure and its Potential for Public Value" at the @ddc-sdu.bsky.social @sdu.dk Go Rasmus 🚀
“Blah,” said a voice from inside the house.
Activist Saba Skhvitaridze of the Akhali party was sentenced to 2 yrs in prison—even though he was the victim of police brutality. Saba's 'crime' is defending a woman who was being attacked by a masked, identified man, who turned out to be a cop. In custody, Saba was beaten unconscious.
#georgia is now in a very dark place...and it happened far faster than I thought
Dozens gathered at the Tbilisi City Court to hear the final speeches of 11 individuals arrested during the #GeorgiaProtests.
For politicians such as Yvette Cooper, doing this to people is worth it to appease a few gammons
📢New paper alert! Ever wonder what gossiping does to your social status, and vice versa? Read in our latest contribution to Social Networks: doi.org/10.1016/j.so.... With Emily Kruidhof, Lea Ellwardt, and Rafael Wittek.
Europe needs to wake up: the #trump monster can never be satiated, just circumvented
I've been asked to clean up AI-spewed copy. I got paid less than if I'd just been asked to write it myself, even though it was about the same amount of work. Just one more reason I prefer to do consulting strategy work over copywriting work. Both are valuable, only one is well-valued.
They might seem sarcastic, even tongue-in-cheek at first, but Tolman's work soon stops being funny if you look closely. Brilliant stuff.
A 3-judge panel of the 5th Circuit held late Tuesday that the Alien Enemies Act did not apply to Venezuelan migrants the Trump administration says are members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which they claim is invading the US. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/u...
Thank you so much!
This represents 10% of the royalties from Bye Bye I Love You in the first quarter of 2025. Thanks to everyone who bought the book!
I *finally* got payment issues sorted out and donated $350 to @globalvoices.org as part of their current fundraising drive. For 20 years they've been reporting news from around the world in multiple languages. You too can donate here: globalvoices.org/donate/
... In T-S 20.117, which Goitein believes must have been written at the time of the caliph al-Ḥākim, a Jewish jurist sets forth that in this space one shall neither consume shadow plays (شيء من الخيال) nor produce beer (لا يعمل في الموضع مزر)
The Cairene underworld of Ibn Daniyal's shadow plays, loaded with references to beer-soaked, hashish-addicted entertainers and ne'er-do-wells, was anticipated by a couple centuries in the Cairo Geniza by this Judeo-Arabic legal document about the policies at Dammūh, a shrine at the edge of Fustat...
I hadn't thought about the phonetics of sarcasm before seeing Karatepe's #uklvc15 poster yesterday. She looked at spontaneous speech in a Turkish comedy show and found a general correlation with high tonal contours, unless the speaker was trying to avoid offence, and then they used "murmur tone".
'One of the most famous polar shipwrecks has been filmed in detail on the sea floor for the first time. The Terra Nova carried Captain Scott and his men on their doomed expedition to reach the South Pole more than a century ago.'
Since we have established theories about preadolescent linguistic variation and change (Eckert 2011), it's with these pre-preadolescents where our field really stands to learn a lot, imo. Both talks showed how very variable this age group is but who better to tackle that than variationists! #uklvc15
So cool that #uklvc15 had a session just on kids: Ryan et al. on Polish and Libyan teens in Glasgow, and two talks on the dreadfully understudied demographic of upper primary school: Jones et al. on Somali kids in East London and Stuart-Smith et al. on kids across central/southern Scotland. /1
1. Thank you! for keeping FALSE! QUOTES! attributed to me out of the academic record!! 2. Thank you? for writing about it publicly and alerting others 3. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa 4. Thank you also for the lovely way you talk about my book in this article!
No, seriously: How is this man given any power? How & why is he given this many passes? Is it literally just because he was on TV for a long time & people are just so used to seeing him *on TV* that whatever "antics" he gets up to you chalk up to "TV guy doing TV shit?" Is that really literally it??
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul urges Chicagoans to protest peacefully. "Do not take the bait," Raoul says.
Mayor Brandon Johnson: The the president is the last person who cares about violence on Chicago's South and West sides. "There is too much violence in Chicago not because we have too many immigrants but because we have too many guns."
Pritzker again exhorts the news media to tell the truth about what's happening: "I refuse to pretend that any of this is normal."
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
Pritzker: "It breaks my heart to report that we have been told ICE will try to disrupt community picnics and peaceful parades. Let's be clear -- the terror and cruelty is the point, not the safety of anybody living here."
Pritzker: "We have reason to believe that the Trump administration has already begun staging the Texas National Guard for deployment in Illinois."
Pritzker: "Any rational person who has spent even the most minimal amount of time studying human history has to ask themselves one important question: once they get the citizens of this nation comfortable with the current atrocities committed under the color of law, what comes next?"
Pritzker: "He has no idea what's he's talking about. There is no emergency that warrants deployment of troops. He is insulting the people of Chicago by calling our home a hellhole, and anyone that takes his word at face value is insulting Chicagoans too."
I don’t think I would have been able to get a PhD without FLAS fellowships. They let me learn Arabic and Persian, which were fundamental to my PhD.
We do it for architects and engineers
NEW from @emilypont.bsky.social: Federal courts are siding with Trump on cancelling climate grants. Read the full story on the fight to reverse the EPA's grant terminations below ⬇️
"He's worried. About the wrong. Border." -- Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, whose speech today focused on the unchecked flow of illegal guns in Chicago. "They are coming from red states," he said simply.
Pritzker: "When did we become a country where it's ok for the US president to insist on national television that a state should call him to beg for anything? Especially something we don't want. Have we truly lost all sense of sanity in this nation that we treat this as normal?"
2/ Now imagine using that energy to think critically about impostor media stories - it's possible! Tap through for #NewsLiteracy tips ⤵️
1/ If you can differentiate a legit #Labubu from a knockoff #Lafufu then you can separate legit news posts from fabrications! The popular toy has created a movement around authenticating real Labubus from counterfeits. That's great.
BREAKING: Gov. JB Pritzker says the Trump administration has sent the Texas National Guard to Great Lakes Naval Base outside Chicago, awaiting orders to deploy to Chicago. Trump administration officials will target Mexican Independence Day (Sept. 16) celebrations. @wttw.bsky.social
but also not sorry either
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker: “We've gathered information from unauthorized, patriotic officials inside the government and from-sourced reporters about Donald Trump's plan, which is to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago."
I'm gonna be masking the entire dang time at #RCCC and would appreciate you doing the same!
Buried 35 paragraphs in: "Violent crime in Chicago has dropped significantly in the first half of the year, according to official data released by the city. Shootings are down 37% and homicides have dropped by 32% compared to the first half of 2024, while total violent crime dropped by over 22%..."
Grim. "For most of the federal workers who lost collective bargaining rights in August, their unions can no longer fight agencies over contract violations." Agriculture Dept food safety inspectors no longer have a formal process to raise safety concerns without facing retaliation.
TINY!! DICE!! JARS!! www.peculiarityshop.com/product-page... wee, portable, and FULLY functional math rocks that double as fashion!
Pritzker: "I refuse to pretend that any of this is normal ... I refuse to fall into the pundit trap that demands we sacrifice vital constitutional rights if it's being done in the fake guise of fighting crime."
the outbursts of online civic-mindedness on bluesky every time there's an influx of new users reminds me of Roxaboxen, the children's book where some kids build a town out of rocks in a vacant lot and do all the little jobs
Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/u...
Important story. Nine agencies have terminated union contracts that covered more than 445,000 federal workers. “This is literally the largest act of union busting in American history,” said Mike Podhorzer, a former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
I’m obsessed with deep sea sharks: their bioluminescent spots are just visible in the pitch black environment they live in
In our magazine: Brenda Bazán is a Mexican-American independent photographer from San Antonio who was on assignment for @texastribune.org from July 5-11 in Kerr County covering the Hill Country flood. Her photos are presented in partnership with the Tribune. www.texasobserver.org/where-the-wa...
nom!
WBAL - A five-alarm fire in Baltimore has shut down light rail service in the area of the blaze. https://www.wbal.com/crews-battling-massive-fire-in-baltimore-light-rail-service-shut-down-official-says
“We have observed approximately 90% of the workers targeted for terminations due to a perceived association with diversity, equity and inclusion efforts are women or nonbinary,” said an attorney representing federal staffers. (Published June)
Mary Barnard (1909 – 2001) was a US poet, biographer, and Greek-to-English translator. She is known for her elegant rendering of the works of Sappho, a translation which has never gone out of print.
GUEST: [lies] HOST: [interrupts lie by doing a 'talk to the hand'] Play the clip. Someone finally came prepared and willing
'Los Angeles (1937)' www.commondreams.org/views/2018/1...
#PublicEducationIsAnUrbanistIssue
New novella! "The Lure of Stone" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia! buff.ly/34Ehvmc
Absolutely blistering takedown of the US government's mad climate report that rehashes the worst denier tropes of the past decade. US gov't took on a handful of self-serious denier micro-celebs, and in doing so, basically just hugely owned themselves in public sites.google.com/tamu.edu/doe...
I wrote about how the U.S. refuses to ratify the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. "ParentalRights.org is an organization that has been actively campaigning against U.S. ratification of “dangerous U.N conventions that “threaten parental rights” www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-p...
congratulations! sounds amazing!
Ruth Henshaw Bascom (1772-1848) was a self-taught artist from the US who produced over 1,400 portraits. Self-portrait, drawing, 1829.
This is a very important point that is often overlooked. An accessible (or at least step free) path that turns people into a second-class user is really barely step-free at all. This might be unsolvable with old infrastructure, where retrofitting is difficult, but it's important for new build.
😅
All of his interviews are so great: globalvoices.org/author/omid-...
On shelves now!
Fake fact-checking: when facts are fiction and falsehoods are facts
ICYMI: (This time with the correct release date!) Weston Wei's delightful cover for my novel The Subtle Art of Folding Space, animated! Repairing physics that has gone awry! Delicious food! Choices no one should ever have to make! Release date: 4/7/2026
i’m muscle posting again, but this time, i’m doing it to help people who want to flex like their favorite err chronically-struggling-to-make-a-good-decision-in-her-life book character
🇧🇷Mãe-de-taoca-arlequim 🌎Rhegmatorhina berlepschi Conservação:Pouco Preocupante A mãe-de-taoca-arlequim é uma ave passeriforme da família Thamnophilidae. 📷 Bruno Rennó
The fascinating microbiomes of trees. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/s...
A new Omid Memarian interview!!! This one with Massoud Hayoun: "The eight works, rendered in spectral shades of blue, channel his family’s history — Tunisian, Moroccan, Egyptian, and Jewish — while confronting the broader architectures of displacement and power."
An interesting discussion about free speech on Brazil’s Supreme Court, reported by @brasildedireitos.bsky.social, now also available in English at @globalvoices.org globalvoices.org/2025/09/02/c...
Why donate to Global Voices? Because marginalized voices deserve global attention. Because translation is power. Because the world needs more nuance — not less. globalvoices.org/donate/ #KeepGVStrong
To me, one of saddest losses in art history is of Courbet's equally monumental 1849 canvas The Stonebreakers, which was destroyed in Allied bombing of Dresden during WWII. These works are on my mind as I'll be teaching Realism in my @huntercollege.bsky.social graduate art history seminar later today
While those who know my posting habits won't be surprised that I adore the dog in the right foreground of Courbet's burial scene, I do think he serves an important purpose: here is a creature, Courbet is telling us, who doesn't understand the significance of that yawning grave at center of the scene
When it comes to 19th-century French art most people go gaga over Impressionism, but I think they're missing out on Gustave Courbet, to me the real GOAT whose devotion to Realism (with a capital "R") made something monumental out of the lives of everyday people, as in his "Burial at Ornans," 1849-50
Hi did you move your newsletter away from substack? drop it in the replies so people can find you and subscribe! I am big on rewarding good choices
Woot! TODAY ONLY, you can get all these cozy fantasy box sets on sale for only $2.99 - including my complete Harwood Spellbook! Check out all the cozy fantasy romance available in this curated set, and get ready to burrow into fall! 🍵💖 books.bookfunnel.com/cozy-fantasy... #romancelandia
really astonishing how they can think like this
By accident, heard the under-minister they wheeled out to justify this, badly. At one point, interviewer Jeremy Kyle (notoriously shite DJ) says "Everyone agrees we need to make the UK less inviting" and I just muttered "they're doing a good job of that, chummy".
That there are no comparable teams working on how care for the elderly might be organized in 2040, or parliamentary democracy, or services for people with disabilities, or childcare, or the everyday life of neighborhoods is extraordinary and indefensible
It's impossible to justify that so much money should go on science & technology breakthroughs & nothing to the equivalents in the social field geoffmulgan.substack.com/p/an-aria-fo...
These comemierdas
🚨The government is considering imposing further restrictions on international students bringing family members to the UK, @politicshome.bsky.social understands It comes amid a wider government crackdown on immigration www.politicshome.com/news/article...
I genuinely wonder if it's because the chicken pox vaccins went on the schedule during the uptick in anti-vaccination that they like didn't talk about it. But we went from 4 million cases a year to a 150k cases a year. Each year 100ish kids avoid dying becase of it
‘Why, to avoid naming Boccaccio, did Chaucer invent a fictional Latin poet as his source for 𝘛𝘳𝘰𝘪𝘭𝘶𝘴? It seems that Boccaccio already had a reputation problem.’ Barbara Newman on Boccaccio’s dirty book: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Europe can lead in tech — if regulation and culture align. Europe has an innovation edge over the US — if it adapts its culture.
Amazing mural by John Ruthven, “Martha, the Last Passenger Pigeon,” at 15 E 8th Street in downtown Cincinnati, seen in 2022.
Martha died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914 but Passenger Pigeons had been functionally extinct in the wild for decades, victims of industrial market hunting and wasteful cruelty for pigeon shoots.
Passenger Pigeon bones from Minnesota, from Otter Tail County (ca. 1000 years old) and 19th century Fort Snelling, posted in memory of Martha, the last of her species who died on September 1, 1914.
