This is an old book and Dave does great work breaking down techo topia goobers' ideas.

Thanks for your sacrifice! I don't think I could do what you do.

Humans cannot transcend biology. There, I just saved you $40!

In our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we spoke about AI becoming as divisive as DEI, the prevalence of scholarly slop, and how Bluesky poisons academic discourse. Evan Goldstein: You’ve described the Substack series as “intentionally provocative.” What — or who — were you trying to provoke? Alexander Kustov: I started using Claude Code and other agentic tools, and I was impressed with the possibilities and functionalities. Yet I still hear a lot of negativity about AI from colleagues who haven’t used those tools. The vast majority of folks in academia still think AI is that chatbot interface from a couple of years ago that hallucinates and cannot really do anything. But that’s not what I saw on my computer. I’d written short items about AI, so I thought to try to see whether Claude could assemble that and create a coherent, substantive post. It did a pretty good job. I just posted it. Then I realized it was a big thing.

Kustov: If we look at the best agentic models right now, they can do most quantitative social-science research tasks better than most professors globally. All of the kind of caveats here are important. What made a lot of people upset about this statement is that they interpret it in a very America-centric way. People were thinking about their colleagues at Oxford and R1 research universities. But I was born in Soviet Russia and went to undergrad in Europe. I have seen a lot of human slop. It should not be a controversial statement to say that agentic tools can do better. The value of qualitative research is going up because that’s something that AI cannot do well — ethnography and actually interviewing people in person, especially in hard-to-reach places. If you are gathering new data that is not yet publicly available, that’s the highest value that you can have as a professor and as a researcher. But I just came from an International Studies Association conference. I saw so much poor research that, if anything, I’m more convinced that my original point is correct. Too many people with Ph.D.s, with tenure, are producing work that is not contributing to human knowledge.

Meanwhile, the Chronicle has decided to interview Dr Kustov, who repeats his claim that AI agents do "qualitative social science research better than most professors globally"
Imagine having tenure and stability, and choosing to shit on his colleagues in a time of great instability for academia.

I'm excited to share that we've made a collection of historic Supreme Court Records and Briefs available via
@archive.org

I've written a blog post where I go into detail about the importance of this collection.

blog.archive.org/2026/04/20/u...

There’s a Seductive Recipe Style That’s Taken Over Our Stoves. Think Twice Before You Cook It Again. Get your kitchen timer ready.

I wrote for Slate about how a new group of cookbooks and food writers are trying to remind us of the actual joy of cooking. slate.com/life/2026/04...

Forbes Prediction Market Gamefies Story About Mass Shooting of 8 Children In another sign that the depravity economy has no bottom, Forbes published a story about a Louisiana man that killed 8 children over the weekend containing a box that asked readers to predict whether ...

horrified by that mass shooting story? Forbes would love you to predict what comes next

This is a snapshot of the failure of MSM and the concomitant ignorance within the American electorate about what is happening in and to their country.

Horrible

The right has long thirsted for this level of power again, for the power they held during the early Cold War. If the GOP gets it's way, this could easy become the easy all universities are run. Most Dem governments seem all too eager to obey in advance.

Gil Duran tweet: TLDR: Fascism in response to Palantir's long fascists screed on X.

"Your Account is Suspended" Message on X

The CEO of Palantir posted a fascist manifesto on X.

I pointed out that it was fascist—which resulted in a permanent suspension from X (my second time!).

So, when you hear the tweeters complaining that BlueSky is intolerant, remember why many of us came here in the first place.

Puff, Puff, Pass – AHA A booming kid-oriented paraphernalia marketplace unraveled efforts to legalize cannabis in the 1970s and 1980s.

Marijuana legalization has a longer history than you might think.

In the 1970s, a dozen states decriminalized cannabis, but backlash and political pressure helped unravel it.

What can that history tell us today?

#AHAPerspectives

strange these op-eds about women being too angry have all come out the last few days when during the same time there's also been a massive investigation published on an online rape academy with millions of viewers a month and none of them have bothered to even cover it, even as news

If you think BECCS (using wood as an electricity source, hoping to capture carbon) will save us, you should really read this paper.

the recent yale report emphasized making visible in its admissions standards its commitment to “academic excellence”—what does that mean, exactly? will the committee explain in more detail?

@DropSiteNews 💢 Israel’s attacks on Lebanon killed 2,294 people, and wounded 7,544 more since March 2 ▪️ On April 17, the last full day before the ceasefire: ▫️ 98 killed ▫️ 359 wounded ▪️ Overall Breakdown by demographic: ▫️ Women: 274 killed, 1,223 wounded ▫️ Men: 1,834 killed, 5,617 wounded ▫️ Children: 177 killed, 704 wounded ▪️ Health sector impact: ▫️ 100 medical personnel killed ▫️ 233 wounded among medical staff ▫️ 116 ambulances targeted ▫️ 25 medical centers hit ▫️ 129 attacks on EMS ▫️ 6 hospitals closed The figures reflect nationwide impact, with the heaviest toll concentrated in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and Beirut’s southern suburbs.

💢 Israel’s attacks on Lebanon killed 2,294 people, & wounded 7,544 more since March 2

▪️ On April 17, the last full day before the ceasefire:
▫️ 98 killed
▫️ 359 wounded

▪️ Overall Breakdown by demographic:
▫️ Women: 274 killed, 1,223 wounded
▫️ Men: 1,834 killed, 5,617 wounded
▫️ Children: 177 killed...

A black and white photo of a row Victorian houses tilted at odd angles presumably due to liquefaction, labeled “Peculiar Effects of Earthquake”

A ghostly black and white photo of people and a cart walking down a street where the buildings are all damaged and some just have the facades standing, labeled “California Street”

A black and white photograph of the burned-out shell of San Francisco city hall with the dome still mostly intact, labeled “City Hall”

A black and white photo of people and makeshift shelters in the earthquake and fire-damaged city, labeled “Refugee Camp”

It’s April 18th, so time to repost some of my great-grandfather’s photos of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake

Endlessly brilliant

A VCR never sold my private info to a nazi

Have a great conference

I'm so sorry. Wishing you the best.

Oh and grade inflation does not exist, despite what the report claims.

As society got meaner, colleges failed to remain open (both by law and by choice). This report fails to fully grapple with these dynamics.

Chief among that was the rise of the ceo and universities embracing the high paid business leadership ideal.

Larger transformations also washed over higher education. Institutional distrust, anti-statism, collapsing industrial economy, wage stagnation; these all robbed college of it's luster.

Switching higher education to a consumer model stripped it of deeper meaning. Colleges sell themselves, brand themselves, on what they provide students, as consumers.

Hatred of higher education is central to movement conservatism. Everything scholars do upsets them, everything about classrooms drives them nuts. Trashing college professors is easy politics. No one has our back.

It turns out that when you treat students life consumers and don't even acknowledge the full-throated rightwing attack on higher education, you fail to build trust.

Teaching about #MayDay shouldn’t get you on Fox News it should be celebrated. May Day is American history and Chicago History specifically. “On May 1, 1886, 80,000 workers marched up Michigan Avenue in Chicago…”
Learn your history-The Haymarket Affair
www.illinoislaborhistory.org/the-haymarke...

Exclusive: DOGE cuts prompt scramble to feed troops at remote US base The remote Army base is responsible for shooting down nuclear missiles targeting the United States.

Large parts of the business of keeping the US military fed were privatised to civilian contractors.

And then last year DOGE started making cuts in those civilian contractors.

eu.usatoday.com/story/news/p...