Opening text of a thread by Palantir from X Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different.
twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...

Social movement scholar here again. So, why protest?

Nihilists were out yesterday arguing that "protests don't do anything."

A short 🧵:

The Olympics Has a New Sex Testing Policy. The Evidence Doesn’t Add Up I’ve spent over 10 years obsessed with so-called “gender verification” tests. Proponents claim they have history and science on their side. They don’t.

Oh did you want 3300 words from me on today's IOC sex testing rules? An essay on the nature of evidence and why we can't seem to stop getting stuck in the same traps around sex and gender in sports? Wow lucky you!! www.coyotemedia.org/the-olympics...

If those app developers had any actual imagination, they’d make sure he doesn’t respond on Good Friday & Easter Saturday because his hands are a bit tied up on the cross and with harrowing hell. And then he can get back on Sunday with “whoa, you wouldn’t BELIEVE what just happened to me! 🥴”

Unfortunately, support for the beliefs that undergird this kind of action aren't fringe in the US. Surveys shows that 1/3 of Americans—and ~2/3 of White Evangelical Christians—hold Christian nationalist views, and similar numbers believe that we're living in the end times, with Christ's return near.

Know a promising undergrad who wants more time before applying to grad school? Pitt has a funded postbac program for students from underrepresented groups.

This year, my lab will consider applications for solo supervision or to be co-supervised by @mehrgol.bsky.social!

App deadline is March 15!

How to Film ICE Filming federal agents in public is legal, but avoiding a dangerous—even deadly—confrontation isn’t guaranteed. Here’s how to record ICE and CBP agents as safely as possible and have an impact.

NEW: The @wired.com Security desk put together a comprehensive guide to filming ICE—with tips for reducing risk at the forefront. No paywall, but please consider subscribing to help find these kinds of resources. And stay safe out there. www.wired.com/story/how-to...

www.wired.com/v2/offers/wi...

A round, light brown tablet made of clay with three lines of cuneiform scripts. Two rulings, or traced straight lines, enclose the writing. The photo also shows the sides of the tablet, including a few damaged parts.

May as well dive right in.

Did you know that dogs in ancient Mesopotamia also refused to drop the ball?

According to a Sumerian proverb, “The dog understands ‘Take it!’ It does not understand ‘Put it down!’”

Source: cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/34...

I came to Minneapolis to report on what's going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is "just what is the scale of the resistance?" After all, we're all used to the news calling Portland a "war zone" or whatever when it's just some protests in one part of town.

ChatGPT and "Inventing the University" What we can learn from the em dash debate

This piece gets at one of the underlying reasons students turn to LLMs - because they think it makes them sound like they belong in a university setting. It's the same motive that had students overusing the thesaurus pre-ChatGPT. theimportantwork.substack.com/p/chatgpt-an...

With AltText, so everyone can understand what’s possible if you think about women as people and not just caregiving machines

The Psychological Impact of Digital Isolation: How AI-Driven Social Interactions Shape Human Behavior and Mental Well-Being Felix Eling 3697-3705 Apr 30, 2025 Education The Psychological Impact of Digital Isolation: How AI-Driven Social Interactions Shape Human Behavior and Mental Well-Being Felix Eling Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Pharmacy, Gulu College of Health Sciences, Gulu City, Northern Uganda DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.90400265 Received: 13 March 2025; Revised: 22 March 2025; Accepted: 25 March 2025; Published: 30 April 2025 ABSTRACT The increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in social interactions has transformed how humans experience companionship, communication, and mental well-being. This review examines the psychological impact of AI-driven social interactions, focusing on virtual assistants, AI chatbots, and digital companions. It explores the benefits, risks, and ethical concerns associated with AI companionship. A systematic review methodology was employed, detailing inclusion criteria, databases searched, and analysis techniques. Findings suggest that while AI can offer emotional relief and support, over-reliance may disrupt real-world social bonding. Ethical concerns such as data privacy, emotional manipulation, and regulatory gaps are highlighted. The study underscores the need for balanced AI integration in human socialization. The study also addresses gaps in previous literature by examining AI’s influence on different demographic groups and cultural contexts.

Let me tell you a story. Perhaps you can guess where this is going... though it does have a bit of a twist.

I was poking around Google Scholar for publications about the relationship between chatbots and wellness. Oh how useful: a systematic literature review! Let's dig into the findings. 🧵

I'm so tired of people telling me to have students critique LLM outputs. I'm just going to print this on little cards and hand them out

Happening in 30 minutes in convention center 306, join us! #aarsbl2025

Saturday 3-4:30 pm, Hynes Convention center 206 Session Title: Facing Threats to Democracy, lessons from pragmatism Panelists are Lisa Sowle Cahill, David Lamberth, Chris Tirres, and David Evans

Hope to see everyone this afternoon at our roundtable on Facing Threats to Democracy. It should be a great conversation!

The line-up of panelists has changed slightly from what is listed in the app. Here is the updated version: #AARSBL25 #SBLAAR25

Saturday 3-4:30 pm, Hynes Convention center 206 Session Title: Facing Threats to Democracy, lessons from pragmatism Panelists are Lisa Sowle Cahill, David Lamberth, Chris Tirres, and David Evans

Hope to see everyone this afternoon at our roundtable on Facing Threats to Democracy. It should be a great conversation!

The line-up of panelists has changed slightly from what is listed in the app. Here is the updated version: #AARSBL25 #SBLAAR25

👋 to everyone at #AAR and #SBL in Boston. This feed that aggregates all related hashtags into one easy to follow chronological feed. It ensures you don't miss something because it was tagged #AARSBL25 and you were looking at #SBLAAR25.

Pin it to make it easier to get to! bsky.app/profile/paul...

Achievement unlocked: I both remembered to print my AAR name badge AND remembered to pack it and bring it with me to Boston!
#aarsbl25

Problem is: Neither our work culture nor our education culture incentivizes deep learning. Instead, we're incentivized to economize--to learn only what's needed to finish the task or get the answer right on the test.

So, people use ChatGPT, even when they know they could learn more by other means.

What if we could work with our public libraries to create + sustain convivial infrastructures for local news, local 🎶, digital equity, and more? I wrote abt lots of communities that are doing this work, bldg networks of solidarity + resistance, modeling alternatives to extractive commercial systems.

Ed Luce watching democracy die in the United States of America

There are a lot of cowards in elite positions. There is a lot of courage in civil society. People aren't just taking career risks--though the spate of recent resignations and denunciations might rep. that--they're taking physical risks confronting ICE. They're organizing. Suing.

I'm so glad you said this, because about 30 seconds ago, I published a newsletter piece detailing how conservatives have dump-trucked through all of the previously established common sense, nuanced, compromise positions on trans rights to get here: burns-notice.ghost.io/what-would-t...

Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development | SRCD Journal | Wiley Online Library As increasing numbers of transgender, gender diverse, and queer youths come out to their friends, families and communities, their rights to express their identities in public life have become the sub....

...OMG didn't realize at first (due to paywall) that this was about the recent deMayo study that showed that trans kids' gender identities were just as stable as cis kids'! (& that shifts were largely to nonbinary IDs). here's the study: doi.org/10.1111/mono...

"Multiple international...groups have already described the war as genocidal, but reports from two of Israel-Palestine’s most respected human rights organisations is likely to add to pressure for action."

One can hope anyway...

Inside the digital publishing industry, which I try to monitor closely, this is the big news. By Julia Alexander at Puck.

i really didn’t realize how radical of an idea it was to believe that no one deserves to die from ecological disaster

not red voters
not nonvoters
not blue voters in red states

and definitely not fucking eight year old little girls

No Kings On June 14—Flag Day—Donald Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday. A spectacle meant to look like strength. But real power isn’t staged in Washington. ...

If you're marching tomorrow show us your signs! And if you want to march but aren't sure where, find a protest near you here. There are a LOT. www.nokings.org

I don’t have the answers about AI and education, but one thing I’m 100% certain of is that changes cannot be borne of hostility toward students, even if the AI industry isn’t similarly committed.