This is crazy!

Yes, but privately. Nothing is stopping them from citing your existing paper as someone who agrees with whatever their main point is, and it could help them clarify the fine-grained stuff on their own account.

Much to say here, but let’s start with the fact that the jobs most impacted by AI currently are in finance, computer science, and business. This is classic divide and conquer style propaganda, and the Alex Karp’s of the world are using wedge-issue misogyny to normalize shrinking the middle class.

Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done? Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests.

Frankenstein citations are now a structural risk. 2.6% of major CS conferences papers in 2025 were found to have at least one fake reference.

Publishers are now wrestling with whether these "inexistent bolts" require a simple correction or a full retraction.
#AcademicSky

The first part of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way.

Aspired to post more on bluesky to meet other cool academics, but slowly realizing all I do is read and bake in my spare time. Anyways, getting started on the reading for fun part of my night with some Proust.

Still ugly. Still delicious. :)

Raspberry and blackberry galette.

Guys I made another one (this time, raspberry blackberry and ginger)

The Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

Some lighter reading for today.

Red States: We're going to cut all the programs that don't support our theology
Blue States: We're going to cut the same programs, but because they don't support the business school

A photo of a blueberry galette

I have a tendency to stress-bake. This week’s fixation is galettes. Particularly, creating a recipe that can use unthawed, frozen fruit. This one wasn’t pretty, *but* it tasted good, and the filling actually firmed up (it didn’t become blueberry soup!)

This tracks. I think my worry is that as AI becomes more embedded in our basic tools/ the internet at large, it seems possible that we might see shifts in the way people write. And that could result in more AI-like human writing.

A broad question: How do you reliably “check” students work for AI generated writing if human and AI speech patterns are rapidly converging?

Anyways, on to the next one (Swann's Way by Proust). Wish me luck because I’ve read the first two sentences several times over the years and given up. It’s the second one that always gets me (Ha ha).

My spring break *treat* was finishing Dostoyevsky’s Notes From the Underground. It was utterly bleak. But also very funny. Example:

Are female economists treated differently than males in academic seminars?

These authors wanted to know whether gender shapes how scholars are treated when presenting research.

So they built a massive dataset of 2,000+ economics seminars, job talks, and conference presentations from 2019–2023...

The Board of Governors decided, unilaterally, that no published textbook in the field of sociology could be used in compliance with the law for an Intro to Sociology class. None. Victor: There's not a single existing textbook on the market that could be used that would qualify under state law? Zachary: Correct. Victor: I'm sorry, that's kind of funny. Like, the absurdity of not a single sociology textbook getting past the censors. I mean, it makes me kind of proud of our colleagues, but...

I do want to shout-out my fellow sociologists, who have collectively created a discipline so woke that not a single one of our introductory textbooks can make it past Florida's censors.

Great work everyone.

Been thinking about the Wittgenstein's lectures on the foundations of mathematics recently (I’m woefully under informed). A shot in the dark, but does anyone here have special opinions on the idea of surveyability of proofs (particularly as it comes up in Hilbert, Turing, and Wittgenstein...)?

Amazing talk by Sally Haslanger @shaslang.bsky.social on "Social systems & their micro, meso, & macro interactions'' @ucisocsci.bsky.social & dinner afterwards with Ari Koslow, Tori Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social, Cailin O’Connor @cailinmeister.bsky.social & Kate Ritchie @kateritch.bsky.social !!!

“At the forefront of AI thought thought leadership leadership,” lol.

Anyways, 🫳🎤

If we accept that certain topics can be erased entirely, it won’t stop with this one issue. it will spread to whatever happens to be unpopular next.

Universities are meant to be spaces for dialogue and exploration, where you meet and learn from people with all kinds of different ideas than you, not places where ideas are policed.

Higher education is supposed to challenge students to think critically and to grapple with ideas they might disagree with. If we start banning every topic that someone finds uncomfortable, we will be left with nothing but a hollow shell of what was once an education.

Let’s go a step further. Even if you personally disagree with gender studies, consider: even if a professor chooses to teach gender theory to adult college students, that is precisely what academic freedom is for!

Regardless of your personal beliefs, the idea that a professor could lose their job simply for discussing a topic should be deeply concerning. When we start erasing entire subjects because they don’t fit a current political narrative, we risk losing valuable knowledge and forgetting our own history.

First, there are times when a teacher simply covers certain topics because they are part of the subject matter. Teaching about gender identity doesn’t necessarily mean endorsing any particular position. It’s about presenting information. You know, teaching?

A Texas A&M processor was fired for teaching about gender identity in the classroom. I’d like, for a moment, to talk about why this should be alarming to anyone—regardles of where you stand personally or politically. 🧵🪡

Putting artificial intelligence on overcooked steak is our future

A choropleth map of the United States showing the share of seniors who live at least 46.6 miles round-trip from the nearest Social Security Field Office. Rates are especially high in the Midwest and Great Plains states, with Montana (40%), South Dakota (45%), North Dakota (49%) and Wyoming (65%) topping the list.

In less than one week, many Americans will no longer be able to apply for Social Security benefits over the phone, setting the stage for disruptions and upheaval.

Nearly 6 million seniors live more than 46.6 miles, roundtrip, from a field office, per a new analysis. trib.al/5XSPqyL

Graphic: As many as 69 million American women lack access to valid birth certificates

Are you a woman who changed your name when you got married?

Congress is considering a bill that could make it much harder for you to vote.

Call your rep—this is not a drill. indivisible.org/resource/cal...