Media needs to stop with "critics say" and just quote the actual language of the bill.
HB 249 creates a new category of "seminudity" which can be used to arrest women who aren't nude, but are wearing clothing — leggings, t-shirts without bras — that religious groups feel is too provocative.
Turns out the phrase “America First” is preceded by the words “Sell Out.”
“I used AI to combine the data from two excel lists and then send emails to people who were on one list but not another. Saved me so much time.”
My brother in academia, you just fucking discovered mail merge. Welcome to early nineties computing.
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.
Actual Far Side comic from Dec 6 1987
Holy. Shit. This is Reid Wiseman's video he took with his iPhone while at the moon 🌙
I’ve had the same editor since 1967. Many times he has said to me over the years or asked me, Why would you use a semicolon instead of a colon? And many times over the years I have said to him things like: I will never speak to you again. Forever. Goodbye. That is it. Thank you very much. And I leave. Then I read the piece and I think of his suggestions. I send him a telegram that says, OK, so you’re right. So what? Don’t ever mention this to me again. If you do, I will never speak to you again
Maya Angelou on the joys of being edited
Let’s All Find Things to Be Mad About All the Time, Together: The Story of America Since 2016
You two sound like my people.
Ed is correct. In fact Davy at first suggested "alumium" before switching to "aluminum". Anyway, nice to meet you too.
"Too cheap to meter".
That was a phrase coined by Atomic Energy Commissioner in 1954.
NOPE.
Nuclear energy is neither cheap nor safe.
More Gray Whales Are Visiting San Francisco Bay, and Many Die There
The animals might be entering the Bay in search of food as climate change disrupts traditional sources. They face huge risks from ships in the area.
This was one of the formative incidents in my young life. And I watched almost an entire city of people across racial lines absolutely lose their minds. It was the equivalent of a lynch mob and the NY press was leading the way.
AI is fascist.
"...university bosses treat staff - especially academic staff - as a problem to be managed, rather than as colleagues in pursuit of a shared goal."
Shared with no comment but 100% agreement.
hannahforsyth.substack.com/p/uni-manage...
I agree. If you read to the end, you'll find some overtly racist garbage. Another example of why I avoid AI like the plague.
Child: I know your name. Mamdani.
Obama: What’s his first name?
Child: Mayor.
I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.
In case you're wondering: She has documentation.
A reminder that both a work permit and being exceptionally useful aren't enough.
Pretty frustrating that the New York Times is crediting AP with uncovering the existence of Aadam’s archive when I reported on it 15 months prior. chicagoreader.com/music/gossip...
"Surely not. We have objective measurements for intelligence and will responsibly use our knowledge of genetics to increase these. What? The history of intelligence tests and genetics? Oh, let me loo-- oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no."
I love that this, starting with a post by @dansinker.com, has blown up a bit. As said earlier, I learned about the old electric interurbans from Prof John Stilgoe many years ago.
a map from 1918 showing the interurban network sprawling across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio
One side obsession from my research into the 1920s is the extensive network of ELECTRIC trains that used to connect cities and towns across the central Midwest called the Interurban. We had this more than a hundred years ago. The things we had and the things we lost.
The desperate campaign to push AI down our throats is just what Nestlé did with baby formula, or Monsanto with patended seeds.
Manufactured Intermediation—inserting a corporate tollbooth into a process that used to be self-sustaining, using a low initial barrier to entry to destroy the alternative.
Record profits are unpaid wages and unpaid taxes.
Trump has launched three more boat strikes this week, bringing the total death toll to 177.
Remember: No judge or jury has found these boats were trafficking drugs. We're taking Trump's word for it.
This is murder. We must not lose sight of this lawlessness.
Friendly Fyre Festival
OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit
Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here
Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse
Media and universities: AI is here to stay
I mean, we all *knew* why they're pushing AI, but it's fun when they just come out and say it.
The irony of this initiative is that Harvard’s Department of Government was the academic hub of the first generation of neoconservatives and Harvey Mansfield alone has probably produced more conservative undergrad and grad students than all Marxist faculty at Harvard combined.
