"Rainy Road" - my oil painting

EU: The European Union will require sale of mobile phones with “user-replaceable and longer-lasting batteries” starting in 2027.

The regulation demands “availability of spare parts and manuals for 10 years to curb planned obsolescence”.

Texas Tech University to Close Gender, Sexuality Programs All majors, minors, certificates and graduate degrees that are “centered on” sexual orientation or gender identity must be phased out and canceled, Texas Tech University system chancellor Brandon Crei...

“The decree is an escalation of the course content review policies implemented last year and reflects a trend of academic censorship at Texas public institutions.”

Cyril Cox – "Late Afternoon Light" (2022)

Wikipedia Bans AI-Generated Content “In recent months, more and more administrative reports centered on LLM-related issues, and editors were being overwhelmed.”

Wikipedia does what is essentially a full ban on AI content: www.404media.co/wikipedia-ba...

How hacked surveillance cameras are fueling assassinations in Iran Security feeds and traffic cameras have helped guide some of the most audacious targeted killings in modern history. Security researchers say the underlying vulnerabilities cover the planet and are ea...

“Cheap, ubiquitous and always on, cameras are uniquely useful targets. Poorly secured feeds can reveal where officials live, how convoys move and who walked into which building when. And new AI tools can turn that flood of footage into something searchable and operationally useful.”

Nonfiction Publishing, Under Threat, Is More Important Than Ever Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction, and our understanding of the world around us.

‘Nonfiction books are a crucial bulwark against the surging public culture of “alternative facts,” outright lies, and the brazen embrace of ignorance.‘
newrepublic.com/article/2076...

Nancy Fraser | After Habermas Jürgen Habermas may be variously described as the moral conscience of postwar Germany, the last great systematic...

Incredible, sharp, critical reflection on Habermas’ legacy from Nancy Fraser. This is the postmortem I’ve been hoping would come and also sums up so much of my relationship to his work

Towards the Permissive and Transparent use of Generative AI in Education Commentary on Towards the Permissive and Transparent use of Generative AI in Education by Stephen Downes. Online learning, e-learning, new media, connectivism, MOOCs, personal learning environments, new literacy, and more

Towards the Permissive and Transparent use of Generative AI in Education

When the Future Feels Foreclosed: AI Resignation and the Power to Act This article develops the concept of ‘AI resignation’ to capture how young people encounter AI not only as a helpful or flawed tool, but as an overpowering and seemingly inevitable force that can for....

"The task of AI education, then, is not merely to teach technical competence, but to cultivate the political imagination and collective capacities necessary to contest and reshape technological power," write Jan‐Philipp Siebold, Annemarie Witschas, and Rainer Mühlhoff.

All the more reason to develop a Luddite praxis in education:

The precise definition of digital literacy has long been contested. Although early definitions recognised the importance of traditional literacy (the ability to read and write) for engaging in digital practices (Gilster 1997), this connection is often overlooked in recent scholarship, policy initiatives, and digital literacy frameworks. This article draws on ethnographic data from two secondary schools in England to present a case that highlights the relationship between traditional and digital literacies, underscoring the importance of acknowledging and better understanding their interplay. Situated within a socio-technical approach and complemented by Rosenblatt’s transactional theory of reading (1978, 1986, 1995) to conceptualise technology-as-text and user-as-reader, the article presents analysis of three classroom vignettes to illustrate how students’ interactions with an ‘adaptive’ EdTech platform intended to support literacy learning are shaped by their traditional literacy skills. Our analysis identifies a series of transactional breakdowns between reader and text, each marking a moment in which no meaningful transaction can occur due to insufficient consideration of how traditional and digital literacies intersect. Framing EdTech as a straightforward solution to literacy challenges without attending to the nuanced and context-specific ways students engage with such technologies ultimately risks reinforcing the very disparities they seek to address.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

Louise Couceiro, Rebecca Eynon & Laura Hakimi show how insufficient recognition of the interplay between traditional and digital literacies affects how students interact with an edtech platform aimed at improving literacy.

Read the article: lnkd.in/grPT6gNN

"Haunting Dispossession: A Workshop on Indigenous Methodologies," with Dr. Uahikea Maile (Assistant Professor at the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity, University of Chicago)

Friday, March 20th (12 pm PT/2 pm CT/3 pm ET), over Zoom.

Open to all!

To register: forms.gle/WvumzPJcYzzF...

The majority of UK academic institutions now no longer post on X - LSE Impact For the first time, more UK universities and associated organisations are inactive on X than active.

💥New post | The majority of UK academic institutions now no longer post on X

✍️ @andytattersall.bsky.social

#AcademicSky #X #AcademicSocialMedia

a scribe sitting at a writing desk, in a setting of around 1400 Europe. he is writing with a quill in one book, while another book is opened, and two more books are present on and in the writing desk.

Tab hoarding is leading to stress and information overload, and distraction, since the Middle Ages. #tabhoarding

She Came Out of the Bathroom Naked, Employee Says Bank details, sex and naked people who seem unaware they are being recorded. Behind Meta’s new smart glasses lies a hidden workforce, uneasy about peering into the most intimate parts of other people’...

“The workers in Kenya say that it feels uncomfortable to go to work. They tell us about deeply private video clips, which appear to come straight out of Western homes, from people who use the glasses in their everyday lives.
Several describe video material showing bathroom visits, sex…”

One of my favourite sides of politics/media.

The drunk uncle theory.

You don’t argue with the casually homophobic uncle at Thanksgiving dinner to change his mind; you argue so that the closeted cousin at the kids table knows there’s safe people and better possibilities out there

European Parliament Votes Overwhelmingly For "The Full Recognition Of Trans Women As Women" The resolution, though nonbinding, is a significant shot at those who seek to erode transgender rights on the continent.

In incredible news, the European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly for "The Full Recognition Of Trans Women As Women."

Even the center-right European People's Party voted for the declaration.

It will form a foundation for their position at the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Our latest.

Ed-Tech Dragnet “With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet” writes 404 Media co-founder Jason Koebler, in response to Amazon’s ad in the Super Bowl promising that its front poor camera could be turne...

With the "hardware and software that schools have adopted in the last few decades, they too have built a surveillance dragnet, one that is being actively used to identify, harass, arrest, imprison, fire, monitor, and deport teachers and students and school community members," writes Audrey Watters.

Australian Census on University Staff Wellbeing results are out. Every uni recorded scores indicating high/very high psych risk.

And in news surprising no one, "only senior execs and deans rated their workplaces as medium or low risk while all other staff groups reported high-risk conditions."

No crypto in Canton: Town blocks data centers and crypto mining operations Canton’s makeshift town hall in a tiny trailer was bursting at the seams Wednesday night with citizens united against data centers and cryptocurrency mining.

For my money, the way thousands of regular people are self-organizing to resist data centers is one of the most cautiously hopeful stories going right now.

www.themountaineer.com/news/no-cryp...

How TikTok 2.0 Became a Weapon for ICE In just one week, the company has gone from being Gen Z’s preferred social media platform to a tool for spying on Americans and the suppression of information.

newrepublic.com/article/2059...

“These are not tools for mass surveillance.” — Emma Daniels, Ring “These are not tools for mass surveillance,” Daniels said. “We build the right guardrails, and we’re super transparent about them.”

Saying it doesn’t make it so. www.theverge.com/tech/876866/...

Person: say, i am alive. Computer: I am alive. Person: oh my god.

Heads we win, tails you lose: AI detectors in education The increasing use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in student assessment has led to institutional reliance on detection tools. Unlike plagiarism detection, AI detection relies on unverif...

"AI detection should not be used in education due to its methodological imperfections, violation of procedural fairness, and unverifiable outputs."

‘Rage knitting’ against the machine: the hobbyists putting anti-ICE messages into crafts Makers take a stand through ‘Melt the ICE’ red knit caps and sparkly nails – all while raising funds for those affected by immigration raids

Staff at a Twin Cities yarn store put together a pattern for a red knit “Melt the ICE” hat inspired by the Norwegian resistance.

They thought they would attract 10 people to a weekly knit-along.

They’ve sold 70,000 copies, raising more than $250k for immigrant aid groups.

Fellow writers: I am deeply saddened to share that if we want the rewards of having written, we must submit to the mortifying ordeal of writing

New OpenAI tool renews fears that “AI slop” will overwhelm scientific research New "Prism" workspace launches just as studies show AI-assisted papers are flooding journals with diminished quality.

It never fails to surprise me how many scientists seem to believe actually reading to "find relevant research," and writing, are not thinking, are not essential to the grandiose goals they have of "doing science."

arstechnica.com/ai/2026/01/n...