When you use AI to do your writing, you are telling your audience: “I deserve your attention, but you do not deserve my effort.”

Steph Smith: Sometimes in the process of writing a good enough prompt for ChatGPT, I end up solving my own problem, without even needing to submit it.

AI folks have now discovered “thinking”

The closing of a college is deeply sad in the moment, but is a long-term rolling catastrophe. What happens to the buildings, grounds, and extended footprint of the campus? How does it gut the local economies that routed through its stability? What happens to the validity of its past diplomas?

I'd say "un-frickin-believable," but unfortunately... 🫩

I'm a bit late reacting to the budget release, but jeez, like any of us can absorb any more terrible news these days...

Anyway, tax breaks for fossil fuels industries makes me want to vomit but giving them alongside deep cuts to so many arts, rec, & history projects makes me... 😶🤬

The Daily Bitch desk-calendar page for Apr 13 is outlined in dark red, showing the company logo and day/date. On the left is a vintage illustration of a dark haired white woman with strings of pearls and a blue coat collar, gazing over her shoulder and without much expression to the lower right. Next to her, the caption says: "Ask your doctor if hiding under your bed until the world is normal is right for you."

Once again, the desk calendar I received for Christmas turns out to be eerily appropriate for the day

We all needed this amazing news.

Welcome home everyone 🥰

screengrab of live feed of Artemis II as it approaches Earth

Losing my mind over this. I have a machine in my lap on which I can periodically toggle over from something else I'm doing on the machine to watch a SPACESHIP return from THE MOON. Earlier I could hear the SPACESHIP'S PEOPLE as they talked to other people LOCATED ON MY PLANET BUT VERY FAR FROM ME.

Tis term end, friends.

I understand the sentiment, but feel just the opposite. AI is saturating every surface of students’ lives. What we have to offer them is not small tweaks to their engagements w the technology, but rather spaces separate from it via which they can develop their own critical faculties.

A few have suggested that some aspects of this mission--joy, international teamwork, diversity--are being played up to stick it to the hateful attitude of the administration. But I don't think it's that. I think it's just that those things are essential to and inseparable from a mission like this.

ALSO THIS!
The crew, the views from mission control & the great voiceover narrators on the NASA YouTube livestream have been blatantly proving the "anti-DEI" (aka racist, misogynist) voices are on the wrong side of reality as well as history.
Love to see it. 🎉

Christina Koch’s facial profile backlit by Earth in the background, through the spacecraft window

So, to sum up, a couple of days ago Christina Koch became the first woman to see Earth in its entirety, and today – right now, in fact – she is the first woman to see the Moon up close, and the first woman to see the far side. 🥹

In the face of the relentlessly harrowing world news, I'm struck by how the NASA Artemis II livestream is not just historic + awesome but celebrates teamwork, study, problem-solving, communication, & careful observation and description done by humans *aided* by technology, not replaced by it. 🌔

The rate at which the former drug dealer/sticker salesman, Doug Ford, whose party got only 37% of the vote, is dismantling Ontario's democracy demonstrates:
1. the need for all eligible voters to vote
2. that our 'first-past-the-post-winner-takes-all' system needs to go.
#onpoli #NeverConservative

It is worth noting that advice like this overly focuses on individual effort compared to systemic changes and government policies like equal pay, higher minimum wages, affordable housing, union benefits, as well as funding for childcare, public education, and public transportation.

I keep seeing "all authors use AI, the real issue is they're being forced to be sneaky about it" headlines.

Full stop No. This is a lie peddled for normalization. It's schoolyard-level pressure tactics "C'mon, all the cool kids are already doing it. We won't tell. It's fine. We're on your side."

Campaign to restore "Ghost Alley" name over any association with that other thing

57 of my fellow students were arrested, academically disciplined, and barred from campus 2 weeks before finals.

And then the visas of some of those students were quietly revoked.

And then the DEI office was killed.

And then we watched our mentors’ grants evaporate over “woke”.

the media is now telling people to work from home to save on gasoline, immediately after their years-long crusade to tell us why returning to office is best for everyone. this isn't a gotcha, it's an example of how contradicting demands allow the ruling class to blame us no matter what we do

Young black woman in turquoise silk gown, with lace sleeves, lace cap, and fichu, double strands of pearls around her neck and her wrists. She is holding a white flower. in one hand, and a ribbon in the other. A tropical looking tree is behind her. She looks right at the viewer with an assessing look.

It is lovely that the Art Gallery of Ontario can now name the Black woman in the gorgeous #18thc portrait they acquired 6 yrs ago & also date the painting. It's from 1775. She is Eleonora Susette, enslaved by the Dutch governor of Guyana, accompanying his widow on her return to the Netherlands.

Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the sun-slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
"Even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night."
You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.

Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.

-G. Brooks

I am getting a new website built, as part of which I have been going through my massive blog archive (I have been doing this for 13 years argh). Reminded me of this, my most popular post of all time, in which I explain how bafflingly bad covers happen.

a cartoon of a man in a suit and tie reading a piece of paper ALT: a cartoon of a man in a suit and tie reading a piece of paper

Dear @marthawells.com , would read an entire spin-off series about Pin-Lee: Space Attorney.

'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. The Data Labelers Association is fighting back.

“AI can never be AI without humans. It is not artificial intelligence. It’s African intelligence...We are training our own death. We train ChatGPT and it’s killing us slowly.”

Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. Now, they're fighting back.

I simply cannot get over Kash Patel sending in UFC fighters to train the FBI. What's next, the local high school mean girls teaching homeland security interrogation techniques? Angry geese hosting a seminar for the Air Force? actually never mind, that would be dope, you can have that one kash

Eleven years! Can't believe it.

😔💖

I don't think grammarly should just get to do "sorry deleting now" after ventriloquizing living and dead people without their consent to make money

holy shit