About half way through Katabasis and I’m pretty sure the only reason I’m loving this so far is because I’m in academia.
It’s so grating that I’ve laughed out loud several times - a rarity for a book labelled dark academia.

At this point, I just want closure honestly.

A few times a year I remember the Kingkiller trilogy. Realise that it will be TWENTY YEARS in 2027 to when I first read Name of the Wind. Try to convince myself that the third book is likely to never come out (The Wise Man’s Fear came out in 2011). Have my heart broken all over again. Still hope.

Sorry we couldn’t stay to say hi. It was great to see you perform (again)!

My anxiety really can’t handle all this virtual queuing up and presales and whatnot with ticket purchases.

I very much prefer a physical queue with a human at the end tyvm.

Irony.
Reading an interview from 1997 with Paul Gilster, the author of ‘Digital Literacy’ (1997) advocating against virtual instruction models, while Adobe - on which I’m reading the article - tells me to ‘save time with a document summary’ created by their ‘AI assistant’.

Thank you! I just bought tickets! 😁

Well done Dickson #AusVotes

Go Kimi!

Feeling so much better about the flu shot because I got a lollipop.

Normalise candy at all medical visits for all people!

I can’t, for the life of me, write good introductions to my chapters. #PhDSky

How much have we lost in translation…

There’s a world of difference knowing that most of remaining records about precolonial Sri Lanka comes from the colonisers, and actually reading them.
“…monarch as head of State and Church” is an outsider reading of the island where they could only sense make through the European lens.

Can confirm that many of my students feel the same. They talk about GenAI with such derision, and seem frankly annoyed at uni’s preoccupation with it. I get a lot of “but _why_ would I use it - where’s the satisfaction!”

For the record, 99% of the questions are things we’ve already discussed or is available on Moodle.

Wondering what sort of chaos I would unleash if I had chosen to check my emails as usual today, which is once a day. (There’s an assessment due in a few hours, and students have *questions*)

Instead, I’ve made sure to check my emails every 30 min or so just in case.

Reading an article by Bates from over a decade ago (2012):

“Myth 4: Computers personalize learning

No, they don't. They allow students alternative routes through material and they allow automated feedback but they do not provide a sense of being treated as an individual.”

New favourite thread

AI promises to free up time. But what if it spares us from learning, writing, painting and exploring the world? | Joseph Earp If I reduced my existence to a series of ChatGPT prompts, the act of my living is only shorter – not better

“The artist is the person who makes, not who has made.”
Brilliant article -
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.

Detective Del Spooner: Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a... canvas into a beautiful masterpiece? Sonny: Can *you*?

Talking with first years today on using GenAI to create art was beautiful. We had everything from “it is still a form of expression, which is art” to “that’s called commissioning an artwork; not creating it” to “what *is* an artist though”. Even had I,Robot cited and what it means to be human. 💛

I really hope schools teach The Hunger Games; combined with Sunrise on the Reaping, they are strong narratives of the power and possibilities of propaganda.

A reminder that the greater danger of AI to teachers is less that the technology will replace us and more that it will deprofessionalize and disempower us.

a woman in a black jacket is giving a peace sign ALT: a woman in a black jacket is giving a peace sign

Sunrise on the Reaping.

Tourists, watercolours and the sad, still Star: sketching the route 35 tram showed me a Melbourne I had never really noticed When you are in a city every day, you start to take things for granted. So, after three years in Melbourne, Josh Nicholas decided to be a tourist

I wrote a thing about drawing and Melbourne www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Guardian’s Stephanie Convery takes home the award for Reporting on Disability Issues at the #MPCQuills. Her exclusive report shed light on the fact people with a disability working in supported employment were legally being paid less superannuation. Sponsored by Victorian Government.

Here's an article arguing that using ChatGPT in educational settings can enhance social justice, and what they're actually saying is that in the context of austerity, ChatGPT might plug some of the gaps left by chronic defunding. This is coping, not social justice.

A photo of my hand holding Dan McQuillan's book "Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence".

Rereading @danmcquillan.bsky.social and: "What's at stake with AI is not merely bias and unfairness but assimilation into far-right political projects. For fascist ideologues who glorify violence, AI's tendencies towards epistemic, structural and administrative violence are not flaws but features."

When did we condition our students to base their (intellectual) pursuits on fear and not curiosity? How have we created a young people who stifle their curiosity and intellectual risk taking because they are too afraid of something even they can’t explain?

society erred when we removed the computer from its honored place in the home and ushered it into every part of our profane world. we must rebuild the temple of the Computer Room