This Is Just To Say
I have turned off
the AI features
that were in
the update
and which
you were probably
hoping
to monetize
Fuck you
they were stupid
so unnecessary
and so annoying
New issue of Zeal: A Journal for the Liberal Arts is available now! Featuring two Provocations & Occasions essays and an Author Meets Critics forum on Zena Hitz's book Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life.
Basket of picked green beans in the middle of the field for workers are harvesting
"Adan" shared this photo from the Coachella CA where hes picking green beans. "I get paid 40 cents per pound. The work is exhausting - especially due to the excessive heat in the area. But this is how I support my family." #WeFeedYou
Manchester University Press is proud to launch Radical Histories, a new series dedicated to the individuals, movements and ideas that have challenged political, social and cultural authority.
Call for proposals now open. Find out more: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/blog/2026/04...
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.
This. Also LLMs don't understand that they are dealing with words, with meaning. All the shite they swallowed is chopped down into "tokens". They don't see words or phrases. They see just shapes, in a pattern. They feed us what usually comes next, in that pattern.
There is no understanding.
It’s not limited to America….it’s a global issue
Happy Friday!
Flow chart showing the U.S. spends $445 billion on mass incarceration each year.
Happy Tax Day. Just a reminder, as you potentially owe Uncle Sam: Mass incarceration costs the U.S. $445 billion every single year.
If you paid taxes for 2025, you likely paid:
$124 — school lunch & nutrition programs
$49 — diplomacy to prevent wars
$19 — USPS
$19 — Federal Aviation Administration
$18 — national parks
and
$4,049 — weapons and war.
These priorities are hurting us all. We need change. #TaxDay
Bracelet saying TEACH
Wearing the bracelet given to me by two students last semester.
This weekend I gave a presentation to a group of mostly college-aged folks and had a little line at the beginning of my slides that described it as an "AI-free presentation made by a human, for humans" and I had to pause for clapping at that part
you love to see it
Matching dress, bracelets, and nail polish
Springtime dress and nails
They better not be out here exterminating carpenter bees. You know who else was a carpenter?!
Listen, I didn't want to do Dr. Strangelove ... (1964) this week, but this man is obviously a psychotic.
Kubrick's satire is important for working through Trump's purposely vague threat that invokes the terror of nuclear fears and the truth that the POTUS is a terrorist, a psychotic terrorist.
So if you see this & could, please share that amazing, independent, 100% free as well as Nazi-free & AI-free public scholarly site that Vaughn created & where we both now share our own work as well as feature resources & links for fellow writers & public scholars. @hcrichardson.bsky.social 🗃️
So very 80s!!! 🩷🩷🩷
"All we say to America is, 'Be true to what you said on paper.'"
These words — spoken by MLK Jr. shortly before he was killed on this day in 1968 — ring just as true now.
Let's honor his legacy by continuing the fight for social and economic justice.
BREAKING: For the first time ever, GasBuddy data showing average diesel prices have risen above $8 per gallon in San Francisco, CA- the first ever U.S. city to reach the $8 mark ever.
Well, that was unnecessary 😶
Cherry Blossom
Honey container with salad dressing for a bowl of salad
My colleague’s brilliant salad dressing hack: using a honey container to bring homemade dressing to work.
The. Rise. Of. Cognitive. Surrender.
Study finds that people who use GenAI chatbots rely on them 80% of the time, and develop almost no capacity to recognize when a chatbot is feeding them faulty information.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Tonight I learned a valuable cooking lesson: chili powder and cayenne powder are not the same. 🥵
💜
LAPD officers arrest a protester dressed as the Statue of Liberty outside a federal building during a ‘Kings Day’ protest. (Connor Sheets/Los Angeles Times)
A remarkable photo from #NoKings in DTLA from Connor Sheets of @latimes.com www.latimes.com/california/l...
Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series at age 12. It starts with rape in book one and shifts to graphic sex in subsequent books. My parents had no idea.
I was not surprised to learn that I Georgetown, like most American colleges and universities, has succumbed to the pressure to appear part of the “AI” in-crowd (and to the temptation of the resources being made available to those in that crowd). But even though everything I have done in my professional life has been in some way based on the expectation that institutions will tend towards corruption, corrosion and capture, when I think about what this particular instance of that phenomenon signifies for you, the students of Georgetown, I feel very sad and angry. And I decided that the best thing to do with that sadness and anger would be to write to you all directly about why this decision by your university, which may seem on the surface to be an example of garden variety corporate thoughtlessness, should disturb you deeply, and provoke you to fight back.
Emily Tucker, the Executive Director of @georgetownprivacy.bsky.social, remains stellar and GOATed.
medium.com/center-on-pr...
