I am starting to wonder if people who spend a lot of time talking to LLMs lose their stamina for actual critical analysis because they're so used to having their own priors reflected back at them in the guise of another's voice.
This has to be the hardest piece of figure skating-related art in the history of figure skating
A group of people at a protest holds signs. Below, text reads: "Students Could Face Harsh Penalties for Protests as Campuses, States Tighten Restrictions. Read the full blog on pen.org."
The image is a text quote from Kristen Shahverdian, Director of Campus Free Speech at PEN America. The quote discusses the theme of anxiety and fear in the academic year, mentioning high-profile arrests and a crackdown on expression, leading to concerns about exercising constitutional free speech rights.
A new Texas law restricting protests on college campuses means that "the theme of this academic year is anxiety and fear,” says Kristen Shahverdian, program director of campus free speech at PEN America. Learn more at: https://pen.org/harsh-penalties-for-protests-on-campus/
In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.
This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.
Tell me you live in CT without telling me. @ctwfp.bsky.social @ctdsa.org
rev jonathan edwards, gazing upwards from hell
As the clock ticks on GETUP-UAW’s strike deadline, administrators are trying to intimidate dep’t chairs into strikebreaking, demanding “continuity plans” for courses. Hundreds of Penn faculty and staff are saying no by signing AAUP-Penn’s no-strikebreaking pledge [1/2]
I❤️SouthJersey
The Times picked up my coverage of concerns about ICE enforcement and local police in Danbury, Connecticut, here: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/u... #nutmegsky
Taxing billionaires out of existence may be the most critical domestic policy fight of our lifetimes.
Today! Come hear from two fearless advocates for women’s health and reproductive rights. I’ll probably buy you a beer, too. 🍻
Did you know CT passed a first-in-the-nation law mandating state support for research and treatments for Endometriosis? Did you know @jilchrest.bsky.social led the fight to get that law passed !?! Don’t you want to come out on Saturday hear know more?!
Both Jillian & Neena are really smart women-plan to attend this if you are in central CT
Did you know CT passed a first-in-the-nation law mandating state support for research and treatments for Endometriosis? Did you know @jilchrest.bsky.social led the fight to get that law passed !?! Don’t you want to come out on Saturday hear know more?!
@reproequitynow.bsky.social @endorise.bsky.social @reachfundct.bsky.social
Flyer for fireside chat with Rep Jillian Gilchrest and Dr. Neena Qasba OB/GYN
Hey #nutmegsky I organized this event bc I want a champion for healthcare and research to represent me in Congress. @jilchrest.bsky.social
RSVP @ Bit.ly/1-31-26
Another way to help impacted families in Minneapolis, don't make these teachers go door-to-door to raise funds, we can knock this out.
Notice from Minneapolis schools telling all bus drivers not to open the doors for ICE agents.
They're giving this notice to the bus drivers in the Twin Cities. My 11-year-old rides the bus every morning.
Good morning from a city where over 25% of residents live in poverty and 75% are renters. The majority of our City Council continues to carry water for landlords, even when it means the city will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Communities are full of heroes.
Hey CT, howsabout we contact our reps and tell them to use the $163,300,000 to help vulnerable people instead of letting Ned swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck?
#NutmegSky
I wasn’t sure they were going to publish this. So good for them.
We are all part of an endless string of canaries, it seems.
Share this with the people in your life who need to know.
"It is a mistake to expect those who have taken for granted that colleges should not only be run like businesses, but for the benefit of business owners, will ever defend education’s public mission."
bluesky can’t fix a literacy problem by making people read more.
the problem isn’t that more context is needed, the problem is people don’t know what the context is because they literally do not understand what the words they are reading mean.
In September 2023, Lilian Weng, then Head of "Safety" at OpenAI, used her public Twitter account to announce how ChatGPT could be used as a therapist, and encouraged users to also use it as such.
Paging leaders from American College Counseling Association … students need you to take a stand against university licenses for these toxic chatbots… like now plz!?
front page of the Washington Post on December 28, 2025. A1 story “Suicidal teen found a confidant in ChatGPT”
continuation of Washington Post article: “74 suicide warnings and 243 mentions of hanging” and chart depicting Adam Raine’s increased time spent with ChatGPT
our data story visualizing the rabbit hole people can fall into with chatGPT is on the cover of today’s @washingtonpost.com @kevinschaul.bsky.social
"Let’s get one thing clear, Santa: I ain’t a scab. The collective bargaining agreement clearly mandates the sleigh be led by a union-approved eight-reindeer team. Your little 'won’t you guide my sleigh tonight' routine is a bald attempt to dilute the team’s negotiating power."
