Anne Lutz Fernandez

Price of Crude Oil WTI (USD/Bbl) over a five-year period, spanning from 2021 to early 2026. The chart shows a significant price peak in 2022 reaching over $120, followed by a general downward trend with various fluctuations, eventually hitting a low near $55 in late 2025 before a sharp vertical spike to the current price of 90.900. This recent surge represents an increase of +23.880 (+35.63%), highlighted in green text above the blue line graph.

The real insanity isn’t how much oil prices have spiked, it’s that we’re still burning oil for energy.

Vance Puts MAGA Ideology Above All Else For the vice president, even white nationalists who target his Indian American wife don't merit disavowal

"Vance now spends every day of his life agitating for a society that sees the people he loves most in the world as undesirable foreigners who should be forcibly deported."

My latest for @theunpopulist.net

The Backlash Against School Vouchers Is Showing Up at the Polls A potent issue keeps getting missed by the media

"But what’s so fascinating is that grassroots conservatives, like the ones I interviewed, talk in strikingly similar terms. They see vouchers as a failure of democracy, with billionaire donors and super PACs replacing ‘we the people.’"

Same applies to #OntEd — I wonder if this is a universal issue in teaching. 🤔

Trump take pump.

I do think most technophiles are earnest. Saw it with car culture when I studied that.

Yet he was superintendent of two large school districts, Chicago and Rochester. He should know and care about children.

Homepage – Digital Promise We work at the intersection of education leaders, researchers, and technology developers to improve learning opportunities...

This is his "non-profit":

The question isn’t whether we can catch up technologically, but whether we can develop the political will and strategic coherence to build an American version of this future—one that reflects our values of local control, individual liberty, and democratic participation.

Tucking this in at the closing isn't ironic, it's cynical.

Perhaps most instructive of all was our visit to the East China Normal University, where education psychologists and computer scientists at the Shanghai Institute of AI in Education have established an end-to-end development pipeline—from engineering to model testing to model evaluation—showcasing the power of a true R&D higher education institution. This isn’t simply an academic think tank; it’s one of the many R&D divisions driving the entire system and engineering tangible products at scale. They solve specific, high-value problems: AI math tutors that diagnose handwritten work and identify exact logic failures; essay systems providing nuanced feedback on ancient Chinese poetry; psychological counseling bots using cognitive behavioral therapy techniques.

I'd say he's close to getting it here: they treat children like widgets, like disposable parts of the machine.

(Remember, imagination and boldness are only for those who take manic capitalistic risks, not for those activists who want to protect life, society, and the environment.)

AI resisters have no imagination, says guy who can't imagine any of the dramatic, unfolding costs of AI or imagine what life under AI-powered authoritarianism.

"Too many of us still can’t imagine what AI can do to elevate pedagogy by fostering greater wonder and creativity, or enrich curriculum."

"Moreover, every student has a digital portrait—a comprehensive profile based on continuous, multi-dimensional data collection that adapts in real time. This isn’t surveillance for control, it’s diagnostics for growth and personalizing their learning journey."

LOL.

Forced Labor Labor laws in China do not allow for freedom of association, which is a core labor standard. Independent unions are illegal in China and employers are under no obligation to bargain with workers in good faith. The effects on workers are severe: Occupational safety and health violations are prevalent, with limited enforcement and recourse for workers who find themselves in dangerous working conditions. Workers are frequently not paid in many industries. Workplace discrimination is rampant, including recruitment practices that explicitly reference gender, age, disability, physical appearance, and marital status. In the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, state-sponsored forced labor remains a significant part of the CCP’s campaign of repression against Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups. The PRC subsidizes Chinese companies to set up factories near detention camps in Xinjiang and transfers camp victims and others from rural areas to factories in other parts of Xinjiang and throughout China to work as forced labor under the guise of “vocational training” and “poverty alleviation” programs.

The author is breathless about China having "moved beyond 'AI literacy' to 'AI infusion,' where artificial intelligence becomes the underlying operating system for the entire educational experience."

Yup-They're focused on getting kids ready for work in China, something we may not want to emulate:

"Where is the enthusiasm for how AI and other emerging technologies can support our education system?"

Um, I don't know, everywhere? In the federal government, regional education associations, huge school districts, the largest teachers union, every damn company that sells to schools?

Lots of straw men here, too.

There is a flood of discourse on the potential and marketed benefits and many other harms of AI yet: "here in the United States, we can’t seem to move past a narrative of how AI makes it easier for students to cheat."

AI in education requires national strategy What Shanghai can teach us about using AI in K-12 education.

Opens with a pro-AI classic: You're a scaredy cat! I'll give you something to be scared about!

"other countries are executing on national infrastructure projects for the AI era and treating it as an economic imperative...Risks are inherent with any major shift in how we learn, work, and live"

I wasn't even thinking of that! I was thinking about the quality of his hiring decisions.

Screenshot of the NYTimes home page. First headline is "Trump Fires Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary" and the just beneath a photo of her is the headline, "Trump Says He Should Have Role in Picking Iran's Leader"

#pairedtexts

If I didn't know better, I'd think this was a bit of trolling.

well, there is that hat collection

Teach For Awhile For America Wendy Kopp, the woman who hatched Teach for America, popped up in The Atlantic with an odd reflection on “first jobs” and teaching, and, well, there’s a lot of subtext to unpack.

Kopp suggests that "...TFA is great because it provides an important formative experience for the TFA members. The actual students should, I guess, be happy to provide a useful learning experience for those college grads. It’s almost as great as if someone provided learning for those students."

And that was in good part about reaching the women susceptible to being influenced and used by astroturf groups like Moms4Liberty.

Especially because the school board effort was fueled by accusations that schools were peddling porn and that the existence of trans "ideology" in schools is pornographic.

Paul Ingrassia would like us to know that ballrooms at the palaces from the times of monarchs in Europe are bigger than the plan for the East Wing one and not sure that's helping the case

I want to throw up.

imagine being this ineffectual

The rise of AI is implicated in genocide, authoritarianism, war, misinformation, harm to education, environmental/climate ruination, enrichment of tech oligarchs, etc. Yet tenured scholars, feigning reasonableness, argue that skeptics/opponents should chill out and jump on the bandwagon anyway.

Trump taps Ingrassia for new role after texting scandal Paul Ingrassia, who withdrew his nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel last month, says in a farewell email that he’s moving to the General Services Administration.

This guy is on the commission.

"POLITICO also reported that Ingrassia made a number of racist remarks in a text message chain from 2023 and 2024. In one of them, he remarked, 'I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it,' according to the texts."

If you want to watch today's NCPC meeting: