🌶 David Gray Widder

Your job: answering emails from FAccT ACs locked out of openreview, wrangling unhinged reviews, wrangling unhinged authors, giving great talks

One of my favourite sides of politics/media.

Tech execs provide their kids with liberal arts education to ensure their futures—-all while many state schools are becoming all STEM. www.wsj.com/lifestyle/ca...

but its ✨civic✨

Students feel like they can’t enroll in majors like Af-Am Studies and WGSS because they’re getting messages from all sides that they’re not remunerative. And yet they desperately want the knowledge, so classes are full. That seems to be the situation everywhere.

These are “low enrollment” majors but the classes are regularly at capacity. They changed the funding structure a few years ago here, switching the allocation from course enrollments to majors then blamed these departments for a structural, top-down change. This is entirely a political choice.

"how openai *doesn't* make money"
what a lovely opportunity:)

Protect Academic Freedom, Vote No to Revising The Code The UNC System Board of Governors will vote to amend the UNC System Code with new restrictions on academic freedom at its February 26 meeting. The Board of Governors plans to rewrite the very definiti...

The UNC Board of Governors is rewriting the definition of academic freedom, which threatens to limit critical inquiry and chill speech across campuses.

@ncaaup.bsky.social is fighting back: over 1,300 signed the petition demanding the BOG drop this policy.

Add your signature and share widely!

I admit when someone asks what kind of milk I want I still have a moment of "what do you mean? normal milk!?" before realizing that oatmilk exists

@clegoues.bsky.social is this you?

💸🔥🚨 Amii Fellow!! 🚨🔥💸

This talk is next Friday! Come say hi in-person at Amii HQ if you're in Edmonton, or join online using the Zoom info on this page: sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/...

Spent the last few days in community with Black memory workers contributing their genius via multiple disciplines-librarianship,archiving, oral histories, storytelling, museum curation and much more.The historic convening of the Black Information Futures Symposium in Seattle. #blkinfofutures2026

Police show up to snowball fight, act shocked when pelted with snowballs.

Not the brightest.

AI Will Never Be Conscious In his new book, “A World Appears,” Michael Pollan argues that artificial intelligence can do many things—it just can’t be a person.

Michael Pollan argues that AIs will never be conscious because computers are not lime brains.

Building on that, AIs will never be conscious because they don't have a reason to develop consciousness. Our survival drive cannot be simulated.

Why not just let AIs be AIs and not human-like?

The global AI summit produced another round of generic promises signed by 86 countries. The wide endorsement "tells you what kind of agenda it is: one that is AI-industry approved, not one that meaningfully protects the public," said @ambakak.bsky.social.

www.france24.com/en/live-news...

Even in a Blizzard, Food Delivery in New York City Continues

“Even though Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared a state of emergency that banned all but essential vehicles like ambulances, police cars and utility trucks from the roads, the 80,000 deliveristas were among those exempt.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/n...

St. John's University says it no longer recognizes faculty unions after 56 years St. John's University in Queens, New York, notified employees on Feb. 19 that it will no longer recognize the two unions that have represented faculty members at the Catholic university since 1970.

"This shameful attack on the St. John's faculty union betrays the university's history and most deeply-held Catholic values. It's outrageous that religious leaders are joining in the assaults on higher education that are happening nationwide."

— Todd Wolfson, AAUP President

You may also like that @amabalayn.bsky.social is writing and illustrating a children's book about internet infrastructure, and has a delightful shark that knows that the internet is bad for us. :)

I can’t wait for the Larry Krasner press conference where he announces this policy for Philly.

America, where AI has more rights than Brown kids.

America, where AI has more rights than Brown kids.

Thanks, I hate this.

somewhere, Stephen Miller is yelling about finding undocumented people who are really good at parallelizable math

don't, you're giving them ideas to build mixed use detention-data-centers.

Artificial Intelligence and Academic Professions This 2025 report concerns educational technology, or ed-tech, including artificial intelligence (AI), which continues to become more integrated into teaching and research with minimal oversight. Facul...

You may like our AAUP report: www.aaup.org/reports-publ...

AFT: we protect our faculty from AI!
Meanwhile, AFT partnering with OpenAI and Microsoft to get AI further into the classroom. Make it make sense?!?!?!

bsky.app/profile/aft....

What is ceiling butter like? Ceiling yogurt?

its not that, but it seems to be addressing similar questions: what info is discernible from what data, theories of privacy, idk. maybe: nissenbaum.tech.cornell.edu/papers/Count...