A. Smith

If you loved 'Sinners,' here's what to watch next So you loved best picture nominee Sinners. What should you watch next? We asked our audience to share their recommendations. They suggested Near Dark, The Wailing and other vampire horror films.

So you loved best picture nominee Sinners. What should you watch next? We asked our audience to share their recommendations. They suggested Near Dark, The Wailing and other vampire horror films. n.pr/4rdqhum

AI BOOSTER BINGO The squares read: I might get attacked for saying this Imagine what it'll do in 5 years Al critics are just afraid Al is better than you Everyone is doing it "Levels the playing Field" Your time will be spent on work that MATTERS Your time will be spent correcting the Al's errors MORE VOLUME!! Shit outputs? Switch to [alternate LLM] Yes jobs will be cut... Humans aren't perfect either It's FUN!!! No practical advice "Sorry bluesky" Solution to chronic underfunding What if it could cure cancer??? I made something that appears passable No need for pesky underlings Is it accurate? No. But... Framing human work as "bespoke, hand-crafted" Get with it or get left behind!!! Al critics are luddites This was actually written by AI For more free printables please visit www.timvandevall.com, created by Tim van de Vall, copyright 2013 Dutch Renaissance Press LLC

I made a bingo card

With discontent mounting over SC school voucher program, senators request an audit The request comes after a Senate Republican leader said he was concerned the Department of Education could not be trusted to faithfully implement the program.

www.thestate.com/news/politic...

We Are Creatures Who Mourn | Jonathan Lear | Granta ‘The outcome of analysis isn’t meant to be some sort of independent product, some story I now have.’ Benjamin Y. Fong interviews Jonathan Lear on how philosophy and psychoanalysis intersect.

‘Certain poets, certain poems, they become lifelong companions. They change the way you see things, the way you hear things.’

Benjamin Y. Fong interviews Jonathan Lear.

granta.com/we-are-creat...

Jesse Jackson Loved Us—Sometimes Before We Loved Ourselves “Before they came for us, and woke, and us, and power, they came for Jesse Jackson,” Kiese Laymon, the author of Heavy and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, wrote just hours after …

1) In one of the most personal (and, IMO, one of the most important) essays I have ever published, I wrote in @literaryhub.bsky.social on Jesse Jackson's LGBTQ legacy and what he meant to me regarding Black manhood, being born "illegitjmate," and practing love in America lithub.com/jesse-jackso...

Without considering the sources of claims, efforts at epistemic vigilance become play-acting. With LLMs, we don't know the sources.

Excellent thread from @mjcrockett.bsky.social

The problem with school boards Political scientist Vladimir Kogan says school board politics often reward adult priorities. He explains why culture-war fights and off-cycle elections can leave students behind.

New-

I spoke with political scientist Vlad Kogan about his provocative new book "No Adult Left Behind." He argues that the politics of public education privilege the interest of adults over students. I tried to pressure test his arguments in this Q&A.

cbnewsletters.chalkbeat.org/p/no-adult-l...

Shoddy People The redemption of disgrace.

Shoddy people.
www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/shoddy-peo...

Immigrants Are Welcome Here Week (Feb. 23-27) - ACLU of South Carolina As South Carolinians, we pride ourselves on hospitality. Especially at a time when some politicians want to harm, demonize, and exclude immigrants, it is important to show our hospitality and solidari...

Throughout the week of Feb. 23-27, we will join local activists, communities of faith, and ordinary people expressing a common theme: Immigrants Are Welcome Here. Please join us at an event. Details here: www.aclusc.org/event/immigr...

I can't get over this number: in 2007, there were 360,000 newspaper jobs. Now, there are 80,000. "My local paper sucked!" Sure. What sucks even more? The void. "I get all my news from the Guardian!" No, the Guardian doesn't report on your town council, your school board, local cops.

The really naive move of the past 20 years was to entrust the private sector with the direction of public education—and to assume that the purpose of school is to prepare kids for that sector.

As good as everyone's saying. Just think about the scale:

"in 2021, there were almost 36,000 bachelor’s degrees in English literature conferred across the United States. That same year, more than 320,000 students took the 'English Literature and Composition'"

Department of Education backs down on anti-DEI directive after lawsuit - UPI.com A federal court gave a final ruling Wednesday negating the Department of Education's directive from February 2025 to prevent DEI in schools.

For posterity:

"The U.S. District Court in New Hampshire issued the ruling that permanently invalidated the 'Dear Colleague' letter of Feb. 14, 2025, after the Department of Education backed down from the lawsuit."

www.upi.com/Top_News/US/...

BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide.

This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.

some of you are looksmaxxing when you need to be booksmaxxing

"A more helpful question than “Is it intelligent” might be: what does it mean to know? What does it mean to believe that others know? How does this impact trust in a society, and how might AI colonize those mechanisms to seize that trust? "

^^^ THIS.

The proper link for this is the original Time Magazine one. Here you go!

time.com/7373005/wuth...

A word we should all know right now:

pelf (n): money, especially when gained in a dishonest or dishonorable way

Emily Brontë in Her Smut Era: The Romance Rebranding of “Wuthering Heights” - Public Books Repackaging Wuthering Heights as a Valentine’s Day date movie is a perverse distortion of a text where the only union is found in the dirt of a shared grave.

New at PB: Shawna Lipton (@romancescholar.bsky.social) reviews Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. The Dark Romance rebrand of the Gothic tragedy begs the question: Is Emily Brontë in her smut era?

i am increasingly bothered by terms like "showdown" or "face-off" or "clash" when used to describe corrupt and fascist power coming up against resistance because there's an implied symmetry that does not exist.

It is simply not true that LLMs are "black boxes." Not knowing everything about something doesn't make it a black box. The architecture was developed prior to their invention. They are iterated via intentional design. This is not a black box. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

9-year-old tells SC lawmakers that prothonotary warbler should be state’s official migratory bird A nine-year-old told lawmakers why the potential state migratory bird was important to him and environmental naturalists

Yes

Ghost of Emily Brontë: am I remembered?

Me: yes, a new Wuthering Heights is coming out now

Brontë: and does it look good?

Me: no, it looks like it will be an almost unbearable saga of confusingly sexy suffering for everyone involved

Brontë: I love it.

“Iyou could shove it in your purse or your pocket...There were, say, a few hundred book stores in the US but there were thousands of little drugstores+ bus stations+so on in small towns.That’s why they’re called mass market. There was a much more robust system for getting these books out there.”

The guy who owns Amazon shutting down the books section of the Washington Post is beyond parody