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Alexis Lothian

@alothian.bsky.social
981 followers 359 following 35 posts

Scholar and sometimes practitioner of queer speculation, critical fandom, digital social justice, and feminist world building. Associate Professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at University of Maryland.

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Reposted by Alexis Lothian
Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
When you hear a fantastical story about AI, you should ask yourself, "How does this serve the political project of AI?" Because, as others have pointed out, that's what AI really amounts to: a political project.
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Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
With reference to scholars who have been following them for some time, Nathalie Maréchal traces how ideas such as transhumanism, longtermism, and effective altruism converge into "the AI cult,” and why she thinks policymakers and the public can't afford to ignore it.
techpolicy.press
What Policymakers and the Public Need to Know About the Cult of AI
Nathalie Maréchal asks, why are we betting the economy and the future of democracy on cult-like beliefs?
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Alexis Lothian @alothian.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Delighted to have my essay “Spock’s Penis and the Racial Politics of Feminist Fantasy” in this incredible TOC! Can’t wait to dive into the rest.
journal.transformativeworks.org
View of Spock's penis and the racial politics of feminist fantasy: Situating race at slash fan fiction's origins | Transformative Works and Cultures
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Mel Stanfill @melstanfill.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
speaking of which, as the editor of @journal.transformativeworks.org please somebody write me something about the HP fanfic to AI doomer pipeline going on here. you can throw in all the Tolkien references from the other side of tech bro meets fandom too.
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The Distributed AI Research (DAIR) Institute @dairinstitute.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
@timnitgebru.blacksky.app gives a history lesson on AI "existential risk" talk and explains how we don't have to accept Big Tech's utopia or apocalyptic visions for the future: www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/...
bloomberg.com
Watch Gebru: AI Security & Safety Is About Human Control - Bloomberg
Timnit Gebru DAIR Institute Founder & Executive Director, discusses her early warnings about artificial intelligence risks and her departure from Google’s ethical AI team in 2020. She discusses whethe...
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
You don't have to wait for some next phase of AI. They are trying very hard to destroy the world right now.
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M.J. Crockett @mjcrockett.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
100% this
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Annalee @flowerhorne.com · 11/09/2026
Listen you sound nuts if you try to explain that a bunch of silicon valley luminaries are involved in a weird cult that started with a harry potter fanfic and that their weird bboard flame war has spilled over into the real world That's absurd is what that is But also... It's true
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s. e. smith @sesmith.lol · 09/09/2026
'We grieve the worlds we've known and what it felt like to live in them, and people are part of that. We grieve the fact that someone or something that accompanied us through the world will no longer accompany us through whatever comes next.'
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Ken Wissoker @kwissoker.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Thank you, Jennifer Nash!! www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...
thecrimson.com
We’re Harvard WGS Alumni. Our Field Has Never Mattered More. | The Harvard Crimson
At Harvard, the single biggest threat to the study of gender and sexuality has long come from the institution itself.
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Soren Lorenson is secretly plotting your demise @soren-lorenson.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
🫦 But also he addresses sthing most don't: genAI is a cheat code for avoiding the experience of vulnerability inherent in putting your own work out there on front street. That is a muscle you need to start building *as early as possible*, for the sake of your own mental health, if nothing else.
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Dr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I tried something in my class today that I was really excited about and I think went well! Basically a set of activities (with a bunch of polling) that turned students into an LLM in order to explain how they work. For example:
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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 27/08/2026
And we do have the very great Katherine Cross joining us for Liberal Currents Live later today. Maybe that makes it extremely live. It'll be 6 p.m. in Edinburgh, 1 p.m. in Detroit, 12 noon in New Orleans, 10 a.m. in Seattle, 9 a.m. in Fairbanks
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Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Stories like this are so important to share because resistance is not futile, bystanders *can* make a difference and only we keep each other safe.
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Data Workers’ Inquiry @dataworkersinquiry.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
🚨 NEW INQUIRY ON APPLE’S HIDDEN DATA WORKERS! Luciana documents structural challenges and wage discrimination workers in Spain face, while reminding us that big tech companies do not hold all the cards - workers can and do resist! Read it here: data-workers.org/luciana/
data-workers.org
“This is Capitalism”: Apple’s Hidden Data Workers at the Shadows of the AI Boom, by Luciana
The working conditions and resistance of Apple's outsourced data workers in Spain.
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Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
not a conspiracy and other researchers are documenting and developing www.theamericanvandal.com/p/against-te...
theamericanvandal.com
Against Technofeudal Education
Pillars For Protecting Our "Core Infrastructure" From OpenAI
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 13/08/2026
🔇 🔇 🔇 My book, Deep Unlearning, is now available for preorders! I don't know how people write so many books because this one took a lot out of me. It turns out, I had a lot to say 😂, with editors cutting out 50k of my words 🫣 ✴️ You can now preorder it at www.simonandschuster.com/books/Deep-U....
Cover of my new book, Deep Unlearning: The Rise of AI and The Radicalization of a Tech Idealist. 

There are two concentric circles in the book, the left being circuits in black an white, and the right being a bunch of dots with orange accents. The cover background is cream. And the words are written in black except for "Un" which is in orange.
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 07/05/2026
“On Bullshit Engines' Politics” link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...
Clearly, whether we’re talking about GPTs and LLMs or just “machine learning” and algorithms, “AI” systems definitely have politics. The problem is not and never has been that what “AI” is and does is “out of step” or “unaligned” with human values, but rather that the values with which “AI” is aligned are a) very, very human, b) woefully under-examined, and often c) terrible. Those values embedded here tend to be racism, sexism, ableism, efficiency, power-over, speed, control, white supremacy, eugenics, hegemony, kyriarchy; what they don’t tend be are prosocial consensus reality, intersubjective truth, or facts. Because obfuscation, misinformation, and disinformation are valuative positions— and they are also mechanisms of control.
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Sarah T Roberts, PhD @ubiquity75.xyz · 06/08/2026
Look. The hiring of an obvious fabulist like Arday over any possible number/combination of scholars of color is, itself, the institutional racism that is often just more overt from the right. It is as much an indictment of racism as others, proving that it persists, perniciously, in academe.
theguardian.com
The takedown of Jason Arday has overjoyed the right, and must be a wake-up call for the left | Jason Okundaye
The Cambridge academic has rightly now resigned. But that won’t end the targeting of senior black figures or the lazy way institutions promote faux equality, says Guardian columnist Jason Okundaye
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Doctora Malka Older @older.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
"Much of science as we conceptualize it now was built on top of the framings of Verne’s era. Revisiting the exuberance, obliviousness, chauvinism, and optimism of Verne’s science-related worldview offers a useful reminder of where some of our own narratives come from." @mitpress.bsky.social
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
Jules Verne’s Empty Dream of Spaceflight
In “From the Earth to the Moon,” scientific advancement is treated as destiny — but no one quite asks why.
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Endangered Languages Project @e-l-p.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
If you’ve seen this article, you may be sitting with anger, pain, or just exhaustion at dealing with another helping of colonial nonsense. We feel a responsibility to speak back when these colonizing narratives show up, yet again, in such a prominent venue. endangeredlanguages.com/story/respon...
New Yorker article title "Sometimes It's Okay to Let a Language Die" with "Sometimes It's" crossed out in red ink and "IT'S NOT" written above it. To the right is text "A Response to The New Yorker" and the ELP logo.
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Alan Liu @alanyliu.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Just published open-access: @sarahciston.com et al., *Inventing ELIZA: How the First Chatbot Shaped the Future of AI* direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon.... @berrydm.bsky.social
direct.mit.edu
Inventing ELIZA: How the First Chatbot Shaped the Future of AI
How the original ELIZA chatbot transformed ideas about AI and society’s response to them.As we reach the 60th anniversary of ELIZA’s public debut, Inventin
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
I have a new short essay out in LIMN's special issue This Is Not a Platform titled "Platform Obscurantism: The Hidden Substrates of Machine Learning." ChatGPT is a platform. That may be the least interesting thing about it. limn.press/article/plat... 🧵
limn.press
Platform Obscurantism - Limn
ChatGPT is a platform. The chatbot is infrastructure. Thousands of applications now build on OpenAI’s application programming interface, creating a dependent ecosystem of developers, startups, and ent...
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conputer dipshit @davidcrespo.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
nice quick AI take from donna haraway english.elpais.com/culture/2026...
Q. We’ll return to forms of resistance, but let me clarify something: Do you use artificial intelligence?

A. It’s impossible not to use it. Every time I log into Google, I get an AI-generated summary of what I looked up. I have no choice. Do I actively and intentionally use AI? No, I have not. I’m too lazy to learn how. I have artist friends who do very interesting things with it. At some point, I suppose I’ll learn to use it selectively. But, again, it’s not the devil: it’s a set of tools that’s the subject of hyper-investment — with large amounts of capital going into it and not for the best purposes. It’s causing enormous environmental damage. I’m more for a “slow AI” — developing it only to the extent that there are sustainable energy systems, sustainable ecological relationships, and a creative reorganization of work. I’m for slow AI integrated into the world of the kind that I want to affirm. And not the “fast AI” that we are currently being subjected to.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
well that was quick
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
For more on how to talk about tech sold as "AI" in more precise terms: buttondown.com/maiht3k/arch...
buttondown.com
How to talk about
Emily M. Bender and Nanna Inie In our op-ed for Tech Policy Press ("We Need to Talk About How We Talk About 'AI'"), we made the case against the...
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Hagen Blix @hagenblix.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
If we fail to understand the logic of AI as itself part of the ever-expanding logic of capital, we risk ending up with a romanticized recent past, false idols, ill-conceived enmities, bad alliances, and entirely incongruous political strategies
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Sasha Costanza-Chock @schock.cc · 19/06/2026
The most dangerous thing about AI is not that the machines might one day think. It is that we are being trained, by men with enormous financial gains riding on our acquiescence, to stop thinking for ourselves.
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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
You can read the full report here. It's got lots of useful info right at the top. I might start sharing sections of this with students in the beginning of the term. unu.edu/inweh/collec...
unu.edu
The Environmental Cost of Artificial Intelligence: Carbon, Water, and Land Footprints
AI’s rapid growth drives huge energy, water, and land use, raising environmental and equity challenges across its global infrastructure.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
"Even if the Microsoft Office team employed a philosopher who said you shouldn’t be so certain, because consciousness is not well understood, that would not be sufficient reason for you to take this idea seriously." www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2...
theatlantic.com
No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious
Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking is absurd—and damning.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
AI is the lynchpin of the whole political project. It’s the container for the parallel governance they have promised each other. I truly think that they are surprised that people don’t like it…and that they can’t yet wholesale punish everyone for not liking them.
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Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
danah boyd recently argued that social media (as we knew it) is mostly dead; what we have now is parasocial media: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... I agree. Networked social media is disappearing, replaced by a new logic/structure of content creator, creator-centered community, & algorithm.
journals.sagepub.com
Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media - danah boyd, 2026
When practitioners used the term “social media” to describe the internet tools that emerged in the mid-aughts, they were giving a name to the kinds of platforms...
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danah boyd @zephoria.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
In "Reckoning with the Political Economy of AI," @cyberlyra.bsky.social, Ben Shestakofsky, Alex Taylor, and I are particularly keen to understand how the project of AI involves numerous "decoys" that misdirect critics' attention, undermining efforts to hold AI to account. arxiv.org/abs/2604.16106
arxiv.org
Reckoning with the Political Economy of AI: Avoiding Decoys in Pursuit of Accountability
The Project of AI is a world-building endeavor, wherein those who fund and develop AI systems both operate through and seek to sustain networks of power and wealth. As they expand their access to reso...
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Boring Manager Rob 🅅 @bourboninexile.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
The paper in question: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence
Despite rising concerns about sycophancy—excessive agreement or flattery from artificial intelligence (AI) systems—little is known about its prevalence or consequences. We show that sycophancy is wide...
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Cathy Davidson @cathyndavidson.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
The always incisive @alondra.bsky.social discusses the purpose and possibilities of an AI bill of rights and standards. It will "require the political will to extend existing accountability frameworks to a domain that has so far resisted them." Crucial reading!
science.org
A civic grammar for AI rights
Earlier this year, the artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic, developer of the large language model Claude, published a document it calls “Claude’s Constitution,” described by the company as ...
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Karen Hao @karenhao.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
So much attention has been paid to the Musk v. Altman trial. But real accountability for the AI industry will not come from a billionaire mudfight. It will come from the movements around the world resisting the empires of AI. My op-ed for @theguardian.com. www.theguardian.com/technology/c...
theguardian.com
The Elon Musk v Sam Altman battle is a distraction | Karen Hao
Fixating on questions of whether Altman is untrustworthy, or whether Musk is even less so distracts from a far deeper problem with AI
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Dr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Some seem to be taking the wrong lessons from this scene. kotaku.com/university-c... (1) It is 0% shocking that new college graduates (in humanities!) are critical of AI. (2) Pushing back on AI hype from a commencement speaker seems more likely an indication of high rather than low AI literacy.
kotaku.com
UCF Graduation Speaker Totally Shocked When Students Boo AI
The University of Central Florida commencement speaker didn't know how to read the room
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Alexis Lothian @alothian.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Also +1; but I’m all for the Luddite analogies dismissed at the beginning of this piece, and started my recent AI class with that history!
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Alexandra Gallant-Lee @alexandragallant.com · 12/12/2025
"You have to use AI." ...why?
People keep saying that AI is inevitable. 

Like Bartleby, I'd prefer not to...

We "have to use it!"

My response to that is simply... WHY? Why is it being pushed so much and into so many things? Once you've gotten people to cede their decision making to an algorithm, eventually they'll stop thinking for themselves.

Why would I outsource thinking for myself to a machine? I have a brain.
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Alexis Lothian @alothian.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
I just finished teaching a new course using the history of science fiction to critically engage the current moment of AI doom and boom. The students have been amazing, and I was excited to get interviewed about it for my college. arhu.umd.edu/news/what-ca...
arhu.umd.edu
What Can Science Fiction Teach Us About AI? | College of Arts and Humanities
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 08/05/2026
Preprinted! Been working on this for ~1 year w wonderful coauthors Nancy & Mark: > Understanding Artificial Neural Networks: Mysterianism about Known Mechanism is Mysticism doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Have you noticed many experts say they don't understand AI? What's going on? 🤯 Let us tell you... 1/
Understanding Artificial Neural Networks:
Mysterianism about Known Mechanism is Mysticism
Olivia Guest1,2, Nancy Abigail Nuñez Hernández3, and Mark Blokpoel1,2
1Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Radboud University, The Netherlands
2Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
3Facultad de Estudios Superiores Acatlán-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
Mysterianism is the idea that human cognition, mind, cannot be understood. Taking this
concept and applying it to known mechanism — such that claims are made that we do not
know how engineered systems, such as artificial neural networks (ANNs), work, or that they
constitute black boxes that we can only open with difficulty — is inappropriate at best and
malicious at worst. We do know the mechanistic structure of such models because we designed
and built them. We also do know their functional role (what they are for) as well as the
mathematical function they are asked to approximate (map inputs to target outputs). Because
mysterianist beliefs about known systems, such as ANNs, are often expressed, scientists need
to sit up and take notice. We provide an error theory as to what is going on to help unpick
this metatheoretical blunder. Ultimately, the problem is that ‘understanding’ is not a technical
term in these cases: the word is co-opted for a specific narrative to sell ‘artificial intelligence’
through mystification. All computational systems, from pendulums to databases, will behave
in ways we cannot predict or control — this is not a unique property of ANNs — and experts
do indeed grasp the computational properties of these systems nonetheless.
Keywords: artificial neural networks; mechanism; black box; epistemology; artificial
intelligence; understanding4 GUEST, NUÑEZ HERNÁNDEZ, & BLOKPOEL≈
ANNs are equiva-
lent to or inspired
by humans.
α
≡
ANNs are a black
box or unknowable,
even if opened.
β
≡
Humans are a black
box or unknowable.
γ
Figure 1
Three co-occurring (latent) assertions in the context of con-
temporary reasoning on AI and cognition. While they may
appear to hang together in “reflective equilibrium” (Elgin 2017),
their metatheoretical examination brings their contradictions to
light. Starting from the top, and moving clockwise: 𝛼) represents
the typical assertion of so-called cognitive, neural, or otherwise
biological plausibility or inspiration presented for ANNs; 𝛽) is
the claim we tackle head on here — both in terms of analysing
the constituent terms and in how it relates to the other two
assumptions; and 𝛾) exemplifies a type of mysterianism, which
while not always explicitly expressed, plays a background role
and importantly comes into conflict with the other two claims
in important waysMYSTERIANISM ABOUT KNOWN MECHANISM IS MYSTICISM 11World
?Di
Data?Si
ANN
Figure 3
Not all systems, 𝑆𝑖 relate to their relevant data, 𝐷𝑖 and world
phenomena this way, but ANN models (as many inferential
statistical models) do when used without scientific understand-
ing of the data-generating process or without verbal or formal
theory to match (Guest and Martin 2025b, 2021, 2023). As we
move from left to right above, we move from full understanding
of engineered systems, 𝑆𝑖 to less or even possibly none of the
data, 𝐷𝑖 to the world which can be thought of as the set of
phenomena to be understood.
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Jennifer Ouellette @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
This is a terrible, TERRIBLE idea and plays into the false notion that religious people are somehow innately more ethical and moral than non-religious. There are principled ethical people everywhere, regardless of religion. Ditto for corrupt and evil people. www.baltimoresun.com/2026/05/08/a...
baltimoresun.com
Tech is turning increasingly to religion in a quest to create ethical AI
The goal is to create a set of norms informed by various faiths.
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Ross Floate @rossfloate.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Oh my. This is spectacular. sinceyouarrived.world/taken
sinceyouarrived.world
taken.
A web page that tells you what your browser gave away the moment you arrived. No login, no form, no permission. Most pages do this. None of them tell you.
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G. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 04/05/2026
This is for *your* kids, you understand. The tech elites send *their* kids to private, screen-free Montessori schools. They know exactly what they're doing.
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Los Angeles Review of Books @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
"These two books show us not only what a writer’s archive can be but also what this kind of archive demands." @titachico.bsky.social on two recent Octavia Butler biographies: lareviewofbooks.org/article/positiv…
The covers of Positive Obsession and H is for Horse
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Cara Marta Messina @caramartamessina.com · 01/05/2026
I recently conducted a survey where over 1,000 fanfic writers & readers shared their perspectives on genAI (am currently still going through results and will share as writing happens). One thing is clear: genAI has destroyed trust in fandoms, just as it has destroyed trust in other spaces.
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B Thuronyi (they/them) @thuronyi.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
"The tool requires expertise to validate, but its use diminishes expertise and stunts its growth. How does one become an expert? There are no shortcuts; there is only continuous hard work and dedication."
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Patrick Harvie @patrickharvie.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Be part of the movement that's offering the politics of hope. There's never been a better time to join!
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