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alula-auburn.bsky.social

@alula-auburn.bsky.social
118 followers 275 following 85 posts

Chicago. Cats. Crochet. Chronic illness. Trying to read & write, trying to advocate for humane pedagogy, trying not to succumb to AI, political, environmental or other despair.

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alula-auburn.bsky.social @alula-auburn.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
World Octopus Day, I guess?
Clio, a grey brown tabby cat, grudgingly tolerates a blue crocheted octopus being set on top of her head.The same crocheted octopus now in a shadow box “aquarium” with crocheted waves in the background and two crocheted fish,crocheted sea plants and a crocheted shell. I guess you can vaguely see my reflection, too.
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
“It’s putting a mind virus into a kid’s head, which is what education is. And it’s being done by a teacher you trust.”
theamericanvandal.com
All Our Kids Will Go To Alpha School
On the plans to hyperscale Alpha School’s “AI” tutoring software to “a billion kids.”
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
And that has always been the problem with the way AI pushers and the credulous people who seem to be doing most the reporting talk about "AI"'s feelings and "pain": they are far more willing to believe that "AI" feels pain than actual living human beings or non-human animals, even. Its dehumanizing.
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Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The literacy crisis is not just referring to people's ability to literally read and write. It's also people's inability to read for context. I've been a public educator for over 20 years and I have never, ever seen it this bad.
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Jonathan Edward Durham @thisone0verhere.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Honestly how dare you
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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
"Writing centers should be championed, not dissolved... Colleges are racing to outspend each other with new AI-focused programming. But individualized, human support for student learning should not be sacrificed on the altar of these ambitions." (by Lizzie Hutton, Miami U Ohio's WC director)
cincinnati.com
AI makes college writing centers more important, not less | Opinion
Opinion: AI can generate words. College students still need to learn how to write.
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Maris Kreizman @maris.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
In response to that putrid Bret Stephens column, brilliant @reluctantlyjoe.bsky.social made a whole Google Doc with buy links for all of the @nationalbook.bsky.social Prize nominees. docs.google.com/document/d/1...
docs.google.com
Bret Stephens is mad at these books, you should buy them and read them
Bret Stephens is mad at these books, you should buy them and read them, not just the SCARY PR COPY that triggered him like a snowflake. No, I won’t link this fuckshit here, because I won’t drive tra...
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Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
If we are to truly resist fascism, we must reject the idea that only the strong survive. We must categorically reject any notion that worth is determined by physical ability or socioeconomic status or what you produce under capitalism. We must build networks of community care.
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alula-auburn.bsky.social @alula-auburn.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
"And in a test designed to measure optimism, the Galahs grew more hopeful of finding their favorite treat (a walnut) when they’d had several days of free flight and more pessimistic about their walnut prospects after several days of being grounded." Same, birds. Same. No walnuts to be found.
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Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
SPECIAL REPORT Last month, Alpha School invited people to follow student social media accounts "if curious about life in our high schools." I accepted their offer. What I've found shocks me. Forget the AI and ask instead: Is Alpha Schools a cult? Follow along for a summary of my findings.
buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com
SPECIAL REPORT: My So-Called Alpha School
What is it like to be a student in Alpha School’s high school boot camp?
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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
These sorts of things sound good in one sense--we'll do it all! But in what a lot of us teach, this just doesn't make sense. Instead of treating "using AI" like something that is equivalent to "doing the thing," we need to think about what we actually want students to be able to do. Think through/1
We should also be realistic and revolutionary, adopting this tried-and-tested principle – what I call “teach both, test both” – for AI now. Every subject, from history to English literature, should be divided in two: teach students to use AI in one part, teach students to flourish without it in the other – and, crucially, examine both. A teacher cannot monitor whether or not a student uses AI in the quiet solitude of their bedroom. But nothing can replace the feeling of sitting in an exam, looking at the paper, and feeling that cold sweat when you realise you haven’t prepared for both parts.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Attention Philadelphia! We're hosting a rally to demand that Drexel University maintain The Academy of Natural Sciences Museum open to the public. Join us on Tuesday morning at 10am in front of the academy. Please spread the word, we need all hands on deck! RSVP here: luma.com/1qwnrqz2
A dinosaur on a white background with the text SAve the academy of Natural sciences museum rally Tuesday Sept 8 10am in front of the academy 1900 ben Franklin Parkway. "Tell Drexel University "Keep the museum open!" with the logos for Philly Science Action, Skype a Scientist, and Green Philly
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alula-auburn.bsky.social @alula-auburn.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Very grateful they gave me a waiver so I can attend this as an adjunct without institutional support!
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I understand this feeling. Relief at a human-bad essay instead of a machine-bad essay. I can work with human-bad! Machine-bad is an insult to my humanity.
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alula-auburn.bsky.social @alula-auburn.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Taking the photo: ohhhh look at your paws curled up so cute Looking at the photo: EAR what is happening there #catsofbluesky
Clio, a gray tabby cat curled up contentedly on her human for a nap, with her paws tucked up by her head and curled around. Somehow the angle has made her ear look enormously long, like three times its actual length.
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alula-auburn.bsky.social @alula-auburn.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Haha everyone is posting their bounty but considering the wind abuse my plants take on the fifth floor Chicago balcony and my lackadaisical gardening skills, I’m gleeful to harvest anything beyond heaps of basil.
A blue and white willow-pattern-type china bowl holding two small cherry tomatoes and three small multicolored peppers.
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Scott Stein @sstein.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Students are often portrayed as antagonists/perpetrators in AI cheating stories, and surely some of them are—I won't entirely dismiss their capacity to make choices. But students are also the main victims. The real villains are not living in dorms or going into debt to learn nothing.
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amulya.bsky.social @amulya.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
My husband Drew wrote this at breakneck speed while moving cross-country and caring for an 8 month old, bc he felt it was necessary, ethically and politically, to correct the record. If you read Tyler Austin Harper's piece, I hope you'll read this.
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Shecky @shecky.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
These are the only two shareable pictures I have of the cats (gray is Wally, torbie is Doris):
Almost-all-gray cat (white flashes on his throat and belly only) lying on the floor.Torbie cat curled up in a cat bed.
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Joe Hass @hassgocubs.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Via @moryan.bsky.social via @runwithskizzers.bsky.social, a friendly reminder: JK Rowling is a transphobic bigot.
theverge.com
There is no ethical consumption of HBO’s Harry Potter series
You can’t without supporting Rowling’s transphobic bigotry.
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alula-auburn.bsky.social @alula-auburn.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
I've been away for a few days, so I'm getting some very loud meows, some very nice cuddles. . .and clearly, a warning. #cats #catsofbluesky
Clio, a grey tabby cat, is seen in profile curled up with her eyes closed on the lap of a person wearing a white shirt with polkadots. Her head is wedged under a red throw pillow. Her front paws are very cutely displayed in front of her, one reaching out past her face and one curled--the curled one casually displays one VERY sharp claw.
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Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 08/08/2026
Illinois will fight like hell to keep protecting your reproductive freedom.
chicago.suntimes.com
Many women with high-risk pregnancies can’t get abortions in their home states. Illinois welcomes them.
More people travel to Illinois than to any other state for an abortion. A program helps the small percentage who need care in a hospital.
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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
I'll have more to say about this quote from the article below, but for now just this: We are absolutely not solving the right problem if we end up with a system in which students are being policed by bots while writing papers that no one but a bot is going to read.
Humans also have a lot of bias. There actually have been studies about how human beings grade students differently based on their perceptions of them. I don’t say that to dismiss the fears of AI. I just also want to say the bar shouldn’t be perfection. The goal is: Could you have a system that’s more consistent and less biased than the status quo? Even if you had an amazing English teacher, who gives very consistent and good feedback, if that teacher has to grade 100 papers on “The Great Gatsby,” it’s going to take them a week or two, and in many cases, the limiting factor on how much feedback you can get depends on how much bandwidth the teacher has, and the teacher ... is spending so much time.

We do not do AI grading of full papers yet, but we do have a system that gives AI feedback on papers, and I do think in the next year it will be possible to do pretty solid rubrics-based grading. The benefit of a technical system is that you can benchmark it. You can test it for bias – checking whether details like a family’s cultural background in any way change the feedback that is given.
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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
This seems so clear to me as a teacher and is what drove me to develop a course and a first-year AI curriculum that are *about* gen AI rather than focused on "how to use it." But there is a lot of FOMO driving the decisions to focus on making sure students "know how to use it" instead
“It’s a hard time to be a college student,” Fiesler said. “People who have been out of college for a long time are telling students that everyone needs to use AI, but those people already know how to do things. They learned how to do them without AI. If people are using ChatGPT to do things for them from the very beginning, then they will never learn how to do those things.”
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
One of most heartbreaking things about Hank Green turning to LLMs is that he gets to do science communication full-time to a massive audience and is well-resourced. He doesn't need to cut corners or outsource his thinking. Meanwhile, there are so many people doing amazing work with zero resources.
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
I think about this finding a lot: "Students whose school uses AI for many reasons are more likely to report that they or a friend of theirs has had a back-and-forth conversation with AI, like chatbots, in potentially troubling ways." From @cdt.org's report:
cdt.org
Hand in Hand: Schools’ Embrace of AI Connected to Increased Risks to Students
Artificial intelligence (AI) has continued to alter the educational experiences of teachers, students, and parents during the 2024-25 school year. The frequency and variety of AI uses continues to gro...
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alula-auburn.bsky.social @alula-auburn.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
She is sitting here to protest my being at the desk and not in the comfy chair, but a weakness in the strategy is that it makes it way too easy for me to lean in for head kisses. #catsofbluesky
Clio, a grey (irl even if she looks more brown here) senior tabby perched on my glass top desk next to my laptop. Her paws are all very close together and her head is bowed, making it much too tempting to  go in for a little head kiss, which she objects to during lap cuddles. Behind her is some yarn.
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StressArt Studio @stressart.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
So Cool! www.thisiscolossal.com/2026/07/dani...
thisiscolossal.com
Los Angeles Public Library Unveils the World's Largest Pop-Up Book
"Luceros y Penumbres," designed by Daniel González and engineered by Matthew Reinhart, is an ode to learning and discovery.
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alula-auburn.bsky.social @alula-auburn.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Alone in a pair of really absurdly excellent theater seats trying to pretend it’s on purpose.
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
And when (either able bodied or certain disabled) people tell you that we must not criticize AI because it might have access use-cases, its really important to push back with examples like this, but also how gAI will cut the kinds of freelance work many disabled people rely on, and cutting services.
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Mo Ryan @moryan.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Yep [as Linda knows] this is also a common response when someone accused of misconduct or abuse: "He was nice to me/I never saw it." Right so [Chidi voice] you get how that makes it worse??! This person KNEW how to be good, thoughtful etc & chose not to act that way in situations where it mattered!
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alula-auburn.bsky.social @alula-auburn.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
I’m staring down my birthday after what has honestly been one (really two) pretty terrible years personally, professionally, healthwise etc. I had to make a new account last month, but if you see this and want to send me cute animal pics, nerdy jokes, yelling about AI, or complimenting my crochet…
My pretty senior kitty Clio posed very cutely on the couch next to a pink canvas crate. She is a gray tabby sporting some excellent whiskers and big pile of paws.Clio the grey tabby cat putting up with my resting a circle of blue crochet on her head, like a hat, while she loafs on my lap. She looks both disgusted and resigned.A crocheted aquarium I made featuring a water backdrop, three fish and assorted corals. I mixed, matched and adapted so many pattern designs I can’t list them all, but if you have specific questions DM!Another view of the crocheted aquarium I made with different fish, an octopus, and some shells.
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
I once wrote Dante had Beatrice; Orwell had Stalin; for political writers their muses are not the good things. Wrote this in one sitting today.
meditationsinanemergency.com
Pod Save Patriarchy (or Whatever That Sorry Platner Spectacle Was)
For at least a decade we have been told that this and that and the other thing must be tolerated in pursuit of the elusive vote of the working class or the white working class which often means the wh...
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Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them) @bookjockeyalex.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
What I find especially interesting is the section where they tried to get "Bella" to discuss her work and she couldn't with any depth or knowledge. This is the same thing that happens with students who use genAI for research or writing help. There is no there there.
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Molly Crabapple @mollycrabapple.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
If you are a normal human, and you value something, that is something that AI companies are trying to destroy few things are as multidirectionally malignant as these corporations
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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
A message for the class of 2026: We need more friction!
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alula-auburn.bsky.social @alula-auburn.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
I’m going to hope Clio is directing this face at SCOTUS and not me, because yikes.
An indignant grey tabby cat with green eyes is leaning her head on a pink fabric crate. Some yarn and a piece of super bulky crochet are also visible. However the photo is dominated by the cat’s absolute look of irritated disgust.
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alula-auburn.bsky.social @alula-auburn.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Just a Chicago girl and her cat, yelling at The Things again.
A grey tabby cat receiving ear scritches from her person, capture mid-meow so she looks like she’s shouting. Her teeth and long whiskers are prominent. She looks very soft and she is.
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