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Antonia Alksnis

@antoniaalksnis.bsky.social
1.3K followers 204 following 149 posts

Political theory PhD candidate, UC Berkeley polisci | Rousseau & XVIIIe siècle BA University of Toronto 🇨🇦 Save OSAP !! antonia-alksnis.weeblysite.com

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Reposted by Antonia Alksnis
Jack Lynch @jacklynch000.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Teaching Swift today, and will always share this on “Modest Proposal” day.
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Arrête Mark Carney ⚜️ @lalegault.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
It is a must read. Here is the unlocked 🔓 article for everyone: archive.is/XKGxY
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Recently reminded of when I got commissioned to do a few illustrations for Italian audiobook covers about #romanhistory Got sad; future beginner artists won’t get opportunities like this. Small companies that used to be willing to pay ~50 € for little illustrations will just use AI.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 11/09/2026
I also find it hilarious how universities are justifying these expenditures using the language of 'equity.'"If we don't buy these tools for everyone, then only the rich kids will be able to afford them, and that's unfair." But you don't buy books assigned by profs for anyone? Why not subsidize that!
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Laura Bassett @lebassett.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Can’t let people see how many women died from the new abortion laws before they vote
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Jesse Locker @jessemlocker.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
How many times has Satan tempted you to neglect Learning, and follow Gaming?
Four panels from an early modern English printed broadside showing: 1) The School-master and Schollar: a teacher and student in a doorway 2) The Vertu-ous Student: a young man at his desk with books 3) Satan tempteth him to neglect Learning, and follow Gaming: Satan at a table with playing cards 4) SATAN tempteth him from his Study to evil company: satan at a table with men and women playing cards, drinking, and smoking
Source: THE YOUNGMANS VICTORY Over the POVVER of the DEVIL (London, 1672-1696?), Houghton Library, Harvard https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/34760/album
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
What if we made a petition for free coffee to be served more frequently #APSA2026
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Flight to #APSA2026 will /allegedly/ be departing after 9 hrs in the airport and 1 cancelled flight. Phone is getting nonstop emergency warnings for "DESTRUCTIVE WINDS." But I can't give up. It's too important that I share my absolutely groundbreaking research on Rousseau's stupid romance novel.
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The Beaverton @thebeaverton.com · 25/08/2026
BREAKING: Doug Ford challenges Donald Trump to a corruption fight in the school parking lot
thebeaverton.com
BREAKING: Doug Ford challenges Donald Trump to a corruption fight in the school parking lot
QUEEN’S PARK - Ontario’s premier has officially challenged the President of the United States to a corruption fight in a parking lot behind a local Etobicoke high school.
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they/them might be giants ☭ @babadookspinoza.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
I think the biggest thing here is that people’s reading comprehension and general communication skills aren’t good enough even to notice when the AI is substantially changing their meaning. This just caps off decades of criminal, willful neglect of our education system.
Tweet from rob (@RobertSecundus):
Yep. and from Google:

Paper abstract:
Google DeepMind
How LLMs Distort Our Written Language
Marwa Abdulhai'.*, Isadora White?", Yanming Wan, Ibrahim Qureshi*, Joel Leibo, Max Kleiman-Weiner,5
and Natasha Jaques3,5
"Equal contributions, 'UC Berkeley, 2UC San Diego, University of Washington, 4Zaytuna College, "Google DeepMind
2026-03-19
Large language models (LLMs) are used by over a billion people globally, most often to assist with writing. In this work, we demonstrate that LLMs not only alter the voice and tone of human writing, but also consistently alter the intended meaning. First, we conduct a human user study to understand how people actually interact with LLMs when using them for writing. Our findings reveal that extensive LLM use led to a nearly 70% increase in essays that remained neutral in answering the topic question. Significantly more heavy LLM users reported that the writing was less creative and not in their voice. Next, using a dataset of human-written essays that was collected in 2021 before the widespread release of L.LMs, we study how asking an LLM to revise the essay based on the human-written feedback in the dataset induces large changes in the resulting content and meaning. We find that even when LLMs are prompted with expert feedback and asked to only make grammar edits, they still change the text in a way that significantly alters its semantic meaning. We then examine LLM-generated text in the wild, specifically focusing on the 21% of AI-generated scientific peer reviews at a recent top Al conference.
We find that LLM-generated reviews place significantly less weight on clarity and significance of the research, and assign scores that, on average, are a full point higher. These findings highlight a misalignment between the perceived benefit of Al use and an implicit, consistent effect on the semantics of human writing, motivating future work on how widespread Al writing will affect our cultural and scientifi…
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
#academia
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
What if I made a playlist that’s just the Misters
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Linotype Pilgrim @symbo1ics.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Universities take note about using private cloud vendors for their infrastructure.
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Opened my old copy of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, and apparently I used my jury summons for a bookmark
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Emerence 🍁 @damemyniah.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
If you’re a Canadian, a junk drawer must contain Canadian Tire money.
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Daniella M. @farsouthhistory.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Check out Simone Edgar Holmes's review of Nicholas Walton's "Orange Sky, Rising Water: The Remarkable Past and Uncertain Future of the Netherlands," published in 2025 by @hurstpublishers.bsky.social; review now available @hnetreviews.bsky.social #envhist #envhum www.h-net.org/reviews/show...
h-net.org
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
and yet bro isn't even a cat
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will pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
incredible discovery here: the 1762 original of the ha ha ha yes sicko cartoon courtesy of thomas waters new book “Magic”
DECODING HOGARTH'S CREDULITY, SUPERSTITION AND FANATICISM
English artist William Hogarth s iconic engraving Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism. A Medley
(1762) expresses the growing tendency, in the 18th-century West, to mock magic. The scene brims with contemporary references and tropes, showcasing different examples of misplaced beliefs.

The print shows a confused scene of various dramatic poses inc a witch on broomstick, preacher etc and crucially a Turkish Muslim looking in through the window Detail of the Turkish man from larger image “TURKISH MAN
A Turkish Muslim man looks in from the window, smiling at the foolishness of the Christians gathered inside.”Yes, ha ha ha, yes Sickos meme of man looking through a window.Front cover of Thomas waters’ Magick
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Rousseau at some point I hope 👀 He was so delightfully obsessed with how clothes affected politics and vice versa
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Fabula, la recherche en littérature @fabula.org · 21/07/2026
Rousseau et les inégalités. Une série de podcasts édités par la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau www.fabula.org/actualites/135704/ro…
fabula.org
Rousseau et les inégalités. Une série de podcasts édités par la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau et les inégalités. Un cycle de rencontres organisé par la Société J.-J. Rousseau en partenariat avec la Maison Rousseau et Littérature. Les cinq rencontres du cycle Rousseau et les inégalités sont désormais disponibles en...
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
My job is the best bc sometimes I’m wrestling with complex philosophical arguments and moral & political problems, and sometimes I’m laughing at ugly #18thC pictures of frogs. And both tasks are equally important to my research.
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Paul Cohen @paulecohen.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
the great irony is that Trump has exempted Canada's abundant fossil fuels from the tariffs he just imposed in retaliation for the border-scorning smoke generated by climate-change-fueled forest fires www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/b...
nytimes.com
Trump to Impose 50% Tariff on Many Canadian Goods
The administration will use an untested legal provision to put significant duties on Canadian exports, reigniting a clash with one of America’s biggest trading partners.
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SandyLee🍁 @leeram.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Doug Ford and Mark Carney post posted about pipelines today.
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
8 years ago today I first laid eyes upon one of the greatest works of art ever made. Under-appreciated masterpiece.
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Library etiquette back in the day was just awful. Someone straight up took a chomp out of this page smh
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
my privacy is worth 6 dollars and 15 cents #facebook
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Natalia Luka @nataliyan.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
One of my growing pet peeves is people clearly using AI to write an email that just needed to say: “Got it, thanks” but instead is a 200 word essay that sounds like it was written by a diplomatic mission
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
good to know.
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
On eduroam at the club 💯
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Nina Marotta ☢️💙 @mrschief7.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
What I guess I don't understand is that I'm seeing a lot of the general public saying we should sink the Hondius and all it's passengers to "prevent another pandemic"... But I thought the general consensus was that COVID was nothing? 🤔 I'm just tryna understand the median voter...
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
get high-resolution images through the power of duplicity. follow for more political theory hacks.
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Sandra L Lester 🇨🇦 #KillBill22 @sandrallester.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Doug Ford is ramming through legislation right NOW that will HIDE Doug Ford’s text messages!!!! Right now!!!! In the middle of the night!! 🌒 Please repost and sign NOW: #ONpoli releasedougstexts.ca
releasedougstexts.ca
Release Doug's Texts
What Is He Covering Up?
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Marilyn777 @marilynsargeant.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
mikeschreinergpo Right now, Doug Ford is holding a late-night sitting to ram his shady FOI changes through the legislature. Just how much corruption is Ford trying to cover up? He needs to be removed.
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katt-888bsky.social 🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁 @katt-888.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Add your voice now to support Marit Stiles' motion to Ban Predatory Pricing in Ontario! share.nwmd.social/s/haVw0mEi
share.nwmd.social
Ban Predatory Pricing Now!
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Chance aesthetic moment on my desk
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Louise Seamster @louiseseamster.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
“Educational institutions are like beekeepers,” according to the report. “While their principal aim is to provide education and raise people’s earnings, in the process they create an array of external benefits...society indirectly benefits, just as orchard owners indirectly benefit from beekeepers.”
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Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they) @doctorvive.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
🚨 A new frontier of coordinated disinformation. Fossil fuel industry front groups are using AI platforms to flood clean air regulators with fake public comments—submitted under real residents' names, without their consent. @robbonta.bsky.social www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...
sfchronicle.com
‘This was forged’: Residents deny sending emails pushing Bay Area air policy change
At least 10 people listed as sending letters in favor of an air quality policy change said they have no recollection of doing so and weren’t even aware of the proposal in the Bay Area.
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Recently realized that when I circulate working papers, I have to start asking people not to use AI to read it. Not sure how to phrase the request to balance force, explanation, and brevity, without sounding like the crazy killjoy I am.
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
struck the space key by mistake, making a strangely poignant typo
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Now open: call for abstracts for the 2026 Berkeley Graduate Conference on Political Theory Keynote: John T. Scott (UC Davis) Submission deadline: January 31 Date: April 11 Submission form: forms.gle/xZUupQbhSfD7... Please circulate widely!
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
New in Political Theory, by me: Does this guy's chain look like a necklace to you? ↓ Scholars have treated it as a necklace. By reading it as a chain instead, I recover Rousseau's paradoxical insight: pride can help us escape corrupt, unequal social conditions journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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Kari Maaren @angrykem.bsky.social · 20/12/2025
The whole point of being an academic is that you need to be willing to spend three days creating a 700-word footnote that you will later delete. And you need to LIKE IT.
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Now open: call for abstracts for the 2026 Berkeley Graduate Conference on Political Theory Keynote: John T. Scott (UC Davis) Submission deadline: January 31 Date: April 11 Submission form: forms.gle/xZUupQbhSfD7... Please circulate widely!
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
While home sick for a few days, I successfully broke my caffeine addiction! ☕ ❌ 😌 Here's how it's impacting my life & work 👇🧵
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Congresswoman Lateefah Simon @replsimon.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
I joined my Democratic colleagues in instructing USDA Secretary Rollins to use SNAP’s emergency reserves to keep food assistance flowing for the 42 million Americans who rely on it, including 16 million children, and 4 million people with disabilities. (1/3)
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Paul Cohen @paulecohen.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
look, I'm no fan of the Bourbons, or of monarchy in general for that matter -- but to invoke them to characterize Trump is I think deeply unfair to Versailles and the French absolutist monarchy
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Alexander Agadjanian @agadjanian.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Department floor is having a halloween door decor contest, I think our office wins for scariest @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social
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Meagan Tyler @drmeagantyler.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
The writing / academic-ish / research meme side-quest continues! And with halloween almost upon us, what could be scarier than Reviewer 2? #highered #academicsky #resdev
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Antonia Alksnis @antoniaalksnis.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
facts. #academicsky
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Paul Cohen @paulecohen.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
Delighted to share the Call for Papers for a special issue of French Historical Studies on the theme "European-Indigenous Relations in the French Americas" (to be co-edited by Scott Berthelette and myself) CFP and submission guidelines can be found here: read.dukeupress.edu/french-histo...
read.dukeupress.edu
Submission Guidelines | French Historical Studies | Duke University Press
Submission Guidelines | French Historical Studies | Duke University Press Submission Guidelines  CALL FOR PAPERS Special issue of French Historical Studies on European-Indigenous ...
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