iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 08/10/2026

This is the most 2026-ass lede. Perfect encapsulation of the entire era.

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Holly Brewer @earlymodjustice.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The demographic cliff is such a problematic term. It’s actually only - a 13-15% decline in college student populations over a fifteen year period (to 2041) — so less than 1% a year. It excuses a lot of administrative poor decisions. www.npr.org/2025/01/08/n...

npr.org

A looming 'demographic cliff': Fewer college students and ultimately fewer graduates

The long-predicted downturn in the number of 18-year-olds is almost here. And it isn't just a problem for higher education. It's a looming crisis for the economy.

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I fear that any midterm “mandate” angry voters give them will be squandered on dinner party invites instead of building the accountability regime people are desperate for and are putting their bodies and lives on the line to get.

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Larry Glickman @larryglickman.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Trump is doing his best to weaken and undermine higher education, an area in which the United States has been a global leader since World War II, with economic and other benefits that extend far beyond the students, staff, and faculty at universities.

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 16/09/2026

If you are willing to drop $47 million on AI services but unwilling to invest in research support & infrastructure for humanities faculty & students, you show that austerity is a choice. It’s not “too expensive” to give people the resources they need; you just don’t want to. bsky.app/profile/ashe...

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 16/09/2026

Reading proofs from book & remembering what I wrote in 2015: "I am very concerned about the future of AI. Not because of the risk of rogue machines taking over. But because of the homogeneous, one-dimensional group of men who are currently involved in advancing the technology.”

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Brian Maass @brianmaass.com · 08/09/2026

Do NOT let your legislature hear this pitch!

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 07/09/2026

This is one of the objections I have when people talk about how useful LLMs can be for literature searches or for any kind of search, really. Even beyond the biases that inevitably (and, in some cases, intentionally) show up, part of a good literature search is seeing information *in context.*

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 06/09/2026

We keep discussing ”strategies” for teaching in the age of AI to avoid talking about resources. It’s so boring!! The strategy is invest $ to hire people, lower class size, support research-engaged learning & stop measuring the worth of disciplines in relation to # of enrollments and majors.

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Girish M. Duvvuri @gmduvvuri.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

The open secret to pedagogy research is that small class sizes/maximizing educator attention per pupil is the simplest, most effective, and unfortunately the least attractive to administration thing you can do to improve learning outcomes.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 02/09/2026

There are endless studies showing this and also the financial and societal benefits of universal basic income and or housing-first policies but the U.S. never goes for any of it because it would require allowing the poor to receive benefits that the rich consider “undeserved”

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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

"You can't scale good teaching" is a remarkable claim--and an arguable claim--that should be at the center of this conversation and not an aside. You certainly can't scale something you don't invest in but of course you can scale good teaching if you do invest in it. /1

Hendrick admits Alpha School’s model is “not perfect.” But he argues that most kids aren’t getting a good teacher or instruction grounded in learning science in a classroom anyway. “You have massive variance in teacher quality and pupil outcomes in a way that most people would find shocking,” he says. “The variance within schools between teacher quality is often greater than the variance between schools. If you apply that to doctors or dentists, there’d be a public outcry.”

That’s Hendrick’s biggest argument for Alpha School’s model as a solution: “You can’t scale good teaching,” he says. Software, Hendrick argues, can be updated across classrooms at once as new curriculum and instructional research emerges and can give feedback far faster than a teacher grading assignments one by one.

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Kate Jackson @katejackson.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Finally, we are not a bunch of luddites. Even humanities folks love things like zotero and scrivener. Anyone with classes over 100 students praises the good lord for spreadsheets (pls forgive). We’ve all gotten comfy with zoom and canvas and online publishing.

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Kate Jackson @katejackson.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

The search for AI ROI continues. University admin gave a presentation to faculty senate on AI. They begged us to discover use cases for them. All they have is a bespoke Ai tutoring agent and hopes and dreams for improved internal operations All senate had to offer was complaints about cheating

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/08/2026

This matters. As Leek writes, ecologists have long understood the importance of variety for systemic resilience: they call it "the insurance value of biodiversity." 64/

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/08/2026

Leek argues (persuasively) that this isn't because recommenders are good at "knowing your taste" - rather, they are good at "narrowing the menu." 55/

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/08/2026

All the movies, books and songs you might have liked that were omitted from that initial set are excluded from being recommended in the future. The features of that media that you might have appreciated "decay out of consideration." They are never tested for desirability. The model collapses. 53/

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/08/2026

In New York City, it's Citibank-bodega-Chipotle-Walgreens; in the Chicago suburbs, it's the strip malls with a Chili's, a gas station, and a big box store. 21/

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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Something I appreciate about this statement that I haven't seen well-articulated elsewhere is how the rest of us are paying for "single-use" code--in environmental costs, in hardware costs for small software communities, and in free/libre code pollution.

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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

This is like a "choose your own adventure book". If you choose option A, it will do the next step for you, etc. This is not writing. This is producing text for a grade. Writing has value as a way to figure out what you think and why. If students see this possibility in a product that is/5

Good pick — that contradiction (faculty alarmed about student AI use while using it heavily themselves) gives you a real argument, not just a summary.

Working thesis: Something like — "Academic integrity frameworks built around detection and prohibition are failing because they ignore the double standard institutions themselves practice: faculty and universities are adopting AI in their own work while restricting it for students. A workable integrity model has to define legitimate use, not just police it."

Outline:

Intro — the contradiction as your hook (College Board: 45% of faculty view AI negatively on integrity grounds, yet 77% use it professionally)
What "academic integrity" meant pre-AI, and why detection-based enforcement (Turnitin-style) is breaking down
The faculty double standard — evidence and what it reveals about the real concern (is it dishonesty, or loss of skill-building?)
Counter-argument — the case for strict AI-use rules (Ecuador study: link between trusting AI output and plagiarism)
What's actually working — institutions shifting to "process tracking" / "learning assurance" instead of pure detection
Your argument for what a better policy looks like
Conclusion
For sources beyond the two I found, you'll want your own database search (JSTOR, Google Scholar) for peer-reviewed studies — I can help you evaluate sources once you have them, but a paper this current benefits from primary studies you've actually read, not just what I can find via web search.

Want me to help you draft the introduction next, or do you want to gather a few more sources first?

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 30/07/2026

With "surveillance pricing," businesses have finally found something AI can do way, way, *way* better than people: price gouging. 1/

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 24/07/2026

As *tech*, AI isn't exceptional. It's not exceptionally wicked. It's not exceptionally good. Take away the accompanying, galactic-scale stock-swindle, and we'd call AI's apps "plug-ins" and we'd use them and abuse them in the same way that we've used every other technology: www.normaltech.ai 1/

A carny barker waving his top-hat and selling tickets from a roll; his head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background is a magnified, halftoned detail from a US$100 bill.

Image:
Cryteria (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 24/07/2026

Austerity is fascism's best recruiter: pluralistic.net/2026/04/12/a... When the AI bubble bursts, defective chatbots that replaced skilled workers will disappear, leaving us scrambling to get that work done after the workers who understood it have retrained, retired, or exited the workforce. 35/

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Once you understand that this is a model of science written by non-scientists who hate universities but love venture capital and redirecting money to political allies, everything makes a lot more sense. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/u...

nytimes.com

Trump’s Plan for Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities

Michael Kratsios, President Trump’s science adviser, proposed overhauling how the government funds research. Democrats said Mr. Trump’s actions had weakened science.

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Mylee Joseph @mylee.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

“Psychologists increasingly recognise positive anticipation as a contributor to wellbeing. Looking forward to enjoyable experiences can improve mood, increase motivation and provide a buffer against everyday stress.” theconversation.com/why-you-keep...

theconversation.com

Why you keep buying books you don’t read – and why it feels so good

Why a pile of unread books is not stressful, yet a pile of unread emails is.

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Brian Maass @brianmaass.com · 09/07/2026

Sorry, I'm referring to the MLA community website. I dropped the listserv because it was just a steady stream of ILL reqiests.

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Brian Maass @brianmaass.com · 09/07/2026

When I log in, I can only see my main dashboard page. Clicking on my groups or anything else just returns me to the same page.

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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

What most Americans know about EVs is propaganda from the fossil fuel industry mortified at the prospect of loss of their leading source of sales. Now that millions of electric vehicles have been on the road for a decade or more, we have the data to check in on how their batteries are holding up.

wsj.com

EV Batteries Are Defying Expectations After Hundreds of Thousands of Miles

Industry experts think newfound knowledge of battery durability is a game-changer for consumer confidence in EVs.

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Brian Maass @brianmaass.com · 08/06/2026

I was not expecting this to be so sudden.

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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 19/05/2026

❌ 45% AI Scribe systems fabricated information and made suggestions to patients’ treatment plans ❌ 60% of the systems captured a different drug than what was prescribed by the doctor ❌ 85% of systems missed key details about the patients’ mental health issues globalnews.ca/news/1184434...

9 of 20 AI scribe programs had hallucinations, 12 of 20 had incorrect information, 6 of 20 had incomplete information.

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Brian Maass @brianmaass.com · 06/06/2026

Betteridge is still undefeated: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteri...

en.wikipedia.org

Betteridge's law of headlines - Wikipedia

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Psychotic way to characterize taxing rich people to help the disadvantaged.

Forget weighty collectivist ideals or seizing the means of production. Gen-Z socialism is a me-first doctrine. Climate change and race, preoccupations of the 2010s and early 2020s, are now much more peripheral concerns. So are social issues, barring Gaza. Angst about inflation, housing and artificial intelligence have replaced all that with something cruder. “This country is awash in wealth,” says Avi Lewis, freshly elected leader of the New Democratic Party in Canada, a country where productivity has been all but flat for a decade. “We can have nice things.” Saying that prices should be capped to keep your bills down while someone else pays for your public services is a seductive, shareable message.

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Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them) @bookjockeyalex.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

*mutters* they could've spent that money on faculty, staff, and librarians

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Rebecca Colesworthy @rcolesworthy.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

“The reason AI-generated content isn’t as good, Chieng argued, is that the journey of making and learning something matters —‘it’s the point of all of this.’” www.harvardmagazine.com/commencement...

harvardmagazine.com

Ronny Chieng Tells Harvard to ‘Destroy AI’ as Graduates Cheer | Harvard Magazine

The comedian and The Daily Show host gave the keynote address for Class Day 2026.

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Brian Maass @brianmaass.com · 26/05/2026

I used to be excited to see a national headline about Nebraska. Lately, not so much.

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jessamyn @librarian.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

A reversed question would be: why has efficiency (and income) become literally the only metric through which we measure success? I like to own things, not lease them. And I like to remember when that was a viable option. And these mixtapes, they are something special. Thanks Hanif Abdurraqib.

Photograph of a mixtape with song listings written in an interesting sloping handwriting. The cassette is called "Toast & Jam" and the songs range from DJ Krush to Zap Mama.

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Brian Maass @brianmaass.com · 09/05/2026

Another [open] to [one-time charge] to [annual fee] enshittification pipeline #skybrarians 📚 #chemsky 🧪 #medlibs 🦀

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Louis Redux @louisredux.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

A fundamental misunderstanding from the AI boosters is that they think drug discovery is, essentially, cooking. They don't understand it is research. It is treated as reductionist mechanism. Clockwork. Deterministic. At least in an ideological sense. This is why the hype is just hype. 21/n

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Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

They think you're stupid.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

The article's existence negates its own argument. The fact that the easiest way for an academic to land an opinion piece in The Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed is by offering contrarian takes about how awful academia is suggests a strong desire to look in the mirror.

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Adam Conover @adamconover.net · 18/04/2026

I don't recall any previous transformative technologies that had to be sold to the public so hard. No one in 1999 was going, "Guys. Cell phone? It's coming, whether we like it or not. I think it's important, FOR WOMEN ESPECIALLY, to learn about cell phone. So that we're not left behind!!"

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Brian Maass @brianmaass.com · 16/04/2026

Even as shocking as the headline is, every bit of that story gets worse as you get to it.

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Also, if the problem is that trust has "eroded" in the last decade & 📈 costs are the problem, then 1) we should talk about the central cause of 📈 costs at public universities, which is declining state $$; & 2) we should talk about how inflation-adjusted costs have actually <declined> since 2013.

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Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

My hottest “I have no data to back this up” take is that phones aren’t making young people less happy. What’s making them less happy is living in a world where everyone is having their reality defined by recommendation algorithms that can only care about whether something keeps you watching.

Young adult happiness is falling. Percent of young people who are pretty or very happy has dropped from 88% to 76% over the last 15 years after having held fairly steady between 1980 and 2010

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Brian Maass @brianmaass.com · 10/04/2026

This has been haunting me. It'd be nice to create a place to track these - collect the articles, fake citations & journals that published w/ enough metadata for systems to proactively "un-index" them in discovery systems. And (my childish belief in fairness would like add) hold people accountable.

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