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Cullen

@cullenstephenson.bsky.social
31 followers 247 following 13 posts
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Reposted by Cullen
Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 26/08/2026
If you feel the moral stakes of this moment are “universities must be defended,” this may not be a reassuring post. It backs up to ask “why,” and finds the answer not self-evident. But strangely, honest wrestling with fundamentals reassures me more in the end than polemic.
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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
The uncertain future of academia got me interested in the history of US science policy. It's surprising how fragile the basic vs applied research distinction behind the postwar “social contract for science” is. There are takeaways for what it means to defend universities now🧵
jessicahullman.substack.com
What stories should we tell about scientific progress now?
In search of the mysterious fruits of basic science
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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
An essay on sincerity and embarassment and cliché, inspired by a not-very-good documentary about the Counting Crows watched on a flight. jessicahullman.substack.com/p/embarrass-...
jessicahullman.substack.com
Embarrass the sky
What’s the value of sincerity?
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
Yes, and: this is what "data driven" means everywhere it is used, because determining how "data" is generated is a political decision
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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
I wrote about what it means to keep writing when more language feels like the last thing we need--as a computer scientist, but also as a writer.
open.substack.com
Softly, effectively, in the age of AI
On dolphins and disobedience
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Rachel Maddow @maddow.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
please watch:
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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
"Men who lack control over their own lives reach out desperately to drag women down, to control their emotions, to make them feel weak and dominated" Yup. I experienced this just this week w/a rogue commenter determined to take out his feelings of inadequacy on me. Who would want to empower this?
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Brian Eno News @dark-shark.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
"What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits quantity." - William S. Burroughs #quote
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Cullen @cullenstephenson.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
exquisite corpse drawings with the 8yo, making things together is always time well spent
4 collaborative drawings where one person draws the head another the body and then the legs - creating odd unintentional juxtaposition
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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
I wrote an essay about platform complicity and other quiet kinds of self-loss: becoming legible, optimizable, successful while your inner compass goes quiet.
open.substack.com
Don't get any on you
I am still what I meant to be
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Cullen @cullenstephenson.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
Love Berkeley! Incredible plants and pastries, explaining to my 8yo that the moon is not an alien spaceship and dolphins are not typically portrayed as alien gods after an interesting Lyft ride
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Charlie Thomas @cthomasjamh.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
This is the sort of statement that was expected from every university president and law firm partner over the last year. That those statements weren’t made played a huge part in where we are now and people will remember.
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Cullen @cullenstephenson.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
My dog and I have this ritual where I'll hear her drinking too much water, and I'll think "I should stop her before she drinks too much." But I don't. Then, without fail, she'll walk over to thank me for trusting her judgement and knowledge, then barf a little water on the floor.
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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
This is why MAGA come up with so many anti-American ideas like hostility to immigration and feminism. The fundamental premise that all people are created equal is anathema to the MAGA mind.
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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
I keep thinking about how a young woman DoorDash driver was charged and hauled into court for recording and posting evidence of her customer sexually harassing her, while nothing is happening to the droves of men using Grok to sexually harass women and children. The institutions are pro-perpetrator.
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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
Wrote a summary of a great keynote by @zey.bsky.social at NeurIPS, arguing that we’re having the wrong nightmares about AI: not AGI or superhuman benchmarks, but good-enough genAI at scale threatens "load bearing frictions" society relies on to signal effort, authenticity, sincerity, credibility.
open.substack.com
Zeynep Tufecki on having the wrong nightmares about generative AI
I was writing a blog post where I was going to reference Zeynep Tufecki’s 2025 NeurIPS keynote, and realized there isn’t a solid synopsis online.
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Cullen @cullenstephenson.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
bsky.app/profile/jame...
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Cullen @cullenstephenson.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
One thing I will say about AI, is that ever since they did that Tupac hologram show, nobody wants to go to concerts anymore. Everyone wants to stay at home, by themselves, looking at a hologram sing songs from 30 years ago.
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Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
One of the most unforgettable images capturing the vibrant promise of the new year, by the great Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy: 7 A.M. (New Year's Morning), c. 1930 www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...
Photograph shot from above, aka a bird's eye view, of an urban street with tram tracks, and three figures: a delivery man (perhaps for bread?0 on a bicycle, and a male and female couple walking arm in arm. The long shadows suggest it is early in the morning
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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
Merry Christmas from Chicago!
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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Also on substack jessicahullman.substack.com/p/howl-after...
jessicahullman.substack.com
Howl, after Allen Ginsberg
for the AI-headed hipsters
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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
who fed it words, who watched it excrete words, who fed it excreted words again & again waiting, who ran the primitive nervous system with sloshing words & prayed & made words of excrement & finally brought it out to check the Time, & now mistake the words for heroes (more from my Howl rewrite) 1/2
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
More Howl, after Allen Ginsberg for the AI-headed hipsters | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
I wrote a thing. As someone who survived the 1970s and kept the receipts.
theguardian.com
Shocked by Epstein’s birthday book? That culture was everywhere before feminism | Rebecca Solnit
Feminism exposed the ubiquity of child abuse, rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence – and helped fight that culture
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Cullen @cullenstephenson.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
At the jazz show Jam Band: Oh look, we got a new boat, a funky boat, with pink sails Crowd: Yeah? Band: And stripes, we’re sailing it down a river… Crowd: So cool! Band: Uh oh, the river's picking up speed... something’s around the bend… ? Is it... some Rapids!?!! Crowd: Fuck yeah, some Rapids!
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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
I rewrote Allen Ginsberg's Howl, but for the AI-headed hipsters👇 "I saw the best minds of my generation distracted by machines, shining-eyed delusional demo gods, rubbering through polished cities at dusk Capitalizing The Next Big Push to the end of Introspection, 1/N
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Cullen @cullenstephenson.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
Nick Drake voice: Yeah it's a corn moon, Corn corn corn corn, Corn Moon
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