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Alex Helberg

@dystopamine.bsky.social
160 followers 233 following 51 posts

Lecturer at Trinity College, researcher of digital rhetoric and food justice, co-Exec Producer of re:verb podcast

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Reposted by Alex Helberg
re:verb Podcast @reverb-podcast.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
🚨New re:verb episode🚨 In the first installment of a multi-part series, Alex & Calvin outline the "intellectual" genealogy that presaged the notorious "Grievance Studies" affair back in 2018, as well as detail the biographies of the 3 perpetrators, Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay, & Helen Pluckrose
reverbcast.com
E110: The Grievance Studies Affair: A Rhetorical and Political History (Part 1) — re:verb
In the first installment of this multi-part series, Alex and Calvin trace the intellectual genealogy behind one of the most consequential academic hoaxes of the past decade.  In Part 1, we outli...
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
In which @calvinpollak.bsky.social & I trace the evolution of the anti-woke Intellectual Dork Web out of the fever swamp of the New Atheist blogosphere and set the stage for a full breakdown of the annoyingly influential "Sokal Squared" hoax
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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
After a brief summer hiatus, The Important Work will be back in September. If you teach writing to high school or college students, work in writing centers, take writing classes, assign writing in any context, I would love to hear from you and publish your reflections. Guidelines are here. /1
theimportantwork.substack.com
Write for The Important Work
Submission Guidelines
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
In which @calvinpollak.bsky.social & I trace the evolution of the anti-woke Intellectual Dork Web out of the fever swamp of the New Atheist blogosphere and set the stage for a full breakdown of the annoyingly influential "Sokal Squared" hoax
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The Drift @thedriftmag.com · 19/08/2026
Andrew Baker was also a “token black professor” at Bates College. But his perspective on the events Tyler Austin Harper recounts in his Atlantic cover story is very different. Read Baker’s side of the story online today. newsletter.thedriftmag.com/p/racism-and...
newsletter.thedriftmag.com
Racism and labor at Bates: the other side of the story
Andrew Baker responds to Tyler Austin Harper
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
A humble suggestion in case the Trump HHS & FDA are looking for a theme song www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Re6...
youtube.com
All The Food is Poison | Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! | Adult Swim
YouTube video by Adult Swim
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Jennifer Sano-Franchini @jsanofranchini.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Sharing this fundraiser for legal support after CCCC--the flagship academic professional organization for the field of rhetoric and composition--was abruptly and unceremoniously "de-chartered" by NCTE gofund.me/05363e2ce
gofund.me
Donate to Help the Undefeated CCCC Chairs and Members Unite, organized by Vay Young
The undefeated CCCC group is a coalition of CCCC chairs and members who ha… Vay Young needs your support for Help the Undefeated CCCC Chairs and Members Unite
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Bradford Vivian @bradvivian.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
It’s really pretty simple: The Atlantic is a major source of misinformation about higher ed. Full stop.
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Bradford Vivian @bradvivian.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
The thing about TAH’s latest article in The Atlantic is that throughout many of his recent articles he consistently makes arguments about “DEI” that match hyper-partisan pretexts for widespread government censorship of universities on a scale that surpasses that of 1950s McCarthyism. 1/2
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All Grim Prints @allgrim.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
donorbox.org/marxopoly-ag... Ends on Wednesday. All donations go to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, and maybe you get Marx monopoly out of it.
donorbox.org
Marxopoly Against ICE | All Grim Prints (Powered by Donorbox)
I’m Adam Ahlgrim of www.allgrimprints.shop. I decided to raffle off this hand-made Marx Monopoly board to help raise a bit of money to support the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. Fascism is sickening ...
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
re:verb is back after a brief hiatus! Tune in to hear @calvinpollak.bsky.social & me talk about Trump and Seb Gorka's counterterrorism rhetoric, as well as the new baby that I was still awaiting back in May when this was recorded! 😅
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re:verb Podcast @reverb-podcast.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
🚨New re:verb episode out today!🚨 On today's* show, Calvin and Alex perform a deep-dive rhetorical analysis of the Trump administration's recently released Counterterrorism Strategy document 👇 Check it out below! 👇 www.reverbcast.com/podcasts/202...
reverbcast.com
E109: The Rhetoric of Counterterrorism in the Age of Trump — re:verb
On today’s show (recorded in mid-May), Calvin and Alex explore the Trump administration's recently released national counterterrorism strategy. As a rhetorical artifact, this document offers a reveali...
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Donnie Johnson Sackey @donniejsackey.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Update on CCCC 2027 I just got off a call with Antero Garcia and Emily Kirkpatrick. 1/21
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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...
thecrimson.com
In Defense of the Harvard College Writing Center | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson
As current and former Harvard College Writing Center tutors, we write to condemn the dissolution of the Writing Center as an independent entity and the laying off of its director, Jane Rosenzweig.
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
The value of Writing Centers for encouraging research and cultivating scholarship cannot be overstated! It's part of my college WC's tutor training to conduct an original research project (many of these students go on to present at undergrad conferences), and...
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
This is such a loss for the Harvard community. Jane has been a leader and a steady voice in the conversation about university writing and AI nationwide but especially in New England. Carnegie Mellon did the exact same thing with our Writing Center while I was a grad student there... (1/2)
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Megan McIntyre @rcmeg.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
So, I’ve created a form where current and former CCCC Caucus/SIG/SG-affiliated leaders/folks can sign up if they want to be part of an ongoing conversation about how to respond (and how we might preserve and/or continue the work of our Caucus/SIG/SG after the loss of Cs).
forms.gle
CCCC Cross-Caucus/SIG/SG Conversation about the Future
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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Important petition re CCCC "If you are currently a CCCC member, we ask that you commit to cancelling your NCTE membership should these changes be made." Petition: "Join us in calling on the NCTE to halt any actions leading to the dissolution of the CCCC member group." www.change.org/p/halt-disso...
change.org
Sign the Petition
Halt Dissolution of CCCC and Call for Transparency from NCTE #SaveCCCC
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Megan McIntyre @rcmeg.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
NCTE has just summarily killed a 77-year-old organization that has shaped how writing is understood, taught, and learned, in higher education in particular. No member involvement. No transparency. No process to speak of. With friends and fellow educators like these, I guess who needs enemies.
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Kendall Gerdes 📚🦕 @kendalljoy.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Here it is, folks. @ncte.org Executive Committee votes to "de-charter its special topics conference CCCC," i.e., to shitcan the Cs. mailchi.mp/ncte/ncte-up...
mailchi.mp
NCTE Update, Decision by NCTE Executive Committee
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Perusing the Poster's Tacklebox
A c. 1800s illustration labeled "TROLLING IMPLEMENTS" that includes figures of different hooks and lures for catching fish
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
I’ve only recently learned that these are distinct discourses — for me they’re one and the same, the displacement of reason is the element that allows for the concentration of power.
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Today I'm really psyched to help promote the @reverb-podcast.bsky.social interview that my friend and co-producer @bkwilliams21.bsky.social put together with Iván Chaar López on examining the US-Mexico border through the lens of cybernetics. Check it out! www.reverbcast.com/podcasts/202...
reverbcast.com
E109: The Cybernetic Border (w/ Dr. Iván Chaar López) — re:verb
Episode 109: The Cybernetic Border: Drones, Technology, and Intrusion (w/ Dr. Iván Chaar López) On today’s show, Ben sits down with Dr. Iván Chaar López, Assistant Professor with the Department of A...
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Bad Ideas about AI and Writing, a new anthology from the @wacclearinghouse.bsky.social, transforms bad ideas into "'generative' ideas about GenAI and writing, ideas that spur creative new directions in the education and practice of writing." wacclearinghouse.org/books/perspe...
Book cover for Bad Ideas About AI and Writing: Generative Practices for Teaching, Learning, and Communication, edited by Christopher Basgier, Anna Mills, Mandy Olejnik, Miranda Rodak, and Shyam Sharma. Part of the Perspectives on Writing series. The cover shows a shattered clear lightbulb lying on its side against a light blue background, with broken glass shards scattered around it.
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Dawkins proving yet again that the Turing Test is less a measure of machine intelligence than of human credulity
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
A "pause AI" letter that I actually like (and signed)! Because it's not about imagined doomsday scenarios, but rather putting the brakes on the rush to impose synthetic text extruding machines in schools in particular: actionnetwork.org/petitions/ca...
actionnetwork.org
Call For Five-Year Pause on Gen AI in Schools
As generative AI tools are rapidly expanding in schools, often based on their hypothetical “potential” to enhance learning, these products are posing risks to children’s development, mental health, pr...
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
We dealt with some pretty grim subject matter on this episode, but these analyses always help me to elucidate what premises are worth questioning as we continue to be overwhelmed with both military and AI hype propaganda
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re:verb Podcast @reverb-podcast.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
🚨 New re:verb episode out this morning! 🚨 On today's show we're taking a look at the auspicious role that so-called "AI" technologies and companies are playing in the military industrial complex. www.reverbcast.com/podcasts/202...
reverbcast.com
E108: AI-Assisted War Crimes? — re:verb
On today's show, Alex and Calvin continue our discussion about the ongoing war in Iran, focusing on the literal use of artificial intelligence in the imperialist campaign being waged by the US and Isr...
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
My friend Kaolin is a queer nb public school teacher in Philly, who recently went through the horror of shepherding their cat Scoot through diabetic ketoacidosis, and is now dealing with the financial stress of vet hospital bills. These two mean a lot to me - please share and contribute if you can!
gofund.me
Donate to Help Scoot bounce back from DKA, organized by Thickie Comrade
I have created this gofundme to help my dear friend Kaolin. The amount of debt they ha… Thickie Comrade needs your support for Help Scoot bounce back from DKA
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
My friend Kaolin is a queer nb public school teacher in Philly, who recently went through the horror of shepherding their cat Scoot through diabetic ketoacidosis, and is now dealing with the financial stress of vet hospital bills. These two mean a lot to me - please share and contribute if you can!
gofund.me
Donate to Help Scoot bounce back from DKA, organized by Thickie Comrade
I have created this gofundme to help my dear friend Kaolin. The amount of debt they ha… Thickie Comrade needs your support for Help Scoot bounce back from DKA
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re:verb Podcast @reverb-podcast.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
🎆re:verb is back in 2026 with our first new episode of the year!🎉 This episode hits very close to home for Calvin & Alex: E106: CMU Coup? (w/ @caevans.bsky.social & @seeshespeak.bsky.social) www.reverbcast.com/podcasts/202...
reverbcast.com
E106: CMU Coup? (w/ Sheila Liming & Catherine Evans) — re:verb
On today’s show, Alex and Calvin sit down with the co-authors of a viral op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education regarding the controversial restructuring of the English Department at Carnegie Me...
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
Following and participating in this has been a great way to keep a little mindfulness practice and experience a bit of communal warmth at the outset of a (so far) rough year. Highly recommend following along on this playlist if you're reading the book: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
youtube.com
This Year - 365 Songs Annotated by John Darnielle - YouTube
Songs from the book by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. Some of the lyrics in the book are unrecorded, never performed, and/or unreleased, but I added e...
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Bradford Vivian @bradvivian.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
Amplifying some key claims from this bold/important article by @ehayot.bsky.social + @mattseybold.bsky.social 1/ …
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
Just woke up from a Long Winter's Nap™ and I've gotta say I cannot recommend it enough
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re:verb Podcast @reverb-podcast.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Since we're new over here, we've been re-posting some of our favorite episodes featuring friends & past guests we've had on the show who have found a home on BlueSky. It's also a good starter pack for anyone new to the show! Here's a master 🧵...
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
the fact that dealing with rampant lying and its much worse downstream consequences involves cultivating values rather than just imposing formal frameworks or rules (legal or otherwise) is a tough pill to swallow for some. but it is indeed medicine
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Rich Swinton @ricosuavejd.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
Everyone just keep blocking this garbage. bsky.app/profile/did:...
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/09/2025
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
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Mark Riedl @markriedl.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
The broligarchy is rushing to tear through the administration centers of our government. Their dream is to replace large amounts of administration with AI in the name of "efficiency". This is despite daily reminders that LLMs regularly make stupid, hard-to-detect errors. 1/6
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Mark Riedl @markriedl.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
There is another issue that the broligarchy isn't attending to, or are deliberately ignoring: Accountability There is a legal entity to whom errors can be attributed, penalties can be assigned if necessary, and corrections made. AI systems cannot be held accountable. 3/6
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
Ah memories
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
How hard is it to not dance on the graves of disabled people singing "told you so," and instead do some introspection on the real tragedy: that the opposition party wasn't able to mount a convincing argument that there was a reliable alternative?
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
One thing that hasn't changed is the rhetorical front of "national security" discourse that's being used to justify the ban, which we interpret as an attempt to obscure the realpolitik of consolidating tech & communications infrastructure within the US economy (and under its legal jurisdiction)
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
Hard to believe it's been over 4 years since @calvinpollak.bsky.social and I recorded this episode on the *first* attempt at a federal TikTok ban. Worth a re-listen whether this one goes through or not www.reverbcast.com/podcasts/202...
reverbcast.com
E42: Keep TikToking in "the free world" — re:verb
This week’s episode of re:verb is presented as part of The 2020 Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival , a weeklong podcast series centered on a common theme: “the digital future of rhetoric and composi...
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
I really want to like and keep using this app, but I swear, reading through replies to popular posts, we're already reaching Facebook levels of out-of-touch-with-reality
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
Hard to believe it's been over 4 years since @calvinpollak.bsky.social and I recorded this episode on the *first* attempt at a federal TikTok ban. Worth a re-listen whether this one goes through or not www.reverbcast.com/podcasts/202...
reverbcast.com
E42: Keep TikToking in "the free world" — re:verb
This week’s episode of re:verb is presented as part of The 2020 Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival , a weeklong podcast series centered on a common theme: “the digital future of rhetoric and composi...
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Finding it interesting the all the "OF in bio" bots that are bombing BlueSky follows now spell their names with extra vowels like they're millennials subtly asking for a booty call
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Alex Helberg @dystopamine.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
Breakfast of Neuromancers: or, Goodbye Cyber Monday by William "Kurt" Vonnegibson
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