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Jeff Kessler

@jckessler.bsky.social
412 followers 169 following 165 posts

Senior Lecturer at UIC. Union agitator, parent, Victorianist, digital media critic, grammarian, & writer. PhD, Indiana Univ. Co-Editor/Author of "Writing for Inquiry and Research" tinyurl.com/55wxre5x

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Reposted by Jeff Kessler
404 Media @404media.co · 23h
"It's making me dumber." At 404 Media's three-year anniversary, we got into how we report our stories. @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social talks about how he was able to talk to developers at Google about how forced AI use was making them feel stupid. Watch now: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Vj...
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
"Our athletics budget bleeds scarlet!"
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
"Some truths are only valid when the right pain writes them." www.faber.co.uk/journal/poem...
faber.co.uk
Poem of the Week: 'The way you say pen' by Isabelle Baafi
This week, our Faber Poem of the Week is ‘The way you say pen’, from Chaotic Good, Isabelle Baafi's piercing debut about how we are made, how we get lost and how we find new selves.
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
God, I remember complaining about this shit 20 years ago as undergrad at Rutgers. The entire enterprise makes no sense, and shows that there are no adults left in the room at Old Queens.
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Jeffrey Vagle @jvagle.me · 28/09/2026
Can news media please stop writing stories and headlines that attribute agency to AI* software?
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 15/09/2026
Colleges could subsidize books for students rather than paying for premium versions of ChatGPT
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I feel so confident saying the native intelligence of this generation is not the problem. The looting & wholesale sabotage of their educational infrastructure is.
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 24/08/2026
“Sankofa! Go back and get your cosmic dreams. It is how we create ourselves and our futures.” Only $1.99 today!!! Read my bestselling book! The ebook is on sale at all US retailers, and argues that poetry and physics matter — to all of us. 📚💙🧪⚛️ www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/746817...
Digital deal only $1.99 today only 8/24 with the cover of the edge of space-time
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
cognitive sabotage, you can ban it extra credit to U Chicago for bans on professional AND undergrad programs; smart SLACs are going to market AI free campuses soon chicagomaroon.com/53262/news/s...
chicagomaroon.com
Sosc Core to Institute AI Ban, Technology-Free Classrooms This Fall
All social science Core classes will transition to an “analog” approach for the upcoming academic year, restricting in-classroom technology use and banning AI-assisted writing and grading for students...
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
The fire 🔥 I need for the start of the semester.
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
"I have to be blunt here: Our critics are really f**king stupid, and we’ve given them way too much leeway to conjure senile fantasies out of their own illiteracy. We need to stop taking their trolling in good faith, and we need to stop apologizing for our work." 🙏😭🎉
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Adrienne Ghaly @aghaly.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
“one of the surest strategies for amassing autocratic power is… deliberate deliteracy: the destruction, restriction, & monopolization of the infrastructures that make mass literacy possible. Thiong’o’s vivid phrase “colonizing the mind” is not metaphorical…cerebral territory is a space of conquest”
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
❤️❤️❤️"Sales figures are a rough and insubstantial metric, though. They don’t tell us how someone feels when they read a good poem, what it expands for them, what memories it brings, what connections to other times and places. What shiver of alienation it offers; what moment (often) of puzzlement."
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Adam Rawnsley @arawnsley.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Reason number 19,208,138 we love librarians:
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Great thread
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
The cross-platform enshittification of search functionality is such an infuriating exercise of authoritarian creep. They would like to kill the inclination to find information & enforce satisfaction with be fed information.
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
"We might do better to recall our ancestral intelligence: the unparalleled joy of a random home run, the idiosyncratic recipe cobbled together from texts to your family’s group chat, the reading group where hours are spent bumbling through philosophical obscurities."
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Thanks for posting. Donated. Critter pic optional.
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
When friends write about things and authors you love thinking about: disjunctionsmag.com/articles/ai-...
disjunctionsmag.com
“AI” is a Candy House
Jennifer Egan’s prescient reclamation of human sensemaking
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Quick thread on this...
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
This is one of the hardest things to explain to a college research paper comp class. Watching students' information literacy drop has been harrowing.
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Jack Grimes @jackapedia.design · 16/07/2026
Furious that Chris Nolan would disregard historical accuracy in adapting The Odyssey by making a "movie" with "cameras" instead of memorizing the entire story and then going on a nationwide tour to sing it to us while tripping on ergotized barley
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Garth Greenwell @garthgreenwell.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Starting in September, I’m teaching a year-long series of online classes on Henry James. You can take them individually or as a sequence. I’d love for you to join us. Scholarships are available. All the details are here: garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/why-we-lov...
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Awhile back I paired Dracula with A Visit from the Goon Squad. Both teach well in terms of media/mediation and plotting. The multiplicity of styles in each and the pacing also lend themselves well to early undergrad classes.
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
i love those eyes! relatedly, this is my favorite slide from my culture industry PPT 🎄
Tweet from ratty tooey (@200mgedible), saying CAPITALISM BREEDS INNOVATION, with pictures from fifteen hallmark christmas movies that are functionally identical
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
It's like unwrapping a Big Mac and saying you cooked
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Kat Su Yeah @katsuyeah.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
bsky.app/profile/jens...
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Dr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
So when you get LLM output with links or citations to scholarly work: those citations aren't there because the model consulted them and they actually represent the source of the information. They were included because they look like what should appear near that kind of text.
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 19/05/2026
🤷🏾‍♀️
Sick and wrong: Ontario auditors find doctors' AI note takers routinely blow basic facts
60% of evaluated AI Scribe systems mixed up prescribed drugs in patient notes, auditors say

Brandon Vigliarolo
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John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
An experiment with ChatGPT as an illustration for an upcoming presentation asking it to identify actors/actresses who appeared on ER and then want on to bigger things. Its error rate was significant. Because I'm a weirdo who has watched it all the way through 3 times, I caught them all from memory.
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Matthew Gault @mjgault.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
a primal scream that captures a moment
404media.co
Your AI Use Is Breaking My Brain
AI writing is impossible to avoid, is making everything sound the same, and is driving us crazy.
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Sarah Osment @smosment.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
the future of higher ed organizing right here
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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
In 2020 @yaelrice.bsky.social and I authored this article to dispute this kind of pseudo-scientific research, which regularly gets press attention, precisely so that others don't have to cope with the tedium of refuting it. Here's the refutation you need! hyperallergic.com/how-scientis...
hyperallergic.com
How Scientists Use and Abuse Portraiture
Many scientific studies assume that the features of painted faces are the facts of the flesh-and-blood countenances to which they refer. This assumption is not only false; it is preposterous.
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Thank you! It sets the tone for an entire course about portraiture across poetry, prose, painting, and photography.
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
I use the 2020 article in my course on portraiture (gen ed with lots of STEM majors), and it has generated such good conversations about how we produce knowledge.
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The Trandalorian @charliejaneanders.com · 29/04/2026
When people ask, "How can I promote my art when the world is going to shit" I hear that as, "How do I have the right to make art when the world is going to shit" And... We need art more than ever during such times. You need to be making art more than ever during such times.
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
This is my go-to example for a "radical solution" that I want students to imagine implementing for their own research project.
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McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 27/04/2026
Q: How will this new technology benefit overworked faculty? A: By allowing Skynet to relieve you of tasks tedious enough to merit paid employment, you can free up time for unremunerated pursuits.
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Frequently Asked Questions About Our Innovative New EdTech Collaboration
“With a free Skynet Edu account, students can gain the career-readiness needed to navigate an exciting future in which they will be hunted by a remorseless, ...
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
The AI data center / compute boom and crunch is really fucking up a lot of things: www.404media.co/the-ai-compu...
404media.co
The AI Compute Crunch Is Here (and It's Affecting the Entire Economy)
Venture capitalists can't subsidize cheap AI forever, and the hunger for more compute is affecting the labor market, the gadget market, and electricity prices.
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Teaching makes my research better and research makes my teaching better
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
But it is also my first test for any of them: (How long they have taught) minus (when they last taught a real course) = baseline perspective
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Jeff Kessler @jckessler.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Lots of faculty who "don't give extensions" are breathing a sigh of relief rn. www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...
insidehighered.com
DOJ Extends Web Accessibility Deadline
Public colleges now have until next year to ensure their web pages and mobile apps are accessible to people with disabilities in accordance with recent updates to the ADA. Disability advocates decried...
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Akil Bello @akilbello.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Skip the article about/from the employees of the Yale corporation and read this from SUNY Geneseo www.geneseo.edu/enrollment-m...
geneseo.edu
The College Affordability Crisis is Real, but the Media is Looking at the Wrong Schools
Sturges Hall (Photo by Keith Walters ’11) Opinion By Costas Solomou, Vice President, Enrollment Management Published by the Office of Enrollment Management When Yale University released its Committee ...
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
When you attempt to scale the beneficent effects of tutoring, those effects go away. Feels like this would be pretty obvious to anybody who has ever been or had a tutor. The 1-to-1 instructor to student ratio is definitional.
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
UIC English is hiring 3 NTT faculty, part of our United Faculty Union. professional writing, english language learning, literature/culture generalism. hmu w questions! uic.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...
uic.csod.com
Lecturer - English
Position SummaryLecturers in the English Department teach a 3/3 load. In addition to teaching, lecturers are responsible for attending required staff ...
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
To my surprise I got invited to be on a panel here called "The Problem of AI" and took the opportunity to try to shift the discussion from boosterism & normalization, however "thoughtful and deliberative," & toward the political economy of higher education nathankhensley.net/uncategorize...
To understand these dynamics of intensified inequality or splitting, we have to shift away from whether ChatGPT can or can’t write good papers or how bad the “hallucinations” are, and toward an analysis of the political economy of higher education and the accelerating role of corporate interests, and their proxies in boards of directors and trustees, in defining the scene of learning. On this understanding, AI products are best understood not as technologies of information (as their backers prefer them to be discussed) but of labor management and the accelerated concentration of wealth.
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404 Media @404media.co · 26/03/2026
NEW: Wikipedia has banned AI-generated content.
404media.co
Wikipedia Bans AI-Generated Content
“In recent months, more and more administrative reports centered on LLM-related issues, and editors were being overwhelmed.”
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
This is an incredible resource and reference. 45 (!!!) examples of successfully bargained language, with every type of institution represented.
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