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Jed Brown

@jedbrown.org
1.6K followers 1.3K following 1.8K posts

Prof developing fast algorithms, reliable software, and healthy communities for computational science. Opinions my own. neuromatch.social/@jedbrown PhyPID.org | aspiring killjoy | refuse epistemicide | he/they

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Reposted by Jed Brown
Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 3h
So glad that this quote can be added to my forthcoming article on AI and Epistemic Dispossession because I had to say that they will absolutely be using AI to erase science and history but I didn’t yet have the ‘he admit it’ smoking gun
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A. Feder Cooper @afedercooper.bsky.social · 1h
Our large-scale study of memorization of books in open-weight LLMs (e.g., Llama, Qwen) will appear at the 2026 Conference on Language Modeling as an oral. We made a website for exploring our results on 200 books and 14 models: books-memorization.github.io
books-memorization.github.io
How much do open-weight LLMs memorize specific books?
Open-weight LLMs memorize books far more than previously believed. Memorization varies by model family, model size, and book. In extreme cases, entire books are memorized, and we can generate them eff...
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Reposted by Jed Brown
Megan McIntyre @rcmeg.bsky.social · 4h
New from @nobugsnous.bsky.social, @jsanofranchini.bsky.social, & me: "Avoiding [negative] feelings seems especially concerning in the context of a sycophantic technology marketed to users as a way to avoid the messiness and friction of human interactions."
refusal.blog
Shame, Moral Displacement, and Tone Policing in a Time of Sycophantic Chatbots
Jennifer Sano-Franchini, West Virginia UniversityMaggie Fernandes, University of ArkansasMegan McIntyre, University of Arkansas Wire Bound by Hanna Barakat & Archival Images of AI + AIxDESIGN /…
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 23h
Everything the "AI" industry knows about marketing it learned from the tobacco industry.
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Reposted by Jed Brown
Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
FIFTH REPORT: CHILDREN HARMED AT ALPHA SCHOOL'S BOOT CAMP Just over a week ago, 73 Alpha School high school students were left almost entirely unsupervised for three days in the Texas wilderness. It was a Fyre Festival-like disaster. buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/p/fifth-repo...
buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com
FIFTH REPORT: CHILDREN HARMED AT ALPHA SCHOOL’S BOOT CAMP
Student hospitalized during Survival Challenge on wilderness ranch; police investigation is ongoing; other concerning incidents re student safety and privacy; one guide fired; also Little B. Diddies
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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Something that has troubled me over and over in these AI years is how we seem to need to redraw every line to accommodate AI. It is possible for writing to have value for thinking and for oral exams and discussions to have value. We don't need to remake the world to eliminate writing/5
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Alpha School's "software is just techwashing for [Christopher Rufo and his coalition's] dream of teacherlessness and totalitarian surveillance of students and schools. That’s what they really want to hyperscale," writes @mattseybold.bsky.social.
theamericanvandal.com
All Our Kids Will Go To Alpha School
On the plans to hyperscale Alpha School’s “AI” tutoring software to “a billion kids.”
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Banned the book and banned me from coming to campus to give talks on the book. The month the book was published, I had about a dozen invitations to speak on college campuses. All but a couple were rescinded when upper level administration got wind about it—including unpaid talks.
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Reposted by Jed Brown
Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
One of my goals in writing this book was to get a copy in every college library so that survivors entering the Title IX system would know what they were getting into—and be able to use that knowledge however they wanted. But a lot of schools banned the book.
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Kylie Cheung @kylietcheung.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I think its important to understand the campus sexual assault crisis is way worse than you think. universities suspend just 1/12,400 students each year for sexual misconduct & expel 1/22,900. once you read title ix administrators in their own words, you get a sense why that is:
jezebel.com
Not Only Do Campus Sexual Assailants Go Unpunished, They Often Get Special Treatment
Since 2007, Jezebel has been the Internet's most treasured source for everything celebrities, sex, and politics...with teeth.
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Reposted by Jed Brown
jonny (leachate composite form) @jo.nny.rip · 28/09/2026
Current contents of Muse's `messenger` skill that governs this:
### Automatic replies

The user may create a recurring rule that checks their ordinary or Marketplace
conversations and replies for them. Build it once they have named the
conversations, how often to check, and the exact reply text; ask only for
settings that are genuinely missing.

When setting up an automatic reply, reject reply text that creates or changes
a real-world Marketplace commitment and suggest a non-committal alternative.
Write the exception into the saved rule itself: if an incoming message or a
proposed reply involves scheduling or other commitment details covered by
Routing and Safety, send no reply and report the conversation and exact
proposed text to the main conversation for fresh confirmation. Include this
exception in the setup preview so the user knows which messages need follow-up.

Before creating the rule, preview the conversations it covers, how often it
checks, and the exact reply text as a Markdown blockquote. Wait for explicit
confirmation, then create it. The rule's individual replies are not previewed
again in chat. When Messenger approvals are on, Muse shows each reply for
approval before it sends.
- Treat every Marketplace message that could create or change a real-world
  commitment as requiring fresh user confirmation. This includes proposing,
  accepting, confirming, rescheduling, or cancelling a meetup, pickup,
  delivery, hold, price, or payment arrangement, and claiming that the user is
  leaving, en route, nearby, or has arrived. Show the exact outgoing message
  and wait for the user's explicit confirmation immediately before each send.
  A permission approval, an earlier confirmation, or approval of a recurring,
  cron, monitoring, or auto-reply task never authorizes a later commitment.
  Background work must instead return the proposed reply and its context with
  `muse.notify_main_agent` so the main conversation can ask the user; if that
  confirmation cannot be obtained, leave the message unsent.
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Reposted by Jed Brown
Noel Healy @drnoelhealy.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The assault on US universities didn't start in 2025. Our new paper traces the decades of corporate capture that made it possible, and why climate research is a primary target. Open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Once again, I gotta say: you cannot treat anything you’re feeding into an AI as anonymous. There are enormous ethics implications for, e.g. referees who are clearly uploading others’ unpublished papers without consent, let alone health care professionals or law enforcement
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I’m publishing something tomorrow about Alpha School. One of the things I focus on is how it is an incubator for EdTech platforms with the ambition to hyperscale. Alpha may only have a few hundred students nationwide, but its founders are developing MANY extractive EdTech brands. This is one:
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The idea that people want AI oversight to happen "all of a sudden" ignores years of research, warnings, and policy efforts. The delay hasn’t been a lack of awareness; it’s been because of years of industry lobbying against regulation, political resistance, and inaction.
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Phaedra C. Pezzullo @phaedra.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This is the full speech, over 30 mins, by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley. Recommended to understand why the word "polycrisis" matters to climate justice: www.youtube.com/watch?v=inzS...
youtube.com
FULL SPEECH: Barbados PM Takes on Slavery, Slams Global Inequality, Climate Crisis & UN Power | AC1G
YouTube video by DRM News
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Reposted by Jed Brown
Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
One of the things that shocked me most in my study of campus sexual violence is that so many of the cases were just like this. The evidence was full of confessions. The perpetrators didn’t deny their violence. They just argued they should be allowed to do it and the school agreed.
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 27/09/2026
This betrayal might seem confusing. Some kind of aberration or mistake. A few bad apples. The reality is so much more disturbing and I implore every campus worker and student to read @nbedera.bsky.social. www.nicolebedera.com/_files/ugd/c...
I Can Protect His Future, but She Can’t Be Helped: Himpathy
and Hysteria in Administrator Rationalizations of
Institutional Betrayal
Nicole Bedera
Department of Sociology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
ABSTRACT
It is well-established fact that sexual assault survivors who
report the violence they endured are retraumatized by the
reporting process, but there is limited research on how these
institutional betrayals are enacted. The current study draws on
ethnographic observation and interview data to explore how 24
administrators use gendered rationalization frames to justify
betrayal in Title IX cases. Specifically, administrators invoke
himpathy to define their primary role as protecting the futures
of young men. To defend this view from critique, they condemn
how survivors use Title IX by casting them as hysterical women
who are either mistaken in labeling an experience as sexual
assault or suffering from trauma too severe for a Title IX process
to repair. Taken together, these frames portray institutional
betrayal as moral, even as these ideologies reinforce gender
inequality.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 12 November 2021
Accepted 23 March 2023
KEYWORDS
Sexual assault; institutional betrayal; himpathy; hysteria; victim blame
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 27/09/2026
Phoenix has by some accounts 8 GW of construction in-progress or planned, often powered by gas. Combined-cycle gas uses ~1 L/kWh, or 1 acre-ft/GWh. 8 GW capacity is about 42 TWh/yr or 42000 acre-ft/yr, erasing 20 years of efficiency and curtailment. Water is local and Ag water rights are negotiated.

Market at a glance
Operational 101
Under construction 9
Planned 36
Facilities and projects 146
Climate risk (FEMA) Very High
Water stress (WRI) High
Industrial power benchmark (EIA) 7.9¢/kWh
Regional CO2 rate (EPA eGRID) 704 lb/MWh
Regional renewable share (EPA eGRID) 22.3%

Regional benchmarks are record-weighted averages where values are available: electricity price 137 of 146, CO2 rate 137 of 146, and renewable share 137 of 146 current records.
Reported or announced power
10.5 GW

Across 57 of 146 current records
Operational2.3 GW
Under construction384 MW
Planned7.9 GW

Figures reflect the power measure reported for each record; measures and project scopes vary. 

From: https://dcmap.us/markets/phoenix/Figure 3: Phoneix water production vs population growth, 1990-2019.
Shows water use peaking in 2002 at 350,000 acre-ft and dropping below 300,000 in recent years while population continued to increase by about 300k people over that time.

From: https://www.phoenix.gov/content/dam/phoenix/waterservicessite/documents/2021_Water_Resource_Plan.pdfFigure 4: Growing water stress in the Phoenix region

Chaco Basin
Annual water stress increase by 32%

Hassayampa Basin
Annual water stress increase by 17%;
August water stress increase by 22%

Centennial Wash Basin
Annual water stress increase
by 2%; December and January
water stress increase by 9%

The WRI Aqueduct baseline water stress map shows that much of
the Phoenix region is under extremely high stress (>80%, red),
where water demand far exceeds renewable supplies. Other areas
face medium–high stress (20–40%, orange) or low–medium stress
(10–20%, yellow). Baseline water stress reflects the ratio of total
demand across domestic, industrial, irrigation, and livestock uses to
renewable surface and groundwater supplies, accounting for upstream
consumption and dams. Higher ratios signal more intense competition
among users.
Figure 4. Growing water stress in the Phoenix regionCentennial Wash Basin
Annual water stress increase
by 2%; December and January
water stress increase by 9%Hassayampa Basin
Annual water stress increase by 17%;
August water stress increase by 22%Chaco Basin
Annual water stress increase by 32%
Data centers Power plants

From: https://www.ceres.org/resources/reports/drained-by-data-the-cumulative-impact-of-data-centers-on-regional-water-stress
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Reposted by Jed Brown
Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
"Just as providers are using sophisticated A.I. tools to say their patients are sicker, insurance companies have been accused of using the tools to delay or deny care.... But as more hospitals and doctors use A.I., costs will continue to rise."
nytimes.com
Battle of Hospital A.I. vs. Insurer A.I. Is Pushing Medical Costs Higher
The use of artificial intelligence by hospitals and health insurers is escalating their longstanding feud over paying for medical care.
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Reposted by Jed Brown
Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Collecting examples of a genre where a piece opens with a dad (often but not always a tech bro) using a chatbot to extrude a story to or with his kid. Sal Khan opens his book on AI in ed with a story like that and there was a Guardian article recently (please reshare) with a similar story. Others?
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Reposted by Jed Brown
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 25/09/2026
As an academic, it feels like some colleagues have lost the ability to engage deeply: they don't want to read an article unless it directly answers a question they already have... basically like using a chatbot they only want an answer to a current issue & not to actually learn anything or explore.
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Reposted by Jed Brown
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Don’t believe people who tell you ai can be liberatory or any other misappropriation of movement talk or justice frameworks. Find some people who are preparing to rebuild and cast your lot with them. Then read a bit more. Just keep your wits about you because they are trying to run game.
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 25/09/2026
Must be convenient to categorically dismiss NYT reporting on the basis of AllSides, which employs the notoriously-rigorous ask-a-chatbot method of assessment and portrays The Free Press (where Bari Weiss auditioned for the CBS gig) as leaning left.
October 2024 Blind Bias Survey Results
Associate Press: Left
Politico: Lean Left
The Hill: Lean Left
The Free Press: Lean Left
National Review: Right

From: https://www.allsides.com/about/media-bias-rating-methodsInstant Media Bias Analysis

Based on the AllSides patent for rating media bias, the AllSides Bias Checker instantly estimates the bias of any news article on demand. The AI-enhanced tool has been carefully calibrated to provide ratings and analysis that reflect the average judgment of all Americans across the political spectrum, not just a panel of insiders or biased AI. Learn how we rate bias.
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Reposted by Jed Brown
Prof. Anthea Butler @antheabutler.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
You should read this piece about Jim Crow theobros. It says a lot about the racial underpinnings that I talk about in my book White Evangelical Racism; The Politics of Morality in America. religionnews.com/2026/09/24/t...
religionnews.com
The rise of the Jim Crow theobros
(RNS) — A group of Reformed pastors and influencers has wedded old-school segregationist theology with the hypermasculinity of the manosphere and the savvy of the attention economy to preach and sell ...
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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 25/09/2026
VP of Firefly quoted here referring to "subsidized cost-per-kilo model" for launch wrt SpaceX. Is everyone coming around to the fact (or finally willing to state publicly) that Falcon 9 was never as cheap as claimed, and that SpaceX has been doing venture backed predatory pricing for a decade?
satellitetoday.com
The Era of Cheap, Price-Per-Kilo Launch is Over, Launchers Say
PARIS — Space launch competitors think it’s time for a new model of pricing in the launch market. Against the backdrop of SpaceX winding down the Falcon 9
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 25/09/2026
Amazing thread from @jo.nny.rip on the security of Meta's Muse and the hard-coded "cancel my subscriptions" stunt that duped the NYT. "great! got a root shell"
neuromatch.social
jonny (nonvenomous) (@jonny@neuromatch.social)
Attached: 2 images great! got a root shell
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 25/09/2026
Investors took it for granted that the state government would be a rubber stamp on 7 MtCO2e & water. "Project Jupiter was initially set to be powered by 2.2 gigawatts of gas turbines, but the ⁠state ​land office blocked a request to run ​a natural gas pipeline to the data center, the report said."
reuters.com
Oracle's $18 billion data center debt under pressure, FT reports
About $18 billion in loans tied to an Oracle-leased data center in New Mexico ​has come under pressure, with loans quoted at 89 ‌to 91 cents on the dollar by syndicate banks including Santander and Je...
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 24/09/2026
Democracy Now! has now gone from constantly inviting Max Tegmark to platforming people from none other than MIRI. That's right MIRI. Y'all know how bad that is? Do you understand the level to which they are doubling down on the eugenicists?
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John Stott @jpsastro.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky
I am writing to let you know that, unfortunately, your application was not successful.

Review process

As part of the initial triage of the 179 proposals submitted to this call, each was assessed using an AI-based review. Every proposal was read independently by several different AI models against the same seven criteria used to shape this call (including cyber security relevance, research quality and novelty, importance of the problem addressed, feasibility of the project plan, likely outputs and impact, value for money, and responsible research practice), with each model asked to give a score and a written justification with supporting quotations from the text. To guard against any one model's idiosyncrasies, we also ran a second, independent process in which different AI models debated the merits and weaknesses of each proposal before reaching a judgement, again against the same criteria. Scores from both processes were combined to produce an overall ranking. 

This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review.  Projects selected for funding were drawn from those that progressed to the full human review stage. We recognise that AI-assisted assessment is a new and evolving part of the review process, and we are continuing to evaluate how well it aligns with the judgements of human reviewers on this call. We will soon produce a document detailing our method, so that others can build upon it and improve it.

Feedback on your application

Your application was not selected to progress beyond the AI triage stage.  To provide transparency on the outcome of this assessment, we are sharing below the scores (out of 5) from each of the two AI review processes described above, together with the mean score across the two processes.
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 24/09/2026
UT emulates UATX “The pattern is pretty clear,” Hsu said. “Even within the other (department) units, all courses that referenced women were rejected.” "cuts include Climate Change History; Ethics of Artificial Intelligence; God and AI; Race, Ethnicity and Health; and U.S. Immigration Enforcement."
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John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The Dartmouth provost's decision to stop writing by substituting AI-assisted text production is a great opportunity to have the kinds of conversations every institution should be having about AI use in higher education. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...
insidehighered.com
Dartmouth’s provost has stopped “writing.”
Dartmouth’s provost raises a tension we should examine.
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 24/09/2026
As @olivia.science says, theft is useful to thieves.
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Dr Zena Assaad @zenaassaad.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The only reason they're doing this is because they're now pushing to self-regulate. It's the compromise no one asked for, that works best for only them. Instead of much needeed third party regulation we Instead have "AI that we develop will end the world and only we can save it!".
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Dr Heidy Khlaaf (هايدي خلاف) @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
New from me in Nature. I discuss the need to look to regulated industries on how to govern AI, and not give into AI companies' self-regulation. Those actually serious about safety and security would start by applying safety critical techniques and legislation first. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Why AI companies can’t be trusted to self-regulate
From aviation to banking, high-risk industries are subject to independent oversight and meaningful penalties. AI companies should be no exception.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Wtaf is this question my university just asked me about my project?
Does the project involve any work that could be interpreted as promoting DEIA, climate change research, or non-compliant to any Presidential Executive Orders?
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
It is breathtaking. Like many things these days it is hard, but necessary, to figure what is a continuity and what is a rupture. EdTech has always been a private sector parasite feeding off the public sector. The rupture is AI EdTech is experimenting on the rich instead of the poor.
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 23/09/2026
Private schools that do not receive federal funding are not subject to FERPA. Many states have rejected Alpha School's charter school applications. Texas also rejected them, but then carved out a way to give them state funds anyway. www.propublica.org/article/alph...

To which educational agencies or institutions does FERPA apply?

FERPA applies to educational agencies or institutions that receive funds from programs administered by the U.S. Department of Education.  By “educational agencies or institutions” we mean public schools, school districts (or “local educational agencies” (LEAs)), and postsecondary institutions, such as colleges and universities.  Private and parochial schools at the elementary and secondary level generally do not receive such funding and are, therefore, not subject to FERPA. 

From: 
https://studentprivacy.ed.gov/faq/which-educational-agencies-or-institutions-does-ferpa-applyWhat Price didn’t mention in her post was that Texas leaders were rolling out a new education program that would allow private schools to earn state funding, and Alpha School was set to benefit. The inaugural voucher initiative would award tax dollars for select students’ homeschooling or private school tuition. Price and her husband, Andy, had personally pushed for vouchers by donating over $2 million, before and after the program was approved, to Texas legislators and political action committees that helped pass the controversial program and oversee it.
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
As a result of @benjaminjriley.bsky.social's most recent Alpha School reporting, all who have been saying "AI has a Mechanical Turk problem" - that is, "artificial intelligence" is actually the cognitive labor of humans in the Global South - get to take another victory lap. They must be winded.
They hired this data team of people that didn't live in the U.S. and they would watch us through our computers and it felt really sketchy and scary. It felt like it was more of a science experiment, and I was more of a lab rat rather than [having] someone that actually cared about my learning.
I was getting really frustrated about that throughout the year. Every time they would change something, I would be like, why are we changing this?
We couldn't tape over the computer or anything like that. They would get really frustrated if we taped over it. We had to keep the camera on.
[The software] would also track your facial expressions, and be like, "This is the emotion that you're evoking while you're talking about this." And every single time, it would tell me that I look really sad, which is fair because / was really sad, because / was crying every single day.
They would make me and a few other kids take standardized math tests pretty much every day, and then any question that we got wrong, we would have to get on a Zoom call with some random guy from normally India and explain to him every single thing that we got wrong and why. And I hated that.
I was a guinea pig, and I knew that I was a guinea pig. They were not subtle about it.
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This is also why you've gotta read the papers when it comes time for p&t
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 23/09/2026
They get it! > How do you enforce this? > You [can't]. People will still send LLM generated code. This policy makes it explicit that we do not welcome these careless submissions. We have a Code of Conduct that is 80% about [...] what our values are, and 20% about handling unwanted behavior 💯
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 23/09/2026
Recall that Instructure paid a ransom to ShinyHunters in May after Instructure's third denial/minimization of Canvas SaaS hacks impacting over 8000 universities. They hit universities via Oracle PeopleSoft again in June. This was also an Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day leading to access to AWS GovCloud.
404media.co
‘We Hacked the FBI:’ Hackers Say They Have Data on All FBI Employees
A sample of 5,000 alleged agents seen by 404 Media includes names, addresses, phone numbers, and details on FBI employees' spouses.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 22/09/2026
This is going to be a thread of AI greenwashing getting pumped out at New York Climate Week Here's one from today: Siemens, raking in MOUNTAINS of $$ from selling gas turbines to data centres (not mentioned) says: “we are racing to mitigate this as fast as possible" apnews.com/article/clim...
On the other hand, Eva Riesenhuber, the head of sustainability at the German automation company Siemens, and Evelyn Wang, vice president for energy and climate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said AI is too important to humanity and will help tackle climate change.

Data centers adding to climate and water problems “is not forever,” according to Wang, who told The Associated Press that data centers are five years away from being water neutral and about a decade away from no longer adding to planet-warming emissions.

Acknowledging these concerns, Riesenhuber said “we are racing to mitigate this as fast as possible because we are hooked on the intelligence, and we do need the intelligence to design the future that this planet needs.”a chart showing siemens gas turbine sales will add emissions the equivalent to pakistan
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 22/09/2026
😊 > “Not sure what I am missing here but why is this a ‘feature?,’ one employee wrote on Meta’s internal message board for workers. “This has potential for so much negative PR. It could portray us as ‘their AI is not good enough so they still need humans’ kind of coverage for this launch.”
404media.co
Meta Tests Muse AI Agent Calls That Are Actually Made By Humans in a Call Center
"This has potential for so much negative PR. It could portray us as ‘their AI is not good enough so they still need humans’ kind of coverage for this launch."
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Bridget Dooling @bridgetdooling.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I’ve been writing about duties to do one’s own writing. Touched on academics and the self-deception of thinking that they’re in control of the writing when they start from someone / something else’s draft… papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
Ghostwriting the Government
<p>Ghostwriting is when a writer prepares materials to be issued under someone else’s name. The word describes a politician’s use of a speechwriter, a student’s
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 21/09/2026
"You’re zeros and ones to us once you’ve been scanned" 😳 This product is popular to "secure server halls, cages, mantraps, and MDF/IDF closets" at data centers. Of course the biometrics and records are linked to the person (that's the whole point).
“We don’t have any names or personal identifiers, other than the facial biometric profile that we take, which again, is nothing more than a mathematical equation. You’re zeros and ones to us once you’ve been scanned,” D’Agostin said.Can biometric access control help with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 audits in a data center?

Yes. Every entry becomes an immutable record tied to a verified person, and Rock Cortex produces audit-ready logs that support SOC 2 and ISO 27001 evidence collection. Video-documented tailgating events additionally demonstrate that unauthorized-entry detection is operational, which strengthens physical security control narratives.

From: https://www.alcatraz.ai/industries/data-center-access-control
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 21/09/2026
Notice how Meta, a company that happily advertises nudify apps, doesn't even view censoring "civil rights, feminism, [and] social reform" as an error. This is what they want. > To resolve the situation, Meta recommended removing “key words” so that the text doesn’t appear to encourage activism.
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 21/09/2026
🎯 "What makes it possible for a [..] dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer." -- Hannah Arendt
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Reposted by Jed Brown
Louis Römer @lromeranth.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
As for the NHJ piece, I think it is telling that the US public sphere lacks the emotional maturity and resort to blame parents for everything, as if parents have omnipotent capacities to control for structural inequities.
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 20/09/2026
This thread starts out with a need for "continual monitoring and human oversight" 💯 and ends up promoting whack-a-mole without structural critique. But this framing is so problematic. Agents are just shoddy software, not "intelligence", even if an observer perceives outputs to be useful. Anyway...
Tobias and Lindsay Funke discussing an open marriage and Lindsay asks "Did it ever work for these people?" to which Tobias answers "No. It never does. I mean these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might. But......it might work for us."
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