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Jeremy Cohen

@jeremyfcohen.bsky.social
3.8K followers 1.7K following 968 posts

Assistant Professor @ McMaster University. Anthropologist of religion. Immortality, transhumanism, conspiracy theories and technology. Vegan. Dad. ADHD haver. TalkDeath.com co-founder.

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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Inspired by @aroddick.bsky.social to shoot film again after 10 year break. Developed my first ever roll of colour film. Nikon L35AD Very expired Portra 160. #believeinfilm
Image of an Old tractor in a field of sunflowers on a partly cloudy day.
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The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 27/09/2026
Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/kQdKbY1
trib.al
Trump Moves to Cut Off Student Loans for Tons of Degrees
Under a new rule, if your degree doesn’t make enough money, you won’t be able to get a student loan.
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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
today in Stop Romanticizing Canada: Quebec’s Bill 9 has just taken effect, barring women in veils from receiving public services. Public employees include university faculty, so professors have been instructed to require veiled women to uncover their faces or be removed from the classroom.
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Canadian Anti-Hate Network @antihate.ca · 24/09/2026
This is the first attack on a synagogue in Canada that has resulted in a death - the attacker was shot and killed by police. It could have been much worse. According to multiple sources the shooter engaged with anti-immigrant and antisemitic conspiracy theories. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
cbc.ca
Synagogue shooting was deliberate hate attack: Belleville, Ont., police | CBC
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Whitney Curry Wimbish @whitneycwimbish.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The youngest person his pager attack killed was 9-year-old Fatima Abdullah, who had just started 4th grade. The pager was on a table when it went off and she picked it up to take to her dad. It exploded in her face and reports said it covered the room in her blood. She wanted to learn English.
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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
We just dropped a bombshell investigation into ChatGPT's role in the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting. Incredible reporting from @markfollman.bsky.social that will have far-reaching effects...hopefully: www.motherjones.com/media/2026/0...
motherjones.com
ChatGPT helped the Tumbler Ridge school shooter focus on guns, tactics, and terror, our investigation reveals
OpenAI’s chatbot fed the shooter’s violent fantasies and planning up to the massacre.
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Toronto GDC @gdctoronto.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Hate group "Canada First" has a rally scheduled in Nathan Phillips Square this SUNDAY SEPT 27th (not Saturday as we reported originally). We need people to show up to counterprotest! Please find more details here: www.facebook.com/events/s/cou...
facebook.com
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Rine Vieth @rinewithoutacat.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Hamilton ON Anarchist Bookfair is coming up! Saturday, October 3rd: 10am-5pm at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (a lovely space) north-shore.info/hamilton-ana...
north-shore.info
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
How the hell do people fast *every day* for an entire month each year?!!
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Sasquatch McGillicuddy @antilinguist.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Walking around #Hamont and discovering one of the city's greatest neoliberal ironies. Construction preparing infrastructure for upcoming light rail projects have unearthed... Hamilton's original light rail that was cancelled, buried, and forgotten 70 years ago
Original light rail exposed under four inches of asphalt in Hamilton Ontario along the current future route of an eternally planned(and maybe never deliverered) light rail route Original light rail exposed under four inches of asphalt in Hamilton Ontario. Along the current future route of an eternally planned(and maybe never deliverered) light rail route Original light rail exposed under four inches of asphalt in Hamilton Ontario. Along the current future route of an eternally planned(and maybe never deliverered) light rail route
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Virginia Heffernan @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
What happened to Steven Pinker? I only felt free to write this because he blocks me: www.thenerve.news/p/steven-pin...
thenerve.news
From celebrity intellectual to anti-woke outlaw: how Steven Pinker lost his way
The pop psycholgist’s new book seems to betray a lurking fear of others’ criticism – about his Epstein links, his manosphere admirers and his discredited former field of study, writes Virginia Heffern...
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I'm putting together a list for my students of productivity, notetaking, flashcard, transcribing, language learning, annotation, etc apps that don't use generative AI. Any recommendations?
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 19/09/2026
Again: "Tilly Norwood" is not a person; it is a shoddy, and also pretty gross puppet. Stop referring to it as "she," and start asking whether there might be something a bit off about wanting to promote a sexualized but also childlike "actor" that can never tell its creators or users "no."
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Fuck the SPVM.
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Listening to the shofar in the hospital synagogue makes for a bleak Rosh Hashanah.
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Rine Vieth @rinewithoutacat.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Really worrying development in the prairies re uni governance, fairness in student grading, and big tech: UAlberta has approved—outside union and collegial governance frameworks—AI "instructors" that can also do marking (ostensibly with human review, but uh...).
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
If an AI-generated essay were a fortune cookie
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Every boomer I know refers to the ChatGPT app as "my friend". That might give us a clue as to what is different.
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Heba Gowayed هبة جويد @hebagowayed.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
9/11/2001 I was a freshman in high school in Alabama, I wore a hijab. In gym class my teacher wheeled in a screen. Something horrible was happening. I watched, mouth agape as the second tower hit. We were silent. As that period reached an end, my name was announced on the loud speaker. 1/
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Make a band edible NIck Cave and the Good Seeds
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Make a band edible MeWithoutStew
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Cameron Campbell @camerondotca.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Susan was probably at 90% of every show I’ve been to. She served me more beer than I’d care to admit. We’d run into each other in the neighborhood & chat. She will be missed. The best thing is she mentored so many of the next gen. What a legacy she leaves. montrealgazette.com/entertainmen...
montrealgazette.com
Obituary: Montreal rock photographer Susan Moss’s life ‘surpassed my dreams’
She had Stage 4 cancer and chose medical assistance in dying. 'I’m really at peace because I didn’t think I was going to live old,' she said.
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
My goal for this academic year is to not write "Sorry for the delay."
static.klipy.com
Goodluck Titus: Fingers Crossed
Alt: Goodluck Titus: Fingers Crossed GIF. Man sitting on chair doing a "goodluck" dance.
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Matt Thiessen @mattthiessen.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
"the nationwide [sic, worldwide] attack on the Humanities is an attack on the public good." If you are an academic or care about academia and/or the world, read this important piece by @vox-magica.bsky.social & @profgabriele.com: www.liberalcurrents.com/religion-hum...
liberalcurrents.com
Religion, Humanities, and the Public Good
The right wing's assault on Religion and Humanities programs is an assault on our ability to understand the world, from Hindutva abroad to Christian Nationalism at home.
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I am constantly fighting the urge to respond to certain student emails with: "Have you considered punk music?"
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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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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
"Hey Google, play Wheels on the Bus by Raffi!" My daughter is getting excited to see @raffic.bsky.social live in Hamilton 😊
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James McLeod @jamespmcleod.ca · 01/09/2026
For the Toronto Star, I wrote about the trade war, digital sovereignty, and Lake Ontario. We are already dominated by American tech giants. If Canada fights this trade war and we don't renegotiate the terms of digital trade, we will lose. www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...
thestar.com
Google changing Lake Ontario to Lake America isn’t just frustrating. It points to a deeper problem for Mark Carney
Canada’s digital infrastructure is too tied to companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon.
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Here is my addition to the Deli AI graphic design slop nightmare.
A flyer with an AI generated image of an avocado, Cheese, and egg sandwich on a bagel. Text above the sandwich reads "Avocado Breakfast Bagel"
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elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
If folks here have contacts within Ontario or Quebec academia, especially pertaining to helping a potential non-Canadian incomer, please lemme know. (French is one of my native languages and I have a PhD in Cultural Studies, for what it’s worth)
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
When Jordan Peterson was being banned from campuses for being a pos and people were yelling "academic freedom!", I thought to myself that if Peterson had been talking about Black or Jewish folks, no one would support him. The defense of Cofnas has shown me that I was wrong and naive.
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
This Hour has 22 Minutes - Talking to Americans. "Congratulations Canada on becoming part of North America" youtu.be/7ZE0TuKTpo4
youtu.be
Rick Mercer - Talking To Americans!!
YouTube video by BonoRocks100
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Greg MacPherson - one of Canada's most underrated artists imo: youtu.be/hB6fCbcOdz8
youtu.be
Greg MacPherson - Frequencies
YouTube video by bigmcenroe
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
I have a list of people I need to send this to... but I probably won't
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Leonore (Lee) Carpenter @leecarpenter.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
In case you are an academic who is currently being gaslit into believing that you're a caveman who wants their students to be jobless if you resist allowing AI in your classrooms... I present to you Berkeley Law's response, which can be summarized as "Fuck off directly into the sun."
law.berkeley.edu
Artificial Intelligence Policy
Effective Summer 2026 Purpose Future lawyers may need to use artificial intelligence (“AI”) fluently. But the current state of the technology requires that AI use be coupled with the cognitive […]
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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
This and cost of attendance are by far the biggest genuine problems affecting universities and they are not in any way reducible to ‘DEI.’ Neoliberalism is killing higher education.
Adjuncting Until the End of Time
Universities now have more adjuncts than tenured and tenure-track professors combined. The conditions are unsustainable—for professors and students alike.
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r o o @jakepaulsartre.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
"Bluesky is dying" bro you're talking about a website full of 38 year olds who have fringe political beliefs and listen to black metal bands with >1000 listeners on spotify, nobody here cares about popularity
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Napalm Death did a NPR Tiny Desk Concert and it rips. "We are hear to heartily support public access broadcasting" youtu.be/e81LZCHhNKQ?...
youtu.be
Napalm Death: Tiny Desk Concert
YouTube video by NPR Music
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I think I'm going to become an @disabilitystor1.bsky.social repost account.
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
This.
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Andy Roddick @aroddick.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
lol our university is hosting Epstein file famous Steven Pinker. Gross.
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ghost malone ergo propter bones @proptermalone.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
and GOD IS EMPTY JUST LIKE ME
democrat is socialist and socialist is communist
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 01/08/2026
There's a lot in this thread & its multiple & various reply/quote offshoots that i disagree with, & am exhausted by, but i want to focus on 1 that i keep trying to press on: Let's stipulate LLMs *Can* do grad- & even expert-level math & we should prep for a revolution in the field… So what then?…
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
I've been posting on here a lot more and also trying to get out and see more friends, which can only mean one thing: I am trying to write an academic journal article.
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Disgraceful and a clear attack on academic freedom by Canadian universities.
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
this fatigue/overstretching is exactly what is happening in classrooms around the world, but administrators, Big Tech, and politicians are apparently fine with large scale mis-uses of gAI to read, write and think instead of actual learning because...reasons, I guess
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
this might actually be how we achieve world peace
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Côte d'Ivoire not on a coast is perfection
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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Film you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, Marvel, Disney, or Ghibli
static.klipy.com
Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue
Alt: Two men and a woman side by side in a room. Man on the left is sniffing glue and falling backwards. Text on the bottom reads "I picked the wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue"
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