iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Kristen Bottema-Beutel

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Yes, the precondition for regular AI agent use is changing your culture to speak in middle America white bureaucratic language to make it work. You can’t put “the good collards“ on an optimized shopping list, much less account for what some call familect: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/m...

nytimes.com

Every Family Has Its Own Private Language. What Does That Tell Us About Ourselves? (Gift Article)

“Familects” emerge out of in-jokes and mispronunciations, but they reveal something about how all language evolves.

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Kristen Bottema-Beutel @kbottemabeutel.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Everyone in Boston looking out their window today

A fishermen from the 1800s with rain gear and binoculars

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Luke LeBrun @lukelebrun.ca · 26/09/2026

Tech companies suddenly decide they can, in fact, moderate content on their platforms after all

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Jack Wilkinson @jdwilko.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The integrity of evidence synthesis is threatened by problematic randomised controlled trials. These may be fraudulent, or subject to critical errors. INSPECT-SR is a tool to assess trustworthiness of RCTs - out today: www.bmj.com/content/394/...

bmj.com

INSPECT-SR tool for assessing trustworthiness of randomised controlled trials

The integrity of evidence synthesis is threatened by problematic randomised controlled trials, where there are serious concerns about the trustworthiness of the data or findings. Such concerns could b...

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 24/09/2026

over the past few weeks several AI evaluation/cybersecurity experts have explained how what's happening is a result of human incompetence rather than "AI going rogue". I'm begging the media to show a shred of journalistic integrity and stop parroting what altman or amodei say

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Matthew Noe @noethematt.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Boston spends 6.4 times more on policing than on libraries That probably explains why BPL is facing a pretty big (under)staffing crisis and may have to close some branches Is this really what we want? 📚 --- Graphic via @librariesftp.bsky.social www.librariesforthepeople.org/snapshots

LIBRARIES VS COPS SPENDING PER CAPITA
r:PS,COURTS,CAGES $697.09 :::nim
LIBRARIES $108.57 :::nim
h BPL belongs to the Books Unbanned coalition, in • WJ which library systems provide a free digital card to
youth ages 13-21 anywhere in the country, allowing
them to check out materials that may be otherwise
unavailable to them due to censorship. The program
was started by Brooklyn Public Library in 2022.
6.4 TIMES MORE ON
POLICING THAN ON
LIBRARIES
LIBRARIES GET 1.09%
OF CITY SPENDING
POLICING GETS 7.01%
OF CITY SPENDING
A 2025 WBUR analysis of Boston Police Department
records found that the police chief routinely ignored
recommendations from the city's Office of Police
Accountability and Transparency, which was created
in 2020 in response to widespread calls for increased
police oversight. In August, Lawyers for Civil Rights
sued the department for footage of the fatal shooting of
Stephenson King, Jr by an officer in March 2026.

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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Have you ever tried to read a scientific journal article and been told “you don’t have access, pay to download this article?” Did you know that the author of that article gets $0 if you pay? Instead, you can email the author and ask for a free copy! I’d be delighted to help and answer questions!

Screenshot of a scientific journal paywall

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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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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 20/09/2026

“The arrangement would give Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, a direct role in determining how NIH distributes its $48 billion in congressionally-appropriated money.” Bypassing the many checks and balances at NIH on grant funding decisions.

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Trump banning media outlets from the WH over their coverage is unlikely to affect their reporting much, but it is yet another example of how the right wing definition of “free speech” is that they can say what they want and you can say what they want. (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

theatlantic.com

Speak at Your Own Risk

Donald Trump’s attacks on the First Amendment

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 19/09/2026

"For a man whose academic field was built largely on faulty studies to ignore the intellectual fraud in his circle and lash out at people like Arday for bad scholarship – well, psychologists used to call that projection" @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social 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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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

OpenAI and Microsoft admitted LLMs are predatory tech built on “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” and the “largest theft of labor in human history.” An internal Microsoft document said AI has created a “doom loop” that is killing “the entire web.” www.404media.co/doom-loop-op...

404media.co

‘Doom Loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft

"Millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions."

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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

BREAKING: Boston University's English department (my dept) recently voted to approve new learning outcomes for the English major, including an anti-AI provision that requires students to “craft and revise writing that is sustained, original, and generated without the assistance of AI."

bu.edu

New Learning Outcomes Announced | English

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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Sorry I don't think that the Democratic party is capable of leading us through the current AI bullshit. I think it should be clearly said so that community leaders emerge.

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

it's two things, to me: 1) trans rights matter because trans people matter and deserve rights, not just because failing to stand for trans rights is a bellwether for inauthentic progressivism more broadly 2) if you can't be trusted on trans rights you can't be trusted on anything

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Thinking Person's Guide to Autism @thinkingautism.com · 06/09/2026

"When autistic people experience insufficient speech, we can say some things, & those things are true. They might even be related to what we want to say. But there are so many other things we can’t say." By @yesthattoo.bsky.social at @assistiveware.bsky.social: www.assistiveware.com/blog/intermi...

assistiveware.com

Intermittent, unreliable, insufficient, and expensive speech - AssistiveWare

This article explores some of the varied experiences autistic people can have navigating the space between nonspeaking and fully speaking.

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Sarah C Vogel, PhD @sarahcvogel.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

The UMass Boston Department of Psychology is hiring an assistant professor in our clinical area, with a developmental focus and emphasis on Black children and families. Please spread the word! #psychjobs employmentopportunities.umb.edu/boston/en-us...

employmentopportunities.umb.edu

Page Up - UMass Boston

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Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Somehow, it does not feel like a coincidence that a lot of the panic about the autism diagnosis being overly broad or too many people being diagnosed came just as more #ActuallyAutistic women received a diagnosis. www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/ar...

yahoo.com

Autism Diagnoses Are Rising In Women — But Not In Men, New Research Finds

More women are getting answers later in life, and researchers think there may be a reason why.

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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

1. Students are being lied to about the harms of AI, and they ARE cheating, on scales never seen before and brushing past that is not going to hurt them and society is not great. 2. In some fields, banning AI is absolutely fine why are people outside of those fields insisting that we MUST use it?

Yet reacting to these new technologies by putting barriers up, as many instinctively want to do – banning, admonishing, punishing – just cannot be right. To begin with, this is the water in which the next generation will swim: we are letting them down if we prepare them for the world that we grew up in, not the one they will actually inhabit.

How often, for instance, have you heard people accuse students of cheating if they use AI to help them with their work? But at what point are we cheating them by failing to overhaul the way we are educating them? If AI is making education “too easy” for young people, at what point does the burden shift on to us, the adults, to make their education more testing, to push them on, to stretch them?

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 04/09/2026

In the latest round of pass the harasser, this Professor slept with students and now is moving into a leadership role at Arizona State University 🧪 #metoo madison.com/news/local/e...

madison.com

Records: UW-Madison professor engaged in sex with students, exploited 'power imbalance'

The records were released in response to a request from the Wisconsin State Journal.

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

They’ll keep telling us it’s inevitable but NYC and other large school systems are starting to say no to AI, recognizing it’s not a legitimate tool for k-12 learning. Even some universities are putting their foot down, like U Chicago (and some law schools) www.nyc.gov/mayors-offic...

nyc.gov

Mayor Mamdani and Chancellor Samuels Put Students First with Nation’s Broadest Generative AI Moratorium in Schools

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Again. Again. It was just the usual white supremecist double standard the first dozen times. After Arday‘s sad, avoidable tragedy it feels like more than the usual distraction. They want to gaslight us to death. www.dukechronicle.com/article/duke...

dukechronicle.com

‘Insane data’: Duke professor Dan Ariely accused of additional research fraud

New evidence released Monday shows that Dan Ariely, professor of business administration in the Fuqua School of Business, likely tampered with or fabricated data in an influential research paper from ...

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Mark Dingemanse @markdingemanse.net · 27/08/2026

Very proud to share this new work led by the amazing Marlou Rasenberg (not on here), with Joel Fischer and me doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We use #EMCA methods to study empirically how LLM users shoulder the burden of solving sequential trouble and end up restructuring their own aims & activities

Abstract: This paper investigates how a core component of human interaction – action projection – is realized in conversations with systems like ChatGPT, which are not able to recognize nor anticipate actions in a sequential sense. We ask what this means for users who engage in longer, multi-step projects built through incremental prompt-response pairs. We draw on Conversation Analysis to examine how early adopters of ChatGPT sequentially organise such interactions, using anonymised naturalistic interactions from the WildChat dataset. Our analysis reveals how action projection in LLM interactions is beset with interactional trouble. In turn, we document a set of practices we term ‘pre-emptive prompting’ that users develop to work around the trouble. In doing so, users employ a range of conversational methods including pre-sequences, prompt categorization, withholding executables, spelling out relevant next actions, eliciting displays of “understanding”, and creating slots for redirection in their attempts to complete their projects. Our work provides empirical evidence of how users interactionally accomplish the configuration work (Alcaras and Ricci 2025) needed to work around the discretization and cluttering that LLMs-in-use produce.

Excerpt 10: ‘wouldnt you require both inputs’ wc_1211945; wc_usr_d2a27584b4185dda [conv_index: 359]
1 user : ok if i said i want to provide you with input A (which is an items description) and just assess its format and presentation then i provided you with input B (which is also a item desctiption for a similar item) but in a way diffrent format could you make the B input into A input
2 LLM: Yes, I can certainly help you with that. Please provide me with Input B, and I will try to make it resemble Input A in terms of format and presentation.
3 user: wouldnt you require both inputs

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Using LLMs in science for “literature review” or “summarizing" is *automated cryptogyny* olivia.science/cryptogyny/ @olivia.science 🧵

olivia.science

Cryptogyny

On the systematic obfuscation of women's contributions.

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William Shakespeare @shakespeare.lol · 25/08/2026

[Exit Queen.]

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Mr. Blabalino 🇳🇴🇺🇸💙 @blabalino.com · 22/08/2026

Found this recording of Rita Moreno performing “Fever” on The Muppet Show from 1976. 14/10

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Kate Crowe @kcrowe.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

re: Cofnas, it's particularly striking that someone who fired from one institution for nakedly racist public posts & later called out by experts in his field for work that does not meet academic standards is waving the flag of "academic freedom" to defend himself. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

More than provocative, less than scientific: A commentary on the editorial decision to publish Cofnas (2020)

Published in Philosophical Psychology (Vol. 33, No. 7, 2020)

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

You cannot appeal to rigorous academic standards and argue for the inclusion of racist pseudoscience, the most fallacious, damaging, and discredited idea of the past 500 years. You might as well teach doctors to recognize the four humors.

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Romy Lorenz @romy-lorenz.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Please share widely! 🚀 I am recruiting a PhD student for an exciting cross-species collaborative project using layer fMRI to investigate how interoception shapes cognitive control - Application deadline is: 1.10.2026 - Start: Jan 2027 www.mpg.de/26934670/phd...

mpg.de

PhD Position (m/f/d) | Ultra-High-Field Layer fMRI of Cognitive Control and Interoception

PhD Position in Ultra-High-Field Layer fMRI of Cognitive Control and Interoception

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Maggie Astor @maggieastor.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

This gets at a motte-and-bailey aspect of some AI defenses. "AI can analyze massive datasets," "AI might cure cancer" — these have nothing to do with how average consumers are using it, and you don't need to reject all machine learning to say it's absurd for schoolteachers to make worksheets with AI

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Sue Fletcher-Watson @suereviews.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

This survey on what it's like to hide parts of your identity is still open - particularly keen to hear from trans people who are not autistic please! But also open to: trans + autistic people cis + autistic people Link for full info and the survey itself is tinyurl.com/3jrfkate

This image is a recruitment advertisement for a survey study about gender identity and masking. It contains images of two people holding the trans pride flag and a QR code. The text on the advertisement states ‘participate in our survey and tell us about your experience of hiding your identity. To access the survey or learn more about the study please use the QR code below or follow this link. The link is https://tinyurl.com/3jrfkate. The main researcher for this project is Mark Somerville, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh.

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Kristen Bottema-Beutel @kbottemabeutel.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Ah yes, Steven Pinker, who once wrote "Together with robots and chimpanzees, people with autism remind us that cultural learning is possible only because neurologically normal people have innate equipment to accomplish it."

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Plenty to reflect about re: the Arday affair, but I'm going to repeat this one thing. The playbook the right used here is effective even though it's not especially sophisticated, as it relies on the audience to do the dirty work. I've been calling it "Trojan horse propaganda", let's go with that. 1/

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Saeed Jones @theferocity.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

“Obsessing over whether a person of color deserves a spot prevents everyone from noticing that white people get and keep positions without needing to be impressive at all.”

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Septima P. Snark @drsubini.blacksky.app · 14/08/2026

This. And I'm already seeing people erase his disability in real time. This isn't only about his Blackness, the NYT made a huge deal of his disability and reading level. This is how racism & ableism work together, they intersect to harm all Black people and target Black disabled people for death.

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 14/08/2026

This is the coverage of Arday **just in the Telegraph** in the UK. This is only the first four pages of results, just in one outlet.

Ä14
Jason Arday found dead
2 hours ago — Mr Arday was found •unresponsive• at an address in Battersea. south London. on Froy
afternoon. He was uter pronounced dead at the scene. A Read rnore
Jason Arday says he was an illiterate, mute child. His .
6 hours ago — Jason Arday says he was an i&erate. mute child. Cambridge's youngest-ever black
professor in 2023. Arday attended from the age of four to 11
r— mm-WI 3
A PhD is no longer a sign of brilliance — take it from Dr Arday
1 day aeo — Juon Arday resigns from the Unwersity of Cambrdge after The Telegraph reports he had
falseb• claimed to have pubåshed a book
We are all Jason Arday now
S days ago — Jason Arday resons from the University of Cambridge after The Telegraph reports he had
falsew cGimed to have published a book Aug 7.2028. Read more
Cambridge professor claimed he was on Seven Up..
2 Aug 2026 — He was not bom until 1985. Prof Arday is at the centre of a row about academk
plagiarism after The Tekgragh that he had been accused
The Jason Arday 'memoir' that now appears to be more .
7 days ago — Instead of tales of triumph over adversity. the now-fomer Cambridge professors
autob"qraphy is a case study in self-rnythobgising,
Arday failed to mention 'months-long coma' in autobiography
8 days ago — Jason Arday toz publishers he was k•ft a three-month coma fohwhg a car gash. but
never wrote about the ordeal his memoirs_
Jason Arday is living proof that you reap what you sow
6 Aug 2028 — The Cambridge professor feed plagiarism alegations and made fantastical clä'ns about
his life. so what did he expect woUz happen? Read rmre
ÄIO
Arday 'accused student of Miite privilege' after she
4 days ago — Forrner Cambrdge professor alleged* htplied that Roehamptm student was racist after
cornplaint about essay SOOre.
Jason Arday is rnerely a symptom of the Leffs corruption
Aug 2026 — Lab-curs on school standards is on the same toxic assumptions that created his
academic career.
Cambridge hired Arday after 'listening to black stu…

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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

its worth asking whether this ending would have happened without the endless, gleeful, hunting and dismantling of Arday's choices on Twitter, where he represented all the sins of DEI made flesh for a range of assorted disgruntled academics who once had to go to a training and hated it

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Michelle Dawson @autismcrisis.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

"Despite meaningful advances in reproducibility of biological factors associated with autism, clinically actionable biomarkers remain elusive"--review, COIs www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... note: "a biomarker is not a measure of how an individual feels, functions, or survives"

sciencedirect.com

Recent progress of large-scale biomarker consortia and paths forward in biomarker development for autism

Autism presents significant challenges for clinical research and biomarker development due to behavioral heterogeneity and reliance on clinician- and …

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Joshua Bowman @thalesdisciple.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Working on an A.I. policy for my calculus classes. Decided to be upfront about the current situation with LLMs and to give a heartfelt explanation for why the course still matters.

Al policy

Context

Artificial Intelligence, or "A.l.," Is a broad term used to refer to several different kinds of technologies. The kind most relevant to this class are Large Language Models (LLMs), which use mathematics to analyze large amounts of human-produced text and then generate new text that simulates what a human might write in response to prompts or questions. Some examples of LLMs are OpenAl's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and Google's Gemini.

Current LLMs can provide a solution to any calculus problem I give you. So why should we work on them, you might ask? Here's the thing: for the most part, the problems were already solved anyway. Calculus as a subject is nearly 400 years old. It has reached into virtually every modern scientific and economic field. And while I would like to believe that I have crafted a few new problems with some small amount of originality tailored to this class, for the most part I have curated a collection of exercises drawn from my years of teaching calculus. Those exercises come from textbooks, workshops, friends, and other fields of study, as well as my own invention.
And they nearly all have known solutions, often with fairly standard approaches.
Before A.I. became widely available, you could find those solutions in another textbook, or from a friend's notes, or through a repository on the internet.

The point of this class is not necessarily to solve problems that have never been solved before. It is for you to develop habits of thinking that are used by mathematicians, scientists, and policymakers-to develop a sort of mental toolbox that can be applied to new problems. If along the way you happen to find a new way of solving one of the class exercises, that's great! I am constantly learning new things from my students. But you will be bereft of discovery if you rely on a LLM for solutions to the calculus problems before you. Here I mean the discovery of having your own realizations, crystallizing your own internal understanding, claiming the knowledge in a way that cannot be taken away from you.
That ownership is what I want for you, and that is what the course is built around.

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victor @notnaughtknot.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

people say you should ask "what are your questions" instead of "any questions" to presuppose it's normal to have questions. that's why during talks I always end with "what are your compliments?"

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Karen Graubart @kbgraubart.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Cambridge prof committed plagiarism, accused of sexual assault, still on the job and the press has barely noticed.

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Autistic Realms (Helen Edgar) @autisticrealms.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Gosh it is a day for some epic research! Sivathasan, S., Moravvej, M., @drmbothapsych.bsky.social & Bottema-Beutel, K. (2026). Aligning Counseling Psychology with Neurodiversity Scholarship: A Call to Action. The Counseling Psychologist, 54(5), 809-834. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

journals.sagepub.com

Aligning Counseling Psychology with Neurodiversity Scholarship: A Call to Action - Shalini Sivathasan, Maryam Moravvej, Monique Botha, Kristen Bottema-Beutel, 2026

Neurodivergent people are a notably underserved population in counseling psychology, which is an urgent concern given that they experience elevated rates of men...

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Kristen Bottema-Beutel @kbottemabeutel.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

The primary reason I desk reject systematic reviews and meta-analyses is because researchers either do not conduct quality assessments (e.g., no risk of bias assessments in quant research), or do not mention the quality assessment findings in their discussion. 1/1

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

"criticizing AI use in journalism or other creative industries is classist" NO IT IS NOT there is a class that benefits enormously from cognitive surrender, epistemic warfare, and the enclosure of all hitherto produced culture and it is NOT THE WORKING CLASS

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Autism: The International Journal of Research & Practice. @journalautism.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Call for papers for our special issue on Autism and the Criminal Justice System: Research, Practice, and Policy Perspectives. Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1 November 2026 Intended SI Publication: 2027 For more information: journals.sagepub.com/page/aut/cal...

journals.sagepub.com

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 04/08/2026

Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia It's been a year & people tell me they've changed their mind, feel safer now to sign, etc. So I'm sharing it again for them. We're almost at 2k & anybody from anywhere can add their names. openletter.earth/open-letter-...

We call upon you to:

• Resist the introduction of AI in our own software systems, from Microsoft to OpenAI to Apple. It is not in our interests to let our processes be corrupted and give away our data to be used to train models that are not only useless to us, but also harmful.

• Ban AI use in the classroom for student assignments, in the same way we ban essay mills and other forms of plagiarism. Students must be protected from de-skilling and allowed space and time to perform their assignments themselves.

• Cease normalising the AI hype and the lies which are prevalent in the technology industry's framing of these technologies. The technologies do not have the advertised capacities and their adoption puts students and academics at risk of violating ethical, legal, scholarly, and scientific standards of reliability, sustainability, and safety.

• Fortify our academic freedom as university staff to enforce these principles and standards in our classrooms and our research as well as on the computer systems we are obliged to use as part of our work. We as academics have the right to our own spaces.

• Sustain critical thinking on AI and promote critical engagement with technology on a firm academic footing. Scholarly discussion must be free from the conflicts of interest caused by industry funding, and reasoned resistance must always be an option.

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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

I have, with my own eyes, watched my tax dollars in the form of missiles as they hit buildings inhabited by civilians. I'd much prefer subsidizing a grocery story I don't use.

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