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Patrick De Oliveira

@plso.bsky.social
823 followers 385 following 660 posts

| Historian of France, technology, and cities | e/ludd | 🇧🇷🇺🇸🇫🇷🇸🇬🇪🇸 | You can find out more about me at www.patrickdeoliveira.com | ICE is a terrorist organization |

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 11h
the transformation of learning institutions into lifestyle providers, etc. And, of course, the crisis is further exacerbated by the feckless university leaders (with some noble exceptions), who have made it very clear that large remuneration packages certainly don't buy courage and integrity.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 11h
but also due to the even weaker institutional position universities now find themselves in—caused by the neoliberal-driven austerity that long preceded the current administration's tactics of holding funding hostage, the massive campaign from the right to delegitimize higher ed, ....
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 11h
Academic freedom in the U.S. has arguably reached a new nadir—maybe worse than the 50s. This is not only due to the scale and range of the assault on higher ed, which is targeting everything (individuals' views on Gaza, DEI initiatives, the curriculum, collaborative research with other countries)...
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 16h
The Daily put out some nice @rlspang.bsky.social bait this weekend! www.nytimes.com/2026/10/04/p...
nytimes.com
The Restaurant Industry Is Broken. Can It Be Fixed?
The creative — and sometimes radical — solutions that restaurant owners are trying to address an industry in crisis.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 18h
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
This is about a catastrophic of an outcome one could have—bar Bolsonaro taking it in the first round. Senate and governorships swept by the far right. Hard to see a path for Lula to overcome the gap with Bolsonaro in the run-off...
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Spain twitter game at a whole other level.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
There's a long discussion going on in my mentions about whether or not "LLMs" (quotes explained in a sec) apparently getting mostly* correct answers to arithmetic questions is "inconsistent" with the stochastic parrots metaphor. >>
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"Concerns about LLMs are overrated. You can just evaluate students with 45-minute oral assessments." Says the elite SLAC professor who on average has 14 students per semester.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Combining a Brazil-rich background with a midwestern-middle class one means that while you just assume all homes should come with a cleaner, ironically, now that you can occasionally afford one, your self-consciousness paralyzes you from hiring them unless you get the house clean for when they come.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Tech bros trying to "fix" society.
static.klipy.com
Pat A Mat: Pat's Hammering Troubles
ALT: Pat A Mat: Pat's Hammering Troubles
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Imagine the @nytimes.com in the late 1940s getting a sit down interview with Oppenheimer and centering the discussion on his fondness for porkpie hats. (To be fair to Oppenheimer, he was a much clearer ethical figure than Zuckerberg will ever be.)
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Imagine the @nytimes.com in the late 1940s getting a sit down interview with Oppenheimer and centering the discussion on his fondness for porkpie hats. (To be fair to Oppenheimer, he was a much clearer ethical figure than Zuckerberg will ever be.)
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Which is why you get absurd proposals (like my own), where you're trying to pitch a bunch of unnecessary/unrealistic deliverables for a year-long fellowship offering 40k. I'd be thrilled if I just got half of that for a course buyout and some money to spend a couple of months in the archives.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
A framework in which no one ends up getting sustained time to dedicate to a in-depth monograph. So instead we get a a few articles that get recycled, another mediocre edited collection, and a website whose link is dead 6 months after the funding ended.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
And ERC grants are largely geared toward collaborative work, which, as we know, is not especially embedded as a practice in the humanities. So then we get these short-term research groups.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
As in even if you get an individual external fellowship it can be a challenge to use that for course buyouts, since they don't end up counting toward the institutional funding data (and the uni doesn't get to reap the "overhead costs")
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Also true in the European ecosystem (perhaps even more so, since that approach has been dominant here for even longer). ERC grants or bust, basically.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The boring adage goes if you're not a liberal at 20 you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at 40 you have no head. But I'm fascinated by how so many of my friends/colleagues (and myself!) have been steadily moving to the left as they age. Contrast that with the younglings' reactionary turn.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Odds that he's divorced / soon-to-be divorced?
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
You know it's bleak when those seeking to be more Catholic than the pope are steering what remains of the education commons into ruins.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
As universities become obsolete institutions by embracing their transformation into meaningless credential factories disguised (at best) as utilitarian jobs training, it is worth rescuing an observation made by the supreme utilitarian, John Stuart Mill (who also happened to be rector of St Andrews):
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Thanks!
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I'm curious. Do people know what university's allocate toward marketing on average in their operating budget?
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Ah yes. Another day experimenting with ChatGPT for research, another day being pinpointed to a neonazi website as a trusted source.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Yung Lean and every single kid in the original would've beat the living crap out of these people (the tech overlords and the losers who think this kind of AI cosslop™ is cool). www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6_m...
youtube.com
GENER8ION - STORM starring Yung Lean
YouTube video by GENER8ION
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Not all heroes wear capes.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
For a class on "Critical Thinking." Speaking of which... are there any good histories out there of "critical thinking" (as a concept, as a method, as a educational policy goal, etc)?
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Teaching MBA students sure produces some weird ass artifacts
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Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Wrote a short weird little book about far-right death threats against me + my fam, fleeing our home, Trumpism, + my experience as a Jew amidst the resurgence of fascism + genocide in Gaza Coming January 2027 from @melvillehouse.bsky.social mhpbooks.com/books/unpunc... #NoPasarán #FreePalestine
“Unpunctuated Death threats: Notes from a fascist present. Author of Antifa Mark Bray.” Text on a black and white image of the author from the chin down.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I made something.
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Gremliny Nussboo @emilynussbaum.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Most accurate portrait of modern culture currently available
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Boy, Harvard leadership sure is trying to devalue a real education and embarrass the university as much as possible, isn't it? www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...
thecrimson.com
Harvard Humanities Faculty Push Back on Deming’s Call for AI Use in Writing Courses | The Harvard Crimson
Harvard faculty in the humanities and social sciences expressed broad concern over an email Harvard College Dean David J. Deming sent students Wednesday suggesting that artificial intelligence be inte...
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Something that has seemed pretty evident for a while, but having a "Nobel Prize"-winning economist formalize it is 🧨 🧨 🧨 🧨 🧨
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Forthcoming Acemoglu: CEOs with business degrees lead to lower wages and suppression of the labor share, while not actually producing higher output. In short, rent-extraction for shareholders, rather than real value creation. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
aeaweb.org
Eclipse of Rent-Sharing: The Effects of Managers’ Business Education on Wages and the Labor Share in the US and Denmark
(Forthcoming Article) - We provide evidence that CEOs with a business degree reduce wages and the labor share in the US and Denmark. Firms appointing business managers are not on differential trends a...
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Hear hear.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
That baby has better balance than a mountain goat.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
static.klipy.com
Mando: This Is The Way
ALT: Mando: This Is The Way
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I'm gonna go ahead and assume there was a whole lot of lead in the Warmke household tap water. #IYKYK
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Found this amongst my tabs and, um, inflation since 1986 has risen more than 200%, so this is basically the equivalent to a 70% budgetary cut. But yeah, let's spend all the moneys on data centers.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
New Blackboard course banner.
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Stacy Fahrenthold @sfahrenthold.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
AHA hired a lobbying firm with an extensive client list in Israel's occupations. And asked them how to squash advocacy by its own members working in/on the Middle East. It's bad. But It's clockable bc this is also what universities also do to crush dissent, discipline faculty in contested fields.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Kind of hilarious that as Americans face an epidemic of uncontrollable explosive shits due to the Trump administration slashing health standards, that same administration still manages to surge the price of toilet paper.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Numerous cases of faculty losing their jobs for expressing opposition to the genocide in Gaza, for teaching/researching about gender, etc., and the first letter dude chooses to sign is the one expressing support for the self-proclaimed racist who thinks Black people shouldn't be in academia.
static.klipy.com
Batman Thinking: Interesting...
ALT: Batman Thinking: Interesting...
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
For me any reference to "singularity" just brings to mind the image of infinite wanking gestures.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
This is a must read: newsletter.thedriftmag.com/p/racism-and...
newsletter.thedriftmag.com
Racism and labor at Bates: the other side of the story
Andrew Baker responds to Tyler Austin Harper
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
And not at all surprising that many of those same people stand to gain $$$ by contorting themselves in that manner.
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
"LLMs don't make students dumb. The problem is flawed assessments/lack of AI literacy/or any explanation that would let AI companies off the hook to justify partnerships with them and their full incorporation into the educational ecosystem."
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Many in the LLMs and education discourse seem to be contorting themselves in a similar way to people in the gun and violence discourse. "Guns don't kill people. The problem is bad people/bad training/or any explanation that would let manufacturers off the hook to avoid stricter regulations."
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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
You motherf***ing bedbug.
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