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Rory Solomon

@rorshock.bsky.social
1.9K followers 393 following 623 posts

Mesh networks, media infrastructure, software engineering, ham/CB radio (KD2QGX); Assistant Professor of Media & Cultural Studies at Macalester College; “very clear & cool, simple but intricate”; he/him

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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
First word, top banner, front page, Sunday edition. Brutal
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
In 2004 I volunteered with EMILY’s List to campaign for Kerry in hanging chad country Florida On that long sad car ride home I made some comment like “oh well it won’t affect our lives directly anyway” & got a talking to from a car full of queer women. A humbling, educational & formative experience
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
“We’ve been sharpening knives & testing them on our flesh. They’re starting to pierce our skin. Should we continue sharpening & testing on ourselves? ‘A brutal bloodbath is imminent & we don’t know how to prevent it’ said Knife CEO while sharpening a 12 inch blade.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/s...
nytimes.com
Anatomy of an Autonomous Attack: 5 Alarming A.I. Capabilities (Gift Article)
When OpenAI’s agents went rogue in July, they demonstrated ingenuity and drive beyond what many experts imagined — a dangerous harbinger of what such bots could do in the future.
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goggle @ayures.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
theintercept.com/2025/01/28/p...
theintercept.com
Proton Mail Says It’s “Politically Neutral” While Praising Republican Party
The “privacy-first” company surprised its user base when CEO Andy Yen lauded Trump on social media.
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Andrew Lilley Brinker @alilleybrinker.com · 31/08/2026
Hey @1password.bsky.social, time to change course.
alilleybrinker.com
1Password Supports the Ethnic Cleansing of Europe — Andrew Lilley Brinker
1Password has committed $300,000 to Omarchy. This is unacceptable and must be rescinded.
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
It’s the 𝘛𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘡𝘰𝘯𝘦 episode where the guy wishes anything to beat the deceased pool champion of all time, so the champ comes back to life & loses on purpose, forcing the new guy to suffer a restless afterlife always having to return to face any challenger. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Game_...
en.wikipedia.org
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I’m always here for a David Brooks takedown — the guy is just so eminently takedownable. Total vaporware punditry & Reader’s Digest thinker.
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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 17/08/2026
This is IT! “The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy” drops tomorrow (8/18) 1st week sales are crucial to success. So: Give the tech fascists hell, make “The Nerd Reich” sell! Big things coming! Be a part of this moment—please buy it wherever you get your books.
Cover of the nerd Reich book coming August 18
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
You mean the big brains over at Amazon can't figure out how to scan a book without destroying it? They could if they wanted to!
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Some apt words introduced in print the year of my birth according to Merriam-Webster: attention deficit disorder, BFF, bodice ripper, dramedy, electroweak, enterprise zone, gap year, hepatitis C, off-grid, open mic, paragliding, pay-per-view, techno-thriller, telematics, trash talk, uncanny valley
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dorian @doriantaylor.com · 23/07/2026
aside: an anecdote i like from computer history is how sql was originally conceived so suits could pull their own reports this is laughable for lots of reasons but the particular one i want to surface is the fact that the whole point of being a suit is somebody else pulls the reports for you
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Tragedy and farce: Shock & awe … Shock & aw shucks
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Leigh Claire La Berge @lclaberge.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
"Full AI Communism," a phrase from the Wall St Journal this morning on whether China's vision of AI as a public good or Wall Street's as a private product will win the AI race. Good title for a book!
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Why do we as a society even tolerate private equity? Just an entire industry premised on the idea of making everything else worse
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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
A really interesting piece on reducing AI cheating in the classroom from a Professor of English and former Dean of Humanities at University of Utah. The solutions? Smaller classes, lower teaching loads for faculty, and in-person classes.
hollisrobbinsanecdotal.substack.com
How to limit unauthorized AI use in the classroom
A handy rule
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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Maybe if we stopped thinking of ourselves as so special and removed from broader labor dynamics, we'd actually have models for enacting the change we want to see.
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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Some responses to this post have been so defeatist, basically saying "admin will never change and there's no money so we're fucked." I wish faculty feeling this way had a little more humility. Union organizers in the past were beaten and killed, but they worked on. Let's take our lead from them.
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
TIL the CIA World Factbook was discontinued this past February. RIP. You got me through many games of Carmen Sandiego. It seems OpenFactBook may carry on its legacy, offering accessible geographical info with less imperialist ties openfactbook.org
openfactbook.org
OpenFactBook - World Factbook Alternative | Country Data & Statistics
The community-maintained successor to the CIA World Factbook. Free comprehensive data on 260+ countries: geography, demographics, government, economy, and more.
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The A.V. Club @avclub.com · 08/07/2026
You can, and almost certainly should, opt out of being part of Muse Image's new experiment in making the internet a worse and more invasive place.
avclub.com
Instagram about to start letting internet randos "remix" your photos with AI
Instagram about to start letting internet randos "remix" your photos with AI
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jf789.bsky.social @jf789.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Now, we need to stop private equity from buying hospitals. It's a disaster waiting to happen, if not already here.
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Stephen Miller must be tried
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Educating myself about campus culture at my new employer & really enjoying the excellent journalism in the student newspaper, The Mac Weekly. themacweekly.com
themacweekly.com
The Mac Weekly
The Student News Site of Macalester College
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
VR, AI, face computers … How many times is FB going to choke on poorly regurgitated old tech fantasies before people realize that maybe the rapey webpage guy doesn’t actually have any good ideas? finance.yahoo.com/technology/a...
finance.yahoo.com
Zuckerberg Admits That AI Is Not Working Out the Way He Imagined
Shocker.
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Please let’s all start using this coinage and let this be his most lasting legacy in the public consciousness … that and the lesson learned to never make this kind of compromise again.
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Friends & colleagues, I'm very pleased to announce that this fall I'll be starting a new job at Macalester College as Assistant Professor of Media & Cultural Studies. Events at my current institution haven't left much space for sharing good news, but I hope we can also celebrate light in dark times
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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Le Guin on the idea that there is a secret to getting good at writing.
I will dispose of the first myth as quickly as possible. The “secret” is skill. If you haven’t learned how to do something, the people who have may seem to be magicians, possessors of mysterious secrets. In a fairly simple art, such as making pie crust, there are certain teachable “secrets” of method that lead almost infallibly to good results; but in any complex art, such as housekeeping, piano-playing, clothes-making, or story-writing, there are so many techniques, skills, choices of method, so many variables, so many “secrets,” some teachable and some not, that you can learn them only by methodical, repeated, long-continued practice — in other words, by work.
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Definitely one of the more interesting & intellectually dishonest figures in US politics. According to this review he manages to celebrate the US cause in WWII & endorse fascism. Elsewhere Trump's VP has the audacity to criticize Bill Clinton's "moral failings" www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | JD Vance Is Worried
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AAUP @aaup.org · 25/06/2026
Are the many “Intellectual Freedom Centers” being placed on college campuses nationwide really just mandatory ideological indoctrination centers? 🤔 #AcademicSky
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
They’re talking about abundance but we’d rather have a Bund
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
How many Jews shouting ‘genocide’ will it take until everyone understands that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism?
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Heather Anne Campbell @heathercampbell.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
can’t believe a narcissist is being so publicly humiliated by a reflecting pool
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Brett "Solidarity 2026" Banditelli @banditelli.org · 24/06/2026
I mean without occupy there was no Bernie 2016 and without Bernie 2016 there was no dsa as it is today and without dsa as it is today there's no Mamdani. Highly unlikely an AOC, but also Bernie 2016 on that one.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
The rise of larger vehicles like SUVs and pickup trucks, with their taller hoods and larger blind zones, has contributed to a 75% increase in pedestrian and cyclist deaths since 2009. Until we design better streets and ban these vehicles, people outside these vehicles will keep dying.
nytimes.com
The Deadly Rise of Giant Trucks and S.U.V.s (Gift Article)
The vehicles on American roads have grown larger — and they are killing thousands more pedestrians, a Times investigation found.
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Josh Shepperd @joshshepperd.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
To the “AI is useful” crowd, it might certainly be in theory, but we can’t ignore that it is being shaped by right wing extractive logics mired in cultural hierarchal commitments, that have very little interest in a utility that serves a broader social good.
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Texas Conference of the AAUP @texasaaup.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
“The AAUP and AFT condemn the federal indictment of fifteen Minnesotans—including Erik Davis, former president of the Macalester College AAUP chapter—for defending their community during the violent ICE occupation of Minneapolis earlier this year.” www.aaup.org/news/indictm...
aaup.org
Indictment of Minnesotans for ICE Protests a Threat to Democracy
The AAUP and AFT condemn the federal indictment of fifteen Minnesotans for defending their community during the violent ICE occupation of Minneapolis earlier this year.
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Absolutely legendary video. It’s incredible they got this whole rap crew to so many iconic Bay Area spots. Kids today will watch and assume it’s AI or at best green screen
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Incredible. My students & I experiment with commands like these in my Radical Software class when we craft keystroke injection attacks, scripting that pretends to be a human user. Here this is using a CAPTCHA, supposedly the test of a real human at the keyboard, to mímic the scripted attack
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
American political discourse is written on an Etch-a-Sketch and the goal of every political campaign is to tickle the populace so hard they inadvertently shake it clean
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
The professor made it hard for the guy to be there
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Robert Komaniecki @komaniecki.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Feels like a lot of STEM guys believed coding was the hardest thing a human could do, and assumed that once somebody invented an AI that can code, it would follow naturally that the AI can do all of the lesser non-coding things that other dumber people were doing
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
This thread pretty well tracks what has been happening at @thenewschool.bsky.social so far with its “Center for American Experience”
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
MADPA Make Americans Drink Poop Again
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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 30/05/2026
Sure are a lot of ways to succeed in academia by making yourself…useful.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/05/2026
Here’s the story, and it’s not good: www.newschoolfreepress.com/2026/04/16/i...
newschoolfreepress.com
Inside the Center for the American Experience, The New School’s controversial new “nonpartisan” hub — Part 1 - The New School Free Press
This story was updated on April 17 at 8:23 a.m. Introduction The Center for the American Experience (CAE), a new center promising “nonpartisan dialogue and fearless debate,” is coming to The New Schoo...
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Paul N. Edwards @avastmachine.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
My great colleague and former student, History professor Dr Emma Park, was summarily fired to make room for this bullshit.
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cass @cassiusa.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
As of this morning, @thenewschool.bsky.social is de facto replacing its History department with a “Center for the American Experience,” which is funded by private and undisclosed donors. The New School has been New Colleged, and there’s no GOP to blame here. Our anti-fascist identity is over.
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
“19 full-time faculty members, 10 of them tenured, were told… that they’d been laid off… Dozens more have taken early-retirement or buyout offers… Among those laid off Monday was Sanjay G. Reddy, a professor of economics + prominent critic of the university’s financial management.”
chronicle.com
‘It’s Just Been Agony’: Facing a Big Deficit, the New School Begins Layoffs
One of New York’s most prominent universities has handed layoff notices to about 15 percent of its employees, marking its latest measure to rectify a $48-million budget deficit.
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Rory Solomon @rorshock.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Goonies 3 is going to be a bunch of kids trying to find an uncle’s old USB key rumored to have a long lost bitcoin on it
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Chica Marx @mckenziewark.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Infuriating that we don’t know the criteria for firing FT faculty at #thenewschool.
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Maggie Harrison Dupré @mharrisondupre.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
NEW: People are being involuntarily committed to psychiatric care facilities — and even ending up arrested or jailed — after becoming fixated on ChatGPT and other chatbots and spiraling into psychosis. futurism.com/commitment-j...
Futurism

MIND GAMES
/ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into "ChatGPT Psychosis"

“I don't know what's wrong with me, but something is very bad — I'm very scared, and I need to go to the hospital.”
JUN 28, 9:00 AM EDT
 
by
 
MAGGIE HARRISON DUPRÉ
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