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SB

@sbridger.bsky.social
565 followers 600 following 292 posts

Tired history prof, #histsci writer of sorts, font of regrets. Author of Scientists at War: The Ethics of Cold War Weapons Research (www.amazon.com/Scientists-War-Ethic…) Was @bridgebot at the other place.

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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 29/09/2026
Norway has solution to this actually, stay at home parents can get their share of the public daycare subsidy as cash, that way parents are not pushed one way or the other. the problem of course is virtually no one on the center or right actually gives a shit about parents
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Nils Gilman @nilsgilman.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This year’s El Niño is likely to be the largest in at least 1,000 years #NothingToSeeHere #MoveRightAlong www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
‘Jaw-dropping’ El Niño bursts through temperature record months before peak
‘Godzilla-level’ phenomenon is supercharging the climate crisis and will have a huge impact on communities across the world
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SB @sbridger.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Maybe there'll be a street fight between Ari Emanuel and the worm-eaters vs Joe Rogan and the ivermectin-antiworm-eaters and they'll cancel each other out
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cmrn knzlmn @ckunzelman.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
If you are a graduate student in the humanities (construed as broadly as possible), what is the MOST EXCITING book published in the last five years to you? Please repost if you’re not a graduate student!
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SB @sbridger.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
They do! And you, too, can join the Paulinella Consortium: www.vanettenlab.org/paulinella-c...
vanettenlab.org
Paulinella Consortium — Van Etten lab at UMD
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Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Making the US dirtier and less globally competitive www.reuters.com/world/trump-...
reuters.com
US to finalize sharply lower vehicle fuel economy standards
The US Transportation Department on Monday will finalize sharply lower vehicle fuel economy standards through 2031, reversing a push by the Biden administration to force automakers to build more elect...
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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
As of today, the CDC has changed (reverted) their Covid guidance to make the vaccine recommended for all people over 18. In addition to being a smart public health move, this recommendation also means insurance must cover it. Read more here: www.cdc.gov/covid/hcp/va... Listen to a breakdown here:
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
there is so much fascinating work on "cute" especially in the past decade, but especially how much it permits us to ignore and facilitate
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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
new favourite Smaug dropped
the 1968 "pleasure in reading" edition of the hobbit featuring an adorable bright pink Smaug torching the inhabitants of lake town
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Sam Barlow 🔥 @mrsambarlow.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Can we please go back to the old internet where Search was a bunch of efficient SQL queries? Please, I'm so done with this
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 24/09/2026
When you look at what Hamilton has done, you see how tiresome and pointless the “why is nobody majoring in the humanities” handwringing is. You need to invest and create a vibrant, research-forward humanities ecosystem on campus. Nobody’s going to want to major in disciplines that act dead.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 24/09/2026
Democrats control the entirety of the state government of Massachusetts. Why aren’t they funding the humanities at MA public universities? Why aren’t they doing what Republicans in Florida did with the Hamilton School?
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Yair Wallach @yairwallach.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The Knesset barred today the only two Palestinian led parties from running in the coming election. According to an overwhelming majority in the Knesset, the constitutional meaning of a Jewish State is a state where Palestinian citizens cannot run for parliament.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
I don’t think most people realize how bad this will be for the world.
bbc.co.uk
El Niño set to be 'strongest in living memory', says Met Office
Scientists say the growing El Niño weather pattern is an "unprecedented event" and means 2027 is likely to be the world's hottest year on record.
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Everything the pro-Trump billionaire Ellison family will now own: Paramount+ CBS CNN Showtime HBO Warner Bros TNT TBS MTV DC Studios Nickelodeon Comedy Central And more... With this comes the power to decide which stories get told, but more importantly, which stories DON'T get told. Shameful.
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R Subramanian (he/him) @rsubramanian.com · 17/09/2026
"NPR tracked down equipment and found that some of it was auctioned, donated or thrown in the trash... NASA donated hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of radio communications equipment to Capitol Technology University without the knowledge of the scientists who used it"
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Mary Lewis @profmarylewis.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Excellent oped in @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social by my @harvard.edu colleague Jill Lepore. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...
But of course, the machine conversation is not free. It comes at the cost of our common life together as teachers, learners, and researchers, colleagues, mentors, and friends. Not to mention, supervising student researchers is our job.
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Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff @concernedjfaculty.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Over 300 Haverford College students and alumni signed a letter criticizing Haverford's legal settlement with the Deborah Project, which appears to single out "Zionism" as a protected religious identity. www.haaretz.com/us-news/2026...
haaretz.com
Haverford College's policy stifles criticism of Israel, open letter warns
Haverford College's new policies following an antisemitism lawsuit seem to treat Zionism as a protected identity, signatories say
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Katie Bergh @katiebergh.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Food insecurity didn't go away just because they stopped collecting the data. (Our chart will not be going away, either.)
Chart showing the prevalence of food insecurity among all households and households with children over time, with no data shown for 2025. Title: Food Insecurity Data Not Released for 2025; USDA Canceled Data Collection After 2025 Republican Reconciliation Law's Historic SNAP Cuts
Subtitle: USDA canceled the nation's longest running and most consistent measure of food insecurity, taking away a crucial measure to track the mounting impacts of the harmful 2025 Republican reconciliation law
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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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SB @sbridger.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Still from the movie Lady Bird in which Laurie Metcalf's character says "Money is not life's report card"
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Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Volunteer moderators are a big part of why some corners of the internet still feel human, writes Sarah Gilbert of Cornell's Citizens and Technology Lab. Without them, she argues, we face intertwined crises of knowledge and community.
techpolicy.press
Millions of Volunteers Are Keeping the Internet Human. For Now.
We’re never going back to the human internet we had. But we can hope for a better internet than the AI-dominated one that is emerging, writes Sarah Gilbert.
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Seth Rockman @sethrockman.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This is a big one: Brown University is searching for the next director of the Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Please help us identify excellent candidates to lead this signature program into the future. Please write me with ideas; please share in your networks; please apply.
networks.h-net.org
Brown University - Professor and Director of the Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice | H-Net
1. Academic Accomplishment. We seek a scholar with a strong scholarly record, including excellence in both research and teaching, appropriate for appointment at the level of full professor in a social science, humanities, or arts department at Brown.
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SB @sbridger.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Anyway, as of this morning, this little identify-and-count-the-letters-in-a-word problem still hasn't been solved. AI still has fundamental engineering problems and very basic dysfunctionality:
Google AI text answering the prompt "how many rs in raspberry" with "There are 2 "r"s in the word raspberry (rasrberry)"
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PM2.5 Kills ~9 Million People Each Year Worldwide @tkovach.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
"OpenAI is hiring hundreds of contractors who read a massive stream of real users’ ChatGPT prompts, with the prompts sometimes including sensitive personal information, 404 Media has learned. The prompts these people review can include whole conversations between users and the chatbot."
404media.co
Inside ‘Project Lily’: The Humans Reading Your ChatGPT Chats
Humans are reading ChatGPT users’ prompts to improve OpenAI’s models, and those chats can include sensitive, personal information, according to leaked internal documents and real prompts seen by 404 M...
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SB @sbridger.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Blunt, earnest, & thoughtful MIT report on numerous deleterious effects of AI on student learning, with recommendations for teachers and universities (more in-person activities and assignments, rethinking grades, etc.). aiandeducation.mit.edu/report/
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 14/09/2026
Breaking News: The E.P.A. is said to be planning to announce that the U.S. will no longer limit climate pollution from power plants.
nyti.ms
E.P.A. Will Erase Limits on Climate Pollution From Power Plants
Generation of electricity is the second largest source of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases in the United States.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 14/09/2026
The only person in public service who has consistently made 100% sense on issues of "AI," which is why they hate her so much.
Law enforcers already have authority to charge companies and their CEOs for creating and releasing dangerous, unvetted, or defective products. We shouldn’t let discussions about new legal regimes distract from the fact that there’s no AI exemption from laws already on the books — a point 
@FTC
 emphasized repeatedly during my tenure.

1. There is an extensive set of laws that govern dangerous and defective products. For example, releasing unvetted AI models or agents can violate consumer protection laws. Shipping flawed AI tools without implementing adequate measures to detect and stop rogue or defective AI agents can be an “unfair or deceptive” act or practice under the FTC Act (and analogous state laws). And some state AGs are already exploring holding AI firms and their CEOs criminally liable when their models participate in criminal activity.

2. Existing laws also prohibit “unfair methods of competition.” This covers instances where AI firms appropriate the competitively sensitive information of their customers, including through tracking their use of various tools. It can also cover instances where firms pursue dangerous behavior, aware that doing so may compel rivals to do the same.As the Supreme Court has noted: “A method of competition which casts upon one's competitors the burden of the loss of business unless they will descend to a practice which they are under a powerful moral compulsion not to adopt, even though it is not criminal, was thought to involve the kind of unfairness at which the [unfair methods of competition] statute was aimed."

3. The highly concentrated and interconnected structure of these markets could be creating major risks and conflicts of interest. We had started investigating these partnerships and cross-investments across the stack (and released a preliminarily overview of some findings: https://ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-issues-staff-report-ai-partnerships-investments-study). 

Both federal and state enforcers should be scrutinizing these opaque relationships and inter-dependencies. We are already seeing how these relationships could undermine accountability. For example, OpenAI could face liability given the Hugging Face incident, but Hugging Face being bought up by Nvidia means that we’re unlikely to see it file a lawsuit over this — given Nvidia’s strong incentive to see OpenAI continue full speed ahead.4. As AI tools dramatically change the landscape of cybersecurity risks and hacks, all businesses should be doubling down on having core security protections in place. Firms that fail to invest in adequate data security measures or fix known vulnerabilities can also be breaking the law. A recent analysis showed that around 1/3 of Fortune 100 companies do not even have a way to notify them about security issues. During my 
@FTC
 tenure, we sued firms for poor data security practices and held CEOs liable when they were personally responsible.

https://this.weekinsecurity.com/dozens-of-americas-largest-companies-have-no-simple-way-to-report-security-flaws/

https://ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/10/ftc-takes-action-against-drizly-its-ceo-james-cory-rellas-security-failures-exposed-data-25-million

5. As policymakers consider new legal regimes, we should be looking to lessons from prior efforts to govern major sectors, such as banking and other networks, platforms, and utilities. Tools like structural separations, nondiscrimination, and supervision could be key, and there’s a rich history of what works and what doesn’t. But we can and must pursue any new efforts alongside enforcing existing laws.
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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
They're exposing our secrets! Israel’s Culture Minister Miki Zohar said Sunday he will work to revoke the citizenship of Oscar-winning filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor after their documentary “NAZA” won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. The film examines what it describes
haaretz.com
Israel's culture minister threatens to revoke citizenship of Gaza doc filmmakers
The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday. It reveals 'in detail the systems behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza' following the e...
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SB @sbridger.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
An apt poet for the grimness and grief today. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/b...
nytimes.com
Carolyn Forché on Her Favorite Books and New Poetry Collection, ‘Otherwhere’
“I haven’t finished it yet,” she says of the 20-volume gift from her husband. A new book, “Otherwhere,” collects 50 years of her poetry.
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SB @sbridger.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
There is so much to "never forget." costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human?...
From Brown University's Cost of War: "Costs of War research examines the human toll of U.S. military operations and spending, for U.S. service members, veterans, military contractors, and allies; and for civilians killed and displaced.

An estimated over 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001-2023. Of these, more than 432,000 were civilians. The number of people wounded or ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who died “indirectly,” as a result of wars’ destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure and the environment. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting."
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Dave Weigel @daveweigel.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Summer is over but I want to vent about an old man peeve: Sunscreen should be cream, not spray. I shouldn’t be inhaling your spray from five towels away. Spread that white gunk on, like our ancestors did.
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Dave Itzkoff @ditzkoff.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
how is this real
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Dave Itzkoff @ditzkoff.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
there's a teaser trailer and everything youtube.com/watch?v=GGJSRFWALTI&feature=youtu.be
youtube.com
You Can See Everything | Official Teaser HD | A24
YouTube video by A24
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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
The idea that classrooms are chiefly spaces for product testing, and that it is irresponsible pedagogy not to enforce this, is both cynical and vile, and “fuck off” is a cogent response from any professional educator to any non-teaching salescreep or tech-but-not-subject-matter expert who voices it.
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Keifer @dannyvegito.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
[guy who can’t fully remember that Gramsci quote] it’s Monster Time
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Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Shame on the 33 House Democrats who voted for an unconstitutional bill to block financial aid to any colleges or universities that support BDS. It's a solution in search of a problem (none currently do) and an assault on protected speech.
Jake Auchincloss (MA-04) 	Greg Landsman (OH-01) 	Kim Schrier (WA-08) 
Kathy Castor (FL-14) 	George Latimer (NY-16) 	Brad Sherman (CA-32) 
Gil Cisneros (CA-31) 	Susie Lee (NV-03) 	Darren Soto (FL-09) 
Jim Costa (CA-21) 	John Mannion (NY-22) 	Haley Stevens (MI-11) 
Joe Courtney (CT-02)	Jared Moskowitz (FL-23) 	Tom Suozzi (NY-03) 
Henry Cuellar (TX-28) 	Donald Norcross (NJ-01) 	Shri Thanedar (MI-13) 
Don Davis (NC-01) 	Jimmy Panetta (CA-19) 	Dina Titus (NV-01) 
Lois Frankel (FL-22) 	Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03) 	Ritchie Torres (NY-15) 
Laura Gillen (NY-04)	Josh Riley (NY-19) 	Juan Vargas (CA-52) 
Jared Golden (ME-02) 	Brad Schneider (IL-10) 	Eugene Vindman (VA-07) 
Vicente Gonzalez (TX-34)	Hillary Scholten (MI-03) 	Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-25)
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Jen Fifield @jenafifield.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
1/ Just in: An anonymous federal worker has filed a whistleblower disclosure warning that the U.S. Postal Service's attempt to create a system to regulate mail voting for the midterms has been "rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed." @propublica.org has the details 👇
Screenshot of the top of a whistleblower disclosure titled "USPS Rushed Implementation of New and Untested IT Systems Threatens U.S. Ballot Mail Delivery." Addressed to Senator Blumenthal, the first point details how the whistleblower has "significant concerns about the USPS's secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process for the creation and implementation of an entirely new and untested set of IT systems" intended for the 2026 midterms.
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Andromeda @ulveheksa.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Questionnaire by Wendell Berry
Questionnaire by Wendell Berry

1. How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade?
Please name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines, and works of art you would most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and the flag, how much of our beloved land are you willing to desecrate? List in the following spaces the mountains, rivers, towns, farms you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes, the energy sources, the kinds of security, for which you would kill a child. Name, please, the children whom you would be willing to kill.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
It's like a parody, but it's deadly serious; the Commerce Department (which includes Census, NOAA, and others) has outright deleted "don't alter or suppress scientific findings for political reasons" from its scientific integrity rules. Seriously.
Protecting against "inappropriate influence" is no longer a "hallmark" of scientific integrity

The Commerce Department updated its policy for promoting a "culture of scientific integrity" in January 2025, days before Trump's second inauguration.

A new Trump administration order bans the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis from using statistical “noise,” or data for fuzzing survey results, to protect people’s privacy in their statistics.

The 2025 version included bans on attempts to shape or interfere in data collection, statistical analysis and other scientific activities "against well-accepted scientific methods and theories or without scientific justification."

The department's policy, the 2025 version said, involves ensuring scientific findings at its agencies "are not suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes and are not subjected to inappropriate influence," as well as making sure there's "independent review of facilities, methodologies, and other scientific activities as appropriate to ensure scientific integrity."

That language is missing, however, in the Trump administration's revision of the policy, according to an NPR analysis of text posted on the Commerce Department's website.

And while the revision adopts a definition for "scientific integrity" that is similar to the previous version, it no longer says that "protection from inappropriate influence" is among the "hallmarks of scientific integrity."
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Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) @hansilowang.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
SCOOP: After the Census Bureau issued a highly unusual report tied to a President Trump-aligned think tank, the bureau’s parent agency, the Commerce Department, cut language banning political interference from its scientific integrity policy, @npr.org has learned www.npr.org/2026/08/31/n...
npr.org
Trump officials cut political interference ban after unusual Census Bureau report
After the Census Bureau issued a report tied to a Trump-aligned think tank, the bureau's parent agency cut language banning political interference from its scientific integrity policy, NPR learned.
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SB @sbridger.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
U.S. students at unis governed by the (deeply flawed) IHRA definition of antisemitism are forbidden from "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis." But here are former high-ranking Israeli military and defense officials--in Israel--making these allegations.
nytimes.com
These Generals Fought for Israel. Now They See ‘Jewish Terrorism’ as the Threat.
A growing number of former Israeli generals, intelligence officials and prime ministers are accusing settlers in the West Bank of committing ethnic cleansing with government support. “Once a society b...
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I’d never heard this version before. God, the emotion she puts into it. youtu.be/CEPUxpR64YE?...
youtu.be
Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
YouTube video by Dolly Parton - Topic
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SB @sbridger.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Excuse me while my head explodes that my university *library* has decided to end the practice of physical course reserves. Only e-books can be placed on reserve (a meaningless designation for an e-book).
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Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 26/08/2026
The Empire State Building went pink at exactly 9:25pm for Dolly Parton. Because of course they made it 9 to 5. That’s how you honor an icon. 🩷
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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 25/08/2026
Dolly Parton supported so many important causes, among them donating a million dollars to COVID vaccine research early in the pandemic, which saved millions of lives. She will always be remembered as a champion of the people.
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 24/08/2026
The real "administrative bloat" in education is the money that schools are being forced to fork over to tech vendors that can just keep jacking up their prices year after year, because it would cost even more to rebuild the systems and retrain the people that were built/trained on that tech.
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
cognitive sabotage, you can ban it extra credit to U Chicago for bans on professional AND undergrad programs; smart SLACs are going to market AI free campuses soon chicagomaroon.com/53262/news/s...
chicagomaroon.com
Sosc Core to Institute AI Ban, Technology-Free Classrooms This Fall
All social science Core classes will transition to an “analog” approach for the upcoming academic year, restricting in-classroom technology use and banning AI-assisted writing and grading for students...
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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
(The loss of search function is a vastly vastly vastly more damaging thing to information equity and social progress than research papers being paywalled and yet it’s getting a fraction of the indignation)
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