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Tom Mullaney

@tommullaney.bsky.social
3.3K followers 2K following 1.1K posts

Tom Mullaney (he/him) teaches high school Social Studies in the Philadelphia suburbs. 🌐 tommullaney.com 📰 criticalinkling.com No Bitcoin, Crypto, or AI hype.

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Reposted by Tom Mullaney
Dan Meyer @ddmeyer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Teachers and students have different jobs, yes, but both exist in a social compact that says, "We will both bring the HEAT here. No weak stuff." And with AI lesson plans & grading, kids increasingly see their teachers as bringing weak stuff.
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"...We couldn't imagine that people would want lots and lots of synthetic text because it's just so patently useless." - @emilymbender.bsky.social on LLMs. #EduSky www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z7o...
youtube.com
The Two Words the AI Industry Hates More Than Anything
YouTube video by Blood in the Machine
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Looking forward to listening to this conversation @bcmerchant.bsky.social and @emilymbender.bsky.social conversation. #EduSky 🦜🦜🦜 www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-two-wo...
bloodinthemachine.com
The two words the AI industry hates more than anything
I talk with computational linguist Emily M. Bender, co-author of the influential 2021 “stochastic parrots” paper, about why AI industry leaders can’t stop seething over the term.
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dan favale @danfavale.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
"stop trying to make super intelligence happen" mean girls meme
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Thank you, @ddmeyer.bsky.social, for sharing this. #EduSky www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...
nbcnews.com
Poll: Most Americans think AI is doing more harm than good in schools
Last year, a slim majority thought schools that integrated AI would be better for students. Now a majority say schools that ban AI are better, according to the NBC News Decision Desk Poll.
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
As a history teacher, I have concerns about this post. I emailed you.
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Reposted by Tom Mullaney
Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
p.s. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that all of this acceleration in the hype is a reaction to the succesful and broadening opposition to their wasteful, polluting, noisy data centers.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
So how about this for a "pause AI" proposal: "pause credulous AI reporting". No more media about "breakthroughs" or "rogue agent swarms" or ... UNLESS and UNTIL that media demands the actual empirical evidence and/or focuses on the motivations of & harms by these companies.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 13/09/2026
All of a sudden we're not talking about the widely popular bipartisan opposition to massive data center buildouts. I wonder why 🤔
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Straight talk time: Doomerism is BORING. It's the same fantasties rehashed over and over again, just louder each time. And with each iteration it seems that new audiences are being reached, and a new group of people needs to be talked down from unnecessary fear. >>
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Governor Tim Walz @governorwalz.mn.gov · 05/09/2026
Good news: he lost.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Every time I think the mainstream media in America can't get any worse, their counterparts in the UK pop up to remind me, oh, yes it can. It's like an entire ecosystem run by the Mean Girls clique
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Matthew J Kuiper @matthewjkuiper.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
“not even close to accurate” - now extend that “insight” to… (gestures at everything)
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
The dissonance between the influencers promoting genAI in education and the public backlash to tech is jarring. Everyone in K-12 education should read @bcmerchant.bsky.social. #EduSky open.substack.com/pub/bloodint...
open.substack.com
With the backlash to data centers, Flock and AI glasses, a mass opposition to big tech is underway. Silicon Valley is in denial.
The backlash against data centers is difficult to understand if your salary depends on your not understanding it.
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
RIP Dolly Parton. My wife and I rewatched 9 to 5 at Bryn Mawr Film Institute just last week. americansongwriter.com/dolly-parton...
Not A Fan Of AI

Sitting down with The Hollywood Reporter, the topic of AI integrating into the music industry eventually landed at the feet of Parton. When debating how AI could be used to recreate voices from singers who passed away, like Elvis Presley, Parton said, “I ain’t going to consider AI on nothing that’s human being. Because I think that is a weapon and a tool that can be scary. I think it’s going to be great for a lot of things, like science and medicine and many, many things, but not to replace human beings.”

On a personal note, Parton shared her hesitation about AI and referred to it as the mark of the beast. “That scares me to death. That’s like the mark of the beast.”

When discussing AI used after she dies, Parton admitted to not wanting to be replicated. “It’s like you can’t remake a person. I don’t want that. I want to just leave a body of work behind.” She added, “I think all this stuff can be great, used in the right way. But not to replace voices and writings and not to replace a human being that belongs to God.”
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Matthew J Kuiper @matthewjkuiper.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
The quote is drawn from this wholly unsurprising report. Tech ceos understand exactly what they’re doing.
nytimes.com
Silicon Valley Executives Are Tech Fans. Just Not for Their Own Kids. (Gift Article)
At home, moderation and restraint are the rule for tech parents. Boredom is exalted. Maybe they’re onto something.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 25/08/2026
Fox News finds what so many other polls have found over the past few years: the core reason people oppose data centres in the US are real, material and immediate environmental concerns. static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/...
Survey results (17–20 July) listing main reasons for opposing a local data center: 50% environmental concerns (29% energy/water use, 13% environmental impact, 4% noise, 4% pollution); 14% quality-of-life; 11% economic effects; 11% negative views of AI; 10% other; 4% unsure.
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Matt Steinglass @mattsteinglass.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Over here in Europe we have always tracked kids towards trade school or university with a test at age 12! Still do. It sucks. It’s a really dumb idea! America should definitely do this if it wants to kill growth and waste human potential, oh and also worsen racial discrimination
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/b...
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
"Many parents would likely object if, say, Exxon Mobil wrote their children’s environmental science curriculum. Or if Purdue Pharma trained their children’s biology teachers. Yet, over the last decade, schools have often embraced the technology industry in similar ways with few questions asked."
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
"But something different is happening this time in schools: pushback. A groundswell of teachers, parents, researchers and local government leaders say they aren’t buying the idea of new, and educationally unproven, A.I. tools as the next fulcrum for learning,” writes @natashanyt.bsky.social.
nytimes.com
How Big Tech Captured American Schools
Companies like Google and Microsoft have used their money, their might and their massive reach to influence nearly every step of the education supply chain.
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Breaking News: I outscored NYC Mayor Zoran Mamdani by seven (7) points on the New York State Spanish Regents exam.
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
"Educators who try to withhold A.I. writing tools are essentially announcing to their students — ‘consumers,’ [the Grammarly employee] called them — that their coursework is irrelevant to the job market." IDK seems to me like turning education into transactional job training is the problem.
nytimes.com
What Do Students Lose When They Stop Writing?
Educators are worried that many students can no longer write essays without A.I. And it’s costing more than just grammar skills.
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Riley is the reason Ewing didn't win a ring. I appreciate this excellent @secretbase.bsky.social video as the start of holding him accountable. youtu.be/_9jfik_LYw8?...
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Democratic Party frets about electability. Donald Trump, who breaks every rule of electability won the 16 and 24 elections. What about a right wing actor in 1980? Or a Black man in 2008? 2008 was informed by backlash against the incumbent party. 2028 will be similar. Democrats should go big - AOC
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
STOP FORCING THIS FUCKING GARBAGE ON US
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 14/08/2026
They used to call this malware.
cultofmac.com
ChatGPT just learned to watch everything you do on your Mac
ChatGPT Computer History tracks your Mac activity to build a searchable timeline, no screenshots involved.
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Adam Conover @adamconover.net · 14/08/2026
Gas powered leaf blowers were BANNED. So why do we still hear them? Watch the full video on YouTube: youtu.be/Ay73erQx39U
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
🤞🏻
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Excellent article by @edgeofsports.bsky.social.
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Shout out to @maveybooks.bsky.social.
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Reposted by Tom Mullaney
Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 13/08/2026
🔇 🔇 🔇 My book, Deep Unlearning, is now available for preorders! I don't know how people write so many books because this one took a lot out of me. It turns out, I had a lot to say 😂, with editors cutting out 50k of my words 🫣 ✴️ You can now preorder it at www.simonandschuster.com/books/Deep-U....
Cover of my new book, Deep Unlearning: The Rise of AI and The Radicalization of a Tech Idealist. 

There are two concentric circles in the book, the left being circuits in black an white, and the right being a bunch of dots with orange accents. The cover background is cream. And the words are written in black except for "Un" which is in orange.
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AI Moratorium for NYC Schools @aimoratoriumnyc.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Register here! Panel 1 Registration: us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi... Panel 2 Registration - us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi... @schoolsbeyond.bsky.social @comixaction.com @moreuft.bsky.social
us06web.zoom.us
Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: What Comes Next Panel I: Power, Privatization, and AI: Understanding and Resisting the Educational Industrial Complex. After registering, you will receive a...
A two-part series of panels hosted as a collaboration between AIM and SBS answering the question 'what comes next?' from a teacher perspective - once we win the battle to get AI out of classrooms, wha...
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Thank you for confirming that! I should have gotten that promise from CoT, but I never imagined I needed to.
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
I'm wary after edtech hype was part of Civics of Technology last week, but maybe this could redeem that experience?
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
So @thecrashcourse.bsky.social just emailed their list for BTS and included a link to @complexly.org's response to the Hank Green debacle. Their genAI policy doesn't go far enough, but it's better than nothing, I guess. I'm so happy I'm not a science teacher 😌 #EduSky complexly.org/ai-response/
complexly.org
Response to Discussion about AI use in Ask Hank Anything | Complexly
Hello Complexly Community,  You may have seen the discussion about Hank using ChatGPT for research in a “Future Hank” segment of Ask Hank Anything, or you may just have questions about how the 80+ per...
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Very true and reminds me of Grace Helbig's take on Hank Green who alienated his audience because of his LLM addiction. I'm really hesitant to encourage children to use LLMs. www.instagram.com/reel/DbtT_bW...
instagram.com
Instagram
Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you're into with the people who get you.
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Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
We're laughing at this guy for saying something dumb while in the throes of AI addiction, but now I'm wondering if we shouldn't treat it like a drug or alcohol problem. These people need help.
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Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Axios writer: I melted my brain with AI. Not only can I no longer read, but I don't even understand the purpose of reading anymore. Here's how you can also do this. www.axios.com/2026/08/11/r...
Axios: AI has become my reading buddy as I've plowed through my summer book list, helping me keep track of plots and characters, unpack themes, and make sense of wordy, old prose.

Why it matters: The way many of us actually read books — a few pages before bed, a chapter at the beach, another on a plane — makes it easy to lose the thread. AI can help you pick it back up without starting over.
📖 I really got into using AI while reading James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans." The text was far too dense for casual vacation reading. My first prompt asked:

"I'd like a guide as I read The Last of the Mohicans who can help me understand what I've read and where the story is, without giving spoilers or getting ahead of my progress. Can you do this, chapter by chapter?"
The robot agreed: "Cooper's sentences are long and his diction is archaic."
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Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I'm old enough to remember when the NFL, not the NBA, was the dominant league in the US. Watch, next year NBA will have games on Thanksgiving. I'm here for it. Knicks in 5!
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 11/08/2026
"A student’s essay on Macbeth has no value as a product. It’s what you learned in the reading and writing that created it – the swiftness and resilience and suppleness of thinking you built, along with the knowledge gained of a literary marvel, of something unsummarisable – that was the point"
Many students want to resist, but the temptation is great, and some start to feel they’re being penalised for their honesty. I tell the students I meet: imagine you’re an Olympic athlete. You set out to sprint the 3km across London, from Clapham to Balham. You know if you take the bus, it will be faster. But you also know that the point was never being in Clapham or Balham; they’re very similar: they both have a nice Pizza Express. It was the strength you built, the speed and knowledge of your body that you gained. A student’s essay on Macbeth has no value as a product. It’s what you learned in the reading and writing that created it – the swiftness and resilience and suppleness of thinking you built, along with the knowledge gained of a literary marvel, of something quicksilver and unsummarisable – that was the point. So you can’t collaborate with AI in the same way you can’t collaborate with a bus. And you cannot learn to think without a climbing frame of facts and ideas and texts to move around in.
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 11/08/2026
"To wrap AI into the art of learning when we have overwhelming proof of the harm it does to developing minds is feeding snake oil to the people we should cherish most." www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...
theguardian.com
‘I hate what AI is doing to the minds and happiness of the young’: Katherine Rundell on the view from the classroom
Education is at a crossroads, argues the author and academic. Should we embrace new technology in the name of efficiency, or is it time to fight back?
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Elizabeth Lopatto @lopatto.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I am coming to believe we need a better quality of AI booster www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
theverge.com
Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand how to live
An AI future of sleek, streamlined, and totally empty relationships.
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Elizabeth Lopatto @lopatto.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
previously in AI weirdos www.theverge.com/tldr/915176/...
theverge.com
Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want
Did the tech industry get high on its own supply?
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
The environmental damage is well documented at this point. I think the status of data centers as focal points of economic damage merits a little more expansion: www.wired.com/story/the-ai...
Screencap of linked article:

Beyond online outcry, more people are starting to protest against the building of data centers that power these AI tools. “There's a lot of pushback coalescing around data centers," says Emily Bender, coauthor of The AI Con. "Data centers are important because they are focal points of environmental and economic damage.” Americans across the political spectrum have recently united in these data center protests.
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Allison Dieppa @amdieppa.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Every time a commercial for ChatGPT or Claude comes on now, I can’t unsee it… “[B]utthole logos is what happens when you have style over substance in a move-fast-and-break-things industry…you just get a lot of meaningless shit.”
graphiclanguageblog.substack.com
Why So Many A.I. Logos Look Like Buttholes
Many logos from A.I. integrated products or companies look, either abstractly or quite literally, like a butthole.
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Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Hinton said he wanted to "disrupt the humanities;" I suggest we use the humanities to disrupt the AI industry: youtu.be/hPV-Ql_KGzM?...
youtu.be
The 2026 Wiegand Lecture featuring Teresa Heffernan — Literature Versus the AI Industry
YouTube video by Arts & Science - University of Toronto
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Dr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Excellent piece highlighting student voices on gen AI in higher education, including MS student Mirakle (pictured!) in my lab who is leading research on college student AI resisters. I can only assume that leadership at many universities are making incorrect assumptions about student attitudes.
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Elizabeth Hernandez @lizzy-hernandez.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
New: Universities (CU, CSU, others nationwide) are partnering with AI giants like ChatGPT to roll out university-sanctioned AI Hear from the students resisting & why some liken their opposition to wartime conscientious objectors www.denverpost.com/2026/08/07/c... via @denverpost.com #EdColo #AI
denverpost.com
As Colorado universities align with ChatGPT, student AI resisters take a stand against the ‘plagiarism machine’
“The majority of my participants flat out don’t think AI has a place in education,” said Mirakle Wright, a CU graduate student who is studying resistance to artificial intelligence.
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Christie Nold @christienold.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
When asked as part of school-wide conversations, students shared that they felt “abandoned” when “teachers wouldn’t answer questions” I think there are times when we believe ourselves to be well meaning in letting students construct understanding, but really they feel “alone” in their learning…
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