Colin

@celsmooth.bsky.social

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Assistant professor of STEM Ed. Parent to two young children. Walker in woods. Usually in Philly these days (he/his)

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Colin

There is no way to stop committed attention-seeking grifters/rhetorically talented hacks from prominence but all these people/their orgs/movement structures were called out by black folks, trans folks, anarchists and others over and over and you can avoid getting burned by taking critiques seriously

Ken Klippenstein is streaming with George Galloway. The Young Turks are hosting RFK Jr. One ex bernie spokesperson is streaming with candace owens and another is defending Nick Fuentes. Brianna Wu is hanging with lauren southern. Maybe now is the time to re-evaluate how the left chooses celebrities.

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I think about this quote from Audrey Watters' Teaching Machines a lot: "With the students of Harlem as his test subjects, [B. F.] Skinner could rescue them from a failing system and as an ed-tech savior, he could then convince the rest of the world of the effectiveness of his teaching machines."

Also known as “training your replacement.” 😩

Morehouse to be the first university to use virtual AI teaching assistantswww.axios.com The Atlanta HBCU will have AI teaching assistants this fall.

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Madness.

Google’s emissions are up 48% in 5 years. Microsoft’s are up 30% since 2020. Those soaring figures are being driven by mass investments in data centers to power AI tools. Generative AI is a climate disaster and data center expansion must be stopped.

Generative AI is a climate disasterdisconnect.blog Tech companies are abandoning emissions pledges to chase AI market share

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I live in the “Data Center capital of the world” and tech companies are trying to develop on historic Black cemeteries. This increased demand for computing power is a climate justice as well as a racial Justice issue.

Generative AI is a climate disasterdisconnect.blog Tech companies are abandoning emissions pledges to chase AI market share

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Colin

Aaron Sorkin brain worms

Wild to watch horserace journalists suggest the most politically suicidal shit and pretend it's savvy. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

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Regretting canceling my subscription to the New York Times on a morning when they’re bringing me an oped from Bill Maher AND an interview with Steve Bannon. What a tantalizing feast for the mind, sadly beyond my reach now

This is AWFUL and highly predictable. School districts have been a place for Tech to plunder for a while, but especially over the past few years.

“ai” edtech company collapses after taking six million dollars from the Los Angeles school district to develop an “educational friend” platform.

A.I. ‘Friend’ for Public School Students Falls Flatwww.nytimes.com Los Angeles schools hired a start-up to build an A.I. chatbot for parents and students. A few months later, the company collapsed.

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Colin

This is obviously bad, but one reason inflation hasn't really taken hold in Japan is because companies are wary of raising prices if there's a chance it will drive consumers to other producers or to stop consuming all together So yeah, the companies suck but don't let consumers off the hook either

This is my shocked face.

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"The cloud" was such an incredible marketing move. Just fully leaning into the rhetoric that cloud computing is this magical thing that happens up in the sky and doesn't have impact on our environment or the sustainability of our labor. It's depressing how well that rhetoric worked.

I fucking love lightning bug (AKA firefly) season

Im so incredibly happy for you @rishikaye.bsky.social to be going back home to Toronto. OISE could not be more lucky to have such an incredible scholar and human joining their faculty.

This summer I’ll be joining the University of Toronto (OISE) as faculty in Science Education. I am truly grateful to the colleagues, friends, and students at Penn State who became family so quickly. I could not have asked for a better/more welcoming introduction into academia. 1/

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Ultimately, the problem with rich people is that they think they are rich because they are smarter than the rest. Often, they are just less altruistic and have a greater taste for monopoly and exploitation.

"If Jay Z really wanted to help, why not partner with public schools and create community schools with wraparound services?" Exactly. He's not helping. He doesn't know anything about education policy. He's just rich.

Jay Z makes a final push on failing public schools, backing school voucherswww.usatoday.com Jay Z's company is funding training sessions to support school choice.

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“Fuck y’all,” - SCOTUS

Omg I laughed out loud in what might have been the most cynical moment of my life. SCOTUS ruled that we dgaf.

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Don’t be a Proctorio president. Don’t be a Proctorio provost. Don’t be a Proctorio professor. Stand up for students. Protect them from the harms of AI surveillance in their own homes, which they don’t and can’t consent to. Build a trusting learning environment by being ethical.

“Ability to find power right now will determine the winners and losers in the AI arms race. It has left us with a map bleeding with places where the retirement of fossil plants are being delayed.”

AI is exhausting the power grid. Tech firms are seeking a miracle solution.www.washingtonpost.com Some data centers need as much energy as a small city, turning companies that promised a clean energy future into some of the most insatiable guzzlers of power

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Colin

"With the help of a research assistant, I reached out to every union drive that went public in 2022...BLM was the (non-union) movement influence that was most widely cited by those workers who initiated union drives in 2022." @ericblanc.bsky.social www.laborpolitics.com/p/can-anti-r...

Can Anti-Racism Spur Labor Organizing?www.laborpolitics.com My survey findings on BLM's impact on the current unionization uptick

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It's a personal bugbear of mine that a headline like this: "Amazon-Powered AI Cameras Used to Detect Emotions of Unwitting UK Train Passengers" should actually be this: "Amazon-Powered AI Cameras Used to Guess Emotions of Unwitting UK Train Passengers" www.wired.com/story/amazon...

Amazon-Powered AI Cameras Used to Detect Emotions of Unwitting UK Train Passengerswww.wired.com CCTV cameras and AI are being combined to monitor crowds, detect bike thefts, and spot trespassers.

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Kinda sucks that a growing majority of communications, healthcare, and national security infrastructures are all being run by openly fascist billionaires.

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It's increasingly clear that the people who make generative AI don't like films, don't like books, don't like art of any kind, and don't understand why anyone else does.

This isn’t a movie, it’s a screensaver bgr.com/tech/movies-...

Movies may soon use AI to change the story each time you rewatchbgr.com Filmmakers are experimenting with a new type of filmmaking called generative film, which uses AI to change the film each time it's watched.

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NEW: Check out my conversation w/ @charleswlogan.bsky.social on the importance of a Luddite Pedagogy in the "Age of AI". What should be the relationship of education, automation & "artificial intelligence"? Should there be one at all? 🤔 www.humanrestorationproject.org/podcasts/tow...

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My dream is that one day the objectivity folks can read something about this concept from the long, long histories of scholarly critique instead of just using it as a cudgel against their colleagues in our field. Objectivity is not the same as rigor.

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People in our field need @charleswlogan.bsky.social’s work in this moment. Thank you for the hope and incisive critique in equal measure. repository.isls.org/handle/1/11112 #isls24

Repository of the International Society of Learning Sciences: Learning About and Against Generative AI Through Mapping Generative AI’s Ecologies and Developing a Luddite Praxisrepository.isls.org

Learning and nodding intensely at @charleswlogan.bsky.social as he presents his great paper at ISLS. Bring Luddite praxis to the learning sciences!!! Y’all really need to read it and hear him talk about it. Where the sledge hammers at?!

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Put this whole paragraph on repeat.

Writers are losing their jobs after false positives from ai detectors.

AI Detectors Get It Wrong. Writers Are Being Fired Anywaygizmodo.com AI is already stealing writers’ work. Now they’re losing jobs over false accusations of using it.

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Where I’ma be during #ISLS2024. See yall in Buffalo!

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Watch this space, especially if their power expands within the federal government

House Republicans Threaten Colleges’ Federal Funding With New Investigations Six House committees will probe 10 colleges’ responses to antisemitism. Is it a serious effort or a politicized “fishing expedition”? #HigherEd #EDUSky #AcademicSky bit.ly/3X9lv5I

House Republicans open antisemitism probes of 10 collegesbit.ly Six House committees will probe 10 colleges’ responses to antisemitism. Is it a serious effort or a politicized “fishing expedition”?

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Should have seen it coming that schools can now be badged as AI Academies with corporate LLM branding and training for teachers. Schools as ads for Gemini et al www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/2435097...

Hampshire college becomes UK's first Gemini AI Academywww.dailyecho.co.uk A college in Hampshire has become the UK's first ‘Gemini AI Academy’.

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computer scientists: we have invented a virtual dumbass who is constantly wrong tech CEOs: let's add it to every product

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From reading the article, there’s a ton of “yay for police!” to get through before the information that the city deployed social workers who referred troubled kids and their families to Social Services instead of putting them in the system.

Boston has had only three murders this year. What is it doing right? www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/...

Boston has had only three murders this year. What is it doing right?www.csmonitor.com Boston has been a pioneer of community policing. That’s showing signs of success. The next step is to build a deeper sense of trust with residents.