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Reposted

Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 2h

I bang on about this a lot: I think the combination of a global pandemic, underregulated internet/SM, collapse/corruption of trustworthy media, plus now unregulated genAI, is a wildly toxic environment for radicalisation & mental health. We see the results of that in our politics & lives every day

James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 16h

Everyone knows at least one person (normally, but not exclusively, a guy) whose gone properly mental due to net rabbit holes.

We see public figures regularly go mad and destroy themselves.

And we have, at a policy level, just decided to put our fingers in our ears and go nahnahnah

Alastair Meeks @alastairmeeks.bsky.social · 16h

Last night I heard of another friend of a friend who has been lost to a rabbit hole of online propaganda. We need to start treating this as a serious public health concern.

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edifiedlistener.bsky.social @edifiedlistener.bsky.social · 16h

May his memory be a blessing. Sorry for your loss.

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 23h

This is such a clever idea on taking kids to museums/galleries
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Nadia from London has an idea that sounds such fun you'll be booking a day out asap.
"I've always loved museums," she says,
"but they can be overwhelming for children. For decades now, I've done something called 'playing postcards'
We do
the museum backwards, visiting the gift shop first. Each child gets to choose three postcards. Then they take it in turns to find that particular artwork in the museum and give us a little information about the piece from the details on the postcard, or from any gallery plaque. At the end of this treasure-hunt-style activity, we vote for our favourite in the cafe."

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 20h

Not only is this explanation great, I also know 5,271,009 people whose lives would be changed for the better by taking it on board.

Chappell Ellison @chappelltracker.bsky.social · 10d

This Tumblr user summarizes something I've been feeling/doing lately. Against everything going on, it somehow feels helpful.

User homoquartz writes: as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now."
Small talk isn't to get to know a person. It's just a greeting to affirm you're buddies in the universe. I am motivated by wanting the other person to know I am friendly, so I have gotten pretty decent at small tall when I used to hate it.

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edifiedlistener.bsky.social @edifiedlistener.bsky.social · 17h

I just finished Empire of AI by @karenhao.bsky.social and it is excellent! Even my resistance to learning about the main characters was disarmed by the urgency of the reporting. Excellent journalistic accomplishment. Recommended in the last BTA:
bendingthearcnewsletter.blog/2025/09/21/b...

Bending The Arc Late September 2025

“If the elongated text made by AI, or the images of forests or people, or the music it writes does not hold much emotional meaning for you, you might eventually learn to set expectations of e…

bendingthearcnewsletter.blog

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edifiedlistener.bsky.social @edifiedlistener.bsky.social · 17h

@karenhao.bsky.social Thank you so much for Empire of AI! I was not expecting the page turner you delivered. Not only do you meticulously document the underpinnings of one company's trajectory, you expertly cover the wider impacts across multiple layers of involvement. Amazing! 👏🏾👏🏾

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Consortium @consortium.lgbt · 1d

Whether you're out, not ready, or unable to come out, you are seen, you are valid, and you are not alone.

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edifiedlistener.bsky.social @edifiedlistener.bsky.social · 21h

Even knowing this did not prevent me from rushing back to work prematurely after an illness. My team members insisted I go back home and recover.

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 7d

happy sunday, remember that you are completely expendable to your employer and that when you die they will forget you ever existed within weeks and easily replace you

Work really hard and one day this can be you (followed by graffiti of a headstone that says “RIP worked really hard” on it

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Raider @iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social · 1d

This Is Fascism

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Ghostly Bree @mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 1d

Art is going to be so bad when only privileged wealthy people can afford to make it.

Georgina Kiersten @ingloriousgigi.bsky.social · 1d

You should be concerned about the rate of authors leaving publishing. Especially from marginalized communities. This year I have seen so many authors just pack it up and go. And it's only getting worse.

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Blake Leyh @earlofedgecombe.bsky.social · 1d

If you think you know why US newspapers died, this feature documentary now streaming for free on PBS might surprise you. It wasn't the Internet. Newspapers were specifically targeted by vulture capitalists.

I composed the score for the film, which features electric cello & Crowfoot guitars.

Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink

A handful of journalists rebel against a hedge fund that is gutting newspapers nationwide.

www.pbs.org

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Louise Seamster @louiseseamster.bsky.social · 1d

Private equity gets its toothhold into firms through economic squeezing, devalues them, then breaks them into parts to sell off. This compact is the squeeze that will simultaneously advantage for-profit ed *and* make it easier to PE-ify non-profit ed. The ideological component is a means to an end.

Louise Seamster @louiseseamster.bsky.social · 1d

an article with more context
www.republicreport.org/2025/billion...

Billionaire Behind Trump Pressure Campaign on Colleges Owns Predatory University of Phoenix - Republic Report

Private equity billionaire Marc Rowan was revealed last week to be the driving force behind a Trump administration campaign pressuring nine major U.S. universities, including Brown, MIT, and the Unive...

www.republicreport.org

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edifiedlistener.bsky.social @edifiedlistener.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks for this context. Grim times.

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Alistair Barrie @alistairbarrie.com · 4d

Excellent. In the parents’ spare room tonight, and just discovered both bedside tables are stuffed with copies of every memorial service/funeral they have ever been to.
They’re in their mid-eighties.

Sleep well between the Drawers of Death.

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edifiedlistener.bsky.social @edifiedlistener.bsky.social · 1d

The lifts are amazing and so is that flexibility!! That warm-up range of motion!! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

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Librarian to The Man @nobpeck.bsky.social · 2d

Just finished The Originalism Trap. Thank you to @audrelawdamercy.bsky.social for writing this, maintaining a wonderful sense of humor throughout, and getting in a reference to Doctor Who.

Please, everyone, grab a copy.

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edifiedlistener.bsky.social @edifiedlistener.bsky.social · 2d

God bless the IRS employee who patiently waded through my data to clarify my payment issues. Second time I've encountered such knowledgeable assistance and I couldn't thank them enough.

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edifiedlistener.bsky.social @edifiedlistener.bsky.social · 3d

What an honor to be featured in this series! Shout out to @brennacgray.bsky.social for making this a reality. 🙏🏾

Wilfrid Laurier University Press @wlupress.bsky.social · 3d

In this episode of Community of Praxis Brenna interviews Sherri Spelic about her book Care at the Core and what reciprocal learning can happen between post-secondary and K-12 educators. @brennacgray.bsky.social @edifiedlistener.bsky.social
On your favourite platform or at www.wlupress.wlu.ca/...

An image of a Black woman with short hair holding a microphone within the Community of Praxis multicoloured abstract image. The text reads New Episode! Care at the Core with guest Sherri Spelic, found and publishing editor of Identity, Education, and Power

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edifiedlistener.bsky.social @edifiedlistener.bsky.social · 3d

Oh my goodness! 😀Thank you for this! I remember parts of our conversation; listening to the whole thing was fun and illuminating. Such an honor to be included in this project!

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Ryan Hendrickson @imaginaryhistories.bsky.social · 5d

This is something I wish my AI-cheerleading colleagues in archives and libraries fully understood: all the work we've done in the past 25+ years, all of it, is now actively being used to putting us out of business in the most dire fashion imaginable by the wealthiest people on the planet

Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · 5d

So-called #genAI means the abolition of the future through the proliferation of endless streams of stochastically rendered generic pasts. Having turned large parts of the cultural archive into training data, it now traps us in a foreverized pastness, a 24/7 nostalgia for a past that never existed

QuoProQuid @quoproquid.bsky.social · 6d

have just come across a YouTube account that has been using Sora to upload reels of fake, AI-generated “90s sitcoms” every few hours

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Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them) @bookjockeyalex.bsky.social · 6d

Having to deep dive every fucking book I buy now is such a hassle. GenAI isn't making my work more efficient or productive. The opposite in fact. It's bogging everything down in tedious fact-checking that I didn't have to do before. And all so some asshole can rake in easy cash.

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edifiedlistener.bsky.social @edifiedlistener.bsky.social · 6d

Whew. Painful to know how long and persistently this has been and continues to be true.

Jonathan W. Gray @elmcitytree.blacksky.app · 7d

James Baldwin to Angela Davis in 1970, discussing white Americans:

Or, to put it another way, as long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness— for so long as they are unable to walk out of this most monstrous of traps-they will allow millions of people to be slaughtered in their name, and will be manipulated into and surrender themselves to what they will think of-and justify—as a racial war. They will never, so long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between themselves and their own experience and the experience of others, feel themselves sufficiently human, sufficiently worthwhile, to become responsible for themselves, their leaders, their country, their children, or their fate. They will perish (as we once put it in our black church) in their sins—that is, in their delusions. And this is happening, needless to say, already, all around us.

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 6d

this is practical advice about immediate steps to take if somebody you know has been taken by ICE.

nothing is ever guaranteed, they'll try to get away with whatever they can, but you have to try whatever you can too

ashley scarebanks 💀🕯️ @ziibiing.com · 6d

this felt too informative not to share

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Emily L. Hauser (she/her) ❌👑 @emilylhauser.bsky.social · 6d

*10/6/2025 noncooperation thread*

This.
Is.
Every.
Thing.

(Bread & Puppet Theater breadandpuppet.org. Amazing.)

(When you've watched this 54-second video, you'll definitely want to see the longer version Ashley shares a couple of posts further down.)

8/

ashley scarebanks 💀🕯️ @ziibiing.com · 6d

i don’t really understand why this made me start bawling i just really love seeing people try to help each other in creative ways and that this shit is necessary

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · 27d

AI is the wrong tool to tackle complex societal & systemic problems. AI4SG is more about PR victories, boosting AI adoption (regardless of merit/usefulness) & laundering accountability for harmful tech, extractive practices, abetting atrocities. yours truly
www.project-syndicate.org/magazine/ai-...

The False Promise of “AI for Social Good”

Abeba Birhane refutes industry claims about the technology's potential to solve complex social problems.

www.project-syndicate.org

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