Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
@maralina.bsky.social
810 followers 670 following 390 posts
Librarian, scholar, dancer, reader, writer, and friend to dogs. I talk about comics and India a lot. 🌈 💜🦄 🤘🏼
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Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
angrystaffer.bsky.social
That’s crazy. I wonder what happened in January
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
clairezagorski.bsky.social
A student on TikTok has been documenting her journey with a professor who “wrote” the anatomy textbook and it’s all a bunch of AI hallucinations.

She’s saying that, understandably, the students are doing super poorly!

Behold what we’re teaching the healthcare professionals of tomorrow:
A diagram of the bones and (some) deep muscles of the hand and forearm. AI says that we only have four digits. It’s also identified a tendon as the median nerve, another tendon as the ulnar nerve, among other issues. An AI generated diagram of the muscles of the neck. It hallucinated the “ennocleidomasid” muscle, and the “anterior scalpalin muscle”. An AI generated diagram of the muscles of the lateral thigh. It says that the gluteus Maximus (the big juicy butt muscle) is on the anterior side. It also points to the quadriceps muscle and says “attattment”. It also says that the same structure is the tibia AND the deep fascia of the leg. An AI generated diagram of the bones of the hand and forearm. This time AI says we have 6 digits. It also says that the radius is the ulnar artery. Among other many issues.
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
needhibhalla.bsky.social
"Are my migraines hormonal, or am I thinking too hard about how Peter Thiel has more money than all nurses on Earth combined?"

It's so hard to tell 😭😭😫
maralina.bsky.social
Somebody screwed up some settings and 126 of us are receiving an unending stream of emails about unapproved time cards. The dinging sound is driving me batty. I feel bad for whoever has to own up to this.
maralina.bsky.social
Small Press Fest was this weekend and this is part of my haul. These are prints made by some very talented U of I students and I can’t wait to get them framed and see them on my walls!
Two posters side by side. The one on the left is green and blue and says “F*ck AI Art Buy From Real Degenerates”. The poster on the right has a hissing black cat with a red mouth and candle and says “Resist Fascism!”
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
kenwhite.bsky.social
Wen should direct more attention to incidents like these because Americans are more likely to respond to brutality to pets than to brutality to human beings.
thetnholler.bsky.social
EL PASO — a family says ICE showed up at their house looking for migrants and shot and KILLED THEIR DOG, then didn’t help them as the agent ran away and was not identified.

kfoxtv.com/news/local/e...
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
karlbode.com
papers like the New York Times actively help right wing propagandists by introducing false claims as something that's open to debate and interpretation, instead of clearly framing them up front as lies pushed by unreliable operators

Turning Point USA is a right wing propaganda op aimed at kids
maralina.bsky.social
So we can’t have healthcare but Argentina gets $20,000,000,000 because reasons?
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
tedbrassfield.bsky.social
Capitalism in a nutshell:
Studies of UBI - positive effects, cheaper than government benefits, don't directly finance capital, so WE MUST STUDY MORE

Studies of LLMs - lots of harm, very expensive, directly finance major corporations & the wealthy, so we MUST IMPLEMENT BUT BETTER SOMEHOW
tedmccormick.bsky.social
A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
tusk81.bsky.social
$20 BILLION.

Remember that we’re being lied to whenever we’re told that we can’t afford something that helps American families.
washingtonpost.com
The Trump administration confirmed that the U.S. bailed out Argentina.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he had directly bought Argentine pesos in global currency markets in a bid to relieve pressure on the nation’s embattled President Javier Milei, a supporter of President Trump.
The U.S. just bailed out Argentina, Treasury Secretary confirms
The US Treasury has finalized a $20 billion financial rescue of Argentina, including a currency swap arrangement with the country's central bank.
www.washingtonpost.com
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
propublica.org
Kristi Noem, while governor of South Dakota, supplemented her roughly $130,000 salary by secretly accepting $80,000 donated to a political nonprofit she was affiliated with, records show.

She never disclosed this income on federal ethics forms.

(Published June)
Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations
A dark money group paid $80,000 to Noem’s personal company when she was governor of South Dakota. She did not include this income on her federal disclosure forms, a likely violation of ethics requirem...
www.propublica.org
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
strandjunker.com
If you rename the Department of Defense the Department of War, then bomb fishing boats in the Caribbean, and shoot an unarmed priest in the head with a pepper bullet, you should automatically be barred from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for the rest of your life.
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
melkatrey.bsky.social
I just keep coming back to this, the most obvious lacunae in every conversation about “incorporating AI” into our classrooms: no one—literally NO ONE—can explain how it improves the work of learning & knowledge-making. There is, in fact, overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

This whole thread.
tedmccormick.bsky.social
A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
tedmccormick.bsky.social
A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
meredithshiner.com
“Let Republicans have the literal blood of American citizens on their hands—and make that the central issue of the shutdown. Otherwise, enjoy having your health care subsidy debate in the gulags these people would happily send us all to. I hear that poll-tests great.”
The Case for the Forever Shutdown
Senate Democrats actually allowing the GOP to stop funding the government is only the first step. Now they have to make the case that Trump’s government is illegitimate.
newrepublic.com
maralina.bsky.social
And you’re helping amplify the perception that it’s biased by reporting that it’s news rather than ignoring it as the whining of an anti-education, ignorant jerk who is vocally supporting pedophiles and authoritarianism.
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
karlykingsley.bsky.social
All these headlines saying “Bondi Goes on the Attack.” Really? She wasn’t in the octagon, she’s a public servant who was at an oversight hearing. Her job was to answer questions. She refused to do her job. Stop glamorizing and whitewashing this moronic, performative bullshit.
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
johnpfaff.bsky.social
Um, ICE just coldly shot an unarmed PRIEST in the head w a pepper ball when he (and everyone around him) clearly posed no threat.

For the crime of … complaining about government policy.

Core 1A speech.

With cameras rolling, they’re sniping priests for sport.
flglchicago.bsky.social
Here’s video of the incident
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
joycewhitevance.bsky.social
Looking for one thing you can do right now to help protect the right to vote? It will only take a few minutes, and you can share it with all of your friends. joycevance.substack.com/p/a-thing-yo...
A Thing You Can Do Right Now To Help Protect The Right To Vote
The U.S.
joycevance.substack.com
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
biodivlibrary.bsky.social
We're going a bit batty in celebration of #BatAppreciationMonth. Archibald Thorburn's "British Mammals" (1920-1921) contains some of our favorite bat #SciArt in #BHLib. Check it out thanks to #FieldMuseum
➡️ www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48418555 #BatMonth 🦇 🧪
Reposted by Mara Thacker 🏳️‍🌈🦇
sifill.bsky.social
Someone should start asking why we’re hearing and seeing Stephen Miller so much all of a sudden.
maralina.bsky.social
Our bat of the day is the fancily named Pipistrellus etula, a species only recently discovered by PhD student Laura Torrent at the BiBio Research Group. The name "etula" honors the inhabitants of its native Bioko Island and means "god of the island" in Bantu, the local language. tinyurl.com/pipetula
Photo of a small brown bat clinging to a piece of wood. Bat has darker brown wints and ears and a fuzzy body.