Author | Lightnews

Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · 5d

I'm working with other concerned families at my child's elementary school to slow down an expansion of digital platforms and AI software across the district. Your writing, and the work of the NEPC, has really helped us understand the issues at stake.

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · 9d

I wrote about the reality of individual guilt in a culture of moral disintegration.
darkforum.substack.com/p/how-to-liv...

How to Live with Yourself and Others

On Jim Goldberg’s “Rich and Poor”

darkforum.substack.com

Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · 10d

If you don't have time for the full article, at least watch the embedded videos: dance clubs with tens of thousands of people standing absolutely still, all facing the stage, iPhones held aloft, as the DJs play their hit song "Move". Even when the bass drops, the crowd remains motionless.

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · 10d

It's about the success of white European DJs who are packing Ibiza mega-clubs, headlining big festivals, and topping streaming charts with their bland take on "afro house" (which has been scrubbed of any traces of Africa).

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · 10d

What you've written here and elsewhere about algorithms, normal slop, and neoliberal individualism are extremely relevant to this recent article by Rachel Grace Almeida: ra.co/features/4469

The Great Regression · Feature ⟋ RA

We've all seen it: Keinemusik's dead crowds, Ibiza VIP platforms, Euro-washed Afro house. 2020s mainstream clubbing is an algorithm-smoothed spectacle that rewards mediocrity. Yet it's booming. Rachel...

ra.co

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · 23d

Also, "reduced" is not the word I want to see in this sentence:
"the teen account will automatically get additional content protections, including reduced graphic content, viral challenges, sexual, romantic or violent roleplay, and extreme beauty ideals"

Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · 25d

I read this article when it came out a month ago, and I've thought about it every day since. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/o...

Opinion | Disney and the Decline of America’s Middle Class

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Craig Garrett

Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · Sep 19

The defining lesson of this first year of Trump authoritarianism is that kowtowing & capitulating yields zero permanent benefit and only emboldens the admin to come after you more.

This critical lesson was first documented in the landmark political science treatise “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.”

Daniel Laurison @daniellaurison.bsky.social · Sep 19

Pretty clear illustration of "you may as well stand up for what you believe in, they're coming for you anyway."

Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · Sep 19

So, a university president fired a professor because they taught a course that discussed there being more than two genders, and now the university president is being fired for not having fired the professor quickly enough, is where we're at. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/u...

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Sep 12

Reproducing the polaroids larger than actual size was a peculiar decision. Also, I wish the book included some kind of text... although, well, of course it doesn’t.

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Sep 11

I'm grateful for your excellent reporting. It has really helped us understand where our experience fits into recent developments across the country.

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Sep 11

The district has organized a series of events to manufacture parental consent for these products. The first ended with parents shouting that they're not being heard. (Subsequent events have been on Zoom, presumably to prevent shouting.) Teachers are completely left out of the process.

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Sep 11

I shared the article with a group I started at my kid's NYC public elementary school around the issue of AI ed tech. Amira is mandated in all classrooms in our district, a pilot program for the rest of the city. District administrators are pushing hard for it, but the teachers are not impressed.

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Reposted by Craig Garrett

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Sep 7

In this short piece, I lean on embodied cog sci to argue that we should refuse & resist llms in education (pp. 53-58) unesdoc.unesco.org/in/documentV...

"the classroom is an environment where love, trust, empathy, care & humility are fostered & mutually cultivated through dialogical interactions"

But what iseducation? Embodied and enactive cognitive sciences remind us that knowledge is not something discrete that an individual possesses and passes down but an inherently dynamic and evolving endeavour that develops in the process of embodied, curious and engaged interaction through dialogue. The pinnacle of cognition, particularly ‘human knowing’, is inextricably interwoven with interactions we engage in

with each other and the physical, cultural and social world we inhabit, ‘so much so that individuals are not thinkable outside of their interactions and embeddedness in their (social) world’ (De Jaegher, 2019). Dialogic models of knowledge and education emphasize that interactions between a student and teacher and/or peer provide ‘scaffolding’ for how that child understands the world. The always in flux, active and continually transforming nature of human cognition necessitates that education be fundamentally an ongoing activity. Far from the reductionist view whereby ‘formal knowledge’ can be packaged and acquired from an LLM, the classroom is an environment where love, trust, empathy, care and humility are fostered and mutually cultivated through dialogical interactions

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Sep 7

Whether you're participating in an authoritarian spectacle or just denying someone's health-insurance claim, "I was only following orders" doesn't absolve you of moral responsibility. open.substack.com/pub/darkforu...

How to Live with Yourself and Others

On Jim Goldberg’s “Rich and Poor”

open.substack.com

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Sep 1

Creating a perpetual sense of crisis is the whole point. Brilliant writing, as always, @nesrinemalik.bsky.social‬

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Sep 1

The people stoking anti-immigrant hysteria aren't interested in adjusting immigration to an acceptable level, not even to zero, because hysteria is the point. "No matter what ever-escalating pledges, solutions or policies are offered, nothing will ever be enough." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Vote Brexit, stop the boats – the goalposts on immigration keep moving, and those who oppose it will never be appeased | Nesrine Malik

The facts and the numbers are irrelevant: Donald Trump and Nigel Farage just find new excuses and increase the toxicity, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

www.theguardian.com

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Aug 31

Hate to break this to Mr. O'Hanlon, but "just doing the job he was told to do" isn't the excuse he thinks it is. open.substack.com/pub/darkforu...

How to Live with Yourself and Others

On Jim Goldberg’s “Rich and Poor”

open.substack.com

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Aug 29

This happens on the individual level too. When you don't value other people's lives, capitulating usually looks like the rational (least-bad) choice. open.substack.com/pub/darkforu...

How to Live with Yourself and Others

On Jim Goldberg’s “Rich and Poor”

open.substack.com

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Reposted by Craig Garrett

Chuck Noblet @chucknoblet.bsky.social · Aug 8

"generate a map of the USA with each state named"

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Jul 24

Meghan O'Gieblyn's "God, Human, Animal, Machine" is full of essential insights into AI and other narrative-driven tech innovations. And it's beautifully written. bookshop.org/p/books/god-...

God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning

Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning

bookshop.org

Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Jul 14

[interior, Silicon Valley boardroom, 2025]
Founder: "What if — now stay with me here — what if we maximize harms instead of minimizing them?"

Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Jun 23

Is that body paint or is he wearing an actual suit?

Reposted by Craig Garrett

Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · Jun 20

Justice Jackson taking on Gorsuch's "pure textualism" and arguing for a more holistic reading of Congress' handiwork—worth reading in full. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

The majority’s contention that I reject “ ‘pure textualism’ [a]s insufficiently pliable to secure the result [I] seek,” ante, at 10, stems from an
unfortunate misunderstanding of the judicial role. Our interpretative
task is not to seek our own desired results (whatever they may be). And,
indeed, it is precisely because of this solemn duty that, in my view, it is
imperative that we interpret statutes consistent with all relevant indicia
of what Congress wanted, as best we can ascertain its intent. A methodology that includes consideration of Congress’s aims does exactly that—
and no more. By contrast, pure textualism’s refusal to try to understand
the text of a statute in the larger context of what Congress sought to
achieve turns the interpretive task into a potent weapon for advancing
judicial policy preferences. By “finding” answers in ambiguous text, and
not bothering to consider whether those answers align with other sources
of statutory meaning, pure textualists can easily disguise their own preferences as “textual” inevitabilities. So, really, far from being “insufficiently pliable,” I think pure textualism is incessantly malleable—that’s
its primary problem—and, indeed, it is certainly somehow always flexible enough to secure the majority’s desired outcome.

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Jun 14

#NoKings NYC

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Craig Garrett @betatronic.bsky.social · Jun 14

#NoKings NYC

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