Todd Battistelli
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fromtherostra.com
Todd Battistelli
@fromtherostra.com
How do our disagreements go? #rhetoric, #writing, and #education.

Viewpoints that I express are my own and do not represent the views of organizations with which I'm affiliated. Reposts are not endorsements.

he/him
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Hello!

My main interests are writing and learning, particularly as they relate to productive disagreement in rhetoric, organizational & workplace communication, emergent strategy, coalition work, and facilitation.

More here: fromtherostra.com/2023/03/10/w...

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Reposted by Todd Battistelli
November 25, 2024 at 2:54 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
One of the many many shitty parts about health care in this country is that in order to find a therapist for your kid you have to fill out the exact same huge sheaf of forms 100x and recite the same actually painful story to an intake person 100x in order to be told there’s no one available
November 26, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
“Have you heard about the greedy business interests who tried to hack language and nearly destroy a civilization?”

“Oh, you mean Embassytown?”

“No.”
December 12, 2024 at 1:19 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
AI doesn’t even do what its marketing claims it does for folks to be such ardent defenders of it.
November 26, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
People who are ‘AI’ boosters and whine about ‘anti-AI’ sentiment bewilder me. You have Twitter and LinkedIn; you have politicians and journalists on your side; businesses are all pro-AI.
What exactly do you want?
Yall behave like it’s literal sacrilege to be critical of AI
November 26, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
Last year's design was a real hit, too!

Send season’s greetings to your friends and family with Charles Darwin and his mischievous Christmas birds 🪿🎄

We have 14 different humanist designs available to buy. All proceeds go to fund our work for a kinder, more rational society. 👇
November 25, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
Deloitte used AI without doing any fact checking on the information it provided, making “recommendations” on Newfoundland & Labrador’s healthcare system using made up sources and papers

I hope this constitutes contractual beach and the province can claw back the $1.6M for the “analysis” they got
Deloitte just got caught again citing fabricated and potentially AI-generated research—this time in a million-dollar report for a Canadian provincial government | Fortune
In a healthcare report aimed to address a nurse and doctor shortage, Deloitte cited several fake studies with real researchers’ names attached.
fortune.com
November 25, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
We are gathered here today to witness the joining of these twelve beautiful typewriterssswheeee! Let the joyful clackety clacking begin! New ribbons for everyone!
November 25, 2025 at 2:57 AM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
I'm so tired of people telling me to have students critique LLM outputs. I'm just going to print this on little cards and hand them out
I will add the following: our students lack the research skills required to audit an LLM essay for errors. They don’t arrive on campus with these skills; we teach it to them over four long years. So throwing freshmen in the deep end and saying “swim your way to a shore of rectitude” is folly.
November 24, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
And the anniversary of the DB Cooper heist! (1971)
November 24, 2025 at 4:54 PM
TIL: MST3K and On the Origin of Species share a birthday
November 24, 2025 at 4:32 PM
The energy I'm taking into the Monday before Thanksgiving
November 24, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
Today in 1988 Mystery Science Theater 3000 premiered on KTMA in St. Paul Minnesota. #MST3K
November 24, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
to keep functioning, a society must discourage baldfaced lying, especially by authorities

bsky.app/profile/anna...
This is nuts.

Yesterday in the Comey hearing, prosecutors *repeatedly* confirmed that the full grand jury never saw or voted on the two-count indictment.

Now they’re claiming the grand jury *did* vote on it.
November 20, 2025 at 10:40 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
I’m reading and writing about the idea of voice. In student essays particularly and academic writing more generally. Writing studies folk have very mixed feelings about the idea of voice! But now everyone is talking about voice in relation to AI—when do student papers sound more or less human?
November 18, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
What are your favorite resources for conflict management in organizing spaces?
November 20, 2025 at 11:41 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
"...public education has increasingly come to be perceived as a private good that is harnessed to the pursuit of personal advantage; and, on the whole, the consequences of this for both school and society have been profoundly negative." 👀
A ⭐ on your sticker chart if you can guess the year:

"...we have complained that schools have abandoned academic standards, schools have undermined American economic competitiveness, schools are disorderly places that breed social disorder, schools waste massive sums of money..."
November 20, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
Genuinely obscene that after encouraging multiple suicides, OpenAI is allowed to have any influence at all on education.

End your partnership with OpenAI now, @rweingarten.bsky.social @aft.org.
Just reading through this new OpenAI "teen literacy blueprint document." A few things jumped out. 1) document mentions multiple times that rigorous instruction must be protected but also seems to be suggesting/1
cdn.openai.com/pdf/openai-t...
cdn.openai.com
November 20, 2025 at 12:48 PM
Employers: Up or out. And we aren’t offering any opportunities for up.
November 20, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
the Harvard Crimson called Epstein a “child sex offender” while the Chronicle of Higher Ed called him a “disgraced financier” and that pretty much sums up where we are with higher ed journalism
November 20, 2025 at 3:29 AM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
Incredibly bad faith and silly comparison. Libraries are public, not-for-profit entities that don't steal the books that are in their stacks. They actually pay publishers for subscriptions in order to gain access.
November 19, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Democratic Party dark-money funders stuffing cash hand over fist into moneybags: “The party’s problem is that it’s too woke!”
November 19, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
Colorado Ethics Commission advances complaints against Democrats who attended dark money-funded retreat
Colorado Ethics Commission advances complaints against Democrats who attended dark money-funded retreat
The Democratic lawmakers face allegations they violated the state’s gift ban by attending a Vail retreat with lobbyists paid for by dark money
coloradosun.com
November 18, 2025 at 10:04 PM
Reposted by Todd Battistelli
around the world, more than 3 billion people still lack access to safe sanitation.

WTD promotes accessibility, resiliency, and investment in safe water, sanitation and hygiene.
November 19, 2025 at 1:21 PM