Leslie ❄️. Brown
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leslielkb.bsky.social
Leslie ❄️. Brown
@leslielkb.bsky.social
PhD, Curator, Photohistorian, Educator, and Scholar. Believer in wonder & kindness. Lover of art, music, history, science, rocks, weather, & tiny things.
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
We're seeing possibly the worst attendance in history. Even in creative writing classes, where students generally want to participate and have their voice heard--they're not showing up, ignoring guidelines and feedback, and either describing expectations as "unclear" or simply refusing to comply.
November 28, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
NEW: The New York Times got a State Dept. cable telling diplomats to destroy visas that had been approved and printed to give to Afghans. And diplomats are told to do scheduled interviews but not grant visas. US shuts all legal entry routes for Afghans. Our story: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/u...
Trump Pauses All Asylum Applications and Halts Visas for Afghans
www.nytimes.com
November 29, 2025 at 4:02 AM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
Signs you might be a far right authoritarian party (#3267):
Wait, is this the Professor Watchlist, but for media … and instead of being posted on an independent group’s website it’s on the official website of the people who control armed men with badges and a distinct disregard for the Constitution?
November 30, 2025 at 4:18 AM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
“.. At the center of President Trump’s contentious plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war isn’t peace: it’s profit.”

@thedailybeast.bsky.social
www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-2-tri...
November 29, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
As someone who works in the tech industry--absolutely.

They are testing the waters. These are top-down orders. The ONLY way to stop it is a visceral negative reaction. Write articles. Post your rage. Email. Post. @. All those things.

Only you have the power to kill it.
Let me give some insight on this, as a producer in the dub industry who worked with major streamers, who's witnessed first-hand where this push for AI is coming from.

tl;dr: Only CEOs want this. Tell them how much you hate it. Be loud, email, call, @, post. You will kill this.

🧵⬇️
The only thing less human than these AI dub performances is the decision to sign off on them

A company this big can pay human actors a decent wage, not produce slop that intentionally removes the human element.
November 30, 2025 at 5:07 AM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
In the last week, Donald Trump has called for the murder of Congressional Democrats and threatened to unilaterally declare an invasion of Venezuela.

If Congressional Republicans followed the Constitution, both of these would be removable offenses. But, they’re loyal to Trump, not the constitution.
November 29, 2025 at 3:31 PM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
Congressional Republicans let Trump put an alcoholic rapist in charge of the Pentagon, an anti-science kook in charge of our health, and a 22 year old intern in charge of counterterrorism.

These people do not act as if they actually care about Americans or the constitution.
November 29, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
They're not hiding it, folks—straight up neo-Nazi advertising, from the font to the language to the 11 stars for the Confederacy. Then you have the DHS openly using white nationalist language of "remigrate", which means ethnic cleansing.

This is who MAGA is now.
November 30, 2025 at 6:43 AM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
The highest calling of journalism isn’t to tell two sides of a story.

The highest calling of journalism is to tell the truth.

And acting like a stenographer is a betrayal of your audience.
Unfortunately, in US journalism it is considered neutral to spread a lie, but it is considered "biased" to call out a lie. So, there is a structural asymmetry that rewards colorful lies with virality.
November 30, 2025 at 7:49 AM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
The actual "worse than watergate" scandal is how much news media collectively worked to ratfuck a Democratic presidency by largely inventing health/mental acuity concerns for hyperventilate about while largely ignoring the very real & worsening issues in front of their faces from Trump
Both taken this weekend:
November 30, 2025 at 8:27 AM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
Thing is, we DID hear about it at his confirmation hearing.

Every single senator who voted to confirm Hegseth knew he held these views about the laws of war.

They voted to confirm him anyway.
Everyone should read this terrifying thread about Hegseth’s published views wrt war crimes. It’s pretty fucking radical …. We needed to hear about this in his confirmation hearing.
A chapter in Hegseth’s book is literally titled “More Lethality, Less Lawyers.”

It’s almost as if there were signs!
November 29, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
Netanyahu has formally requested a pardon from President Isaac Herzog.

In a statement he said: “The security and political reality and the national interest require the immediate termination of the trial.”

The aim of the carnage all along,
November 30, 2025 at 10:52 AM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
NEW: Over 50,000 people attempted to block the founding convention for the new youth org of the far-right AfD party on Nov. 29 in Gießen, Germany. Wide-ranging actions-including 19 blockades around the small city-prevented a majority of participants from attending. Police violently beat blockaders.
November 29, 2025 at 11:21 PM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
“Based on the available evidence, the skills that future graduates will most need in the AI era—creative thinking, the capacity to learn new things, flexible modes of analysis—are precisely those that are likely to be eroded by inserting AI into the educational process.”
“When you allow a machine to summarize your reading, to generate the ideas for your essay, and then to write that essay, you’re not learning how to read, think, or write.“
November 30, 2025 at 11:10 AM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
He scammed over 1,000 people, most of whom were not wealthy - veterans, farmers, teachers, nurses, small businesses owners. Some lost everything. But he’s a rich Republican, so Trump let him get away with it. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/u...
Trump Frees Fraudster Just Days Into Seven-Year Prison Sentence
www.nytimes.com
November 30, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
Imagine if they just subsidized newspapers and magazines the way they’re subsidizing this slop
"All of this falls apart if humans don't adopt the tech. This is why you've seen Meta cram its lame chatbots into WhatsApp and Instagram. This is why Notepad and Paint now have useless Copilot buttons on Windows. This is why Google Gemini wants to "help you" read and reply to your emails."
Analysis: OpenAI is a loss-making machine, how can it survive?
Don't call it a bubble! Loss-making monster OpenAI is on the hook for $1.4 trillion (with a T) in compute commitments. How can this go on?
www.windowscentral.com
November 30, 2025 at 12:35 PM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
This is what the large majority of West Virginians voted for and now theyre feigning shock that Trump is doing what he promised to do. No sympathy. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
‘Deeply demoralizing’: how Trump derailed coal country’s clean-energy revival
Biden earmarked billions for former coal communities in Appalachia – and his successor came and took it away
www.theguardian.com
November 30, 2025 at 12:50 PM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
This headline and story cannot be too widely shared. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/n...
The Ex-President Whom Trump Plans to Pardon Flooded America With Cocaine
www.nytimes.com
November 30, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
Five-byline alert: 🚨

David Sacks “has 708 tech investments .. that could be aided directly or indirectly by his policies, according to a New York Times analysis

“The tech bros are out of control,” said Steve Bannon.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/t...
November 30, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
And of course Trump is gutting the watchdogs designed to provide a check on this sort of atrocious behavior. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
November 30, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.

Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq
Learning With AI Falls Short Compared to Old-Fashioned Web Search
In virtually all the ways that matter, getting summarized information from AI models was less educational than doing the work of search.
buff.ly
November 30, 2025 at 3:30 AM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
The White House’s new anti-media website includes denunciations of:

-ABC, which bribed the president
-CBS, which bribed the president and moved away from fact-based journalism trying to appeal to him and his fans
-WaPo, which spiked a Harris endorsement and tilts coverage in Trump’s favor

Fools.
November 30, 2025 at 3:15 AM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
I remember Joe Manchin being absolutely effusive that the Inflation Reduction Act would bring millions of dollars to create jobs for renewable energy in West Virginia.... now Trump is killing these opportunities.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
‘Deeply demoralizing’: how Trump derailed coal country’s clean-energy revival
Biden earmarked billions for former coal communities in Appalachia – and his successor came and took it away
www.theguardian.com
November 30, 2025 at 4:47 AM
Reposted by Leslie ❄️. Brown
I really appreciate that @pbsnews.org ended the interview with this graphic.

It captures, in the simplest and starkest terms, the brutal arithmetic driving this country's homelessness catastrophe.
November 30, 2025 at 1:33 AM