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"The tools that likely brought down Harvard president Claudine Gay are improperly used on students all the time. [...] The technology of text mining can be used to destroy the career of any scholar at any time." Tools like Turnitin are rife with false positives, and can be weaponized
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I think Chuck Tingle is awesome and proves love. This was a disappointing decision by the Texas Library Association, which is hopefully a learning moment for every organization like it. Chuck's description of the intersectional challenges at play here is in-depth and well-stated. And there'
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This was why I started Known, and I wonder if I should try again. "If we want the future web we’re all clamouring for, we need to give people more options for self-hosted independence. If we seriously, truly want the independent, non-enshittified personal web to flourish,
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The headline here is a little misleading, because it should end: "... but not proactively, and with no changes to our content policy." Substack seems to want to have its cake and eat it: to offer content deals, promote writers, and shape its writer community, but also be treated
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"Every year, the Supreme Court’s nine justices fill out a form that discloses their financial connections to companies and people. Using our new database, you can now search for organizations and people that have paid the justices, reimbursed them for travel, given them gifts and more." Journalism
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Not just a retelling but a complete recasting of 1984. It's helpful to consider this as a separate work: a response to 1984, in a way, rather than a layering on top or a direct sequel. It's a criticism, an extension, a modernization, and a deep
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Every single one of these titles looks beautiful: I'm excited to put them on my want-to-read list. I don't think I read a single graphic novel last year, and I love them. I'm grateful to Ritesh Babu for putting this list together.
Previous birthday posts: 44 thoughts about the future, 43 things, 42 / 42 admissions, 41 things. This post is in partial answer to Matt Mullenweg’s birthday request for everyone to blog, which is a lovely idea in its own right - happy birthday to you, too, Matt. 2024 feels like a
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Molly White, who has been one of the most important voices on technology and society, has moved her newsletter from Substack to Ghost because of the Nazi problem. As she points out: "To be very clear, we're talking about Substacks that are using swastikas, sonnenrads, and photos
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Pascal was my first real programming language. I'd learned BASIC first, but I never built a full software application in it. Pascal allowed me to build and release software for the first time. It was magical. What I didn't know: Niklaus Wirth was from Winterthur, Switzerland,
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"Your career is not your job. It’s the humans you help along the way." I feel this in my bones. The people who have helped me in my career have made an outsize difference to my life, and I hope to make the same kind of difference
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"Until Substack, I was not aware of any major US consumer internet platform that stated it would not remove or even demonetize Nazi accounts. Even in a polarized world, there remains broad agreement that the slaughter of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust was an atrocity. The Nazis did