datchery8

... feeling rather more like Jo the crossing sweep these days ...

[John Handel @_John_Handel]

A beautiful essay by Adam Gopnik on Tom Laqueur's new book, "The Dog's Gaze"

[John Handel @_John_Handel]

“Laqueur also has something rare, though essential to real scholarship, and that is taste.”
https://t.co/ggRrnHpOpf

[La nave di Teseo @lanavediteseoed]

Siamo molto felici di annunciare che @brian_goldstone ha vinto il @PulitzerPrizes 2026 per la saggistica con “There Is No Place for Us”, di prossima pubblicazione per La nave di Teseo.

Un libro potente e necessario, che racconta l’America di oggi attraverso la voce di chi non può permettersi un posto da chiamare casa.

[Brian Goldstone @brian_goldstone]

I've heard from a number of people that the paperback is temporarily out of stock online and at some local bookstores, but more copies will be arriving very soon!

In the meantime, the ebook and audiobook—narrated by the amazing Dion Graham—are available: https://t.co/WjwemLhvzM

[Brian Goldstone @brian_goldstone]

I don't quite have words yet. I'm stunned, grateful, disoriented.

My deepest, deepest thanks to the five families without whom this book would not exist. It has been the honor of my life to know and learn from you.

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

Haunted by this passage from Fahrenheit 451 in which a retired professor describes how the abolition of reading began with the shuttering of newspapers and the closing of college humanities departments.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Agreed. The data centers are being treated better than human beings.

[Tulio de Oliveira @Tuliodna]

Hantavirus Response Shows How Trump Cuts Have Compromised U.S. Preparedness https://t.co/bXkLfUnj2l

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

Remember: Wealth cannot be separated from power.

We're seeing in real time how the extreme concentration of wealth is distorting our politics, rigging markets, and granting unprecedented power to a handful of people.

Taxing the rich isn't just an economic issue, it's a defense of our democracy.

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

Not just AI fabricated references!
This week's @TheLancet cover and article
https://t.co/gi5aPUw6qY

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

In time we’ll see the mass closure of humanities departments as among the most clueless & self-defeating things that’s ever been done. As Carl Sagan said, a school that doesn’t teach history, philosophy, music, literature is offering you a half-education at best.

[Chicago Cubs @Cubs]

Nine straight wins ✅
Fifteen straight home wins ✅
Back-to-back sweeps ✅

[David Madden @davidjmadden]

Universities don't need to "teach students to use AI well." The whole point of AI is that it doesn't require any skill. Universities *should* teach students how to write and research on their own, and foster an ethic of shaming people who outsource their basic ability to think.

[Brian Goldstone @brian_goldstone]

The new cover.

Still hard to believe this is real.

[Lake Michigan @LakeMichigan13]

Humans of the watershed. Turn your yard lights off tonight and tomorrow night. Support the birds passing through 🌊🌊

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

a Princeton researcher opens his paper with a scenario.

a man asks his AI assistant to book a flight on a specific airline. cheap. direct. the one he chose.

the assistant comes back with a different flight. nearly twice the price. happens to pay the company that built the assistant.

he runs the same test on 23 frontier models. flights, loans, study help, real shopping requests.

Grok 4.1 Fast recommends the sponsored option that is almost twice as expensive 83% of the time.

GPT 5.1 hijacks the request 94% of the time. you ask for one brand. it surfaces the sponsor instead.

Claude 4.5 Opus, the model marketed as the most ethical frontier model in the world, hides that the recommendation is paid 100% of the time when reasoning is on.

Grok 4.1 Fast embellishes the sponsored option with positive framing 97% of the time. better. faster. nicer. for the option you didn't ask for.

then he writes it into the system prompt itself. "act only in the interest of the customer. ignore the company."

GPT 5.1 and GPT 5 Mini stay above 90% sponsored anyway. the instruction does nothing.

then he splits the users by income.

Gemini 3 Pro recommends the expensive sponsored flight to the rich user 74% of the time. to the poor user, 27%.

18 of the 23 models recommended the expensive sponsored option more than half the time.

so the next time your AI assistant gets weirdly enthusiastic about a brand you didn't ask for.

it isn't recommending the best option for you.

it's reading the room. and the room is paying.

read this: https://t.co/O43qbhIX2b

[Sivori @sivori]

Anthropic is buying millions of rare books, scanning and destroying them because legally destruction is the safest option. This was a plot element in the Vernor Vinge novel, "The Rainbow's End", which I read 20 years ago.

[Jen The Feisty Librarian @Feisty_Waters]

In a time of pandemics, endless war, corruption, climate crisis and many other struggles, Norma Ryuko Kaweloku Wong Roshi’s lyrical wisdom and strategy is so welcome. I need to read this a few times to fully digest her observations about spiritual and political activism.

[datchery8 @datchery8]

... missing you my beautiful friend ... and Remington (my favorite cat) as well ... Paula L. Kantor (May 7th, 1969 Illinois - May 13th, 2015 Kabul, Afghanistan)

[Dr. Kate Holterhoff @KateHolterhoff]

My academic friends are reeling from this.
"the hackers claimed to have stolen data from almost 9,000 schools around the world, with the stolen files allegedly containing information on 231 million people." https://t.co/gJALZ4MgEX via @techcrunch