Oatmeal Enthusiast
@ogresloth.bsky.social
Leftist, academic, and cookie connoisseur based in NY. Writing, editing, and podcasting at leftvoice.org
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
i don't say things like this often, as i find them hyperbolic to the point of extreme dilution, so please believe me when I say this is the most severe, graceful dissection of Musk I've seen. Swift, effortlessly deep, like piano wire through tofu. If someone spoke of me like this I’d be abed a week
November 9, 2025 at 11:00 PM
i don't say things like this often, as i find them hyperbolic to the point of extreme dilution, so please believe me when I say this is the most severe, graceful dissection of Musk I've seen. Swift, effortlessly deep, like piano wire through tofu. If someone spoke of me like this I’d be abed a week
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
So fun that I can’t believe anything I see on the internet is real anymore. What a great future. Good job rich guys.
November 9, 2025 at 4:57 AM
So fun that I can’t believe anything I see on the internet is real anymore. What a great future. Good job rich guys.
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
I honestly don’t get the value of this company. They hoover up energy and water. Their product constantly gets things wrong and, in extreme cases, coaches people into suicide.
And it’s all built on what seems to be malicious and vast intellectual property theft.
What does OpenAI offer the world?
And it’s all built on what seems to be malicious and vast intellectual property theft.
What does OpenAI offer the world?
“authors & publishers who filed a lawsuit against the Sam Altman-led firm have secured access to internal Slack messages… discussing the mass deletion of a pirated books dataset… A NY district court ordered OpenAI to hand over the communications regarding data deletion”
futurism.com/artificial-i...
futurism.com/artificial-i...
OpenAI in Danger After Authors Suing It Gain Access to Its Internal Slack Messages
Authors and publishers, who are suing OpenAI, secured access to internal Slack messages and emails discussing the deletion of pirated books.
futurism.com
November 9, 2025 at 7:35 AM
I honestly don’t get the value of this company. They hoover up energy and water. Their product constantly gets things wrong and, in extreme cases, coaches people into suicide.
And it’s all built on what seems to be malicious and vast intellectual property theft.
What does OpenAI offer the world?
And it’s all built on what seems to be malicious and vast intellectual property theft.
What does OpenAI offer the world?
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
Did you wake up irrationally angry at how much energy is being used - and CO2 is being emitted - to foist upon us AI technology that most of don't even want?
November 2, 2025 at 1:49 PM
Did you wake up irrationally angry at how much energy is being used - and CO2 is being emitted - to foist upon us AI technology that most of don't even want?
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
AI is intellectual asbestos. Building it into all of our information systems and relying on it to produce academic, scientific and legal knowledge is layering toxic waste into infrastructure that we won’t ever be able to fully abate.
When provided the exact same question, “LLMs sometimes say one party should win, while other times saying the other party should win. This instability has implications for the increasing numbers of legal AI products, legal processes, and lawyers relying on these LLMs.”
arxiv.org/html/2502.05...
arxiv.org/html/2502.05...
LLMs Provide Unstable Answers to Legal Questions
arxiv.org
April 6, 2025 at 10:58 PM
AI is intellectual asbestos. Building it into all of our information systems and relying on it to produce academic, scientific and legal knowledge is layering toxic waste into infrastructure that we won’t ever be able to fully abate.
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same.
Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow.
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow.
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
Experimental evidence of the effects of large language models versus web search on depth of learning
Abstract. The effects of using large language models (LLMs) versus traditional web search on depth of learning are explored. A theory is proposed that when
academic.oup.com
October 28, 2025 at 3:14 PM
When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same.
Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow.
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow.
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
Since I heard the idea that "surveillance used to be a side-effect; now it is the product" in @techwontsave.us with @hypervisible.blacksky.app, I cannot help finding it everywhere I read. For instance, this is the new "Claude Memory" by Anthropic.
October 24, 2025 at 8:23 AM
Since I heard the idea that "surveillance used to be a side-effect; now it is the product" in @techwontsave.us with @hypervisible.blacksky.app, I cannot help finding it everywhere I read. For instance, this is the new "Claude Memory" by Anthropic.
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.
October 17, 2025 at 12:16 PM
In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
What HE managers fail to understand is that in the context of the Humanities, ‘employability’ isn’t teaching coding or carpentry, but skills around writing, presenting, reasoning, evaluation, analysis, research etc. In an 80% service economy, these are the skills that fundamentally matter.
October 15, 2025 at 6:40 AM
What HE managers fail to understand is that in the context of the Humanities, ‘employability’ isn’t teaching coding or carpentry, but skills around writing, presenting, reasoning, evaluation, analysis, research etc. In an 80% service economy, these are the skills that fundamentally matter.
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
Everyone agrees that we're currently in a dotcom era-like AI bubble. People disagree what sort of bubble it is.
There are 3 stories one can tell about the dotcom crash: a startup story, a telecom story, and an accounting fraud story.
My take: it's giving Enron
open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...
There are 3 stories one can tell about the dotcom crash: a startup story, a telecom story, and an accounting fraud story.
My take: it's giving Enron
open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...
It's Giving Enron
On the AI bubble, and the various echoes of the dotcom crash
open.substack.com
October 14, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Everyone agrees that we're currently in a dotcom era-like AI bubble. People disagree what sort of bubble it is.
There are 3 stories one can tell about the dotcom crash: a startup story, a telecom story, and an accounting fraud story.
My take: it's giving Enron
open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...
There are 3 stories one can tell about the dotcom crash: a startup story, a telecom story, and an accounting fraud story.
My take: it's giving Enron
open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
AI in education amplifies and intensifies educational systems of product-centredness
AI in education reproduces the idea of de-skilled, casualized pedagogy where the computer is the primary reader of the curriculum/syllabus and the tutor plays a subsidiary role
AI in education reproduces the idea of de-skilled, casualized pedagogy where the computer is the primary reader of the curriculum/syllabus and the tutor plays a subsidiary role
October 11, 2025 at 10:28 PM
AI in education amplifies and intensifies educational systems of product-centredness
AI in education reproduces the idea of de-skilled, casualized pedagogy where the computer is the primary reader of the curriculum/syllabus and the tutor plays a subsidiary role
AI in education reproduces the idea of de-skilled, casualized pedagogy where the computer is the primary reader of the curriculum/syllabus and the tutor plays a subsidiary role
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
The basic structure of so much commentary, some in the guise of academic study, reduces to:
(1) generative AI products are detrimental to the goals of education
(2) therefore, the goals of education must change.
Without the tacit axiom that AI has authority behind it, that just doesn’t follow.
(1) generative AI products are detrimental to the goals of education
(2) therefore, the goals of education must change.
Without the tacit axiom that AI has authority behind it, that just doesn’t follow.
October 9, 2025 at 12:45 PM
The basic structure of so much commentary, some in the guise of academic study, reduces to:
(1) generative AI products are detrimental to the goals of education
(2) therefore, the goals of education must change.
Without the tacit axiom that AI has authority behind it, that just doesn’t follow.
(1) generative AI products are detrimental to the goals of education
(2) therefore, the goals of education must change.
Without the tacit axiom that AI has authority behind it, that just doesn’t follow.
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
Imagine studying a technology whose presence in the classroom is so detrimental to the development of writing and research skills (including even the will to know the sources behind claims!) that mitigating its effects becomes a central goal of course design, and concluding with tips on adopting it.
October 9, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Imagine studying a technology whose presence in the classroom is so detrimental to the development of writing and research skills (including even the will to know the sources behind claims!) that mitigating its effects becomes a central goal of course design, and concluding with tips on adopting it.
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
Robin Williams' daughter has some quality thoughts on AI slop
October 6, 2025 at 8:48 PM
Robin Williams' daughter has some quality thoughts on AI slop
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
"In 2012, 60 trans-related articles were published by Britain’s media. By 2022, it was more than 7,500, according to figures from Trans Media Watch. The media is not responding to public rage against vulnerable minorities; it is helping to create it." www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/709...
What is a reactionary centrist, and does the UK have them?
A term favoured by US progressives can help us understand Britain’s drift to the right
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk
October 1, 2025 at 1:52 PM
"In 2012, 60 trans-related articles were published by Britain’s media. By 2022, it was more than 7,500, according to figures from Trans Media Watch. The media is not responding to public rage against vulnerable minorities; it is helping to create it." www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/709...
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
If you make and show me a Sora 2 video I want you to know I think of you as infinitely less important than a worm, whose movements and excrement nuture the soil, whereas a Sora 2 user is a creature that asks robots to despoil the world out of boredom.
October 1, 2025 at 2:29 AM
If you make and show me a Sora 2 video I want you to know I think of you as infinitely less important than a worm, whose movements and excrement nuture the soil, whereas a Sora 2 user is a creature that asks robots to despoil the world out of boredom.
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
In his wonderful newsletter, @joshgondelman.bsky.social wrote something about AI that is going to rattle around in my head forever:
“AI cannot take a happy person and make them happier, but it can take a lonely person and turn them delusional.“ www.thatsmarvelousnewsletter.com/151-ai-frien...
“AI cannot take a happy person and make them happier, but it can take a lonely person and turn them delusional.“ www.thatsmarvelousnewsletter.com/151-ai-frien...
#151. AI "Friends" and You
Hi everyone,
It's been a huge week for me, not because anything exceptional happened, but because I tested negative for covid and rejoined the general public. I was so happy to be in the same room wi...
www.thatsmarvelousnewsletter.com
September 29, 2025 at 5:13 PM
In his wonderful newsletter, @joshgondelman.bsky.social wrote something about AI that is going to rattle around in my head forever:
“AI cannot take a happy person and make them happier, but it can take a lonely person and turn them delusional.“ www.thatsmarvelousnewsletter.com/151-ai-frien...
“AI cannot take a happy person and make them happier, but it can take a lonely person and turn them delusional.“ www.thatsmarvelousnewsletter.com/151-ai-frien...
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
...I mean that even with careful prompts I would not be confident LLMs could perform the function I'd want. How do I know that any bland AI summary of a paper is going to extract what might be of value to *me* in it? I don't even know that myself before I read it...
September 26, 2025 at 10:48 AM
...I mean that even with careful prompts I would not be confident LLMs could perform the function I'd want. How do I know that any bland AI summary of a paper is going to extract what might be of value to *me* in it? I don't even know that myself before I read it...
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
And as for writing, don't get me started. Most often, the process of writing is not a laborious business of transcription, but a process of thinking itself. I'm not about to outsource my thinking to a machine.
September 26, 2025 at 10:50 AM
And as for writing, don't get me started. Most often, the process of writing is not a laborious business of transcription, but a process of thinking itself. I'm not about to outsource my thinking to a machine.
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
i have to say, as a trans journalist who has covered the "trans debate" for about a decade now, there is no daylight between how the trump administration and conservatives lie about tylenol and autism and how they've lied about youth trans care.
September 23, 2025 at 12:32 PM
i have to say, as a trans journalist who has covered the "trans debate" for about a decade now, there is no daylight between how the trump administration and conservatives lie about tylenol and autism and how they've lied about youth trans care.
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
“The biggest US-listed companies keep talking about artificial intelligence. But other than the ‘fear of missing out,’ few appear to be able to describe how the technology is changing their businesses for the better.”
America’s top companies keep talking about AI — but can’t explain the upsides
FT analysis of hundreds of filings suggest the S&P 500 businesses are clearer about the risks than benefits
www.ft.com
September 23, 2025 at 11:47 AM
“The biggest US-listed companies keep talking about artificial intelligence. But other than the ‘fear of missing out,’ few appear to be able to describe how the technology is changing their businesses for the better.”
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
Yes, excellent point. The most durable lessons may not feel great in the moment of learning, but that friction is necessary. For me, it relates to how education has taken on a transactional structure. If the transaction is satisfied more quickly, that's better. Students get a lot of signals that way
September 15, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Yes, excellent point. The most durable lessons may not feel great in the moment of learning, but that friction is necessary. For me, it relates to how education has taken on a transactional structure. If the transaction is satisfied more quickly, that's better. Students get a lot of signals that way
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
I just don't understand how people know what to teach if they aren't regularly and thoughtfully reading their students' writing. Feedback is not just for the student.
September 15, 2025 at 1:18 PM
I just don't understand how people know what to teach if they aren't regularly and thoughtfully reading their students' writing. Feedback is not just for the student.
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
Remember: there's no audience for AI-produced content. Nobody in the AI ecosystem is there to read or listen - only to publish their own slop.
The real pitch, of course, isn't to consume the slop, but to join the exalted ranks of slop producers. The typical slop middleman makes an "AI company" - they run the gamut from Grammarly to Synthetic Users - and resells the processed slop with the same pitch: you too can now make slop.
September 9, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Remember: there's no audience for AI-produced content. Nobody in the AI ecosystem is there to read or listen - only to publish their own slop.
Reposted by Oatmeal Enthusiast
"We are grateful that, through this mega-contract with a coach, the university is publicly recognizing what we’ve known for years: Our mission is not to prepare America’s youth for successful careers; it’s to make money on football."
Despite Massive Cuts to Higher Ed, We Faculty Are Thrilled about Our New Multi-Million-Dollar Football Coach
Dear Board of Trustees, As professors at this large state university, we want to thank you for your recent investment in athletics. We admit, when ...
buff.ly
September 6, 2025 at 3:01 PM
"We are grateful that, through this mega-contract with a coach, the university is publicly recognizing what we’ve known for years: Our mission is not to prepare America’s youth for successful careers; it’s to make money on football."