Richard
rwpickard.bsky.social
Richard
@rwpickard.bsky.social
190 followers 230 following 1.4K posts
Reader, tree-hugger, teacher, preserver of foodstuffs. Canadian. Deleter of rwpickard from Twitter/X. http://boughtbooks.blogspot.com
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Thanks for getting this into my view! Some very good choices: have you read the Simpson one yet? (On my list.)
I'd definitely say that students who are struggling with a writing assignment aren't ready to read "reams of raw content" that may or may not be helpful!
A perfect Golden Delicious is as advertised! Even though it's also true that when we taste, we taste at a particular time, from the experiences we've had until then: sometimes I've been a bit sad when I've gone back to what I thought of as a favourite food, but certainly NOT always.
I've finally finished (after an embarrassingly long series of rereads, hiatuses, and the like) @biblioracle.bsky.social's book MORE THAN WORDS: HOW TO THINK ABOUT WRITING IN THE AGE OF AI. Just so very thoughtful, even where I don't agree! #resistAI #againstAI bsky.app/profile/bibl...
I know AI can't replace me because it can't think what I think, feel what I feel, experience what I experience. I'm lucky that my work allows me to make use of these things. I don't think it's that impossible a lift to make it so what students do in school brings similar values to the table.
Are you actively looking for books, then, with characters who aren't miserable people?
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Folks in British #naturewriting circles: some time ago there were skeets about who to read who wasn't Callum Robinson. I've just finished Ingrained (it was good enough, but), and I've been unable to find those old skeets. Anyone else got them? #booksky
Indeed I know them both, and fine writers they are! I'm recalling some posts specifically about labouring or working-class writers, mostly women writers, but I just can't find those again. boughtbooks.blogspot.com/2024/04/roge...
Roger Deakin, Wildwood
There was a time when I would've thrilled to almost everything about Roger Deakin's 2007 book Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees . It's truly...
boughtbooks.blogspot.com
Folks in British #naturewriting circles: some time ago there were skeets about who to read who wasn't Callum Robinson. I've just finished Ingrained (it was good enough, but), and I've been unable to find those old skeets. Anyone else got them? #booksky
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I see @oxfordunipress.bsky.social are cancelling independent scholars and researchers. I couldn't have written #RecoveringDorothy without an individual subscription and this is going to make similar work impossible for me going forward, including contributions to scholarly editions. What BS.
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Tech guys six months ago: haha yes we’re cutting all this WASTEFUL spending by eliminating medical research and USAID

Tech guys now: yes I think taxpayers will be excited to bailout my non consensual pornography machine
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Proposal: from here forward, anyone proposing to move, or move a business in protest of a future elxn result must put their assets in a trustee-controlled escrow account, or professional media will refuse to report the threat.
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I read somewhere that it should actually be called Simulated Intelligence. It makes immediately clear what it actually is.
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Good morning! AI is being force-fed to you by a handful of billionaires who will lose a bunch of money if they fail to convince you that you need it. You do not need it 🫶
And indeed I do find them of use: it's bookmarked, and I stop by regularly.
Please read my reply again. I know you're saying that. My point: I'm struggling to imagine how, under anything like the full LLM adoption being forcibly imposed upon all of us, generations of humans can keep developing everything needed to sustain creative discovery. We haven't been here before.
LLMs don't make knowledge and aren't creative. In the current acceptance trajectory, we're increasingly failing to convince users to handle LLMs' productions critically. The "AI" button is everywhere, true, but that's not a measure of its utility. What am I missing? 2/2
I agree with how you characterize that reply. But genuinely, I'm struggling to see any way that AI can help us "start repairing the arts of knowledge making and creative discovery ... [so that] writing might take care of itself, AI notwithstanding" (to use your words). 1/2
I do appreciate the late 2025 reality that "AI" buttons and popups and so on are embedded into almost every app. Saying only "no!" is facile and pointless.

But if there's no data showing positive outcomes (even neutral ones!), why accept its inevitability re pedagogy? Why not actively resist?!?!
“What is there to teach with respect to typing some text into a box and then mindlessly copy-pasting the output? Such a skilless relationship disregards our pedagogical commitment to foster a critical stance in our students and colleagues” — @olivia.science et al. (2025) zenodo.org/records/1706...
Hot take: If the project of "critical AI" means finding a way to purchase and work with the marginally least toxic LLM product, and making room for the slop machine on campus, it isn't genuinely "critical."

What am I missing? Resistance is an option, no? #resistAI
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Very proud to have worked on this statement of the Modern Language Association with @annamillsoer.bsky.social and other colleagues on the MLA’s task force on AI in Research and Teaching. It is a direct call for faculty input into Ed Tech decision-making, especially AI: www.mla.org/Resources/Ad... 🧵