Richard
@rwpickard.bsky.social
Reader, tree-hugger, teacher, preserver of foodstuffs. Canadian.
Deleter of rwpickard from Twitter/X.
http://boughtbooks.blogspot.com
Deleter of rwpickard from Twitter/X.
http://boughtbooks.blogspot.com
Pinned
Richard
@rwpickard.bsky.social
· Aug 30
Neighbourhood radical: A story about "AI"
Last night, at a kind neighbour's gentle garden party, I found myself calling for revolution and telling someone to choose which side they'd...
boughtbooks.blogspot.com
Re-upping this post, just to make my feelings about AI unmistakeable. #noAI #againstAI
boughtbooks.blogspot.com/2025/05/neig...
boughtbooks.blogspot.com/2025/05/neig...
Reposted by Richard
Do we need a whole new model for writing instruction? Or do we need to stop pretending that AI is a problem for individual professors to solve through responsible pedagogy and not a symptom of systemic issues in higher education that can only be addressed through collective action?
January 7, 2026 at 12:48 AM
Do we need a whole new model for writing instruction? Or do we need to stop pretending that AI is a problem for individual professors to solve through responsible pedagogy and not a symptom of systemic issues in higher education that can only be addressed through collective action?
Are they stupid enough to think that everyone will leave the US and go back to Cuba, Venezuela, etc, just because the US decides to stomp bloodily around in their countries of origin? (Narrator: They were exactly that stupid.) www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...
Marco Rubio says he believes Cuba is 'in a lot of trouble'
The secretary of state's latest remarks came after he told reporters that he'd be "concerned" if he were a government official in Havana.
www.nbcnews.com
January 4, 2026 at 11:59 PM
Are they stupid enough to think that everyone will leave the US and go back to Cuba, Venezuela, etc, just because the US decides to stomp bloodily around in their countries of origin? (Narrator: They were exactly that stupid.) www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...
Reposted by Richard
Colombian President Petro commenting on the US;
“A clan of pedophiles wants to destroy our democracy. To keep Epstein's list from coming out, they send warships to kill fishermen & threaten our neighbor with invasion for their oil."
“A clan of pedophiles wants to destroy our democracy. To keep Epstein's list from coming out, they send warships to kill fishermen & threaten our neighbor with invasion for their oil."
January 4, 2026 at 3:40 AM
Colombian President Petro commenting on the US;
“A clan of pedophiles wants to destroy our democracy. To keep Epstein's list from coming out, they send warships to kill fishermen & threaten our neighbor with invasion for their oil."
“A clan of pedophiles wants to destroy our democracy. To keep Epstein's list from coming out, they send warships to kill fishermen & threaten our neighbor with invasion for their oil."
Remember that oil and gas companies in Canada are heavily American, and American imperialism steals from the world in all kinds of ways. A random invasion of Venezuela is just a variant on how American oil companies in Canada make money here.
And one more last-last thing: lawless US foreign policy and acts of naked imperialism are, without fail in my lifetime, applauded/encouraged by the oil and gas companies in Calgary. Every time. So watch for that, and understand the perspectives you may be reading from academics, think tanks etc
January 3, 2026 at 6:44 PM
Remember that oil and gas companies in Canada are heavily American, and American imperialism steals from the world in all kinds of ways. A random invasion of Venezuela is just a variant on how American oil companies in Canada make money here.
Like, these people? C'mon, now. bsky.app/profile/akur...
Katie Miller, political advisor/spouse of White House deputy chief of staff for policy and advisor in homeland security Stephen Miller, quotes someone saying "Canada just lost all leverage with the USA" and adds "Free trade is over" #venezuela #cdnpolitics
January 3, 2026 at 6:37 PM
Like, these people? C'mon, now. bsky.app/profile/akur...
I don't comment often on American news, because there's too much and it's all the same, but just to make the point: fuck ALL those people involved. It's Trump, sure, but they're all criminal at this point. #venezuela #sovereignty #ruleoflaw www.cbc.ca/news/world/t...
Trump says U.S. is 'going to run' Venezuela until safe transition of power can take place | CBC News
U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday said the United States had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and flown them out of the country amid strikes by the U.S. on Caracas, Ven...
www.cbc.ca
January 3, 2026 at 6:31 PM
I don't comment often on American news, because there's too much and it's all the same, but just to make the point: fuck ALL those people involved. It's Trump, sure, but they're all criminal at this point. #venezuela #sovereignty #ruleoflaw www.cbc.ca/news/world/t...
Reposted by Richard
A real news outlet publishing the phrase "Grok apologized" should result in like a week-long timeout. Think about what you've done.
January 2, 2026 at 10:31 PM
A real news outlet publishing the phrase "Grok apologized" should result in like a week-long timeout. Think about what you've done.
Reposted by Richard
It is a heartening thing to see more academics dropping habits of being overcautious in their writing and instead speaking the truth clearly and forcefully.
Stank as style
Stank as style
It was amazing to write with @ehayot.bsky.social & each of us put our stank into every part of this essay.
I have no memory of how we drafted it in October, but when we came back to it a couple weeks ago, I felt this paragraph in my bones.
I have no memory of how we drafted it in October, but when we came back to it a couple weeks ago, I felt this paragraph in my bones.
December 30, 2025 at 1:31 PM
It is a heartening thing to see more academics dropping habits of being overcautious in their writing and instead speaking the truth clearly and forcefully.
Stank as style
Stank as style
Reposted by Richard
Maybe, if you're not actually in university classrooms, teaching students in the age of gAI, perhaps you might want to stop and listen when people actually in those classrooms raise concerns about what they are seeing; and not just dismiss us as luddites, or boomers, or cruel profs playing cops
December 28, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Maybe, if you're not actually in university classrooms, teaching students in the age of gAI, perhaps you might want to stop and listen when people actually in those classrooms raise concerns about what they are seeing; and not just dismiss us as luddites, or boomers, or cruel profs playing cops
Reposted by Richard
THIS THIS THIS. ALL OF THIS
THIS is why faculty resist technological strategies for teaching. There is no engaging with Edtech without this context
THIS is why faculty resist technological strategies for teaching. There is no engaging with Edtech without this context
December 30, 2025 at 1:50 AM
THIS THIS THIS. ALL OF THIS
THIS is why faculty resist technological strategies for teaching. There is no engaging with Edtech without this context
THIS is why faculty resist technological strategies for teaching. There is no engaging with Edtech without this context
Reposted by Richard
This seems reasonable to me. We tolerate typos introduced by human error, but it's easy to read your paper over and miss some typos. Not realizing your paper includes AI-generated artifacts like citing fake papers or LLM meta comments is a different level of negligence.
I'd like to propose the following norm for peer review of papers. If a paper shows clear signs of LLM-generated errors that were not detected by the author, the paper should be immediately rejected. My reasoning: 1/ #ResearchIntegrity
December 28, 2025 at 6:43 PM
This seems reasonable to me. We tolerate typos introduced by human error, but it's easy to read your paper over and miss some typos. Not realizing your paper includes AI-generated artifacts like citing fake papers or LLM meta comments is a different level of negligence.
Sealioning and reply-guy culture are both real, sadly.
December 28, 2025 at 10:18 PM
Sealioning and reply-guy culture are both real, sadly.
Also, your reply wasn't balanced. Legislative tools are reasonable options for situations with global impact. Otherwise, you're asking every teacher to dedicate their lives to adjudicating AI, rather than teaching. Textbook small-gov't conservatism isn't "balanced." bsky.app/profile/msin...
And it definitely should NOT be up to legislators to decide AI use in the classroom at any level. Do you really want some rep who has spent exactly 0 minutes in a classroom to be the one writing rules on how you’ll teach or assign work?
December 28, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Also, your reply wasn't balanced. Legislative tools are reasonable options for situations with global impact. Otherwise, you're asking every teacher to dedicate their lives to adjudicating AI, rather than teaching. Textbook small-gov't conservatism isn't "balanced." bsky.app/profile/msin...
Sure, your scenario is possible. I said I wasn't saying you WERE a bot. It's an oddly targeted beginning for a new account, but stranger things have happened.
You don't seem aware of just how intensely OP has been in discussion about these issues, for literal years, but again, okay.
You don't seem aware of just how intensely OP has been in discussion about these issues, for literal years, but again, okay.
December 28, 2025 at 6:16 PM
Sure, your scenario is possible. I said I wasn't saying you WERE a bot. It's an oddly targeted beginning for a new account, but stranger things have happened.
You don't seem aware of just how intensely OP has been in discussion about these issues, for literal years, but again, okay.
You don't seem aware of just how intensely OP has been in discussion about these issues, for literal years, but again, okay.
This was SUCH a disingenuous reply.
December 28, 2025 at 5:23 PM
This was SUCH a disingenuous reply.
I'm not saying he IS a bot, but the account seems to have been created only to respond to your skeet.
Plus the profile pic seems to appear online only once, for a YouTube channel created in 2011 with only a single odd Short to its credit.
Plus the profile pic seems to appear online only once, for a YouTube channel created in 2011 with only a single odd Short to its credit.
December 28, 2025 at 5:13 PM
I'm not saying he IS a bot, but the account seems to have been created only to respond to your skeet.
Plus the profile pic seems to appear online only once, for a YouTube channel created in 2011 with only a single odd Short to its credit.
Plus the profile pic seems to appear online only once, for a YouTube channel created in 2011 with only a single odd Short to its credit.
To be fair, this skeet was from a long thread, and the writer has expressed their ideas more complicatedly and richly than here. Am I crank? Very well, I'm a crank, but a crank isn't necessarily wrong.
December 28, 2025 at 1:21 AM
To be fair, this skeet was from a long thread, and the writer has expressed their ideas more complicatedly and richly than here. Am I crank? Very well, I'm a crank, but a crank isn't necessarily wrong.
This skeet's woefully limited imagination is why I keep refusing LLM-type AI. Books are the site of self-interactivity, and the act of reading is inherently dialogic (more than that: I argue with myself AND the text). If they can't see that, it's not wonder they fall to the machine. #resistAI
Re books: books and literature are useful for information, but they aren't interactive and dialogic. They don't fulfil the same function that I'm referring to.
December 28, 2025 at 1:17 AM
This skeet's woefully limited imagination is why I keep refusing LLM-type AI. Books are the site of self-interactivity, and the act of reading is inherently dialogic (more than that: I argue with myself AND the text). If they can't see that, it's not wonder they fall to the machine. #resistAI
Jesus Christ, these PEOPLE.
December 28, 2025 at 1:14 AM
Jesus Christ, these PEOPLE.
Damn it, Beatty, now I have to make waffles myself.
December 27, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Damn it, Beatty, now I have to make waffles myself.
I enjoyed experimenting with Diigo, for much the same reason, but it didn't take (not with me, and not widely)
December 27, 2025 at 12:36 AM
I enjoyed experimenting with Diigo, for much the same reason, but it didn't take (not with me, and not widely)
Fascinating piece, that tries to reconsider the role of reading in an age of mechanical reproduction (so to speak) #resistAI #noAI
I wrote this blog post after stumbling into a Reddit thread that wondered if reading AI synthetic text was bad for you mentally. I introduce this term “firm reading” as a way to question if a text has meaning in the first place. I appreciate you reading.
meresophistry.substack.com/p/firm-readi...
meresophistry.substack.com/p/firm-readi...
Firm reading in an era of AI delirium
Could reading synthetic text be like eating ultra processed foods?
meresophistry.substack.com
December 26, 2025 at 4:35 PM
Reposted by Richard
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Not sure I’ve seen a better framing of this problem
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Not sure I’ve seen a better framing of this problem
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No one says to legit business owners, "hey I see there's an underground market selling toxic knock-offs of your product: how will you incorporate the toxic product AND protect your customers against its harms?" But apparently it's fine to make this suggestion to educators with respect to AI.
December 24, 2025 at 11:24 PM
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Not sure I’ve seen a better framing of this problem
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Not sure I’ve seen a better framing of this problem
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THIS RIGHT HERE. #resistAI
If someone says to you, "what are you doing about students' use of AI?" ask them, "do you think that this should be my problem? How good do you think my response can be? Should it not be up to legislators & administrators to defend against a commercial industry's attack on your child's education?"
December 24, 2025 at 7:49 PM
THIS RIGHT HERE. #resistAI