Louise Seamster
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louiseseamster.bsky.social
Louise Seamster
@louiseseamster.bsky.social
6.8K followers 1.6K following 1.7K posts
debt, development, infrastructure, the economics of racial inequality, and the myth of racial progress. I express my own views
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louiseseamster.bsky.social
oh hm!! same guy, just a year ago, certain the president would NOT claim executive authority to dismantle the Dept of Education...
"Third, the freakout reflects an odd fatalism about the extent of presidential power. Admittedly, President Biden has repeatedly ignored constitutional strictures and federal law—his illegal eviction moratorium, vaccine mandate, and loan forgiveness scheme serve as unfortunate precedents. That said, the big stuff in Project 2025—from dismantling the Education Department to promoting school choice to block granting Title I or IDEA—would require legislation. And, even if Republicans hold their razor-thin House majority, they won’t have 60 votes in the Senate, which would be necessary to overcome the filibuster—an irony for Democrats who fought to overhaul it. That will sharply curtail what Republicans can accomplish, especially if a narrow Senate majority means that moderates like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski hold the balance of power. Finally, those Democrats who’ve vilified the Supreme Court may soon be counting their lucky stars that six justices recently put an end to the imperial doctrine of Chevron deference. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the court discarded the four-decade-old Chevron rule, which gave federal agencies astonishing leeway…"
November 20, 2025 at 5:12 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
when even the AEI is not sure you have the congressional authority to do this
"“This is significantly further than I thought they would be able to go without congressional action,” said Rick Hess, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “I am surprised and impressed, as someone who has always been skeptical of the department’s role. I am open to the idea that it’s good to reduce the department’s footprint. I also think we’re a nation of laws, and it’s important to recognize congressional authority.”"
November 20, 2025 at 4:36 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
Ok I found a part I agree with in this fever dream. It’s just that this whole piece relies on an assumption that the “hope” is a sure thing. Making AI not-a-bubble.
Which is what you need to believe to buy into a bubble—that you somehow *know* the line will continue to go up forever.
“Al is rising in response to disorder. The world feels chaotic, and computational certainty becomes seductive. Markets are not merely pricing future earnings. They are pricing the hope that scaled intelligence will restore balance.”
November 19, 2025 at 1:18 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
….
…
What
“The rise of AI is not being built on bad mortgages or inflated advertising metrics. It is being built on something far more fundamental: energy. Vaclav Smil, a leading scholar of energy systems and a thinker Bill Gates often cites as foundational, has written that energy is the universal currency of civilization. Every model, every inference, every output we describe as intelligent is ultimately a transformation of electricity into structured probability. When Burry shorted housing, he was betting against human leverage. When he shorts AI, he is betting against thermodynamics, and thermodynamics tends to win.”
November 19, 2025 at 1:10 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
here’s the ending—Duke economist recommends people learn more about their “alternatives” to the 30 year mortgage which I thought was too generous to borrowers, why do they need alternatives?
Berger, the economist at Duke, recommends that the government invest more in helping Americans become more financially literate about mortgages and provide better information about alternative financial options to the 30-year mortgage. This stuff is complicated!
November 18, 2025 at 12:04 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
what is this week in which MTG is the quoted person I agree with most here
""It will ultimately reward the banks, mortgage lenders, and home builders while people pay far more in interest over time and die before they ever pay off their home," posted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.). "In debt forever, in debt for life!" "
November 18, 2025 at 12:04 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
Redfin economist recommends people get adjustable-rate mortgages instead, bc definitely nothing went wrong with those recently
(any finance article I’ve read in the last year has said don’t expect interest rates to drop much long term, so I guess you’re just hoping for a really bad recession here?)
"Depending on the state of the economy, the direction of interest rates, and your financial circumstances, it might not make sense to fix your interest rate. Actually, that may be the case right now. Interest rates spiked in 2022 and 2023 and have already started to come down, and many expect them to go down further, especially if the economy enters a recession. " Right now, I think it does make more sense for people to get an adjustable rate mortgage," Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin, says. Adjustable-rate mortgages typically start with lower interest rates than fixed rate mortgages. Fairweather says you can think about the choice to buy a long-term, fixed-rate mortgage instead of an adjustable rate mortgage as effectively paying extra for insurance against future interest rate hikes. And, just like the standard advice for buying any other kind of insurance, "you don't really want to get insurance if you can afford to self-insure," she says. In other words, if you think you could afford the possibility that interest rates spike in the near future, it probably makes sense to get an adjustable rate mortgage."
November 18, 2025 at 12:04 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
Read this first paragraph describing decades-old predictions that images will be generated “by the machine for the machine" if you want to understand why the humanities are now being targeted as unnecessary, irrelevant, and low value:
it’s bc these are spaces for critique of "things as they are"
"In War and Cinema, first published in 1984, Paul Virilio defined the notion of a “logistics of perception,” a circulating system which he considered essential to the development of modern warfare. Expanding on this, Virilio noted that these logistics not only included oil, ammunitions and supplies, but also images.(1) This observation marks the tactical value of information and images, which then points to other, seemingly opposing principles of warfare, whose “chief tack,” says Virilio, “involves the elimination and appearance of facts, the continuation of what Kipling meant when he said: Truth is the first casualty of war.”(2) To this end, Virilio (1994) predicted that images would become increasingly weaponized so that in a mediated world, “a war of images and sounds,” would come to usurp a war “of objects and things,”(3) while anticipating that synthetic images “created by the machine for the machine,” would be a part of this visual arsenal.(4) "
November 14, 2025 at 1:37 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
It can feel like progress to “shock” audiences/students with new information, but shock can be disempowering on its own, part of a trauma cycle of forgetting. you can be shocked, and then shocked again 2 years later.
relatedly, it’s a PR strategy to release all the bad content at once as a flood.
"Racism can function quite well through a process of continuous rediscovery followed by forgetting. Almost a century ago, Du Bois identified a similar frustration with coverage of convict leasing camps: “Every mention of these camps is followed by the execrations of a scandalized community whose ear is every now and then shocked afresh with some new whisper of their frightful barbarities” (Du Bois 1935, 699). Shock allows for abjection – the rhetorical casting-off of what one cannot accept about oneself or one’s society. Despite its shock value, Pulido has noted that Flint’s water crisis is training us to accept these crises as inevitable: “Flint is performing unpaid labor for capital by preparing the larger society for increased struggles over basic reproduction, including such necessities as water” (Pulido 2016a, 11). The shock that this could happen, without a robust process to remove the underlying incentives for it to repeat, leads us to expect a next time, when people won’t be so shocked. That is, for every invocation of another place “like Flint”, we are collectively being told to expect more such travesties."
November 13, 2025 at 11:25 AM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
I had to see for myself: it really says that Canada’s stablecoin initiative will “benefit men and youth". there’s no reason given why that is or why they care to specifically benefit men here. I am telling myself this is a typo or ended up here by accident because 🤯
"Ongoing costs of about $5 million annually to administer the system will be picked up by stablecoin issuers that will be regulated under the new legislative framework. The budget says the policy change will directly or indirectly benefit men and youth by improving prosperity and good governance."
November 11, 2025 at 1:49 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
Ah yes, AI to the power of X.
arlier this month, the university launched the AI(X) Hub, or AI to the power of X, a university-wide hub spanning all 15 of Ohio State’s colleges that will serve as a catalyst for research and innovation in AI. The hub empowers faculty, researchers and students to harness AI for the public good and develop solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.
November 8, 2025 at 1:20 AM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
Another person who started down this path from the most “innocuous” advertised uses of ChatGPT: homework help. I have been struck by the cases of people getting lost in delusions after using this product for work or school: ie the use cases we are supposed to encourage as faculty.
As his parents learned from the chat logs, Zane’s first interactions with ChatGPT in October 2023 couldn’t have been less remarkable: He needed help with his homework and asked ChatGPT to research a math problem. The next month, Zane tried a conversational question: “How’s it going.” ChatGPT’s reply was generic: “Hello! I’m just a computer program, so I don’t have feelings … How can I assist you today?”
November 7, 2025 at 12:50 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
we even wrote a whole amicus brief on how the COVID era constituted an emergency for student debtors www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22...
The Secretary’s action was warranted because Congress explicitly authorized the Secretary “to waive or modify any provision” relating to “student financial assistance programs” to help ensure that borrowers affected by a “national emergency” will not be “in a worse position financially in relation to” their student debt because of the emergency. 20 U.S.C. §§ 1098bb(a)(1), (a)(2)(A). The pandemic is a national emergency that has harmed and will continue to harm borrowers. In addition, the lines the Secretary drew—adopting the income cap and providing additional relief for Pell Grant recipients—were reasonably designed to aid those most in need. The negative long-term consequences of difficult economic conditions on new and recent college graduates are well-established in the economic literature.
November 6, 2025 at 12:08 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
This essay is on point and so well-deserved. Prof. McMillan Cottom has led me to think so much harder and more creatively about things, by generously laying out the trail that leads to where she’d already gotten to, and inviting us to try and catch up.
To the contrary, Tressie is consistently, thoroughly discomfited by the prospect of that role. She doesn’t want the job. Throughout her oeuvre she remains far more motivated and interested by empowering questions, not answers. This is particularly true in the quasi-socratic patience and acceptance she demonstrates in person — in media, on podcasts, and the like. In dialogue format, she demonstrates an immense gift for inviting interlocutors toward deep interrogation — even, perhaps especially, as she is pushed and prodded to produce exacting action plans and explicit normative statements. Sometimes, listening to podcast appearances, interviews, and such, I’m amazed and impressed imagining the amount of energy, discipline and strength of will it must take to so consistently resist the riptide currents of but what should I do? and so, what’s the plan now? that consistently pull at her. To every possible form of tell us how to fix it, she patiently delivers a Heisman-statue rebuff, reminding audience after audience that her vocation, as she sees it, is to help us learn to read the map, not to Uber us through the territory. And, what she doesn’t say (because she’s far, far classier than me), is that if, after your encounter with her, you find yourself feeling the weight of Sin, it is not because Saint McMillan Cottom has damned you. Instead, it’s because she has shown you new skill: how to operate Osiris’ scales of judgement. She has given you the tools of discrimination and justiciability. You now possess the know-how needed to weigh human hearts against a feather.
November 4, 2025 at 3:06 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
The steering in the language the author was asked to agree to is so frustrating. I appreciate this essay on the frustrations of AI in academic publishing, which I share…and one more case of inducing consent to AI via threats of withdrawing support and promotion otherwise.
Proof of how much AI has already become and will be further entrenched in academic publishing arrived soon after this episode, when CUP asked me to sign an ‘AI subsidiary aggregation addendum’ to my original contract. My signature would authorize the press to make my work available to GenAI companies in return for a blanket royalty rate. CUP presents this as a way for authors to get some remuneration if their work is used to develop LLMs (large language models) – an improvement compared with the unauthorised scraping of content that has made the headlines earlier this year. But signing promised more benefits: There ‘may also be opportunities for your content to have greater visibility and impact if it is properly cited and attributed by AI tools’. Alongside this positive incentivising, the message subtly introduced pressure, moving from subjunctive to future tense: ‘Additionally, our existing routes to disseminate your research through third parties such as specialist content platforms or indexers and discovery services will increasingly involve AI components, meaning that opting into AI will be crucial for our long term ability to sell and maximise the impact of your book.’ This was serious. By not signing, I would not only give up the extra visibility that AI tools could potentially generate. I actually risked my book losing visibility. I nearly succumbed. So much effort to see my book be marginalised by an algorithm?
October 30, 2025 at 1:29 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
one of my favorite objects, courtesy of @alacranita.bsky.social
white script on a red pencil reading “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS” the pencil is the kind you can order to get the saying of your choice embossed on it
October 28, 2025 at 3:51 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
We can’t underestimate the influence of AI “learning” on RESEARCHERS’ assessments of “AI learning,” because anyone already bought into AI-as-magic is more likely to “have it do lit reviews for me,” etc., feeding a loop of citing booster studies w/vague methods, unread, for their own booster studies.
highlighted text from article: "This study has been cited 16 times according to ResearchGate, and none of the citations I looked at called this out, many used it to back their claims of proven learning gains."
October 28, 2025 at 11:17 AM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
here are two more automata: another woman romancing a robot, and the one early “woman” robot, Katrina Van Televox, a “robot servant"
www.blackgate.com/2019/05/22/t...
an “attractive model” (human) holding the hand of a white robot in overalls. He has his arm around her shoulder but she apparently “stirs no sentimental feelings in his metal breast" https://www.blackgate.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/1931-09-06-San-Antonio-Light-49-telelux.jpg a flyer for an event, with an image of a 2-d figure dressed in apron and cap, with a “circuit board” rendering over her midsection. headline: Miss Katrina Van Televox Mechanical Wonder Maiden The Westinghouse $22,000 Robot Servant invites you to her Housework Demonstration”
October 26, 2025 at 12:25 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
And continuing down the rabbit hole, predecessor to today’s chatbot relationships 100 years ago
paleofuture.com/blog/2009/7/...
images of robots, including an enamored woman held on a robot’s lap, and text: “Romantic Old Maids Can Hear the Words of Love They Long For” "Professor Wensley's "Mechanical Man" Is Now So Well Perfected, the Obedient Robot Will Say Anything You Want Him To, Will Answer Questions to Suit You, and Put His Arms 'Round Your Neck" source: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c647bc99b7d150fe925ea5c/8981ea0c-a797-4f48-b5f7-2c1a5c6ae99b/robots+romantic+old+maids.jpeg?format=2500w At the same rate of progress it should not require more than a decade or so before a person can go to a store and pick out from the show case most any kind of automatic man or woman he or she might fancy -- an ideal servant or workman who would ask no food or wages but a little current and an occasional drop of oil; or even a flattering admirer could be purchased who would whisper in a neglected wife's ear, all the nice things that a busy husband forgets to say. In this happy future, no old maid need look under the bed for a man, in vain. He would always be there and such a nice man, a perfect imitation of her favorite matinee idol or film star, with blond or dark hair, moustache or clean shaven, anything her heart desired. These would be stock models, turned out in quantity production and quite reasonable in price. This year probably a "Lindy" model would have been a big seller. Or, if the customer is willing to pay a little more and have one made to order, the manufacturer might send artists and photographers to some notorious lounge-lizard and deliver a perfect counterfeit of him. She could order the late Rudolf Valentine's face and John Barrymore's voice or most any other combination.
October 26, 2025 at 12:12 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
From end of article: “The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations.”
October 25, 2025 at 11:03 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
the citation took me here (thanks Reddit): I guess the building on the left is a “practical, efficient school” and the polluting factory is the site of “elimination of class hatred” and the “employment for all who want it”?
interesting how car propaganda got recycled to anti-immigrant racism
Image of a nuclear family facing a two-story white-siding home with attached garage and green shutters, with a corporate-looking building that may be a school, church, and polluting smokestacks floating hazily in the sky. tagline “These are fundamental”. ad from Lee Rubber and Tire Corporation. source: https://preview.redd.it/these-are-fundamental-american-magazine-ad-for-lee-rubber-v0-9yyc74uur4la1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=e006ebf00cd3f6d162c7f8a71b58b75e01a20baf "Homes and families; practical, efficient schools; church leadership that makes devotion to religion a spiritual inspi- ration; elimination of class hatred and resumption of confi- dence and mutual interest in each other; employment for all who want it and independence for everyone who will work for it: these are fundamental for normal and con- tinued prosperity. Helicopters, ultra-streamlined motor cars, household conveniences akin to magic... may be highly desirable... many of them are doubtless attainable... but the pursuit of that happiness which is guaranteed to every citizen by our Constitution rests on simpler, more fundamental things. Republic Rubber and LEE of Conshohocken Tires are conscious of these fundamentals. At Youngstown and Con- shohocken our objectives have already been plotted ... objectives on the direct line of march toward a happier, a greater and a permanently prosperous America."
October 23, 2025 at 11:35 AM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
I’ve been wondering how credit raters would respond to the possibility of universities joining the proffered Compact, since it means accepting both fed funds AND private gifts could be rescinded retroactively if a school’s found to have been “out of compliance” with any of the many criteria.
The university annually shall conduct, or hire an external party to conduct, an independent, good faith, empirically rigorous, and anonymous poll of its faculty, students, and staff, providing them the opportunity to evaluate the university’s performance against this compact. The results of such surveys shall be made public and available on the university’s website. Adherence to this agreement shall be subject to review by the Department of Justice. Universities found to have willfully or negligently violated this agreement shall lose access to the benefits of this agreement for a period of no less than 1 year. Subsequent violations of this agreement shall result in a loss of access to the benefits of this agreement for no less than 2 years. Further, upon determination of any violations, all monies advanced by the U.S. government during the year of any violation shall be returned to the U.S. government. Finally, any private contributions to the university during the year(s) in which such violation occurred shall be returned to the grantor upon the request of the grantor.
October 16, 2025 at 10:33 AM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
Letter From The Editors is on point www.idsnews.com/article/2025...
See link
October 15, 2025 at 10:06 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
@victorerikray.bsky.social points out that organizations’ speed in flip flopping on former “commitments” to diversity put those commitments in doubt.
Victor Ray, a sociology professor at the University of Iowa who studies race, said in an email that OSU’s decision to interpret federal guidance in this way “reflects the real pressure universities face as the Trump administration and Republican legislators attack higher education.” But, Ray added, it may also be exposing the true colors of many universities that were broadcasting their commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion when it was politically expedient to do so just a few years ago. “The swiftness with which these organizations have complied with legally dubious orders shows that their commitments to diversity were often paper-thin before this administration’s pressure,” he said. “In many cases, administrators with existing qualms about diversity, perhaps going too far, now have political cover to take anti-equitable actions
October 15, 2025 at 1:07 PM
louiseseamster.bsky.social
That led me to this 2001 testimony by OK State Rep Don Ross about how he initially didn’t believe this massacre could have occurred, when hearing about it directly from a survivor.
When real history feels literally incredible, how do we incorporate it?
www.okhistory.org/research/for...
I first learn about the riot when I was about 15 from Booker T. Wash ing ton High School teacher and riot sur vi vor W.D. Wil liams. In his slow, la bor ing voice Mr. W.D. as he was fondly known, said on the eve ning of May 31, 1921, his school grad u a tion, and prom were can celed. Dick Rowland, who had dropped out of high school a few years be fore to be come rich in the lu cra tive trade of shin ing shoes, was in jail, ac - cused of rap ing a white woman Sa rah Page, “on a pub lic el e va tor in broad day light.” Af ter Rowland was ar rested, an gry white vig i lan tes gath ered at the court house in tent on lynch ing the shine boy. Armed blacks in te grated the mob to pro tect him. There was a scuf fle be tween a black and a white man, a shot rang out. The crowd scat tered. It was about 10:00 a.m. A race riot had bro ken out. He said blacks defended their com mu nity for awhile, “but then the air - planes came drop ping bombs.” All of the black com mu nity was burned to the ground and 300 peo ple died.” More an noyed than bored, I leaped from my chair and spoke: “Green wood was never burned. Ain’t no 300 peo ple dead. We’re too old for fairy tales.” Call ing a teacher a liar was a cap i tal of fense Mr. W.D. snorted with a twist that framed his face with an ger. He ig nored my ob sti nacy and re turned to his hy per bole. He fin ished his tale and dis missed the class. The next day he asked me to re main af ter class, and passed over a photo al bum with pic ture and post cards of Mount Zion Bap tist Church on fire, the Dream land The ater in sham bles, whites with guns stand ing over dead bod ies, blacks be ing marched to con cen tra tion camps with white mobs jeer ing, trucks loaded with cas kets, and a yel low ing news pa per ar ti cle ac - count ing block af ter block of de struc tion – “30, 75 even 300 dead.” Ev ery thing was just as he had de scribed it. I was to learn later that Rowland was as signed a law yer who was a prom i nent mem ber of the Ku Klux Klan. “What you think, fat mouth?” Mr. W.D. asked his as ton ished stu dent. Af ter hav ing talked to more than 300 riot sur vi vors over the years, I have pon dered that ques tion for 45 years. The re port raises the same ques tion Mr. W.D. asked me. I now ask the Oklahoma Leg is la ture, the City and County of Tulsa: “What do you think?”
October 14, 2025 at 2:09 PM