For real

It's gotten BAD. Save everything with Wayback Machine.

I've now deleted my account. I don't really trust that they're not feeding my work to AI in other ways, despite changing these settings.

Most archives are not machine readable across multiple lifetimes.

💯

And more than that, it is actively causing problems...

I hope you rub it in! I'm starting to think shaming people about their AI misuse needs to become a social norm.

I’m a historian; I’m not usually given to nostalgia. But this somehow makes me wish we could recover some of this Cold War-era rhetoric about civilization and democracy, about "freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry."

"(6) that the world leadership which has come to the United States cannot rest solely upon superior power, wealth, and technology, but must be solidly founded upon worldwide respect and admiration for the Nation's high qualities as a leader in the realm of ideas and of the spirit;" (Imagine that!)

"(5) ...it is necessary and appropriate for the Federal Government to help create and sustain not only a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry but also the material conditions facilitating the release of this creative talent;"

(This certainly lands differently as our democracy is dismantled by the AI-wielding minions of a tech billionaire.)

"(3) that democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens and that it must therefore foster and support a form of education designed to make men masters of their technology and not its unthinking servant;"

Some of the paragraphs really stand out: "The Congress hereby finds and declares..."(2) that a high civilization must not limit its efforts to science and technology alone but must give full value and support to the other great branches of man's scholarly and cultural activity;"

Month late seeing this since I didn't whole-heartedly jump into Bluesky: I agree, but the reason I asked the author is that when I attended AAAS, I heard no such repudiation. I heard a lot of "big tent" talk about tech & industry and no acknowledgement of the failure to instill shared norms.

One thing you can do: nhalliance.org/federal-fund...

So grateful to NEH. So disgusted to see it illegally dismantled by doge. Democracy can't survive without the humanities.

☺️

Sincere questions: Are Musk's goons not a part of the scientific community? What does it mean to come together to "preserve science" when computer scientists and engineers are responsible for enabling him to concentrate power? Will AAAS disown unethical tech?