As a scholar in the wild my only connection to the university library is physical access or ILL when possible. I can only look at most journals and ebooks like Charlie looked at chocolate. I also have not been able to visit my library for many years. I also miss being able to browse adjacent books.

time to unearth this excellent paper by legal scholar @madisoncondon.bsky.social (see below), which "argues that actionable and transparent information about our climate-changed future is a public good that the private sector cannot be depended upon to provide equitably or reliably."

x.com/moonlarking/...

Everything I have read of the TAs comments and the essay shows that the TAs did their job well. They did not base the grade on the offensive remarks but rather on whether the student read and understood a psychology article.

All best during what must be a challenging time.

This is a valid hypothesis worth pursuing. But I doubt LLMs are so fundamentally different that they collapse whatever reality testing systems we have. It is far more likely that their gluttonous need for resources hastens the very real collapse of our current ecosystems through climate catastrophe.

Well said. I think institutionalized academics have a hard time understanding life outside the gates.

Interestingly agnotology, or the production of doubt and uncertainty, has been around for decades. Edward R Murrow, for example, spread “authoritative” lies about tobacco for a long time, unknowingly I believe. See Oreskes and Conway. Reality has long been a challenge.

Though valuable to students if done for the right reasons, outsourcing professor research and editing work to RAs or editors is also "fundamentally" passive. You are letting the RAs and editors determine what you learn. Variables of necessity are human involvement, time, quality and sustainability.

Focus on the topic; don't be patronizing. For >50 years, I have worked like you to reach the highest academic levels. I know how to learn. Kagi overlays Google, enhancing but not replacing algorithms. LLMs, however, are killing our ecosystem. For scholars outside the gates, this creates a conundrum.

True LLMs hallucinate &, like math without calculators, manual synthesis aids understanding. However, search engines are also algorithmic retrieval engines using biased PageRanks and indexes. They combine popularity & linked terms. I've never done "my own search"; I've only used algorithmic engines.

Thanks for the update. I am proud to support you for days like these as well as regular days.