It Is With The Deepest Frustrations That I Must Report Microsoft Has Pushed Out Copilot Onto Microsoft

I'm sorry, professor, I consider publishing your course a day late, having a mandatory live zoom meeting during business hours to stay enrolled for an asynchronous class, and requiring students to use a $60 ***pdf*** that you wrote as their textbook to be exceptionally unprofessional and since I've still got 14 days to get a refund I'm totally not paying $150 to take your class.

Also, for all the newbie professors out there: a syllabus is not just a greeting and a list of assignments. If you haven't given your students AT LEAST your office hours, your late work policy, and your preferred method of being contacted, then you have not given your students a syllabus it's just sparkling announcements.

But really. Sir. SIR. You teach Speech 100. This is one of the most basic classes with like, 20 of the most widely available accepted textbooks and you want me to pay sixty dollars for a pdf of a book that you rewrite every semester so that there are no previous editions?

Buddy this is interpersonal communication, not introductory rhetoric. Why is one of your *four* total assignments about Socrates?

Maybe it's the fact that I've taken Spch 100 interpersonal communication three times already, maybe it's the fact that I grew up with somebody who taught Spch 100 interpersonal communication from 1981 to 2018, but buddy what the fuck are you doing?

"Some of our lectures will only be available for 24 hours so it is up to you to stay on top of it."

Friend, you are teaching an asynchronous online 100-level class at a community college during a pandemic. Get off your high horse, a third of your students are probably parents. There is no reason whatsoever to limit access to course materials to 24 hours unless you are doing it to be a controlling asshole.

Also YOU published your class a day and a half late! You don't get to publish your class late with an incomplete syllabus and tell students to "stay on top of it." Especially not since that means that people have two fewer days to buy your PDF textbook and only one full day to prepare for your mandatory 1pm on a Tuesday zoom meeting!

Why do you require me to have access to a printer for an online class? Oh yeah it's because you expect me to print out and draw on sections of your $60 ebook.

SIR. No thank you.

Kids, new students: this is a level of bullshit and disorganization from a professor that you do not have to put up with. This is a neatly ordered series of red flags that say "this professor is going to be absolutely unbearable."

Also *any* humanities class where your whole grade is 4 assignments should get serious side-eye. You should be able to pass most 100 level humanities classes by just turning in weekly assignments. 4 assignments means that by the time you figure out how the professor grades you're probably close to halfway through the class. Look for classes that require weekly participation as a major chunk of the grade because that way, even if you fuck up a project in a major way, just showing up can save your ass.

The Chronicle of Higher Education

AI Assistants Keep Joining Meetings. Administrators Say It’s Out of Control.

The trend marks the latest example of tech development outpacing governance.

At the California Institute of the Arts, it all started with a videoconference between the registrar’s office and a nonprofit.

One of the nonprofit’s representatives had enabled an AI note-taking tool from Read AI. At the end of the meeting, it emailed a summary to all attendees, said Allan Chen, the institute’s chief technology officer. They could have a copy of the notes, if they wanted — they just needed to create their own account.

Next thing Chen knew, Read AI’s bot had popped up inabout a dozen of his meetings over a one-week span. It was in one-on-one check-ins. Project meetings. “Everything.”

The spread “was very aggressive,” recalled Chen, who also serves as vice president for institute technology. And it “took us by surprise.”

The scenariounderscores a growing challenge for colleges: Tech adoption and experimentation among students, faculty, and staff — especially as it pertains to AI — are outpacing institutions’ governance of these technologies and may even violate their data-privacy and security policies.

That has been the case with note-taking tools from companies including Read AI, Otter.ai, and Fireflies.ai.They can integrate with platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teamsto provide live transcriptions, meeting summaries, audio and video recordings, and other services.

Higher-ed interest in these products isn’t surprising.For those bogged down with virtual rendezvouses, a tool that can ingest long, winding conversations and spit outkey takeaways and action items is alluring. These services can also aid people with disabilities, including those who are deaf.

But the tools can quickly propagate unchecked across a university. They can auto-join any virtual meetings on a user’s calendar — even if that person is not in attendance. And that’s a concern, administrators say, if it means third-party productsthat an institution hasn’t reviewedmay be capturing and analyzing personal information, proprietary material, or confidential communications.

“What keeps me up at night is the ability for individual users to do things that are very powerful, but they don’t realize what they’re doing,” Chen said. “You may not realize you’re opening a can of worms.“

The Chronicle documented both individual and universitywide instances of this trend. At Tidewater Community College, in Virginia, Heather Brown, an instructional designer, unwittingly gave Otter.ai’s tool access to her calendar, and it joined a Faculty Senate meeting she didn’t end up attending. “One of our [associate vice presidents] reached out to inform me,” she wrote in a message. “I was mortified!”

Business Insider

America's biggest businesses are bowing out of Pride parades

Corporate America is backing away from Pride amid the DEI backlash and the White House's war on diversity.

Trumps anti-DEI crusade is causing businesses to drop progressive agendas for fear of government retaliation.

it's crazy how many super duper patriarchal things get retroactively justified in the name of being about love. yeah I'm sure women taking their husbands surname has always 100% been about recovering from trauma and distancing yourself from abusive family or whatever and has absolutely nothing at all to do with women being seen as property. great work here everyone, marriage as a concept has been redeemed through the power of pop psychology

The corruption is automatic. Conservative businessmen see grifting and dishonesty as tools of their trade.

These two have absolutely no shame.

matt just fired half the remaining tumblr support staff lmao

Tumblr Tuesday: Nineteen Years of Neil

Two days ago, that momentous time in April blessed us once more: the anniversary of Neil banging out his tunes. It's been 19 years, and Neil still brings us joy each year in April, famously the cruelest of months. In celebration of this fact, some art was created. Please enjoy these depictions of a happy little rattie making some music on a toy piano.

(Lest we forget, April 13 also marked the 16th anniversary of Homestuck. Happy Homestuckness to those who celebrate; we've added a few small treats for you <3)

@emwheezie:

@crtastrophe:

@www-proxxicles-com:

@lotostar:

@artbygiraffe:

@bweirdart:

@bucket-of-amethyst:

@rela-monarchy39:

@jakdaw:

@pizza-feverdream:

@spectrumspace:

@moms-against-homestuck:

@crafftypenguin:

@artificialhaunts:

@cintailed:

@thatlittledandere:

@tobisaurus:

@rabiesram:

@auxhilerated:

@oswald-can-draw:

@bzedan:

@arborix:

@pandaragons:

@wizard-legs:

@inchwormvinny:

@gildedware:

@corvidcrowned:

@stealingpotatoes:

@wpmz:

Making this a separate post: It's super super important that we keep our activist work focussed on Palestine after the ceasefire. On the food aid, on the prisoner releases, on the reconstruction of essential services and the reconstruction as a whole, on the free travel of journalists and researchers to document the genocide, on the human rights and land rights of Palestinians, on the new political conditions, on BSD and on continued pressure on Israel and it's collaborators, on the West Bank, and more.

From Naomi Klein's Doppelganger about 2009:

We met Mona Al Shawa, a Palestinian women’s rights activist, who told me, “We had more hope during the attacks; at least then we believed things would change.” Now, she said, outside attention had moved on and Gazans once again felt abandoned by the world. The idea that there was more hope when they were under active air assault still haunts me.

We can not abandon Palestine. This time has to be different.