“Madagascar wore a toaster to a basketball game" [...]
“We’re all out here innovating … and trying to hold on to some level of academic integrity in the process”

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/28/college-prof-hides-prompt-to-catch-ai-cheaters-finds-human-nature-is-pretty-much-as-we-thought/5279864

“Private equity now owns the plumbing of English general practice. The GP records of more than half the country sit on a system controlled by a firm whose business model is returns for investors, not care for patients, and the public found out after the fact.” - https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jul/27/nhs-patients-records-us-private-equity-firm-optum-uk-tpg

Infuriating.

"The library’s Instagram post about the “Avoiding AI” event got over 2,000 likes and 220 shares, whereas most of the library’s posts don’t get more than a few dozen likes. He scheduled a second program because the first got too many registrations." - https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/25/librarians-are-hosting-viral-avoiding-ai-workshops-for-people-who-are-fed-up-with-big-tech/

When you keep interacting with sycophantic chatbots and corporate yes people all day every day, I guess it's inevitable that the 'real world' comes as a bit of a shock to you when you pay it a rare visit ...

https://www.404media.co/ucf-ai-commencement-speaker-booed/

Just watched @doctormo 's latest Inkscape update and OMG it's as if Martin saw me on the struggle bus of text on curves last week.
Thank you for borrowing from Krita. Can't wait for 1.5!

I have no words for @pluralistic 's #39C3 talk other than BRAVO! 👏👏👏

Let's make 2026 the year we seize the means of computation! 💪

well... something is somewhat b0rked here. 😕

Looks at Steam library ... gets overwhelmed by the choice of games ... clicks on #stardewvalley

Every single time.😅

Heh. Musing that the European answer to AWS might one day be Lidl cloud.... ¹

Their middle aisle might contain a Wordle clone, a calculator app and a chatbot that's on special offer every three months or so...

--------
¹) not as far fetched as it may seem - see this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarz_Group#Schwarz_Digits and this from Heise https://www.heise.de/news/Umbruch-bei-Aleph-Alpha-Gruender-geht-Schwarz-Gruppe-rueckt-vor-10750635.html on the leadership changes at Aleph-Alpha

Got my ticket for @pluralistic 's book tour gig in London in November. Looking forward to it!

Ooh I have @pluralistic 's Enshittification in my inbox. 💩🎉
How exciting!

Thanks for delivering early.

How is it helpful that we have to spend our preciously limited spoons on verifying everything the AI spat out as a meeting transcript? Why do I need to spend extra spoons trying to work out misunderstood nonsense and decode what was really said in the context of the actual meeting? When it comes to spoons, I'm better off following the meeting as is

Talking lived experience here btw. It happens every time I am fooled into thinking that reading the AI transcript is somehow more efficient.
</rant>

So many AI tools are promoted in the name of accessibility and there's often little conversation about the potential negatives of this tech.

The article mentions that people thought AI meeting notes and transcriptions were helpful, and yes, on the surface it may seem that way, but you are being given a potentially very skewed or downright wrong summary of events because these things do not do nuance well.

Why do you deserve a second class experience? How is that ok?

Note:
I am not saying that ND people don't find these tools useful. Many do.

I am merely concerned that it's somehow ok to promote this flawed technology as a 'cure' and that ND people need to be 'fixed' to fit into society with its warped ideas of what's 'normal'.

If there's anything to be fixed, then it's this two tier thinking.

What a sad story

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/09/study-finds-neurodiverse-workers-more-satisfied-with-ai-assistants/

Normies: Beware of the perils of AI. Always check all the things!

Also normies:
You're not a 'fully functioning' human, ND person! Here, have some AI to help you. Don't worry about it violating your privacy, the errors it makes, the emotional exploitation and heaps of other ethical issues.
🙄

A lot of ND people have low self-esteem and try so hard to fit in. Perfect targets for propaganda.

Reminder: ND folks, you are good enough the way you are.

After another day of mostly raging at the state of the world, here's a silly TGIF question:

What do you call your backup drives? 🤔

Mine are called Fred, MiniFred and WinnieFred. 😅

(Please tell me I'm not the only one who does this)

TTS voice just pronounced 'Copilot' as 'copy-lot'.

Close enough, I guess 🤭

It's been a while since I've had positive feelings about anything coming out of the US, but here we are - https://mashable.com/article/illinois-bill-banning-ai-therapy-signed-by-pritzker

Hopefully something others will copy.

Dutch universities, I applaud you! 👏👏
https://openletter.earth/open-letter-stop-the-uncritical-adoption-of-ai-technologies-in-academia-b65bba1e

"Universities must not be passive rule-takers. We must not simply ‘adjust to’ speculative educational and professional visions of the future marketed by technology firms in order to sell more cloud computing and increase reliance on tools with questionable and uncertain utility." -https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208136/1/AI%2C%20Education%20and%20Assessment%20at%20UCL%20Laws.pdf

👏 @mikarv