I wrote this blog about how feeling like a killjoy whenever I talk about GenAI.
refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/10/09/o...

25 Podcasts Announced as Eligible for Golden Globes https://podnews.net/press-release/golden-globes-eligible-podcasts-26

Are you teaching TechComm this semester and wanting to discuss AI? Consider using my short accessible piece about “Extractive AI” that recently came out in JBTC: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Nonsense

As for curriculum at gymnasiums, I think it can vary widely. Yes, you might encounter classics, philosophy, languages, physics. But today, I think you’re also just as likely to get media studies, computer science, and video production at gymnasium. Would be interesting to read a history of them.

Both are publicly funded.

My understanding is that gymnasiums are still quite common today in continental Europe for high schoolers who want to be ready for uni in a variety of fields (arts, languages, sciences, maths, engineering, medicine, law).

My understanding is that many European countries have two pathways for students to choose in high school: you can either go to vocational high school, who CV prepares you for a trade or, if you make sufficient high grades, you can go to gymnasium, which prepares you for university.

TOP AI IN EDUCATION FAILS ... so far:

If you’re looking for a critical perspective on AI that’s accessible to students in a course on media, tech comm, or rhetoric and writing studies, consider this: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... Extractive Artificial Intelligence and Its Challenge to Technical Communication - Collin Bjork, 2025

Uncivil is a FANTASTIC podcast! I teach it to my uni students in New Zealand. And I teach your Transom stuff on voice and vocal delivery. Congrats!

This is very bad. Although entirely predictable. Once more the humanities are being cut back to prop up STEM and, increasingly, AI investment (including at the expense of bench science). In the past, cuts to humanities were promoted on two separate logic streams that do not hold true: /1

Canvas just became one of the most powerful surveillance, IP theft, & data monetization tools in the world.

OpenAI bought a user-base locked in to long-term contracts.

But they can’t make us use their trashware.

Boycott. Luddify. Open source.

Don’t let them have your work or your students.

In addition to owning Canvas, KKR also owns Simon & Schuster (one of the Big 5 publishers), OverDrive (which owns Libby and has a monopoly on e-lending at public libraries as they get rid of physical books), bankrupted Toys 'R' Us, and bought nursing homes that then became sites of abuse and neglect

Silicon Valley AI and Academic Publishing are both extractive industries. Not surprising, but still infuriating.

Good ppl, doing important work. Apply today!

And here’s what’s wrong with Turnitin’s business model and other predatory EdTech companies: theconversation.com/clones-in-th...

Silicon Valley AI companies need universities far more than universities need their AI systems: www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

This is good reporting bc it’s often hard to get the specific numbers. But I’ve written about this before: Turnitin is a predatory EdTech tool that uses mora panics to siphon public edu funding into private coffers at the expense of student IP and educators. calmatters.org/education/hi...

“To call AI a con isn’t to say that the technology is not remarkable, that it has no use, or that it will not transform the world (perhaps for the better) in the right hands. It is to say that AI is not what its developers are selling it as: a new class of thinking—and, soon, feeling—machines.“

We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

"I had no idea science could be so bad."

New blog post: Recognizing AI Hype Masquerading as Research (a reworking of my previous LinkedIn post) refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/05/21/r...

#TheAmbies are proud to honor @james.crid.land with the International Impact Award!

From launching the first UK radio podcast to shaping the future through Podnews and Podcasting 2.0, he has made a lasting mark on the global audio community.

👏 Congrats, James!

@podnews.net

Read the article open access: openpraxis.org/articles/10....

Award announcement: facebook.com/share/p/18hN...

Judges praised it as “innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship advancing the field” with a critical literacy toolkit for AI discourse.