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Dani Wenner

@daniwenner.bsky.social

3K followers 830 following 700 posts

political philosopher, okra & orca lover, nogoodnik she/her/Dr

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · Mar 5

Very excited to share that this paper co-authored with Derrick Gray is finally making its way into publication. In this paper, we use debates about exploitation to complicate taxonomies of ideal and non-ideal theory, and to highlight a problematic ideological bent in some non-ideal theorizing 🧵

Structural Injustice, Exploitation, and Static Non-Ideal Theory

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.We argue for two claims in this paper. First, we argue that existing taxonomies of ideal and non-ideal theory must be expa...

journals.publishing.umich.edu

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Martin Nutbeem @martinnutbeem.bsky.social · 1d

Nothing could possibly go wrong with this. Creating a lifelike digital avatar on a third party platform will definitely not open teaching staff up to career destroying issues in the event of that platform being hacked.

Schools Week @schoolsweek.bsky.social · 1d

Exclusive: Teachers will use 'deepfake' technology to create an AI avatar of themselves to deliver catch-up lessons for pupils who have missed school

Watch one of the school’s ‘deepfake’ teachers in our story below

schoolsweek.co.uk/schools-trus...

'Deepfake' teacher avatars to help pupils catch up

Academy trust staff to use AI generator to introduce resources for pupils returning to school

schoolsweek.co.uk

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 1d

relatedly, I am teaching this huemer piece in the graduate section of my political theory course this semester and it's pretty wild how well huemer diagnosed the vulnerability of rawlsian liberalism that we are seeing play out in real time rn

www.jstor.org/stable/23559...

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 2d

"prescient" maybe not the right word. maybe something like "more important in retrospect than it seemed 30 years ago"

Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 2d

had the occasion to reread Rawls on overlapping consensus and public reason this week and this passage stuck out to me in retrospect as rather prescient

Other great political values-the values of public reason-are
expressed in the guidelines for public inquiry and in the steps
taken to make such inquiry free and public, as well as informed
and reasonable. We saw in 11:4.1 that an agreement on a political
conception of justice is to no effect without a companion agreement
on guidelines of public inquiry and rules for assessing
evidence. The values of public reason not only include the appropriate
use of the fundamental concepts of judgment, inference,
and evidence, but also the virtues of reasonableness and fairmindedness
as shown in abiding by the criteria and procedures
of commonsense knowledge and accepting the methods and conclusions
of science when not controversial. We also owe respect
to the precepts governing reasonable political discussion.

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 2d

ResearchGate is now sending me unsolicited advertisements for "green card profile evaluations" from immigration attorneys, this is a sign that we live in a normal, well-functioning society

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 2d

A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 4d

I endeavor in my scholarly output to never have somebody provide a laborious exposition of my sloppiness in an appendix to their own writing 🤣

Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 9d

"a laborious exposition of nozick's expository sloppiness appears as an addendum at the end of this chapter" 💀

Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 4d

He is delightfully snarky

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 10d

People think they’re taking down a rich intellectual sinecure but they’re mostly terrorizing committed public servants who make $58,000 a year after 15 years of experience at a school that has to budget creatively so students can access textbooks.

Emily Farris @emayfarris.bsky.social · 10d

This new column by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social makes me think about when I recently had to talk to the police for yet another safety plan, I tried to “lighten” the mood by saying that we all knew this wasn’t my first rodeo. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

For at least the past 15 years, my colleagues in academia have grappled with angry letters to university officials for doing their jobs. They have weathered campaigns for their firing. They have contended with an internet army obsessed with doxxing them, their parents, their kids. I’ve been contacted by the F.B.I. more than once in my career. Not because I hold any important state secrets or know a biker gang but because one of my colleagues has lived with so much sustained harassment from right-wing “activists” that it has become a matter of federal concern. Watch lists (one of which was constructed by Kirk’s organization) do not distinguish between public intellectuals at wealthy enclaves and hoi polloi who teach popular classes at cash-strapped schools. In either case, an army of trained provocateurs stands ready to destroy their lives to prove their bona fides as conservative activists.

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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 9d

Either most universities get shoehorned into the Trump scheme, eliminating the funding advantage, or a subset take the poisoned fruit and are isolated by peers who rightly view this as blood money and cheating.

There is no upside for any university to take the deal.

AAUP chapter @UT Austin @utaustinaaup.bsky.social · 9d

www.wsj.com/us-news/educ... UT Austin is one of the 9 schools offered a deal: accede to White House demands and get funding priority

Exclusive | White House Asks Colleges to Sign Sweeping Agreement to Get Funding Advantage

An initial round of nine schools is being asked to sign a wide-ranging accord.

www.wsj.com

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 9d

"a laborious exposition of nozick's expository sloppiness appears as an addendum at the end of this chapter" 💀

Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 10d

Objecting to the scheduling of workshop speakers in alphabetical order on the grounds that I don't wanna go last 😭

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 10d

jfc I'm so tired Ben

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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.bsky.social · 11d

Pfizer "secured a three-year grace period from President Donald Trump’s promised tariffs on pharmaceuticals" and in return will "sell some drugs at a 50% average discount on a direct-to-consumer website called TrumpRx"

looks like state capitalism to me

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Pfizer Gets Three-Year Reprieve From Trump Pharma Tariffs

Pfizer Inc. Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said the company secured a three-year grace period from President Donald Trump’s promised tariffs on pharmaceuticals in a deal that would lower some o...

www.bloomberg.com

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 11d

Yeah my point. We seem to be just opening the door wide & welcome for technology that (were it to work as advertised) completely undermines the purpose of being here in the first place. What tf are we doing?!?

Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 11d

Our department chair asked at the last faculty meeting if we wanted someone from our IT group to come explain how we can use AI to help with grading and all my colleagues said "yes" like they really do not care that the end game of this is putting them or (more likely) their students out of work

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 11d

Yesterday the main quad on campus had a big google gemini tent, giving away big bags of schwag to students and advertising "free student accounts" and just what are we doing here? Are we a university or nah?

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Justin Zimmerman @jztidecat.bsky.social · 14d

Faculty should strike. Shut it all down. We teach from research not the whims of dummies.

Texas Tribune @texastribune.org · 15d

Breaking: Texas Tech chancellor limits academic mentions of transgender and nonbinary identities at five universities.

Texas Tech chancellor limits academic mentions of transgender and nonbinary identities at five universities

Advocacy groups say the new state law, presidential executive order and gubernatorial letter Tedd Mitchell cited do not prohibit classroom discussions of particular LGBTQ+ identities.

www.texastribune.org

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 17d

I don't believe threads, mastodon, or bsky existed in 2020 so I'm looking at the rest of your thread with rather a lot of skepticism

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Lauren @lattsgetlifted.bsky.social · 18d

Autism doesn’t stop at 18. There are plenty of autistic adults that often get left behind during media coverage because the focus is often on moms of autistic children. It’s another way to erase autistic people’s personhood.

Saeed Jones @theferocity.bsky.social · 18d

I feel like news publications should put more energy into asking autistic people how they feel about all this because…

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Matthew Cortland (they) @matthewcort.land · 18d

When @politico.com says "the autism problem" they don't mean tearing down the ableist barriers that discriminate against and disadvantage autistic people in all facets of American life.

When @politico.com says "the autism problem" they mean the existence of autistic people is the problem.

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 18d

The lie is that glasses are made to liberate you from screens. The purpose of the glasses is to make sure you have no experiences except those mediated through a companies’ technology.

Analysis | America can’t quit smartphones. Smart glasses won’t help.

We keep hoping that a magical technology can liberate us from what we don’t like about technology.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 18d

Trump just announced that he always knew more about autism than the experts who‘ve studied it. Obviously, a very stupid, barely literate man with no expertise thinks he knows better than thousands of experts scientists. Not to worry, he has a man whose brain was partially eaten by worms to advise.

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Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 19d

Crickets from our central administration, despite the overwhelming number of faculty we have on H1B visas. I can think of at least 5 in my own department!

Dani Wenner @daniwenner.bsky.social · 21d

this may be the last nail in the coffin for US academia. generations of scholars from around the world have strived to get jobs at US unis, which has been a boon for US research and for US students. those scholars will not stay here if they cannot travel home to see their families. why would they?

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 21d

Those on an H1B cannot return to the US from tomorrow (Sunday) unless paying $100K. This is an out-of-the blue presidential action. We’ll see software engineers stranded abroad.

One easy to predict outcome: those on US visas will travel less… for work, for conferences etc.

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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 21d

Amongst the many, many other faults and follies of the party, perhaps the single most dangerous problem with the Democratic Party today is their incessant habit of reinforcing the idea that there is absolutely *no* principle that matters, no policy that is sacrosanct that they will stand behind.

Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 21d

The idea of running anti-abortion Democrats is sickening to me. That means killing women! That is what that means!

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