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Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
@davehowcroft.com
400 followers 460 following 770 posts
Computational linguist teaching computers to use their words. Queer. Catholic. Immigrant. they/them

Languages: en, de, fr, sv
Also available at https://mastodon.social/@_dmh
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
doctorzen.net
If you run across a gen A.I. slop 🤖💩 diagram in an academic journal, I’d love to know about it! Please fill out this form:

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Slop in journals is illuminating about journals’ quality control. And journals would like you to forget their mistakes.

#AcademicChatter
Slop graphics in academic journals
Use this form to share graphics (e.g., figures, covers, graphical abstracts) made using generative A.I. that have appeared in academic journals. The plan is to compile these slop graphics in an ope...
docs.google.com
December 1, 2025 at 6:36 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
kirbyconrod.bsky.social
"'We are both scamming each other, you and I, and I intend to win.' When a classroom becomes adversarial, of course, as cop shit presumes, then there must be a clear winner and loser."
- Jeffery Moro, Against Cop Shit
jeffreymoro.com/blog/2020-02...
Cop shit is seductive. It makes metrics transparent. It allows for the clear progress toward learning objectives. (“Badges” are cop shit, by the way.) It also subsumes education within a market logic. “Here,” cop shit says, “you will learn how to do this thing. We will know you learned it by the acquisition of this gold star. But in order for me to award you this gold star, I must parse you, sense you, track you, collect you, and—” here’s the key, “I will presume that you will attempt to flout me at every turn. We are both scamming each other, you and I, and I intend to win.” When a classroom becomes adversarial, of course, as cop shit presumes, then there must be a clear winner and loser. The student’s education then becomes not a victory for their own self-improvement or -enrichment, but rather that the teacher conquered the student’s presumed inherent laziness, shiftiness, etc. to instill some kernel of a lesson.
December 1, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
golikehellmachine.com
she went to state legislators, TPUSA and conservative media outlets within a few hours of getting her grade, if you can’t identify the bad faith that can be seen from space, you need to get your eyes checked
caitlinmoriah.bsky.social dr. caitlin m. green @caitlinmoriah.bsky.social · 17h
a lot of people debating the merits of that dogshit essay meanwhile the girl’s mom is retweeting demands to ban all trans people from teaching at any level. it’s forest for the trees shit
December 1, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
callirhoe.bsky.social
December 1, 2019 : the first known case of COVID-19.
More than six years later, SARS-CoV-2 is still circulating. Its long-term effects are not “in the past.” They accumulate, quietly and often invisibly.
December 1, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
mmitchell.bsky.social
"Data are no longer things to be accounted for by a theoretical model...but rather inputs to the process of creating models". Many in LLM-ML don't care about the problems they are actually building models of: "the nature of languages...how we work with language...and the specific contexts [of use]."
December 1, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
adrianpinchbeck.bsky.social
Here's a few green crabs happily tasting the menu at a BRUV located in Bridlington Bay No Take Zone off the Yorkshire coast. #Crustmas
Around sixteen hungry green crabs attracted to a Baited Remote Underwater Video camera trap, placed on rippled sand in the shallow water No Take Zone inside Bridlington Bay, Yorkshire.
December 1, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
chadstanton.blacksky.app
Good thread highlighting some of the ways the popular narrative around Rosa Parks is wrong and elides her more radical politics and actions.
jeannetheoharis.bsky.social Jeanne Theoharis @jeannetheoharis.bsky.social · 6h
Today is the 70th anniversary of Rosa Parks' arrest. Six myths: 1) She wasn't old or tired. 42 years old that day, she had a "life history of being rebellious" & had spent two decades helping to turn the Montgomery NAACP into a more activist branch alongside ED Nixon and Johnnie Carr.
December 1, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
pookleblinky.bsky.social
"Strong floor, no ceiling" is very literally the basis of like every Gilded Age political cartoon
Gilded Age political cartoon titled "the protectors of our industries" A mass of workers strain under the weight of supporting a boat containing rich top-hatted monocle wearing capitalists sitting atop huge sacks of cash
November 30, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
lauraskh.bsky.social
Also, because I've had the.. pleasure... of going through Australian borders a couple of times recently, let's re-up this one from a great project with Ingrid Piller (@languageonthemove.bsky.social) and @htorsh.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/laur...
On the Border Security tv show
📸from recent travels
Qantas sign at airport check-in in Manila: your checked baggage is subject to additional security checks. Ensure your baggage is unlocked and free of any wrapping. Present baggage to security staff are (sic) directed. Screen on back of emirates aeroplane seat with large text: don't be 'sorry', just declare it (with Arabic captions at the bottom) Screen on back of emirates aeroplane seat with a blue suitcase open, filled with what looks like "exotic" souvenirs made of wood and other natural materials. Arabic captions at the bottom.
December 1, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
scgriffith.bsky.social
every trans person i see post about the OU suspension knows that the suspended target is trans & a grad student, & has an innate awareness that this is about purging trans employees. every cis person i see thinks the target is a rando professor & that this is about giving conservatives good grades
December 1, 2025 at 12:04 AM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
mikestabile.bsky.social
The religious right’s “porn is a public health crisis” campaign has exploited this media weakness for years, using faith-based pseudoscientific claims to manufacture consent for censorship, surveillance and sexual repression.
donmoyn.bsky.social Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d
News media has to do better with headlines that present false and unverified public health claims.
List of headlines from media covering FDA, most emphasizing the claim that covid killed children
November 30, 2025 at 9:59 PM
davehowcroft.com
Personally I focus my efforts on avoiding Amazon & Meta. There's other stuff that I'll avoid, sure, but much less strictly, because you need to keep living life and we need regulation to keep business in check--"voting with your wallet" is bullshit individualised guilt for collective problems.
adavidjohnson.bsky.social Antifascist David Johnson @adavidjohnson.bsky.social · 1d
“don’t buy a chicken sandwich from
the homophobic restaurant chain” is easy to avoid

but groceries and household goods? “boycott Amazon, Target, Home Depot — but maybe Kroger and Albertsons too. And always Wal-Mart”

I don’t have infinite hours or health or money to “consume right”
November 30, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
afamiglietti.bsky.social
It actually took me a second to see the edits in the AI version. At first I thought it just tweaked the white balance, the added snow, the changed color on her clothes, the slight face tweaks... its very subtle.

It's now a memory that never happened. And subtle enough people won't realize.
November 30, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
ideocene.net
A screenshot from the I Am Devloper that reads: vibe coding, where 2 engineers can now create the tech debt of at least 50 engineers
November 30, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
virmalised.us
Not including random effects by items when you're studying effects for which different items are known to show vastly different patterns of results is scientific malpractice in 2025
November 15, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
carlbergstrom.com
Leopards, faces, etc.
Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written fully by AI
Controversy has erupted after 21% of manuscript reviews for an international AI conference were found to be generated by artificial intelligence.
www.nature.com
November 30, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
md.ekstrandom.net
Another entry: all of learnxbyexample dot com.

A collection of programming-tutorial-shaped-objects.
md.ekstrandom.net Michael Ekstrand @md.ekstrandom.net · 2d
I really want a renaissance of classic search, but the web needs content worth searching for, and AI is breaking that too (more than unchecked capitalist greed already did).

Was looking for sth today and found myself on a page about compost that can’t decide if it’s about gardening or Minecraft.
November 30, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
marcel.bollmann.me
Trying to learn to be better at that.
astrokatie.com Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 1d
The most precious commodity you have is your attention. You don’t have to waste it on poor-faith debates or arguments with strangers if you don’t think they’ll be productive. You can prioritize the things that matter to you and make your life richer.
November 30, 2025 at 9:08 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
kirbyconrod.bsky.social
showing off my book progress spreadsheet tracker because 1.) i want compliments to motivate me to touch book, and 2.) i genuinely think other people could find this method helpful too
a big spreadsheet: each row is a chapter, and the columns are stages of completion and wordcount. it shows totals added up (the book is 70K words long right now somehow?!)
November 29, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
conjugateprior.org
This belongs in a gallery
statbel-en.bsky.social Statbel, the Belgian statistical office @statbel-en.bsky.social · 4d
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 #Population #density of 385 inhabitants per km² in Belgium.

* The Flemish Region registers a population density of 504 inhabitants/km²
* The Walloon Region of 219 inhabitants/km²
* The Brussels-Capital Region of 7,732 inhabitants/km²
#Statbel

👉 statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/po...
November 27, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
jathansadowski.com
Yet another prime case of Potemkin AI. I hate seeing an “AI notetaker” in a zoom call recording everything. In some cases, these notetakers were literally just a guy writing everything down. We too often see vaporous hype leading to the credulous embrace of fraudulent systems.
Sam Udotong in - 1st Co-founder & CTO at Fireflies.ai 10h • ••• We charged $100/month for an Al that was really just two guys surviving on pizza. We scaled Fireflies to a $1B valuation after 6 failures from our original crypto food delivery idea. Nothing motivates you more than the pressure of living month to month with no safety net. Before I explain how 2 broke guys validated a $1B idea, you need to understand we were couch surfing while desperately chasing our entrepreneurial dreams. An Al notetaker was our last hope after 6 ideas our friends claimed were "genius". The best way to validate your business idea is by becoming the product yourself. We told our customers there's an "Al that'll join a meeting." In reality it was just me and my co-founder calling in to the meeting sitting there silently and taking notes by hand. When customers scheduled a meeting, we'd manually dial in as "Fred from Fireflies.ai" We'd sit there silently, take detailed notes, and send them 10 minutes later. After taking notes for 100+ meetings (and falling asleep in many), we were finally able to make enough money to pay the $750/month rent for a tiny SF living room. That was the point when we said let's stop and automate everything. The best prototype was 2 guys surviving on pizza. Validation before automation saved us from our 7th failure.
November 29, 2025 at 8:09 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
prisonpolicy.org
The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy on Earth, making it a leader in mass incarceration.

Far too many people are locked up in the “land of the free.”
Graph showing that the US has the highest incarceration rate among founding NATO countries (614 per 100,000)
November 29, 2025 at 8:15 PM
davehowcroft.com
I'm trying to write more. Here's a blogpost about prayer in my life: davehowcroft.com/thoughts/202...
Prayers – Just thinking out loud
davehowcroft.com
November 29, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
ladyemily.nebula.tv
I love whenever articles like this are all “SEE THE UNREASONABLE ANGRY DEMANDS OF THIS SJW TEACHER” and the teacher’s comment are always “please actually cite sources and try not to call your classmates demonic”
November 29, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Dave Howcroft 🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
matthematics.com
This is the essence of #scicomm
chanda.blacksky.app Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 2d
in january, a table of physicists tried to convince me i was nuts for trying to explain this idea to the general public and i was just like but this is fucking awesome? why wouldn't we want to tell people about this???
November 29, 2025 at 7:24 PM