@qvidtvm.bsky.social
Art historian, professor.
New York City | Cape Cod.
This is my personal account, views my own, etc.
New York City | Cape Cod.
This is my personal account, views my own, etc.
When’s the episode of “the CBS question”? Oh, there isn’t one, because we already know the answer (hint: it involves journalistic integrity and not having any).
"the feminism question"
December 18, 2025 at 2:05 PM
When’s the episode of “the CBS question”? Oh, there isn’t one, because we already know the answer (hint: it involves journalistic integrity and not having any).
About 15–20% of my students this semester submitted research papers with hallucinated sources.
Academics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.
AI Is Inventing Academic Papers That Don't Exist -- And They're Being Cited in Real Journals
Academic articles from authors using large language model are creating an ecosystem of fake research that threatens human knowledge itself.
www.rollingstone.com
December 17, 2025 at 8:01 PM
About 15–20% of my students this semester submitted research papers with hallucinated sources.
Speaking of smart art historians, two of them wrote this, one of the best pieces I’ve read about AI in education, and how to push back against it.
Read it and create some friction.
Read it and create some friction.
"We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction."
"How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social
www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...
"How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social
www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...
Four Frictions: or, How to Resist AI in Education - Public Books
We are calling for resistance to the AI industry’s ongoing capture of higher education.
www.publicbooks.org
December 17, 2025 at 6:58 PM
Speaking of smart art historians, two of them wrote this, one of the best pieces I’ve read about AI in education, and how to push back against it.
Read it and create some friction.
Read it and create some friction.
Reposted
Deep down, perhaps every right-leaning man wishes that chatbots could be the endlessly supportive and sexually receptive secretaries they saw in 70s movies or in porn.
This is why almost every AI system is voiced by default by a young-sounding woman.
This is why almost every AI system is voiced by default by a young-sounding woman.
If we are banning cell phones for kids we need to be talking about banning chatbots for boomers
www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...
www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...
December 17, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Deep down, perhaps every right-leaning man wishes that chatbots could be the endlessly supportive and sexually receptive secretaries they saw in 70s movies or in porn.
This is why almost every AI system is voiced by default by a young-sounding woman.
This is why almost every AI system is voiced by default by a young-sounding woman.
Let me say as an art historian, the discourse around the Vanity Fair White House photos gives me enormous pleasure. Critical visual analysis unpacking symbolism through close looking? Oh, that’s cool? Huh. Maybe there should be a field devoted to developing those skills, that’d be neat.
December 17, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Let me say as an art historian, the discourse around the Vanity Fair White House photos gives me enormous pleasure. Critical visual analysis unpacking symbolism through close looking? Oh, that’s cool? Huh. Maybe there should be a field devoted to developing those skills, that’d be neat.
See also: State of Massachusetts
Person who declines to use turn signal: “I am a creature unlike any other. I am unknowable. I am the breath of the evening on a moonlit night. I am quintessence.”
December 15, 2025 at 6:34 PM
See also: State of Massachusetts
Reposted
Maybe instead of pouring billions of dollars into their plagiarism machine, they should give that money to the many, many brilliant scholars and creatives who have a surplus of ideas but lack the time and resources to execute them.
December 14, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Maybe instead of pouring billions of dollars into their plagiarism machine, they should give that money to the many, many brilliant scholars and creatives who have a surplus of ideas but lack the time and resources to execute them.
Reposted
I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork
December 12, 2025 at 4:00 AM
I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork
Reposted
This is the entire thing
There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom
December 12, 2025 at 10:13 PM
This is the entire thing
Reposted
This. This was the formative event of my generation & our entire politics in 🇺🇸. The structural break after which we were no longer a full democracy, when 5 Wizards In Robes decided they were a super-legislature & counting all the actual votes didn’t matter. The rest has been 25 years of commentary.
25 years ago today, SCOTUS elected George W Bush president of the United States by blocking completion of a voting canvass in Florida. A subsequent canvass by the Associated Press showed that Bush's rival, Al Gore, had won the race in Florida—and thus the contest for the presidency—by 700 votes.
December 12, 2025 at 7:50 AM
This. This was the formative event of my generation & our entire politics in 🇺🇸. The structural break after which we were no longer a full democracy, when 5 Wizards In Robes decided they were a super-legislature & counting all the actual votes didn’t matter. The rest has been 25 years of commentary.
People getting mad about AI tech bros getting the "honor" of Time Magazine person of the year... In 1938 and '39, it was Hitler and Stalin.
December 11, 2025 at 11:03 PM
People getting mad about AI tech bros getting the "honor" of Time Magazine person of the year... In 1938 and '39, it was Hitler and Stalin.
Reposted
I think it’s pretty clear at this point that one of the main impacts of LLMs is to disrupt thinking: to make it so that far too many people never properly learn how to do it, and then to control the output so there are thoughts that people never learn how to think.
November 24, 2025 at 5:18 PM
I think it’s pretty clear at this point that one of the main impacts of LLMs is to disrupt thinking: to make it so that far too many people never properly learn how to do it, and then to control the output so there are thoughts that people never learn how to think.
Reposted
Reposted
I try to be as measured as possible on social media, but everyone in the art world—including art historians!—who in recent years has focused incessantly on "the contemporary" is at fault for developments like this. This is what happens when you fail to value history hyperallergic.com/1058320/why-...
Why Is DC’s Phillips Collection Selling Off Its Masterpieces?
The museum’s decision to deaccession works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, and more has come under public scrutiny.
hyperallergic.com
November 20, 2025 at 6:19 PM
I try to be as measured as possible on social media, but everyone in the art world—including art historians!—who in recent years has focused incessantly on "the contemporary" is at fault for developments like this. This is what happens when you fail to value history hyperallergic.com/1058320/why-...
The fact that this MF’s signature is on my diploma is a stain on my education and on my pride being an academic.
So Harvard is keeping this guy, but Claudine Gay had to step down over ginned up plagiarism accusations and bad-faith accusations of anti-Semitism.
Got it.
Got it.
Larry Summers tells @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social
he’s stepping back from all public commitments in light of his messages with Epstein, saying he is “deeply ashamed” and hopes “to rebuild trust and repair relationships.”
He will continue teaching.
www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
he’s stepping back from all public commitments in light of his messages with Epstein, saying he is “deeply ashamed” and hopes “to rebuild trust and repair relationships.”
He will continue teaching.
www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
November 18, 2025 at 4:26 PM
The fact that this MF’s signature is on my diploma is a stain on my education and on my pride being an academic.
Reposted
The fact that no one in the room stood up for her says a lot about how we got here bsky.app/profile/pale...
"Quiet! Quiet, Piggy."
November 18, 2025 at 2:55 PM
The fact that no one in the room stood up for her says a lot about how we got here bsky.app/profile/pale...
Giving a paper in 5 days and at that stage of deluded stress writing where I hate the paper but also maybe think parts of it are brilliant? But who can tell and I don't care anymore?
October 26, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Giving a paper in 5 days and at that stage of deluded stress writing where I hate the paper but also maybe think parts of it are brilliant? But who can tell and I don't care anymore?
Reposted
Amazing quote:
nymag.com/intelligence...
nymag.com/intelligence...
October 4, 2025 at 12:30 AM
Amazing quote:
nymag.com/intelligence...
nymag.com/intelligence...
Reposted
If you think Trump deploying troops in American cities is nothing more than an opportunity to pivot to a completely different subject, you do not belong in Democratic leadership.
The Trump administration’s threat to deploy troops in Portland is unlawful.
Here’s a thought.
Focus on protecting the healthcare of the American people.
Here’s a thought.
Focus on protecting the healthcare of the American people.
September 28, 2025 at 12:19 AM
If you think Trump deploying troops in American cities is nothing more than an opportunity to pivot to a completely different subject, you do not belong in Democratic leadership.
I was there for that Nosferatu screening in Bologna's Piazza Maggiore and it was a thing of magic.
The Exacting Magic of Film Restoration
Each year, at a festival in Bologna, movies that were once lost or damaged come back to life.
www.newyorker.com
September 25, 2025 at 5:18 PM
I was there for that Nosferatu screening in Bologna's Piazza Maggiore and it was a thing of magic.
Updated to the new iOS and now when I’m bored, I think about how apocalyptically Steve Jobs would have hated every aspect of it.
September 25, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Updated to the new iOS and now when I’m bored, I think about how apocalyptically Steve Jobs would have hated every aspect of it.
Another thing that is apparently no longer common knowledge: take off your backpack and hold it in your hand on a crowded subway car. Truly everyone in their own, self-centered world…
September 15, 2025 at 12:52 PM
Another thing that is apparently no longer common knowledge: take off your backpack and hold it in your hand on a crowded subway car. Truly everyone in their own, self-centered world…
Seems like what happened at A&M is grounds for the school to lose its accreditation?
September 10, 2025 at 6:51 PM
Seems like what happened at A&M is grounds for the school to lose its accreditation?
I will never understand how a restaurant can have both a C grade from the Health Department AND a long line to get in
September 7, 2025 at 11:11 PM
I will never understand how a restaurant can have both a C grade from the Health Department AND a long line to get in