Stefan Holander
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altaholico.bsky.social
Stefan Holander
@altaholico.bsky.social
61 followers 290 following 11 posts
Total Luddite.
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Reposted by Stefan Holander
georgemonbiot.bsky.social
It is the source of so many of our evils: the astonishing concentration of wealth in the hands of a very few, and the immense political power that gives them. We cannot solve our problems until we tackle it.
This week's column.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
At the root of all our problems stands one travesty: politicians’ surrender to the super-rich | George Monbiot
There are many excuses for failing to tax the ultra-wealthy. The truth is that governments don’t tackle the problem because they don’t want to, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
www.theguardian.com
January 16, 2026 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
ositanwanevu.com
I wrote about Renee Good, Venezuela, Greenland, and what it means to be a human being. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
America, JD Vance tells us, is merely a nation like many others ⁠– a “homeland”, he said upon accepting his nomination to the vice-presidency, for “people with a shared history and a common future”. That’s a vision of American identity that would have described bands of cavepeople in skins just as well or better. Stephen Miller’s proleptic defense of seizing Greenland last week suggests the Trumpists themselves know this. “We live in a world, in the real world ... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he declared. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” Miller’s laws are the laws of animals. It is true, obviously, that high ideals have long been deployed to obscure or justify predation, here and elsewhere. But Miller’s stance and the stance of the administration is that there aren’t, actually, any high ideals worth pursuing or even pretending to – that the human being, in itself, is nothing so much ⁠and that we are, fundamentally and forever, primitives. Against the demands and best aspirations of civilization – western or any kind – they tell us the human being is a creature that yearns for nothing more than blood and soil, which is, of course, just mud. The lust for mud has taken up many guises in our history and has been many given names of late – neo-reaction, post-liberalism, fascism. But the name familiar to most is evil. It was evil – the standpoint that only might matters, that human morality, and our sense of reality itself, must yield to the turfism of the primates with the biggest clubs – that ginned up the propaganda that provoked an act of terrorism against our legislature and the policemen defending it five years ago. It is evil that undergirds pronouncements from the same voices responsible for that attack, in defense of the man who shot Renee Nicole Good, that those who disobey the commands of law enforcement, however unsound or unjust, deserve summary execution – that implies, as Fox’s Jesse Watters and others have, that Good’s killing was of trivial significance because she was a lesbian “with pronouns in her bio”. It is evil that sends innocent men to foreign gulags, evil that condemns hundreds of thousands of destitute people abroad to death without a moment’s discussion or debate about what the country they had depended on might owe them, or the furnishing of alternative arrangements for their wellbeing. The gutting of USAID remains this administration’s worst and least surprising offense against the human conscience – a president who rejects the idea that we might have obligations to all within our society can’t be expected to wonder or worry about whether we have obligations to those outside of it. This is also why, after all the noise and nonsense about the need to depose the Maduro regime, the Venezuelan people are now being told that regime will be left in mostly in place for as long as it takes to secure and extract the country’s resources on our terms – that Venezuela will not see democracy unless and until it is profitable for the United States. Democracy has always been a useless abstraction to those who deny we have basic human entitlements – for those who believe, instead, that the idea of human liberty is a luxury for those wealthy and powerful enough to consider themselves our betters rather than the birthright of all. As many who’ve taken to the streets in protest have noted, the Trump administration’s assaults on liberty here at home are the kinds of abuses that spurred the revolution we will commemorate this year. But no grand revolution is in the offing this time around. The only just and plausible recourse for our situation is politics – understood not merely as the contest to win any given set of elections but as the broader fight to forge a republic that honors and strengthens our humanity. The American project must and will succeed. Its enemies stand for too little. Our lives are worth too much.
January 14, 2026 at 3:26 PM
altaholico.bsky.social
On evil - such clarity and truthfulness here. An absolute must-read.
ositanwanevu.com Osita Nwanevu @ositanwanevu.com · 2d
I wrote about Renee Good, Venezuela, Greenland, and what it means to be a human being. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
America, JD Vance tells us, is merely a nation like many others ⁠– a “homeland”, he said upon accepting his nomination to the vice-presidency, for “people with a shared history and a common future”. That’s a vision of American identity that would have described bands of cavepeople in skins just as well or better. Stephen Miller’s proleptic defense of seizing Greenland last week suggests the Trumpists themselves know this. “We live in a world, in the real world ... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he declared. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” Miller’s laws are the laws of animals. It is true, obviously, that high ideals have long been deployed to obscure or justify predation, here and elsewhere. But Miller’s stance and the stance of the administration is that there aren’t, actually, any high ideals worth pursuing or even pretending to – that the human being, in itself, is nothing so much ⁠and that we are, fundamentally and forever, primitives. Against the demands and best aspirations of civilization – western or any kind – they tell us the human being is a creature that yearns for nothing more than blood and soil, which is, of course, just mud. The lust for mud has taken up many guises in our history and has been many given names of late – neo-reaction, post-liberalism, fascism. But the name familiar to most is evil. It was evil – the standpoint that only might matters, that human morality, and our sense of reality itself, must yield to the turfism of the primates with the biggest clubs – that ginned up the propaganda that provoked an act of terrorism against our legislature and the policemen defending it five years ago. It is evil that undergirds pronouncements from the same voices responsible for that attack, in defense of the man who shot Renee Nicole Good, that those who disobey the commands of law enforcement, however unsound or unjust, deserve summary execution – that implies, as Fox’s Jesse Watters and others have, that Good’s killing was of trivial significance because she was a lesbian “with pronouns in her bio”. It is evil that sends innocent men to foreign gulags, evil that condemns hundreds of thousands of destitute people abroad to death without a moment’s discussion or debate about what the country they had depended on might owe them, or the furnishing of alternative arrangements for their wellbeing. The gutting of USAID remains this administration’s worst and least surprising offense against the human conscience – a president who rejects the idea that we might have obligations to all within our society can’t be expected to wonder or worry about whether we have obligations to those outside of it. This is also why, after all the noise and nonsense about the need to depose the Maduro regime, the Venezuelan people are now being told that regime will be left in mostly in place for as long as it takes to secure and extract the country’s resources on our terms – that Venezuela will not see democracy unless and until it is profitable for the United States. Democracy has always been a useless abstraction to those who deny we have basic human entitlements – for those who believe, instead, that the idea of human liberty is a luxury for those wealthy and powerful enough to consider themselves our betters rather than the birthright of all. As many who’ve taken to the streets in protest have noted, the Trump administration’s assaults on liberty here at home are the kinds of abuses that spurred the revolution we will commemorate this year. But no grand revolution is in the offing this time around. The only just and plausible recourse for our situation is politics – understood not merely as the contest to win any given set of elections but as the broader fight to forge a republic that honors and strengthens our humanity. The American project must and will succeed. Its enemies stand for too little. Our lives are worth too much.
January 14, 2026 at 6:50 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
sorayanadiamcdonald.com
WHAT
npr.org NPR @npr.org · 5d
A recent Israeli decision to bar Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups means international staff and aid can no longer enter Gaza or the West Bank. Local staff must rely on dwindling supplies and no international expertise.
Inside a Gaza medical clinic at risk of shutting down after an Israeli ban
A recent Israeli decision to bar Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups means international staff and aid can no longer enter Gaza or the West Bank. Local staff must rely on dwindling supplies and no international expertise.
n.pr
January 11, 2026 at 8:04 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
ncweaver.skerry-tech.com
Thanks, and you are 100% welcome to do so.

I'm also using this as a bit of a test: if a dept I apply to has a committee that doesn't agree with this I wouldn't want to work there anyway, like boarding the Titanic after it sights the iceberg
December 29, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
ncweaver.skerry-tech.com
My statement on teaching (looking for permanent teaching-centric gigs)
docs.google.com/document/d/1...

It really really is bad in the CS side, and I've dealt with too many faculty who are all gaga over it...
Statement on Teaching:
Statement on Teaching: Effective Programming in the Age of “AI” Nicholas Weaver [email protected] https://skerry-tech.com/cv.html Computer science is not computer programming but computer p...
docs.google.com
December 28, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
jonblund02.bsky.social
Her fikk han svar på tiltale.

«Det er selve konstruksjonen: Du skal kunne underkjennes selv når du gjør alt «riktig». En permanent prøving der majoriteten alltid har siste ord om din tilhørighet.»

www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kro...
Asle Tojes lojalitetslaboratorium
Mustafa Can svarer Asle Toje.
www.aftenposten.no
December 22, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
kateheartfield.com
I have not used it to brainstorm, rubber duck (this is what friends and actual rubber ducks are for), create concepts, outline, coach, suggest titles, whatever. I have not willingly used it for a damn thing.
December 20, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
kateheartfield.com
In case it doesn't go without saying: I have not used gen AI to create text in any of my books. I have not used Grammarly etc to "clean up" the text. I have not used it to research any of my books, except where it might be built into search engines under the hood (I do not use labelled AI results).
December 20, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
stfisherhoyrem.bsky.social
Jeg prøver å tenke høyt uten å skrike.
KI og begrunnelser — Stefan Fisher-Høyrem
Jeg er velsignet med en jobb der jeg har relativt høy grad av autonomi. Jeg føler jeg mestrer flere av oppgavene mine på en tilfredsstillende måte. Og jeg opplever kanskje 70% av disse arbeidsoppgaven...
www.stefanfisherhoyrem.com
December 20, 2025 at 2:07 AM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
rcolesworthy.bsky.social
one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.
November 25, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
itsabbyyep.bsky.social
How to have good hair:
- Have whatever hair, even bad hair

- Walk around like you have that hair on purpose
December 18, 2025 at 3:12 AM
altaholico.bsky.social
The #1 movie when you were 10 years old is how your 2026 is going to go.
December 19, 2025 at 7:54 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
jenashleywright.bsky.social
Michael C. Rockefeller got shipwrecked in 1963, washed up on an island, and was promptly eaten by cannibals.
December 13, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
benpatrickwill.bsky.social
Learning management systems also of course lock in institutitions to multi-year budget-raiding subscription contracts, enforce templates that restrict pedagogic autonomy, and claim extra value from turning usage data into feature upgrades, *in addition* to being major time and labour drains
lutzfernandez.bsky.social Anne Lutz Fernandez @lutzfernandez.bsky.social · Dec 12
This recent study found learning management systems sold to schools since the 2010s as time-savers (e.g. Google Classroom, Canvas) tend to be burdensome and contribute to burnout.
December 12, 2025 at 11:09 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
benpatrickwill.bsky.social
2025 was the year AI hit hard in education after a long lead in

If anyone's left with a job in the social sciences and humanities to keep studying it critically in the future, here's a reading list I've been compilung all year to get you going
benpatrickwill.bsky.social Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · Feb 9
A social sciences and humanities reading list on AI in education 🧵
December 12, 2025 at 9:05 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
benpatrickwill.bsky.social
A social sciences and humanities reading list on AI in education 🧵
February 9, 2025 at 12:00 AM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
anibundel.bsky.social
Always love to see great talent using their platform for unabashed good.
'F*** Off And Let People Be': David Tennant Doubles Down On Support For Trans People
"People are trying to create division... and it's so f***ing unnecessary."
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk
November 29, 2025 at 4:50 AM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
benpatrickwill.bsky.social
How come the policy obsession with "evidence-based" policy and technology in education of at least the last 20 years has completely evaporated with "AI"? ...
November 29, 2025 at 12:37 AM
altaholico.bsky.social
The Pogues
Ramones
Hasse 'Kvinnaböske' Andersson
The Tragically Hip
Midnight Oil
brooklynmarie.bsky.social Brooke @brooklynmarie.bsky.social · Nov 27
Lila Downs
Pink Floyd
Flogging Molly
Social Distortion
Nortec Collective
davidmack.pro David Mack @davidmack.pro · Nov 27
introduce yourself with five concerts you've seen

Rush
ZZ Top
The Donnas
Aerosmith
Billy Joel
November 27, 2025 at 11:07 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
drkatemarvel.bsky.social
I really wish we'd stop calling them climate "skeptics" or "vaccine skeptics", if you jump off a cliff we don't call you a "gravity skeptic"
November 25, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
samplereality.bsky.social
A Google Doc from Miriam Posner at UCLA with the pros and cons of different strategies for dealing with students using ChatGPT for writing
ChatGPT Harm Reduction for Writing Assignments
ChatGPT Harm Reduction for Writing Assignments Because this document has escaped containment, a couple points of explanation. I wrote this for myself and a few colleagues as we work out how to handle the issue of LLMs in an undergrad writing-intensive class. None of these strategies is perfect, ...
docs.google.com
November 19, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
runningurbanist.bsky.social
Don’t look away from what’s happening in Ukraine. The Russian Terror State continues their never ending onslaught.
reshetz.bsky.social Mira of Kyiv 🇺🇦 @reshetz.bsky.social · Nov 19
Cosmic fucking horror
November 19, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
oddthisday.bsky.social
We begin today with a content warning: this dispatch from history is not for the faint-hearted. However, if you wish, do please join me for the tale of the Sun King’s anal fistula and the three-hour operation performed on it without anaesthetic on this day in 1686... 🧵
Louis XIV in 1685, the year before his operation. Image shows a large man in huge long black wig and long blur robe trimmed with white fur and decorated with gold fleur-de-lis. He is clutching a sceptre in one hand and a laurel crown in the other, and one stockinged, gartered leg is sticking out of the robe
November 18, 2025 at 9:05 AM
Reposted by Stefan Holander
annesigrid.bsky.social
I know a lot of you need this
phineas.bsky.social Phineas @phineas.bsky.social · Nov 3
New awareness campaign
A digital poster in the style of a World War II propaganda piece. Isolaed on a yellow background, a normal, squarish, 20-something guy with glasses is sitting working on a laptop. A ghostly figure of Hitler has his arm around the guy and is grinning and shaking a fist triumphantly looking at the laptop screen. On the lid of the laptop where an apple might otherwise be is an openAI logo, bright green, and dripping green ooze down the lid. Text on the poster, in combinations of sans-serif type and brush script reads: Using Generative AI? You’re prompting with Hitler! GenAI is a Fascist Project! Try using your brain instead Don’t surrender your creativity to the tech billionaire’s control
November 17, 2025 at 11:21 AM