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Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 6h

“It is hard to imagine an achievement more worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize”.

NOT. Talking military action against Greenland, Canada, Panama & his fellow Americans fails the criteria?
1) fraternity b/w nations
2) abolition or reduction of standing armies
3) formation & spreading of peace congresses.

Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 13h

Sargent’s suggestion that the Trump Regime is manufacturing a crisis by exploiting the attention economy fits well with accounts of modern fascism as growing out of late capitalism & the spectacle society.
@gregsargent.bsky.social
@timothysnyder.bsky.social
newrepublic.com/article/2014...

Reposted by Darrin Durant

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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Reposted by Darrin Durant

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 1d

JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom are doing something new and important: They understand Stephen Miller's theory of fascist power politics, and they've developed a theory on how to combat it. More Dems need to reckon with Miller's understanding of the moment.

New from me:
newrepublic.com/article/2014...

Inside Stephen Miller’s Secret Plan to Normalize Trump’s Dictator Rule

He wants to supercharge searing civil tensions to get low-information voters to embrace their inner authoritarian. Exactly two Democrats appear to fully grasp this.

newrepublic.com

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Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 2d

I think a highly useful distinction is that between contextualizing fascism (historicism re: original contexts and specific dynamics) and de-contextualizing fascism (freeing newer forms from older markers).

Asserting Trump can’t be fascist because he is not Hitler fails to decontextualize fascism

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Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 2d

Lucky this wannabe-fascist is not sitting in the halls of power, @radiofreetom.bsky.social.
Oh, wait

Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 3d

If the concern is that using the label ‘fascist’ breeds sloppy thinking, then why is Tom continually engaging in sloppy thinking with the “now is not exactly like then” argument?

Do I need to post (again) the historians who demonstrate why that is sloppy thinking?

Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 4d

The Fuhrerprinzip (unquestioning obedience to the leader) was established by the Nazis in 1926. Does the boiling frog metaphor offer any cautionary lessons?
@radiofreetom.bsky.social

Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 4d

Rasmussen (2022) constructs a “looser & more relaxed” account of fascism, responding to contradictions in late capitalism & settling for a “spectacle economy”, an “infantalized public sphere”, “racial re-enchantment”, and the”consumerist fantasy” of “capitalist accumulation without fragmentation”.

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Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 4d

Elay (2023) suggests we need a portable definition of fascism that involves both contextualizing (historicize old variants) AND decontextualizing (free the term from historical markers to capture new variants).

All ‘but now is not exactly like then’ FAIL to decontextualize fascism?

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Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 4d

It is helpful to remember Umberto Eco writing that “the fascist game can be played in many forms” due to family resemblance relations not exact replication of every feature in every manifestation.
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umbe...

Ur-Fascism

Umberto Eco Ur-Fascism June 22, 1995

theanarchistlibrary.org

Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 4d

Tom you have not clarified “popular mobilization” but declare that fascist element absent in the Trump Regime?

No, Passmore defines such mobilization: parallel admin chosen according to ideology, weaponizing civil society (welfare, education, leisure, rallies), internal cleansing.

Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 4d

Like the debate in statistics that cautions against precision obscuring significance, fine if you want to call the Trump Regime illiberal democracy. But it includes fascist elements: threat othering, conspiracy thinking, truth delegitimization. Maybe substantive significance trumps precision here?

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Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 5d

Imagine living in a rosy world with few challenges to mitigation or adaptation & little regional rivalry: you’re in SSP1 Land not SSP3 Land.

Further imagine you work for a conservative think tank and get upset scientists won’t accept ‘debate me bro’. Welcome to Pielke Land.

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Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 6d

Not that Trump’s ICE would abduct South Korean workers.
Oh, wait
time.com/7317215/sout...

Detained South Korean Workers Wary of Returning to U.S.

Despite guarantees that they can re-enter the U.S., some Korean workers have questioned whether or not they want to, especially after their reportedly harrowing ICE detention.

time.com

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Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 9d

“AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations”.
- Cory Doctorow.
pluralistic.net/2025/05/27/r...

Pluralistic: AI turns Amazon coders into Amazon warehouse workers (27 May 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

pluralistic.net

1

Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 11d

Trump declares war on Portland, OR.

Portland: “Is it our coffee-roasters, did they not add sufficient orange rind for the orange autocrat?”

2

Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 11d

It is more expensive for Finland (w/ 41% nuclear share of electricity) to prioritize nuclear over RE expansion but the Australian pro-nuclear lobby thinks it cheaper to go nuclear over RE despite Oz having 0% nuclear.

When you don’t need a study.

Christian Breyer @christianonre.bsky.social · 13d

1/ New @lut.fi study in collaboration with European partners finds prioritising nuclear power expansion over renewable energy (RE) leads to 71–84% higher annual system costs in Finland by 2050 compared to a cost-optimised RE system. doi.org/10.1016/j.en...

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Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 11d

Painting the battling of online disinformation as a ‘censorship industrial complex’ is exactly what the right wing propaganda industry wants you to think.
www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Inside the hidden conservative network bankrolling an "ecosystem" of right-wing news

John Solomon's Informing America set out to create an echo chamber to shape public opinion. It's working.

www.motherjones.com

Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 11d

Agreed it’s probably anti-intellectualism more than anti-science. So that problematizes ‘technocratic industrial-scientific’ as foundation?

Maybe Hofstadter types of anti-intellectualism are useful guides here?Religious anti-rationalism, populist anti-elitism, and unreflective instrumentalism.

Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 12d

Worth pointing out this totally unfortunate and accidental ‘typo’ re: Mr Shellenberger.
reneweconomy.com.au/coalition-sa...

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Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 12d

I still remember about 15 years ago, talking to some folks who had attended one of the Breakthrough Institute conferences. I said Shellenberger was a grifter who would go off the rails and they insisted he was legit.

Called it

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Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 13d

Mockery has a good track record as anti-authoritarian, so I advise accepting the gesture. Though I agree with the need for a focus on social inequity. Less corrupt clowns in public office would help:
bsky.app/profile/atru...

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 13d

KILMEADE: The president says climate change is a hoax, it's a con job. Where do you fall on this?

EPA ADMINISTRATION LEE ZELDIN: The president is absolutely right

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Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 13d

The Australian Prime Minister taking the stairs without threatening to arrest people because he was using his own motor power.
Just a little bit of non-fascism that Amerikkka could emulate.

Darrin Durant @darrinadurant.bsky.social · 13d

Was Comey also turned into a radical leftist ideologue by one semester of online study at a University?

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