James Old
@jamesold.bsky.social
Political Scientist @ Valpo
Ex-pat yooper
Interests: fiction, religion, politics, hockey - not necessarily in that order
#SlavaUkraini
Ex-pat yooper
Interests: fiction, religion, politics, hockey - not necessarily in that order
#SlavaUkraini
Reposted by James Old
Mirrored here for when that gets taken down: archive.org/details/3mam...
Inside Cecot : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
https://bsky.app/profile/jasonparis.bsky.social/post/3mam565pyes24
archive.org
December 22, 2025 at 11:31 PM
Mirrored here for when that gets taken down: archive.org/details/3mam...
Reposted by James Old
Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things
December 15, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things
Reposted by James Old
Faculty and staff need to be fluent in the language and techniques of univ budgets. Budgets are how an institution's mission is operationalized. But they're arcane documents, cloaked in obscurantism. And upper admin and boards use that opacity to do all sorts of shit, unaccountable and unfettered
People should take a page out of New School faculty's book and start doing forensic accounting for their own institutions using public documents
There is an absolute fucking scandal going down at The New School, wherein at appears that the university is funnelling to a MEMBER OF THE SCHOOL’S BOARD while purging faculty and staff.
This should be headline news.
x.com/uaw7902/stat...
This should be headline news.
x.com/uaw7902/stat...
December 15, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Faculty and staff need to be fluent in the language and techniques of univ budgets. Budgets are how an institution's mission is operationalized. But they're arcane documents, cloaked in obscurantism. And upper admin and boards use that opacity to do all sorts of shit, unaccountable and unfettered
Reposted by James Old
Nothing will make you an education AI skeptic faster than grading some college take home assignments. Admins who haven’t been in a classroom in years push it as a learning tool. Students are laughing at them as they use it as a cheating tool. It’s all instructors are texting about with each other.
December 14, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Nothing will make you an education AI skeptic faster than grading some college take home assignments. Admins who haven’t been in a classroom in years push it as a learning tool. Students are laughing at them as they use it as a cheating tool. It’s all instructors are texting about with each other.
If Trump wants to destroy Indiana's infrastructure, he's late to the game.
Frustrated Trump Struggling To Find Any Infrastructure Left In Indiana To Destroy
WASHINGTON—Searching in vain for a meaningful way to retaliate after Indiana lawmakers rejected his Republican gerrymandering push, a visibly frustrated President Donald Trump was reportedly strugglin...
theonion.com
December 13, 2025 at 6:47 PM
If Trump wants to destroy Indiana's infrastructure, he's late to the game.
It has been a long, long time since I had anything like appreciation for the Indiana Republican Party.
December 11, 2025 at 11:36 PM
It has been a long, long time since I had anything like appreciation for the Indiana Republican Party.
Make America Stodgy Again!
Marco Rubio ordered diplomats to return to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his predecessor's decision to adopt Calibri a “wasteful” diversity move
Rubio Stages Font Coup: Times New Roman Ousts Calibri
The secretary of state called it a "wasteful" diversity move, according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters.
www.huffpost.com
December 10, 2025 at 3:56 AM
Make America Stodgy Again!
Reposted by James Old
i asked chat gpt to fact check an article for me
December 8, 2025 at 9:33 PM
i asked chat gpt to fact check an article for me
I'm not shocked. The technology gets in the way more than it helps.
One Laptop Per Child, 10 years later: "we find no significant effects on academic performance but some evidence of negative effects on grade progression... computer access significantly improved students’ computer skills but not their cognitive skills" www.nber.org/papers/w34495
Laptops in the Long Run: Evidence from the One Laptop per Child Program in Rural Peru
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
www.nber.org
December 7, 2025 at 2:58 PM
I'm not shocked. The technology gets in the way more than it helps.
"the combat decisions he has made" Quite the paragon of masculinity and courage.
Ladies and gentlemen: let’s all watch the chest-beating lethality macho warfighter dude trying to scurry away at the first sign of trouble.
December 2, 2025 at 3:55 AM
"the combat decisions he has made" Quite the paragon of masculinity and courage.
This was so nice to start the week with. www.npr.org/2025/12/01/g...
David Byrne: Tiny Desk Concert
In matching, brilliant blue suits, David Byrne and his band squeeze behind the Desk to perform four songs, including Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime."
www.npr.org
December 1, 2025 at 1:44 PM
This was so nice to start the week with. www.npr.org/2025/12/01/g...
The Secretary of Defense should be impeached and prosecuted.
November 29, 2025 at 3:00 PM
The Secretary of Defense should be impeached and prosecuted.
Reposted by James Old
How Republicans commemorated Thanksgiving in 1869--with a multi-racial/multi-ethnic gathering of people at a table with a centerpiece celebrating universal suffrage and self-government, and with an engraving of Castle Garden, the pre-Ellis Island point of disembarkation for immigrants.
November 27, 2025 at 6:01 PM
How Republicans commemorated Thanksgiving in 1869--with a multi-racial/multi-ethnic gathering of people at a table with a centerpiece celebrating universal suffrage and self-government, and with an engraving of Castle Garden, the pre-Ellis Island point of disembarkation for immigrants.
Reposted by James Old
The war will end when Russia stops fighting. Therefore, pressure has to be put on Russia, so that they stop believing that they will win. Why is that so hard to understand?
November 27, 2025 at 1:49 AM
The war will end when Russia stops fighting. Therefore, pressure has to be put on Russia, so that they stop believing that they will win. Why is that so hard to understand?
Introduce yourself with four spaceships
November 26, 2025 at 4:45 AM
Introduce yourself with four spaceships
Reposted by James Old
Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea
November 25, 2025 at 1:57 AM
Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea
Reposted by James Old
NEW: For Rev. David Black, the pastor seen shot in the head w/pepper balls by DHS agents in a viral clip, protesting ICE is part of an old Christian tradition.
“I’m seeing almost a revival of Christianity through what’s happening at Broadview in Chicago,” he says. religionnews.com/2025/11/19/f...
“I’m seeing almost a revival of Christianity through what’s happening at Broadview in Chicago,” he says. religionnews.com/2025/11/19/f...
For the Rev. David Black, protesting ICE is part of an old Christian tradition
(RNS) — ‘I’m seeing almost a revival of Christianity through what’s happening at Broadview in Chicago,’ the Rev. David Black said.
religionnews.com
November 19, 2025 at 10:00 PM
NEW: For Rev. David Black, the pastor seen shot in the head w/pepper balls by DHS agents in a viral clip, protesting ICE is part of an old Christian tradition.
“I’m seeing almost a revival of Christianity through what’s happening at Broadview in Chicago,” he says. religionnews.com/2025/11/19/f...
“I’m seeing almost a revival of Christianity through what’s happening at Broadview in Chicago,” he says. religionnews.com/2025/11/19/f...
Reposted by James Old
/6 Also, it is the obligation of every lawyer who takes their oath and the Constitution seriously to shun from legal society every single AUSA and DoJ lawyer participating in this. Strike their names from every book and tablet, every pylon and obelisk, every monument of the rule of law.
November 19, 2025 at 11:46 PM
/6 Also, it is the obligation of every lawyer who takes their oath and the Constitution seriously to shun from legal society every single AUSA and DoJ lawyer participating in this. Strike their names from every book and tablet, every pylon and obelisk, every monument of the rule of law.
Reposted by James Old
I'm so sick of this alternate timeline we're all trapped in.
The attorney general and the FBI director, a manosphere podcaster bro, pulled into the situation room a member of Congress best known for getting kicked out of a Beetlejuice musical for drunkenly giving her date a handy, in order to pressure her about the president's child sex trafficking scandal.
November 13, 2025 at 1:49 PM
I'm so sick of this alternate timeline we're all trapped in.
It's nice when @cnn.com puts Scott Jennings in a segment, so I know I won't miss anything worthwhile and can just zone out on social media for a while.
November 12, 2025 at 12:42 PM
It's nice when @cnn.com puts Scott Jennings in a segment, so I know I won't miss anything worthwhile and can just zone out on social media for a while.
Reposted by James Old
There is zero excuse for police, in a free society, to wear a mask.
Cowards
Cowards
November 8, 2025 at 11:41 PM
There is zero excuse for police, in a free society, to wear a mask.
Cowards
Cowards
Reposted by James Old
1.This is not the only known example we know of ChatGPT cheering on a vulnerable young person to die by suicide, this time it is a recent Texas A&M grad
2. Every single university that has invited OpenAI into our midst should be asked to account for their choices.
www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...
2. Every single university that has invited OpenAI into our midst should be asked to account for their choices.
www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...
November 7, 2025 at 1:50 AM
1.This is not the only known example we know of ChatGPT cheering on a vulnerable young person to die by suicide, this time it is a recent Texas A&M grad
2. Every single university that has invited OpenAI into our midst should be asked to account for their choices.
www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...
2. Every single university that has invited OpenAI into our midst should be asked to account for their choices.
www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...
Reposted by James Old
These election results suggest Venezuela will soon be attacked.
November 5, 2025 at 2:51 AM
These election results suggest Venezuela will soon be attacked.