UPDATE: Wily has been FOUND. Thank you so much everyone for your help.

————

San Francisco: Our dog has escaped her sitter and we are trapped on a plane for the next 9 hours.

She was last spotted in the Castro, heading toward the Mission but she could be anywhere. She is very sweet but very timid.

I’ve spent much of this year examining car bloat, the process through which smaller vehicles are being replaced by increasingly massive SUVs and trucks.

What I’ve learned: Huge cars are terrible for society, often in ways that are hidden.

Some basic facts:
◆ >80% of US car sales are now trucks/SUVs.
◆ Models keep expanding. For example, the F-150 is now ~800 lbs heavier and 7 inches taller than in 1991.
◆ EVs can make the problem worse due to huge batteries.

Continued (THREAD)

#cars #climate

I haven’t been on Bluesky since Threads launched. The site seemed to be having drama with Black users every few weeks and the past week has been no different.

It seems they allow usernames to be created containing the word “n*gger” but block a bunch of other slurs. It also seems they didn’t take prompt action when users complained.

Sadly, they now have a pattern of being slow to handle content moderation issues that affect Black users. 😞

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/scotthirleman_hey-neo-are-you-aware-that-your-most-recent-activity-7085538196427546624-R0Pv

bluesky is fun, threads is fun, but I don't think I'll ever forget the lesson of Twitter:

if you don't control your own social graph, someone else controls an increasingly important part of your life

The MLA/CCCCs joint “task force” of which I am a member has produced its first (of multiple) working papers on Writing and AI. It includes specific recommendations with the upcoming fall semester in mind. Note too, that it is framed as a working paper, i.e. work in progress: we welcome comments and feedback. (Please share.)

https://aiandwriting.hcommons.org/working-paper-1/

This post celebrates the 46,000th unique title Distributed Proofreaders has posted to Project Gutenberg: the fifth and final volume of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads by Francis James Child. Congratulations and thanks to all the DP & PG volunteers who worked on these interesting & complex projects! via @DProofreaders

https://blog.pgdp.net/2023/07/03/celebrating-46000-titles/#respond

The Child Ballads at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44969
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47692
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62474
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63116
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/71104

We have spotted quite a few students using generative AI in their essays this summer and applied standard academic misconduct proceedings, though in most cases the work was so bad they would've failed anyway.

Today I learned of one whose use was sufficiently extensive that they will fail their degree.

I am wondering if this is *the first time a student has failed a whole degree for using AI*? Would love to hear about other cases. If you want to tell me in confidence, my Session ID is in my Bio