George Dutton
He/Him. Professor of SEA Studies at UCLA; voracious reader; writing a YA novel on climate change anxiety; frequently outraged activist. 🏳️🌈 ally. Opinions my own.
- Looks like I've got to add this to my short list of important books to read!
- NYT: "Raises substantial ethical issues." Ya think??? That's NYT-speak for something that is flat out ILLEGAL. Rather like NYT-speak of "falsehood" for Trump's transparently obvious LIES. WTF?
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- Absolutely loved this when I read it last year. A sheer delight!
- This is so important! Federal support is critical for international education programs in higher education.
- NEW: California has launched ‘Ask CAL FIRE”, an AI-powered chatbot on @calfire.bsky.social’s website offering wildfire resources and emergency information in 70 languages. We’re committed to transforming government to more efficiently and effectively serve people.
- Oh, sure nothing could possibly go wrong with this. Also, today’s NYT headline: “AI is Getting More Powerful, but It’s Hallucinations Are Getting Worse”🙄
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- So Miller is planning to provoke an actual invasion just so they can declare martial law?? Cool, cool. Definitely love that
- This is absolutely happening here in Los Angeles; my wife is seeing this with patients at her downtown clinic.
- Across the U.S., doctors are increasingly concerned that people with serious medical conditions are avoiding medical care out of fear of being apprehended by immigration officials. “The tragic message to these people is: Be a shadow and hope that you do not die,” one said. nyti.ms/4d4Wu1s
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- Government sanctioned kidnapping has to be one of most obvious signs we are living under a fascist regime.
- Just when you think these grotesque clowns can’t get any more offensive
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- My wife and I LOVE “The Fifth Element”! Just gloriously over the top in so many ways - a joy every time we watch it.
- Proud to call UW my alma mater.
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- I’m not, but have friends on the faculty who have given some hints. Will have to follow more closely, though rather preoccupied with looming fiscal crisis here in the UC system…
- No, Harvard didn't mark up Linda McMahon's letter and send it back to her! That markup was a Twitter/X joke by MIT economics grad student Daniel Luo x.com/danielluo_pi
- I knew it couldn’t be Harvard.
- Still, correcting letters written by Trump appointees is rather like shooting fish in a barrel…
- The anti-book, anti-education, anti-reader troglodytes rear their ugly heads once again. And one wonders why SC is ranked 43rd in K-12 school performance …
- It's not a prisoner's dilemma if there's no upside to trying to settle with the administration!
- The Darth Vader quote is apt, though we know what happens to his administration
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- Also, "Foreign Lands"???
- Ah, the endless revolving door of university leaders; nice to see him head off to Florida where university leaders go to kill their careers (see, eg. Ben Sasse)
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- And, as always, with impunity.
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- Cool! Neon Yang’s work is excellent and I have my students in a modern SEA lit course read their Black Tides of Heaven. If you’re interested, I also highly recommend the edited collection, The SEA Is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia.
- Just a reminder that most of Trump's executive orders are nothing more than press releases. After he ordered the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to pull funding for NPR and PBS, the CPB responded that it is authorized and funded by Congress and is not subject to the president's authority.
- Wish more people would bear this in mind. Trump hears “Order” and thinks it means he’s completely in charge of making people do whatever he wants; NOT how it works …
- POINT: just teach the things, no politics COUNTERPOINT: you have values, and you need to explain to students why we need to uphold them
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- Oh, absolutely.
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- Loved this one! All of her books have really impressed me.
- Teaching is always a political act. My syllabus is full of intensely political choices.
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- No doubt - haven't been back in a while, but had already seen an evolution in the neighborhood from small bagel shops selling 25-cent fresh bagels to upscale Asian eateries.
- Wow, that brings back memories - not the movie, but the little yellow sticker. When I attended Allderdice HS back in the early 1980s, I'd catch the bus home in front of the Squirrel Hill branch at the corner of Forbes and Murray . . .
- If this isn't a cautionary warning for academics then I don't know what is. You are putting yourself one step closer to unemployment each time you use AI to write an email, synthesize literature, code any data, use the socratic method to organize ideas, or write syllabi, lectures & papers.
- Which is one of the many reasons why, when presented with a survey by my institution (UCLA) about AI, I let fly with both barrels about everything I found wrong with it, why I would not let my students use it, would not use it myself, and did not want the university to invest in it. At all.
- "Democrats urge probe into Trump’s push to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, say it’s ‘illegal and unconstitutional’" [Boston Globe, May 2nd] Good! This is literally my current message to my Senators and representatives. It is an absolutely clear-cut case of Trump's violation of federal statutes.
- All of this for some students watching a documentary on campus. Fucking ridiculous.
- Yeah, our campus is under surveillance again; the administration’s mistrust of students is once again on full display. So much for rebuilding trust …
- None of the dystopian literature that have consumed over the past 30 years has prepared me for the deep existential horror of watching the world's loneliest billionaire describe his design for the future of humanity
- Mark Zuckerberg says Meta's chatbots will supplement your real friends: "The average American has fewer than 3 friends ... but has demand for ... 15 friends" (h/t x.com/romanhelmetg...)
- Same. Rather curl up with another dystopian novel than have a microchip build me a bunch of imaginary friends
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- Jeez, what crawled up this guy's shorts? It sounds like he's teaching at a university that only exists in his imagination; sure hope they haven't tenured him🙄
- An important dissection of the NYT article on the recently released Harvard reports around life on its campus.
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- Quite a trifecta!
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- And classic book banning tactic, willful misreading and misrepresentation, albeit particularly egregious in this instance. Here the homophobia is on full display.
- Yet another move in the scorched-earth approach to governance that is Trump. Destruction by a pyromaniac who lives to light fires to watch them burn. Meanwhile, professional historians who worked with integrity are being cast aside, unlikely to be replaced for a long time, if ever.
- Unhappy to confirm that the entire Historical Advisory Committee at the State Department received termination notices this afternoon (myself included). The HAC, set up by Congress, oversees the office that produces the FRUS series. history.state.gov/about/hac/in... 1/
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- Thanks, Robin. It is an uphill and daily battle, but so many of us are in it for the long haul in hopes we’ll ultimately build a better country for all.
- And move some of us one step closer to fleeing a failing nation
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- I can imagine; had me thinking of when I was there in 2018 and VN nearly won the Asian under-23 soccer tournament, which resulted in a hugely spontaneous (near)-victory parade in downtown Saigon that went on for hours. Completely UN-stage-managed.
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- Saw this and was utterly disgusted. The behavior of the agents is obscene and profoundly inhumane, not to mention all kinds of illegal.
- Democratic Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer appeared at a Trump rally and expresses how grateful she is and thanks Trump while speaking at the event. She's selling out her state to fascism.
- Wow, I see her political future spiraling down the toilet, of the power-flush variety.
- Saw this and it's clearly an obscene exercise of brutal government force. The family should sue the pants off of every officer involved and then come after the government for damages too.
- 20 ARMED men bust into your home. They claim they’ve got a search warrant. They make you stand in the rain w/your 3 daughters in their underwear. They seize your phones, laptops, your cash life savings. The suspects listed on the warrant? They don’t live there anymore. kfor.com/news/local/w...
- Quite a moment to be on the scene. I imagine it will be quite a spectacle.
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- Well, yeah, one always has to wonder
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- Sounds about right. As if my climate anxiety needed more bad news…
- So, either he cannot read or he was simply too lazy to do so. Neither is a good look for a Supreme Court justice.
- Abject cowardice as they throw their students under the Trump bus
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- Whew!
- Uh... This is legitimately frightening www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...
- Holy shit. All kinds of illegal, but seriously scary for sure.
- Since this is mandated by Congress, one has to wonder how the President intends to complete it. Does he have a secret stable of scientists we don't know about that will be able to pull it off? Sure hope Congress pushes back hard - will be demanding it of my Congresswoman in tomorrow's call . . .
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- Just saw him on an amazing book banning panel at the LA Times Festival of Books (along with Amanda Jones, superstar librarian). And, picked up my copy of his book while I was there. Can't wait to read the moment I find a slice of time . . .
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- Cowards. "Community and Campus Life" has to be the most bogus, generic label for literally anything. That is pretty much EVERYTHING on a college campus . . .
