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Friday essay: AI is devastating higher education, but the system was already broken
Jeff Sparrow argues that generative AI is ravaging universities, from AI-written essays to scraped scholarship, but that marketised, efficiency-driven higher education was already broken, and calls for a struggle over what knowledge and the university are for.
28 min · 6,529 words
In his Oxford Etymologist column, Anatoly Liberman looks back at the English Spelling Society's century-long push for reform and argues that the movement needs popular culture, media and influencers, not just scholars, if it is ever to make English spelling more humane.
6 min · 1,379 words
Steve Krouse, a programmer and soon-to-be father, asks what education is for in the age of AGI. Drawing on Neil Postman's The End of Education, Edison's failed prediction that technology would replace teachers, and the Lindy effect, he reflects on why schools endure, how AI undermines 'earning a living' as a purpose, and proposes crafting education's purpose together with children.
4 min · 993 words
Making Chicken Transparent Using Dorito DustModifying the optical properties of biological tissues with tartrazine
CasualPhysicsEnjoyer walks through a Nature paper on making live tissue optically transparent with absorbing molecules such as tartrazine (the yellow dye in Doritos), then recreates and explains the physics at home: refractive-index matching, complex permittivity, and why a yellow dye can open a window into chicken meat.
15 min · 3,512 words
Challenging algorithms and data structures every programmer should try
Austin Z. Henley recommends algorithms and data structures worth wrestling with beyond the usual interview set—pieces that stretch intuition about performance, representation, and problem shape.
4 min · 870 words
Why are we even doing all this?A guest post on What’s new about the value of curiosity-driven work in an age of AI
Rikab Gambhir’s guest post on Terence Tao’s blog asks what research and learning are for when AI can already answer many technical questions—arguing for curiosity, taste, and the human practice of doing hard things even when tools get smarter.
6 min · 1,455 words
Craig Hickman tells how a frustrated preschooler using MacPaint led him to write Kid Pix: design principles, wacky brushes, the Undo Guy, freeware then Broderbund, and how the program became a worldwide hit after John Sculley demoed it at MacWorld.
16 min · 3,696 words
Alex Petros uses the case of a Dartmouth provost whose Washington Post op-ed appeared to be LLM-written to argue that universities should require clear disclosure of how much LLMs contributed to academic work, proposing transparency principles that illuminate AI use rather than ban it.
17 min · 3,922 words
What should we tell our students?
In a guest post on Terence Tao's blog, mathematician Álvaro Lozano-Robledo addresses students worried by AI progress in mathematics: keep calm and carry on studying, because there is still much research, explanation and communication of mathematics to be done, with and without LLMs.
19 min · 4,466 words
AI was great until it was not.A cautionary tale.
Nia Robles, a theoretical physics PhD student at Harvard, describes how ChatGPT first helped her learn during a master's at Oxford by turning dense notes into concrete examples, and how its spread through academia has since left her more isolated, with mentors and peers answering questions with 'just ask ChatGPT' instead of debate, collaboration and teaching.
15 min · 3,471 words
So You Think You Could Be An Electrician?
Contractor Jesse Smith pushes back on the viral “trades are an AI-proof six-figure escape hatch” narrative, weighing wages, injury risk, internal blue-collar status hierarchies, and how automation may still reshape construction work.
11 min · 2,474 words
Rejection Sensitivity in Gifted and Twice-Exceptional Children
Maya Sissoko explains rejection sensitivity in gifted and 2e kids—what it is and isn’t, how it shows up at home and school, and practical ways caregivers can respond without pathologizing intensity.
11 min · 2,436 words
Haunted by the ghosts of materialism
lcamtuf explores free will vs scientific materialism, brains-in-vats, Boltzmann brains, and the simulation hypothesis — arguing techie utilitarianism misses what philosophy is good for.
2 min · 498 words
I can't tell who's teaching who anymore
I finished writing an article recently. I did what I always do before I queue something to be published: read it aloud, as if reading a storybook to a child. It's how I find the rhythm: where a comma should sit, whether an em dash earns its beat, and which parenthesis a reader can skip without missing much.
9 min · 2,022 words
Slot Machine Programming and the Hidden Curriculum
CMU educator Michael Hilton names "slot machine programming"—retrying the same AI prompt across models without decomposing problems—and argues CS must explicitly teach the hidden curriculum AI now lets students skip.
4 min · 939 words
Doing a Machine Learning PhD While Working in Japan
Marco Cognetta recounts completing a CS PhD at Tokyo Tech on MEXT while working part-time at Google: visa flexibility, the three-year clock, name-recognition tradeoffs, lab life, and whether to stay in Japan afterward.
8 min · 1,867 words
Coltrane's Tone CircleExploring the circle of fifths, its jazz applications, and Coltrane's geometric approach to harmony
A clear walkthrough of John Coltrane’s famous tone-circle sketch: the circle of fifths, geometric harmony, and how jazz musicians still use the diagram today.
11 min · 2,485 words
On the Value of Doing a PhD in the Age of AI
MIT's Phillip Isola offers ten reminders for anxious AI PhD students: public research still has leverage, human expertise remains safety infrastructure, and the PhD's job is to chase a moving frontier for the love of the game.
3 min · 781 words
Advice to a beginning software engineer
In general, you should be suspicious of engineers who are trying to give you advice. Even during ordinary times, this industry is so wide and changes so quickly that nobody really knows anything for sure.
7 min · 1,507 words
CS 240 Spring 2026 AI Retrospective
Purdue CS 240 instructor Jeffrey Turkstra reflects on Spring 2026 AI-assisted cheating cases: what went wrong in enforcement, what students actually did, and how academic integrity policy should change.
17 min · 3,997 words