Dr. Holly Walters

No surprise, I'm Holly. I'm an anthropologist (PhD) and an author. My ethnographic research is on Hindu/Buddhist pilgrimage and sacred ammonite fossils (called Shaligrams) in the Himalayas of Nepal. My new project is on AI and religion in South Asia. I also wrote "The Way By" and "By The Way."

Ow. Just. Ow.

*Long sigh* Yeah it seems like this is exactly what's up, actually. This new "NaNoWriMo" 2.0 is AI all the way. prowritingaid.com/novel-november Their website tries *real* hard not to mention AI, but then you catch stuff like, "...ran it through Plot Analysis" and yeah that's kind of a giveaway.

Fellow former-Midwesterners. Please take note of this as we continue to stand against the fascism and tyranny that’s been encroaching on our cities.

Look, I defended my dissertation in 2018. I literally got out just in time....

Colleagues…Sign on! @aaup @aaupmason.bsky.social actionnetwork.org/petitions/we...

Don’t forget to take care of yourself. Don’t forget to rest. Don’t forget to read banned books. Don’t forget to dream. Don’t forget to be the reason that forests seem haunted.

Everyone I knew called this one out of the gate. What the hell did they **think** they were building? Of course it was always going to be a weapon.

Oh no, really, who could have ever thought it's just shocking to me I mean..../s

Me, weeping for all the struggling rich tech people, while looking at the seventeen emails I've received from the Anthropic Settlement administrator as I continue to try and get paid the few grand for the books the company stole the IP from.

As far as I know neither ADHD nor executive dysfunction, both of which I have bad enough that I would struggle to hold a full time job, makes us unable to think our kids are special for specific reasons. I do Google synonyms a lot though. For that I use a thesaurus not a whole LLM.

Anthropic is trying to write its own federal AI regulation law. The major AI firms have all issued feeble proposals for how their AI will serve the public, in anticipation of their pending IPOs. It's all a reminder that we cannot, any under circumstances, let AI firms govern the future.

Because Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Sudan, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Cuba, China, Nigeria, Congo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Yemen, Ecuador, Niger, Mexico, and Russia **definitely** shouldn't care who the US President is, right? No reasons come to mind?

I have students who will now immediately and openly drop a class if the professor uses or encourages AI. They do not want it. They know it lies. Colleagues, please. Stop this. You fail us all by brain rotting on this slop.

Of course a win for non-authoritarian leaders or movements does not automatically mean all problems are solved or that authoritarian forces can't come back in future. But it is worth maintaining hope and optimism, because if people succumb to nihilism and apathy then democracy cannot survive.

Oh, look. He got barely a whiff of a consequence and then wrote an essay about it.

"45 year-old man discovers that he is not as cool and interesting as he thinks he is. News at 11."

As I've said before, it's only once I became a professor that I realized the entmoot, a meeting that goes on for three days and three nights, was a professor's joke about faculty meetings.

Tech bros have always been sexual harassers and abusers • Zuck invented “The Facebook” to rank and compare his female classmates at Harvard • Jawed Karim’s idea for YouTube stemmed from his difficulty finding online video of Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction” • Elon Musk…is…Elon Musk…

Oh, the places you'll go.....

Good morning! We're suing Meta for stealing our shit 😎 let's goooo

So, how's the semester going?

This isn't what I intended my membership dues to be used for . . . The whole story is so incredible, the behavior described so egregiously authoritarian, that it really has to be read in full. 🗃️

I am always a little amused by the creative renaming of Halloween because "Halloween" **is** the Christian name of the holiday. Allhallowe'en or Alle halwe eue (Middle English: halwe - meaning "saint" or "holy person") was the day before All Saints Day. Hallow-E'en literally translates to Holy Eve.

Welcome to night 8 of Navratri! Today we celebrate Mahagauri, the goddess of purity, compassion, and tranquility. After two nights of demons hunting fury, the Goddess has taken a deep breath and regained her center and her calm.

Wow. I didn't realize that more than half of all Americans were left-wing transgender witches. Where my people at?

Our more in-depth story on the sudden shut down of Chronicle Heritage. I talk to a handful of employees who recount their experience and concerns following the company’s dissolution. Many worry about the thousands of artifacts still in Chronicle’s care. #Archaeology #CRM 🧪🏺 New at @science.org

This is inspiring in the way that kids running a lemonade stand to pay for their friend's chemotherapy is inspiring: the kids are amazing but they should never have to do this. if this inspires you at all, let it inspire you to create a real right to vote so they can just vote on campus.