Dylan Selterman 🧠🐢👨‍🏫✍️🎙️

Helpful report from HxA. One of the frustrating things about trying to make sense of political slant in the academy is that the estimates vary so much based on metric and sample. All in the same direction but major differences in magnitude. This report is quite helpful for compiling the estimates and providing an overall snapshot. heterodoxacademy.org/reports/how-po…

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees. $30 per seat per month. $1.4 million annually. I called it "digital transformation." The board loved that phrase. They approved it in eleven minutes. No one asked what it would actually do. Including me. I told everyone it would "10x productivity." That's not a real number. But it sounds like one. HR asked how we'd measure the 10x. I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards." They stopped asking. Three months later I checked the usage reports. 47 people had opened it. 12 had used it more than once. One of them was me. I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds. It took 45 seconds. Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations. But I called it a "pilot success." Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail. The CFO asked about ROI. I showed him a graph. The graph went up and to the right. It measured "AI enablement." I made that metric up. He nodded approvingly. We're "AI-enabled" now. I don't know what that means. But it's in our investor deck. A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT. I said we needed "enterprise-grade security." He asked what that meant. I said "compliance." He asked which compliance. I said "all of them." He looked skeptical. I scheduled him for a "career development conversation." He stopped asking questions. Microsoft sent a case study team. They wanted to feature us as a success story. I told them we "saved 40,000 hours." I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up. They didn't verify it. They never do. Now we're on Microsoft's website. "Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot." The CEO shared it on LinkedIn. He got 3,000 likes. He's never used Copilot. None of the executives have. We have an exemption. "Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction." I wrote that policy. The licenses renew next month. I'm requesting an expansion. 5,000 more seats. We haven't used the first 4,000. But this time we'll "drive adoption." Adoption means mandatory training. Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches. But completion will be tracked. Completion is a metric. Metrics go in dashboards. Dashboards go in board presentations. Board presentations get me promoted. I'll be SVP by Q3. I still don't know what Copilot does. But I know what it's for. It's for showing we're "investing in AI." Investment means spending. Spending means commitment. Commitment means we're serious about the future. The future is whatever I say it is. As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

Surprise!

"Never allow yourself to be a useful idiot in Hamas’s propaganda."

The people of Gaza are protesting against Hamas again. Many Palestinians in Gaza totally reject Hamas, and want a better future.

A Muslim Israeli Arab woman, Ella Waweya, has just been promoted to the rank of major in the IDF. Now, how do we explain that to people who have never set foot in Israel yet insist on calling it an apartheid state? Mazal tov, Ella!

With a single photo, you can shatter the Free Palestine crowd’s lies. It shows that Jews don’t want Muslims dead. It shows that coexistence is already a reality in Israel. It shows Arab Israelis living freely, with some even volunteering in the IDF. It shows Arab Israelis (Muslim, Bedouin, Druze, Christian…) proud of their country and defending it against terrorism. And it proves that Israel is not an apartheid state. Arab Israelis hold Israeli passports, vote in national elections, and enjoy the same healthcare and public benefits as any Jewish citizen. Share this photo. Break their fake narrative.

NEW: UC San Diego has released a new report documenting a “steep decline in the academic preparedness” of its freshmen. The number of entering students needing remedial math has exploded from 1/100 to 1/8. They’ve had to create a second remedial class covering elementary and middle school math skills in addition to the one covering gaps from high school. 🧵

I’m tired of the lies we tell ourselves. Our leaders cry every day about “the occupation” as if history began in 1948, as if Israel is some unique monster in human history. But let me remind you of something that no one dares to speak out loud: we Arabs are the children of the biggest and longest occupation the Middle East and Africa have ever seen. In the 7th and 8th centuries, Arab tribes burst out of the Arabian Peninsula. Within just a few decades, they crushed the Byzantine Empire in Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. They destroyed the Persian Empire. They swept across North Africa, reaching all the way to Morocco, Spain, and even southern France. At its height, the Arab Caliphate ruled 13 million square kilometers - larger than Rome ever dreamed of. Millions of Persians, Berbers, Copts, Arameans, Jews, Greeks, and others suddenly found themselves under Arab rule. Their languages and faiths were pushed aside. Coptic faded in Egypt. Aramaic nearly died out. Even Persian was nearly erased until poets like Ferdowsi fought to keep it alive. Arabic became the dominant tongue, Islam the dominant faith. That was not liberation - it was occupation on a scale that reshaped entire continents. The Mongols came and went in about a century. The Romans ruled for centuries, but Latin disappeared from the Middle East. The British Empire held sway for 200 years, then collapsed. The Arab-Muslim conquests? It changed the identity of entire nations forever. Think about it: Egypt was Christian and Coptic-speaking for 600 years before the Arabs came. Today it is Arab and Muslim. North Africa was Berber and Roman. Today it is Arab and Muslim. The Levant spoke Greek and Aramaic. Today it speaks Arabic. Even Spain lived under Arab rule for 700 years. That is not just an “occupation” - that is a civilizational overhaul. And yet, in 2025, our leaders - who are themselves the product of this massive Arab occupation, weep about Israel, a sliver of land the size of New Jersey, calling it “the worst occupation.” Really? Compared to what the Arabs did to North Africa, Persia, and the Levant? Compared to the centuries-long Arab rule that erased identities, forced conversions, and remade entire regions? If we, Palestinians, want honesty, we must stop pretending that Israel invented occupation. The truth is bitter: we live in the shadow of the largest and longest Arab occupation in history. Blaming only Israel while worshiping our corrupt leaders who exploit this narrative is not justice, it’s cowardice. History matters. And if we don’t face it, we will remain slaves not to Israel, but to our own hypocrisy.

@PhiloCasey pewresearch.org/short-reads/20…

@SelterMosby Link?

Great ideas here! youtube.com/watch?v=yH0gPb…

"Many Western pro-Palestine activists and personalities argue the exact opposite, insisting that responsibility lay squarely with Israel and, therefore, there was no need to call out the Islamist terrorist organization."

"I have long maintained that the pro-Palestine voices should insist on Hamas ending the war it began, and that the group should release the hostages and adopt an entirely different pragmatic course."

In a piece for the @TheFP, I decry the hypocrisy & pro-"resistance" enthusiasm among supposed "pro-Palestine" activists and organizations who insisted on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza but suddenly appear opposed or reluctant to endorse Trump's peace plan thefp.com/p/why-wont-pea…

I would have expected the streets of European capitals and campuses around the world to burst with joy for the end of what they claimed is “Genocide”. Might it be that their goal was never to secure Palestinian lives, but to destroy Israel?

The father of the Manchester Synagogue terrorist, who named his son Jihad, posted this during Hamas’ October 7 Massacre.

Will the “Ceasefire Now” crowd support the ceasefire now?

German 🇩🇪 Chancellor: “What's happening in Gaza is not a genocide. Hamas can end the war immediately by releasing the hostages and surrendering their weapons. They can end the war in a few hours.”