Antonia Waltermann 🟥

Are AI-generated summaries suitable for studying and research? Despite didactic, ethical, and environmental concerns, the use of GenAI is on the rise in academia. For most applications, the jury is still out on whether and how they will benefit education and rese...

Tired of AI hype posts? You might like my sober assessment of whether AI-generated summaries are suitable for studying and research. Spoiler alert, they are not.

The text is primarily aimed at students and researchers, but has much broader relevance. So share freely!: www.tue.nl/en/our-unive...

Solidarity ✊

Using teaching evaluations for selection and promotion, despite all the empirical evidence showing how they negatively impact the career prospects of scholars from underrepresented groups in academia, is a political choice.

2 Meldungen untereinander, die eine sagt, dass die USA jetzt in großem Stil Lagerhäuser kauft um sie zu Haftzentren umzuwandeln. Die darunter ist vom Auschwitz Memorial, und zeigt die Rose auf einem Barrackenbett in der Gedenkstätte Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Was für eine Timeline to be alive 🙁

Over 100 confirmed visitors to this conference, and there is still room to join for next week! Nijmegen, NL, 5-6 Feb

A LinkedIn post from my profile, reading: “It's a very simple equation, really: Science communication needs to be accurate, it needs to be authentic, and it needs to be transparent. If you're not doing it that way, you're not doing science communication at all. In addition, *good* science communication is inclusive, it's ethical, it's sustainable. If you're not heeding these things, you're not doing science communication right. Which is why I am profoundly shocked by ostensibly reasonable people promoting the use of chatbots for science communication. Their use decreases factual accuracy. It decreases transparency. It decreases authenticity. Those things are true regardless of *which* chatbot you're using and regardless of *how* you're using it. Plus, the tech is not sustainable, not inclusive, not ethical. The promotion and use of Al chatbots is already damaging science communication and, if taken to the extreme, will be capable of quickly destroying it. Not through the rise of evil Al, but through ignorance on part of the users, rapidly destroying the trust that science communicators have been able to build over decades. Everything I will ever publish will be written by humans, and by humans only. If science communication goes the way of the robots, it will go there without me.”

LinkedIn probably wasn’t the best channel to post this, but I stand by it

Next Tuesday, 27 January (16-18h, on site and online), we will host @ingovenzke.bsky.social (UvA) at our Maastricht Foundations of Law Colloquia.
Title: "Fossil Sovereignty: The Struggle for the Law in the Climate Crisis."
Register here: www.aanmelder.nl/169090/subsc...
@lawinmaastricht.bsky.social

Lighting candles to make the house cozy. Curling up with a cup of tea and a book under a blanket instead of doomscrolling or reading the news for the 254th time in one day. Cuddling or playing with the cats. Given the current weather: going for a walk in the snow.

Let me know when you’ve got something on paper? (Or let’s get lunch one of these days.)

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this (esp the last bit)!

Congratulations!

"Key to all of this is understanding that US companies are explicitly going to be used to enforce US national security interests. And that includes the US technology companies that are at the heart of our national infrastructure and embedded into our everyday lives."

It’s 1990, I’m 1 years old, and the republican president of the US is attacking a petrol state

It’s 2004, I’m 15 years old, and the republican president of the US is attacking a petrol state

It’s 2026, I’m 37 years old, and the republican president of the US is attacking a petrol state

Twitter thread in Spanish by José Mario de la Garza, a human rights lawyer in Mexico, translated using Google Translate: 1. Overthrowing a dictator sounds morally right. No one mourns a tyrant. But international law wasn't built to protect the good, but to restrain the powerful. That's why it prohibits force almost without exception: not because it ignores injustice, but because it knows that if each country decides whom to "liberate" by force, the world reverts to the law of the strongest. 2. The problem is not Maduro. The problem is the precedent. When military force is used to change governments without clear rules, sovereignty ceases to be a limit and becomes an obstacle. Today it is “overthrowing a dictator”; tomorrow it will be “correcting an election,” “protecting interests,” “restoring order.” The law does not absolve dictatorships, but neither does it legitimize unilateral crusades.

Cont’d: 3. The uncomfortable question is not whether a tyrant deserves to fall, but who decides when and how. Because history teaches something brutal: removing a dictator is easy; building justice afterward is not. And when legality is broken in the name of good, what almost always follows is not freedom, but chaos, violence, and new victims. The law exists to remind us of this, even when it makes us uncomfortable.

Maduro isn't the problem: he's the face of the problem. Removing him from power would be merely opening the door. Behind him is the machine: Rodríguez, Cabello, the military command, the operators of repression and plunder. If you only change the person at the top and leave the system intact, what follows isn't democracy: it's a reshuffling. And there's something even more difficult: Chavismo didn't just capture institutions, it captured daily life. Economy, media, bureaucracy, employment, fear, favors, blackmail. A country can't be "de-Chavistaized" by decree or by an electoral miracle. The real transition begins when that network is broken without setting the country ablaze. The challenge is enormous, and it's also a moral one: to unite without vengeance, but without impunity. Targeted justice for those most responsible, truth for the victims, guarantees that the rest will dismantle the system, and a plan for people to live again—not just survive. Because freedom doesn't come with a new president: it comes when the state ceases to be a threat.

Best thing I’ve read this morning, from a human rights lawyer in Mexico. Translation is in the ALT-text.

The legal assessment of the US intervention is not, in fact, complex

Heute wäre ein guter Tag um mit den Beschwichtigungen aufzuhören & ein Programm für eine souveräne EU aufzulegen.

Mit mehr Integration & Investitionen in erneuerbare Energien, gemeinsame Sicherheit & eine eigene digitale Infrastruktur - um uns von den Trumps dieser Welt unabhängig zu machen.

Merz: "Die rechtliche Einordnung des US-Einsatzes ist komplex. Dazu nehmen wir uns Zeit."

Man muss kein Völkerrechtler sein, um zu wissen, dass hier gar nichts komplex ist - außer der Angst von Friedrich Merz klare Worte für diesen illegalen Angriff auf ein souveränes Land zu finden.

… guess it’s time for a re-read 🤓

“I don’t need a machine, I have a community” is such a lovely way of putting what academia is, can and should be

This thread! 👇🏻

With genAI, I keep coming back to two questions:

1. What are we outsourcing?
2. Who are we outsourcing to?

The answers to either don’t make me inclined to use it…

Pre-announcement: on Tuesday, 27 January (16-18h), we will host Alexander Somek (Vienna) at our Maastricht Foundations of Law Colloquia. He will present his paper "Republicanism and Liberal Democracy: Transformations of our Political."
@lawinmaastricht.bsky.social

Screencap of an article titled Are we ghosts in the machine? AI, agency, and the future of libraries with an Elsevier AI 'reading assistant' layered overtop of the article

Elsevier's 'reading assistant' appeared for the first time for me today, on this of all articles. 📚

Seconding that 😀

All travelers from ESTA countries (yes the ones on visa waiver programs) will have to disclose 5 years of social media + huge amounts of personal data to enter the US now. All US academic associations should now meet outside the US if we want to meet our international colleagues.

Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill. Sisyphus is labelled "Me trying to work", and the rock is labelled "Microsoft Authenticator popups". God I hate microsoft authenticator.

Stop de sloop! Vanmiddag stond ik met duizenden op de Dam om te protesteren tegen de desastreuze onderwijsbezuinigingen, nota bene doorgezet door een demissionair, ultraminoritair rompkabinet.

Lees hierover ook dit opinieartikel in NRC van afgelopen donderdag 4 december: lnkd.in/ety2QdZe

A banner showing a woman’s closed fist and the words education is a fundamental right

"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution".

Student band from Enschede is kicking things off, the Dam is getting heated.

🟥 #WOinActie 🟥

Frietjes en protest.

🟥 #WOinActie 🟥

We’ve made it without train issues this time. A little longer, then things will kick off at the Dam.

🟥 #WOinActie 🟥