#University of Virginia

[athleticperfection1]

Virginia Volleyball

[phannibal]

today, protesters at the university of virginia encampment for gaza were tear gassed by police in full riot gear for “violating university policy.” that policy was changed at 11am this morning to ban tents on campus. police arrived on the scene by noon.

you probably unfortunately remember charlottesville from 2017 when white supremacists marched through uva grounds and the city. they carried torches and chanted “jews will not replace us” and walked through the streets with arms raised in nazi salutes. they killed one person and injured 30+. police did not arrive until the following day, after white supremacists unlawfully marched through grounds on the evening of august 11th.

i don’t think any university can claim to be as hypocritical as uva. the discrepancy in police and administration reaction between each of these protests is uncanny and horrifying. uva students were asking for the university to disclose its investments and divest from any support or profiting from israel’s genocide against palestine. they were protesting in a nonviolent, unobtrusive way (although not necessary for a protest to be worthwhile) and police escalated to violence.

a lot of critiques of those opposing the palestinian genocide claim that the opposition comes from a place of antisemitism. today the uva police and administration demonstrated perfectly that that is a thinly veiled shield to hide behind. nazis chanting that “jews will not replace” them are allowed on grounds. students protesting israel’s genocide of the palestinian people are not.

information from here and here.

photo credit.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Researchers develop first voxel building blocks for 3D-printed organs

A research team at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed what it believes could be the template for the first building blocks for human-compatible organs printed on demand. Liheng Cai, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering and chemical engineering, and his Ph.D. student, Jinchang Zhu, have made biomaterials with controlled mechanical properties matching those of various human tissues. "That's a big leap compared to existing bioprinting technologies," Zhu said. They published the results July 13 in Nature Communications.

Read more.

[oeldeservesthenorris]

Taryn Tkachuk and some lesser known athletes in her family 💚

[blastofsports]

Ralph Sampson and Sam Perkins

[transpondster]

I was at a small dinner a few weeks ago in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Seated next to me was a man who related that his daughter had just gotten married. As the day approached, he had wanted to say some words at the reception, as is fitting for the father of the bride. It can be hard to come up with the right words for such an occasion, and he wanted to make a good showing. He said he gave a few prompts to ChatGPT, facts about her life, and sure enough it came back with a pretty good wedding toast. Maybe better than what he would have written. But in the end, he didn’t use it, and composed his own. This strikes me as telling, and the intuition that stopped him from deferring to AI is worth bringing to the surface. 

To use the machine-generated speech would have been to absent himself from this significant moment in the life of his daughter, and in his own life. It would have been to not show up for her wedding, in some sense. I am reminded of a passage in Tocqueville where he noticed that America seemed to be on a trajectory that would have it erecting “an immense tutelary power” that wants only what is best for us, and is keen to “save [us] the trouble of living.”

What would it mean, then, to outsource a wedding toast? To use Heidegger’s language, some entity has “leaped in” on my behalf and disburdened me of the task of being human. For Heidegger, this entity is “das Man,” an anonymized other that stands in for me, very much like Kierkegaard’s “the Public.” It is a generalized consciousness—think of it as the geist of large language models.

LLMs are built on enormous data sets—essentially, all language that is machine-scrapable from the Internet. They are tasked with answering the question, “given the previous string of words, what word is most likely to occur next?” They thus represent what the philosopher Talbot Brewer recently referred to as “the statistical center of gravity” of all language (and I am following Brewer’s lead in viewing LLMs through the lens of [Charles] Taylor’s account of language). Or rather, all language that is on the Internet. This includes the great literature of the past, of course. But it includes a whole lot more of the present: marketing-speak, what passes for journalism, the blather produced by all who suffer from PowerPoint brain. But put aside the impoverished quality of the language that these LLMs are being trained on. If we accept that the challenge of articulating life in the first person, as it unfolds, is central to human beings, then to allow an AI to do this on our behalf suggests self-erasure of the human.

In a presentation in Charlottesville in April that is yet unpublished, at University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, Brewer referred to “degenerative AI.” Because the new AIs are language machines, they are “aimed right at our essence.” Brewer is not himself a Christian, but he finds Christian terms apt for thinking about the problem: We are created in the image and likeness of God, who is the Word.

[guavagyal]

funny how Columbia's staff called the cops on the Free Palestine protesters for being "anti-Semetic" but white supremacists were allowed to march on UVA's campus chanting "Jews will not replace us"

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

The State Attorney’s Office of Cook County, Illinois has dropped criminal charges filed against three Northwestern University faculty and one graduate student who allegedly obstructed law enforcement’s efforts to clear an unlawful demonstration at the Deering Meadow section of campus.

According to a local National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate, the office said its decision is based on its “policy not to prosecute peaceful protesters.”

Charges against the four individuals were pursued by the Northwestern University Police Department, which said that they allegedly engaged in “obstructing a police officer during the protests,” a crime for which they could, if convicted, spend a year in jail and pay a $2,500 fine, The Daily Northwestern reported last week. They had already appeared before a judge and were scheduled to do so again in August.

The university had defended the recommendation of its police department and rejected the notion that the individuals acted peaceably, saying in a statement issued earlier this month that it “does not permit activity that disrupts university operations, violates the law, or includes the intimidation or harassment of members of the community.”

Many more protesters have similarly avoided punishment for the actions they took during a burst of pro-Hamas demonstrations at the end of the 2023-2024 academic year, according to a new report by The New York Times. Prosecutors in Travis County, Texas, for example, have dropped over 100 charges of criminal trespassing filed against University of Texas at Austin protesters, the paper said, and 60 other Northwestern University protesters saw their charges dismissed, with prosecutors calling them “constitutionally dubious.” The Times added, however, that some charges will stick, including those filed against someone who bit a police officer, and many students are still awaiting the outcome of disciplinary proceedings.

Per the report, “At the University of Virginia on May 4, as students were preparing for final exams, administrators called in police to break up an encampment. Police officers in riot gear used chemical irritants to get protesters to disperse and eventually arrested 27 people. The local prosecutor dropped the charges facing seven people after he determined there wasn’t enough evidence. He offered the rest an agreement: their charges would be dismissed in August if they didn’t have any outstanding criminal charges at the time.”

Prosecutors in other states have not been as forbearing. According to Fresh Take Florida, prosecutors in Alachua County, Florida charged seven University of Florida students, as well as two non-students, with trespassing and resisting arrest. The defendants have resolved to take their chances at trial, the news service added, noting that all nine have rejected “deferred prosecution,” an agreement that would require them to plead guilty, or no contest, in exchange for the state’s expunging the convictions from their records in the future so long as they abstain from committing more criminal acts.

[tjkl895]

Coach Garland (https://www.instagram.com/p/CxOt2zwsWtL/)

[non-conventionnel]

The Controversial Historical Novel:

The Secret Gospel of Jesus AD 0-78 by Anton Sammut

Goodreads

[athleticperfection1]

Virginia Diving

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Astrophotographer Captures Spectacular Sight of the Andromeda Galaxy From His Backyard

Photographer: Brennan Gilmore

Pleiades Star Cluster

eart and Soul Nebula over the Rotunda at the University of Virginia

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science developed an AI-powered system that mimics the human sense of smell to detect and track toxic gases in real time. Using advanced artificial neural networks combined with a network of sensors, the system quickly identifies the source of harmful gases like nitrogen dioxide (NO?) that poses severe respiratory health risks. According to the World Health Organization, outdoor air pollution, including NO2, contributes to approximately 4.2 million premature deaths globally each year, primarily due to respiratory conditions like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Their work was recently published in Science Advances.

Read more.

[elenitrack]

Jans Croon (Virginia Cavaliers)

[blastofsports]

Patrick Ewing and Ralph Sampson

[thehappyspaceman]

The Falsies' upcoming livestreamed performance on WTJU!

It's the one year anniversary of WTJU Rock’s Third Rail music series and The Falsies are thrilled to celebrate it with WTJU! In just two days, this free performance on June 15, 8-9pm EST, will open to an audience at the Belmont Arts Collaborative on 221 Carlton Rd, near Belmont Pizza. You can also listen live on 91.1 FM, stream via www.wtju.net, and video stream on WTJU’s Facebook and YouTube channels.

Video filmed at the Ting Pavilion, footage by Elizabeth Cassell!

TWO DAYS, Y'ALL! Be there if you can!