love this gift from my family: a stylized version of my book cover from Ideal Bookshelf!

Two imperatives of human childhood: Learn to think for yourself, while also becoming a full participant in the shared moral matrix of your society. Chatbots interfere with both imperatives. See this WSJ article from @juliejargon, about how frequently and deeply chatbots create or amplify psychosis in adults. OpenAI's own estimate is hundreds of thousands in any given week: wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-chatbot-p… Imagine a future in which people are less intelligent AND we each live in our own world populated by AI companions. It is a future that is a combination of two great movies: Idiocracy and The Matrix. Except that in The Matrix, the hallucination was "consensual" and shared. In our AI future, the pods may not be well connected, so everyone will construct their own reality... which is kind of the definition of psychosis. How about if we don't put chatbots into teddy bears, or schools, or children's lives, until we understand how they affect children's development? How about if we don't let AI companies do to Gen Alpha and Gen Beta what we allowed social media companies to do to Gen Z?

Long must read (worth it): "Education at its best sparks curiosity and critical thought. 'Bullshit education' does the opposite: it trains people to tolerate meaninglessness, to accept automation of their own thinking, to value credentials over competence" currentaffairs.org/news/ai-i…

As I said last week, virtually every problem we have is the result of people collectively abandoning reading. Far from being a “waste of time,” literacy was the load-bearing pillar upholding democracy, reason and sanity. Without it, we are adrift in the vast night.

Former NSSR Dean and historian of The New School, Judith Friedlander has written to Joel Towers and TNS trustees. She minces no words. “The underlying strategy, as I understand it, for restructuring these programs, is to produce PhD’s primarily with an adjunct faculty.”

An important note about plagiarism in the writing community: Almost every day, I hear about someone stealing a piece of someone else's writing, or reposting it without attribution. Recently, a young writer took one of my poems, butchered it, and (astonishingly) republished it in a literary journal. The journal that had originally published my poem, Rust Moth, handled the situation with perfect grace, working with me to create "A Letter to a Young Plagiarist," which turned a transgression into a teachable moment. I'll link to it at the end of this post. But there's more to be said. Plagiarism is the cardinal sin of creativity. A writer goes into the darkness to find a few good words, often sacrificing much to do so, and the theft of that person's spirit-labor is an enormous violation. I write poems, novels, and all my books simply to help people connect and be fully human. In our current AI-saturated world, I worry that people are beginning to think of other people's creativity as up for grabs, and thus plagiarism and posting without attribution have become rampant. Ironically, my viral poem "To a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper" is one of my pieces that is often shared without attribution or misattributed. My viral poem "Gallop" has been reposted so many times without attribution that I get messages from people asking me who wrote it. And the list goes on... I'm grateful for everyone in this world who engages with poetry and literature, everyone who believes in what words can do in our troubled world. But we must protect the human endeavor of creativity, and we must not let our AI-world normalize the theft and misuse of human works. So go out there. Take risks with your heart. Write your truth and find your voice and share it proudly. Whoever you are, if you're human, I'm rooting for you. You don't need to steal anyone else's heart. We want to hear yours. Maybe, just maybe, it can save us.

Locations of "America First" accounts

Amazing story of an editor fact-checking a young writer to find that she had completely made up sources and quotes in articles in some of the biggest news outlets in the world. One by one, those outlets took down her faked stories. The editor's exasperation with AI stands out the most.

Let it never be said that only white men read great books. As a destitute person of color growing up in rural Texas, I saw myself in David Copperfield. Dickens understood me like no one else; his portrayal of abuse, isolation, poverty is universal. The classics are for everyone.

Handwriting is not a motor skill. It is a reading skill. We treat them as separate subjects, but neuroscience says they are the same circuit. Last week I discussed Orthographic Mapping (OM). Many focus on the "sound" part, but miss the "motor" bridge. Here is why the hand teaches the brain to decode: 1. A common assumption is that writing is output (encoding) and reading is input (decoding). It turns out, they are physically linked in the brain. When literate adults read, their motor cortex (Exner’s Area) activates. You decode faster because your brain is secretly "writing" along with your eyes. It subconsciously simulates the strokes to recognize the letter instantly. 2. If a child has never physically written a letter, they lack this "motor file." They are forced to rely solely on visual memory to recognize the shape. Visual memory is notoriously weak for text because it is ambiguous. To a young kid's eye, 'b' and 'd' are the same object, just flipped (like a chair facing left vs. right). But to the hand? They are totally different. The distinct motor plan overrides the visual confusion. 3. When comparing handwriting with typing, the difference is stark. Hitting 'A' or 'B' feels exactly the same (a button press). It creates a weak map. Handwriting is constructive. You have to pull the geometry of the letter from memory. This "active construction" burns the neural pathway that makes decoding instantaneous later on. You can't easily read what you haven't physically mapped.

More reports of this lovely side effect seen in newly phone-free schools: Big increases in students coming into the library and ... checking out books! A report from Oklahoma: nationalreview.com/corner/an… and one from Kentucky: washingtonpost.com/lifestyle…

This is the NYC village Parade and it’s definitely one of a kind and fantastic as they’re dancing to Thriller by the late great Michael Jackson! 👇👇👇👇

Why Even Basic A.I. Use Is So Bad for Students nytimes.com/2025/10/29/opini…

C.S. Lewis responding to a letter from an American schoolgirl asking him for some writing advice. (Worth reading? ✅️)

"AI is the 'biggest driver' of electricity use in North America.... And that might be showing up in your power bill, with AI datacenters cropping up all over the US, raising the electric bills of households nearby". Particularly the last bit is insane. cnet.com/tech/services-and-s…

“In 2015, researchers at the University of Sussex in England asked a group of 20 English teachers in Year 8, the U.S. equivalent of 7th grade, to change their practice for 12 weeks. During that period, they would read two novels back to back, with all of the reading done in class—a much faster pace than these students, who usually read two books over the course of a year, were used to. At the end of the 12 weeks, average reading comprehension for all students—as measured by a standardized test—improved by the equivalent of 8.5 months of regular instruction. The effect nearly doubled for struggling readers, who made 16 months improvement during that period.” @s_e_schwartz explores the issue of books disappearing from US curriculum. Including evidence like this study, in favor of work with whole books.

The data story in our new issue reveals stunning facts about America's gun reality. 350-450 million guns. $557 billion annual cost. A nation in a category of its own. The numbers tell the story.

New from me: Books are going missing from school curriculum, and the issue is worse than you imagine. The culprits might surprise you, too. Link follows.

Staggering numbers by the Lancet. Vaccinations have: - Averted 154 million deaths - For every death averted, 66 years of full health were gained on average = 10.2 billion years total - Accounted for 40% of the observed decline in global infant mortality

Ironic that the print version of this article in the @nytimes is scrambled. Do they think we’re all reading on our phones? Took me a minute to figure out that column 2 should be column 3

Hero Edit: On Literary Depictions of Reality TV lithub.com/hero-edit-on-lite… via @lithub