Heather Bryant
@hbcompass.bsky.social
News and information for and with communities. Journalism person, writer, artist, photographer and maker. Co-founder of Tiny News Collective. Building carefully.org Writing at hbcompass.io Managing journalism.wtf She/her
It is essential in the discourse about AI that we do not conflate being a customer with being literate about AI and we do not conflate its capability to surface things we haven't yet manually surfaced from our data as invention by AI. AI inextricably exists in the context of capitalism.
October 2, 2026 at 9:36 PM
It is essential in the discourse about AI that we do not conflate being a customer with being literate about AI and we do not conflate its capability to surface things we haven't yet manually surfaced from our data as invention by AI. AI inextricably exists in the context of capitalism.
Anyone else got one of those pen holders that decides whether or not you get to use the pen?
October 1, 2026 at 11:16 PM
Anyone else got one of those pen holders that decides whether or not you get to use the pen?
Group projects are an important part of college but higher ed desperately needs to rethink how group projects are designed, facilitated, and evaluated when there are students who actually do the work and students using AI. It is a whole different ballgame than the cliché slacker.
October 1, 2026 at 5:47 PM
Group projects are an important part of college but higher ed desperately needs to rethink how group projects are designed, facilitated, and evaluated when there are students who actually do the work and students using AI. It is a whole different ballgame than the cliché slacker.
When artists encourage people to make any kind of art, but to do it themselves and not having a machine do it for them; that's not gatekeeping art.
When the government says it's going to remove eligibility for federal loans to pursue art and music degrees; that is gatekeeping art.
When the government says it's going to remove eligibility for federal loans to pursue art and music degrees; that is gatekeeping art.
October 1, 2026 at 5:06 PM
When artists encourage people to make any kind of art, but to do it themselves and not having a machine do it for them; that's not gatekeeping art.
When the government says it's going to remove eligibility for federal loans to pursue art and music degrees; that is gatekeeping art.
When the government says it's going to remove eligibility for federal loans to pursue art and music degrees; that is gatekeeping art.
Tech companies painting tunnels on the side of cliffs and declaring them the exclusive and inevitable path to innovation, revenue, the future, etc does not actually obligate the rest of us to slam ourselves face first into a rock wall.
September 29, 2026 at 5:32 PM
Tech companies painting tunnels on the side of cliffs and declaring them the exclusive and inevitable path to innovation, revenue, the future, etc does not actually obligate the rest of us to slam ourselves face first into a rock wall.
When I write an essay trying to explore something complex and nuanced and I find myself at ~2k words there's a part of me that goes "oh shit, I need to shorten the hell out of this or no one will read it" and another part thinking that shortening the exploration of complex things is how we got here.
September 29, 2026 at 4:45 PM
When I write an essay trying to explore something complex and nuanced and I find myself at ~2k words there's a part of me that goes "oh shit, I need to shorten the hell out of this or no one will read it" and another part thinking that shortening the exploration of complex things is how we got here.
One of the ways that I know social media has gone terribly wrong in its design and incentives is that I encounter far more accounts that need to be blocked than ones that I would want to follow.
September 28, 2026 at 12:47 PM
One of the ways that I know social media has gone terribly wrong in its design and incentives is that I encounter far more accounts that need to be blocked than ones that I would want to follow.
Reposted by Heather Bryant
When the powerful playact powerlessness it is always a ploy to avoid accountability.
September 19, 2026 at 2:43 PM
When the powerful playact powerlessness it is always a ploy to avoid accountability.
Universities allowing or encouraging students to use consumer AI products for their coursework aren't creating future thinkers capable of critical evaluation and thoughtful application of AI technology, they're creating future customers of consumer AI platforms.
September 21, 2026 at 9:22 PM
Universities allowing or encouraging students to use consumer AI products for their coursework aren't creating future thinkers capable of critical evaluation and thoughtful application of AI technology, they're creating future customers of consumer AI platforms.
Hey, so a thing can't be both a democratizing force that eliminates gatekeeping AND something that people can be left behind from if they don't immediately become customers. Those are mutually exclusive traits...
August 20, 2026 at 4:04 PM
Hey, so a thing can't be both a democratizing force that eliminates gatekeeping AND something that people can be left behind from if they don't immediately become customers. Those are mutually exclusive traits...
It would cost less for us all to just take care of each other compared to what we're doing now.
August 15, 2026 at 3:08 PM
It would cost less for us all to just take care of each other compared to what we're doing now.
That adding curse words to search queries in Pinterest removes the ads and reduces the AI posts fuckin delights me.
August 13, 2026 at 2:19 AM
That adding curse words to search queries in Pinterest removes the ads and reduces the AI posts fuckin delights me.
I only have so many years.
I only get to use so much of those years to experience the creative efforts of myself and others.
There exists more genuine, authentic, human creativity than I could experience in 1,000 lifetimes.
I have no interest in wasting the one lifetime I have on machine imitations.
I only get to use so much of those years to experience the creative efforts of myself and others.
There exists more genuine, authentic, human creativity than I could experience in 1,000 lifetimes.
I have no interest in wasting the one lifetime I have on machine imitations.
August 11, 2026 at 11:00 PM
I only have so many years.
I only get to use so much of those years to experience the creative efforts of myself and others.
There exists more genuine, authentic, human creativity than I could experience in 1,000 lifetimes.
I have no interest in wasting the one lifetime I have on machine imitations.
I only get to use so much of those years to experience the creative efforts of myself and others.
There exists more genuine, authentic, human creativity than I could experience in 1,000 lifetimes.
I have no interest in wasting the one lifetime I have on machine imitations.
We created a society where we have to have various pieces of personally identifying information in order to securely do basic life tasks such as interacting with the government, banking, commerce, etc and also haven't made it illegal across the board for that information to be sold.
August 6, 2026 at 4:10 PM
We created a society where we have to have various pieces of personally identifying information in order to securely do basic life tasks such as interacting with the government, banking, commerce, etc and also haven't made it illegal across the board for that information to be sold.
Reposted by Heather Bryant
Generative AI is catnip to the men who miss female sycophants katemanne.substack.com/p/a-culture-...
A Culture Hooked on Generative AI is a Culture that Misses Female Sycophants
And we have missed a central reason why AI is a feminist issue
katemanne.substack.com
August 4, 2026 at 6:01 PM
Generative AI is catnip to the men who miss female sycophants katemanne.substack.com/p/a-culture-...
"Publicly perform the doing of your work and post the evidence of your process to prove your authenticity" is basically peer-to-peer CAPTCHA and we should not encourage yet another vector by which people are encouraged to be divided and mistrustful while a small group of people benefit from it.
July 30, 2026 at 8:54 PM
"Publicly perform the doing of your work and post the evidence of your process to prove your authenticity" is basically peer-to-peer CAPTCHA and we should not encourage yet another vector by which people are encouraged to be divided and mistrustful while a small group of people benefit from it.
Watching longtime writers and creators suddenly be like "I have to use AI to create graphics for my posts, I can't afford an artist" as if we never illustrated anything prior to 2022. Poor lil guys, forgot how to license images or source CC graphics.
July 24, 2026 at 2:48 PM
Watching longtime writers and creators suddenly be like "I have to use AI to create graphics for my posts, I can't afford an artist" as if we never illustrated anything prior to 2022. Poor lil guys, forgot how to license images or source CC graphics.
The more insidious way that performance culture and AI contribute to a surveillance state is that individuals now expect other individuals to surveil, record, and provide footage of themselves to prove authenticity.
July 20, 2026 at 3:12 PM
The more insidious way that performance culture and AI contribute to a surveillance state is that individuals now expect other individuals to surveil, record, and provide footage of themselves to prove authenticity.
It's been a while since I've regularly coded anything and I've since gotten a new laptop which also meant setting up a dev environment from scratch and wow, that process is not any less annoying than I remember it.
July 9, 2026 at 11:29 PM
It's been a while since I've regularly coded anything and I've since gotten a new laptop which also meant setting up a dev environment from scratch and wow, that process is not any less annoying than I remember it.
One of the reasons to read more is that when you find yourself in a really, really dumb conversation, you are less likely to be the reason it's dumb.
June 17, 2026 at 4:06 PM
One of the reasons to read more is that when you find yourself in a really, really dumb conversation, you are less likely to be the reason it's dumb.
One of the funnier varieties of Gen AI users are the ones who prompt something and then share it while proclaiming nothing like it has existed before and as soon as you look at it you know the person doesn't read books, watch movies, or look at art.
June 11, 2026 at 4:50 PM
One of the funnier varieties of Gen AI users are the ones who prompt something and then share it while proclaiming nothing like it has existed before and as soon as you look at it you know the person doesn't read books, watch movies, or look at art.
June 4, 2026 at 3:04 AM
That modern life involves having to regularly create accounts to do basic things and then having to spend time almost daily protecting one or more of those accounts from data breaches, hackers, or the incompetence/greed of the platforms themselves is an indicator that we have failed as a species.
May 22, 2026 at 11:22 AM
That modern life involves having to regularly create accounts to do basic things and then having to spend time almost daily protecting one or more of those accounts from data breaches, hackers, or the incompetence/greed of the platforms themselves is an indicator that we have failed as a species.
Before a new technology, system, or process becomes irreversibly entrenched in society is exactly when you are supposed to be the most critical, cautious, and circumspect about it.
May 9, 2026 at 2:55 PM
Before a new technology, system, or process becomes irreversibly entrenched in society is exactly when you are supposed to be the most critical, cautious, and circumspect about it.
Being literate in AI and being a customer of consumer gen AI are two entirely different things and there are a lot of people urging everyone to become customers and calling it becoming literate.
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 PM
Being literate in AI and being a customer of consumer gen AI are two entirely different things and there are a lot of people urging everyone to become customers and calling it becoming literate.