Viral AI College Cheating Vid Is Fake, Beautiful Art Deco From 1940s Cartoon, & More
Around the College Towns: Links and commentary related to urbanism and higher ed for the week of March 14 - March 21
Note: This is my weekly links round-up called Around the College Town. The till may be a little short this week because I am gearing up for some work travel soon. But I have still provided some commentary for urbanism and higher ed articles (broadly defined) that I’m reading this week. These are mostly local stories or those that have fallen through the cracks, rather than Trump or other big news (which I am aware there is a lot of right now).
Fake Viral AI Vid is Fake
There is a viral video going around showing the power of a cheating AI app. You can watch the full thing below. It does seem impressive, yes. But it should be noted that this appears to be some kind of demo created by the company. The questions AND answers are basically nonsense. Here is an example:
Question 1: What does newspaper stand for?
Answer: North, East, West, South, Past, And Present Event Report
Obviously, this is fake and also wrong. Cheating aside, what annoyed me was that users on social media were taking this video at face value and then questioning the value of college. One asked, “can we take a moment and look at the questions she’s being asked?… These are questions for a 4th? Grader maybe younger.”
Look, I have my issues with higher ed, but if so many were fooled by an obvious fake video then perhaps we need more college. If not more college, at least we need more of some kind of education.
March Madness Beautiful Campuses
The NCAA Basketball tournament is here, aka March Madness. One reason I love this time of the year is that the country gets to discover a bunch of new universities they never heard of before. I never knew the tiny Jesuit school in Spokane, Washington, when I was a kid in Oklahoma, but Gonzaga became a favorite team of mine after their Cinderella runs. The same is true for places like Florida Gulf Coast, which earned the nickname Dunk City.
The tournament really is a celebration of American higher education and campus life in general. One place that is poised to be the breakout campus this year is High Point, which has already produced some viral content from the game. The guys over at Barstool noticed that the campus was a Disneyland for young adults. Not a bad way to spend four years. I bet the marketing people at High Point are loving this, too.
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Other Links
The last Battle of Britain pilot passes away. Sad. I will write something on memories of WWII in the future.
Harvard will be free for families making under $100K and tuition-free for those under $200K. Now, they’ve just got to enroll more students from such families.
Azusa Pacific brings back football. It’s an expensive sport; even with the popularity, I’m not sure the costs are worth it. I wish them good luck.
Chinese universities may create more branch campuses abroad.
Lost in the shuffle last month, UC Berkeley is cutting ties with Tsinghua Berkeley Shenzhen Institute in China due to government pressure (American government pressure, that is).
BYD, the Chinese car manufacturer, reportedly has a charger that can refill electric car ranges of 250 miles in five minutes. Incredible.
The Trump admin has released another set of banned or curbed visa countries that will impact international students and scholars. Strangely, Bhutan is on the list, and everyone is confused about why.
Around Substack
Note: I also think it’s important to shout out some fellow Substackers who I am reading here this week. Here are a few:
at writes about the coming collapses of the academic conference circuit. While I have long thought that academic conferences have gotten too pricy, still see their value and importance.
over at has an insightful article on the urbanism movements and politics. His plea is that simply casting off conservatives from urbanism conversations is missing a major point.On a gross material basis, you can see how the supports for the conference circuit are pretty rickety—start draining the bathtub, and pretty soon there’s no more circulation. And you can see why Europeans, Asians, and others would just choose to avoid the whole thing—why schlep to Seattle when you can just stay closer to home? You can see why on both a profound and a selfish level I’m sorry to see this whole edifice broken apart
, the founder of Strong Towns, posted a note that I adored. Glad to have him on Substack now.I’ve gotten into several social media spats over the years with people who think good urbanism is incompatible with conservatives. The “conservatives hate this” perspective tells me that the holder of that view doesn’t understand what urbanism is and/or what a conservative is. This issue has been coming up so often in the last 6 months, and I don’t see that changing since so many Americans have their identity wrapped up in the political team they cheer or play for.
One of the richest zip codes in the country asking for a federal grant to fix and maintain their basic infrastructure? What other zip code should be taxed to make that happen? That didn’t go over well, but I’m also not apologizing. There is a role for federal grants, and I’ve been to some desperately poor places that could have used them, but Nantucket is Exhibit A for how the federal government’s approach to infrastructure has broken local government. A place where billionaires pay millionaires to mow their yard is not one in need of a handout.
In a similar vein,
of talks about the messaging problem urbanists have. It does seem to b a common theme recently.
Likewise, ‘normal people’ don’t go round talking to their mates about their dreams of “high-density mixed-use developments”. But they probably do chat about walking down a street they don’t normally go down and stumbling into a great pub, coffee shop or new lunch spot.
Nor do they obsess about “active transportation corridors”, but they’d love to pop out for milk and not feel like they need to take the car, or be stressed crossing the busy road.
Finally… Art Deco Tom & Jerry
Old images from Tom & Jerry, a cartoon from the 1940s that maintained viewership at least until the 1990s (they were certainly on when I was a kid), went viral this week for their beauty. They definitely caught my eye, via VIKARE on the former Twitter.
It got me thinking that modern aesthetics have gone so off the rails that we’re now salivating over transition stills from old Tom & Jerry cartoons. These are beautiful shots in unimportant scenes in a kid’s cartoon. We need a design revolution.
Thanks for the shout-out 😎
Nice read! Tom & Jerry won 7 Oscars during their run, legendary work! 🙌