Although I feel like this is a positive takeaway from this text, I can't help but think that we have taken one step forward in the right direction this past decade, but two steps back again in the last couple years. I'm encouraged by grassroots efforts mentioned in the article that fight back against the far right efforts to quash rights for women and LGBTQ+ people. However, I am scared of the anti gender mobilization efforts and what that means for students.

To me, this is such a poorly veiled attempt to disenfranchise groups that already bare the brunt of both patriarchal and racist structures. The article mentions that the falling birth rate is not a crisis, and I would extend this to suggest that it's only a crisis for late stage capitalist overlords who rely on the system of taxpayers for government funding, as if society's most wealthy aren't capable of paying more taxes. It's particularly insidious to me that far right movements push the responsibility for the declining birth rate onto women, non white immigrants, and LGBTQ+ groups when all we want is equal rights.

I find this sentiment to be so cruelly ironic. Manufacturing a panic surrounding inclusivity prevents children from learning and knowing about their own bodies, rendering them more susceptible to abuse. To me, this recalls Reagan-era sex education policies enforced during the early AIDS epidemic, which encouraged people to practice abstinence opposed to teaching students methods of keeping themselves safe.

Although it seems like federal governments, particularly Canada's, loves AI and data centres, I remain hopeful seeing people stand up against unregulated AI and the construction of these data centres. It reinforces that action does matter, it is not futile, and any positive shift can be substantial.

This is kind of terrifying for me in the context of education. With all the information compiled and summarized by an LLM, there is a lot of convenience that comes with that, but the price is that now teaching that skill is going to pose a lot of challenges. Not to mention the countless artists who get their hard work stolen from them to train LLMs, only to have their own work spat out in the form of slop.

I really resonate with the sentiment that actions can make a difference in the course we make in the future. All the tech overlords and Big Capitalists want us to believe that we can't avoid inevitable disaster, we are going to get left behind if we don't embrace technology, and there is nothing we can do as people. but that is simply never true! Standing up and resisting "bad AI" enables the people around to do the same, and every individual action adds up.