Things I’ve found useful, thinkers I love, and things I wish I had thought of.
AI Literacy | Fact Checking
Mike Caulfield’s SIFT Toolbox for Claude
The inspiration for my Text Levelling Tool! Mike Caulfield is a researcher at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. This offshoot to his SIFT method for fact-checking information includes a set of very precise instructions to copy and paste into Claude in order to systematically verify claims, surface conflicting sources, flag errors, assess source reliability, and note the broader information environment.
Speculative & Science Fiction
Reactor Mag Fiction Archives
The online home of Tor.com’s original fiction — short stories and novellas from some of the best working writers in speculative fiction, available free. Worth bookmarking for yourself and worth knowing about for the classroom: accessible length, high quality, and the archives are deep enough to find something for almost any thematic unit.
News Literacy | Bias Visualization
Ground News
Aggregates news coverage and shows you how the same story is being framed across the political spectrum, with source bias ratings built in. I use it to check my own blind spots. Imagine using it with an English class to assess the ways different stories are covered by different ideological positions in their headlines. (No, I’m not a podcaster and I’m not getting any kickback for this, haha).
Search | Ethical Tech
Kagi.com
A paid, ad-free search engine built on the premise that when you don’t pay for a product, you are the product. No ads, no tracking, no results optimized for someone else’s revenue. Paid subscription (starts around $5/month, free trial available). Worth recommending to students and colleagues as a concrete, low-friction example of what an alternative internet economy looks like — and genuinely useful as a daily driver.