Me, who has recently discovered how much I like sewing bags: I made another bag! C: why? Me: because I can? It’s something to do with fabric scraps? C: it’s still fabric waste if you don’t use the bags mom.

For many, the end of the year is an opportunity to catch up on reading or to purchase books as gifts. In 2025, a number of authors joined the Tech Policy Press podcast, providing fresh insights into how technology interacts with people, politics, and power. Check out the list:

15. @jathansadowski.com is a senior lecturer at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia; co-host of This Machine Kills, a weekly podcast on technology and political economy; and author of The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism.

Ok, I’m working my through my fav Christmas watches. Started Sunday with the Ted Lasso Christmas episode (I love it). Then moved on to Violent Night (it holds up), sewed to Elf, wrapped presents to Muppet Christmas Carol, and A Very Murray Christmas, and tonight it’s A Muppet Family Christmas.

ICYMI @hypervisible.blacksky.app

For civilians: an academic dept typically has to out maneuver other depts to get a tenure line! I tell grad students applying to red state jobs to indicate that they are familiar with & would be happy spending a decade or more there. A single sentence has moved them to the top of a pile. 1/

Think about this as an opportunity to learn in many ways."

My syllabus now says: "Your professors may all have different policies on the use of generative AI. I know, this kinda sucks for you the student, but keep in mind that different fields of study (and even individual professors) have different goals for your learning. +

This was delicious and I was delighted to see I guessed a few of the winners

Big congrats to these 23 projects that just won awards from the @schmidtsciences.bsky.social HAVI program! Please spread the word. (NB I've been helping the HAVI team on this program. This is a broad slate of terrific DH projects!) www.schmidtsciences.org/havi-2025-an...

i feel really conflicted about the people who insist that the Humanities needs to be a 100% technology free space. I get you - I am very analog in my daily life, with my piles of paper and pens - but AI is also doing a lot of things you actually like and enjoy having. R's thread is right on

Many struggle with writing alt text for charts and other other data visualizations. Amy Cesal's "Writing Alt Text for Data Visualization" hammers home the importance of explaining the chart type, the type of data, and the reason for the chart. medium.com/nightingale/...

a wild story that encapsulates how tech executives view AI. Anthropic's Deputy CISO made his Discord server a ghost town by forcing an AI chatbot onto it despite community protests

For the AM crowd, I wrote about a human-centered technology course I teach at Lehigh. The class focuses on finding your purpose in a time of automation and AI, and it's probably the most important class I teach nowadays.

Oh dear God.

There isn't a single person here I don't want to be thrown into a swimming pool full of humboldt squid.

It's sort of impossible to really capture what Alice Wong meant to so many people (myself included) but @soleilho.com wrote something beautiful, and we gathered up a few touching memories from other folks that speak to what a brilliant star she was. Love you forever, Alice.

💯

ICE being evil enough they start angering famously racist police departments was really not a turn I was expecting

Daughter: Disney, the Copyright Monster? Are you serious? Also daughter: This is going to end so badly.

This has to be the most reckless thing Disney has ever done with their IP and I cannot wait for them to figure out what a bad idea this is.

I am not looking forward to "user-prompted" videos of Mickey Mouse having sex with Darth Vader.

Part of the political project of genAI is to undermine knowledge and expertise until it is meaningless. And this is not theoretical. Actually existing AI is doing precisely this.

I’m watching the “new” Beatles Anthology series. I was OBSESSED with The Beatles when it came out the first time. And yet I have no memory of what I’m now watching and I realize, there was so much more George Martin in the previous version. I learned so much from his presence.

Are there any colleges/universities that DO NOT require having taken a foreign language in HS? My son is starting to look and due to, well, EVERYTHING, we've not taken two years of a foreign language. Options? TY!

Pay for the kids to get comic making lessons! Hire some comic artists and writers to come teach the kids! I took a paneling class in college that changed my art forever, helping me storyboard better. This will just stunt growth. It's an illusion pf opportunity.

This is INSANE www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/t... and these are our closest allies!

My final manuscript in! And now I give you..... COVER REVEAL (US cover, UK is sooooo different but it's not public yet)

Brown: Autocrats don’t fear the disease or the babies dying from whooping cough — they fear the evidence of it, because evidence exposes their failures, demands accountability, and empowers the public.

DYING.

When I was complaining that Murderbot had a "store this for later" file, this wasn't the solution I had in mind.

In May, Human Rights Watch released a report showing how gig platforms use opaque algorithms to erode workers' wages. Now a new investigation finds Instacart is running AI price experiments: charging different people different prices for the *same* groceries, sometimes by more than 23%. Read this:

I know *why* but... WHY IS IT DARK BEFORE 5PM?!?!?!?!?!

If during the Biden administration, masked feds had stormed the campus of a Christian college like Hillsdale to apprehend someone while pointing guns at students and administrators, Republicans would have filed impeachment articles immediately and taken to the streets.

Read this as an American woman and then go break something.

“It uses LiveRamp's clean room technology, which lets companies aggregate their data in a privacy-safe environment…” 🙄

ZINE ALERT!

My students are dope. 😎 A visual analysis of a page from Stan Lee & Jack Kirby's Silver Surfer: The Ultimate Cosmic Experience (1978), from a student who claimed at the beginning of the semester that they had "never really read any comics." #comicsteaching

Too long for the character limit but

I am glad these testimonies are finally being more widely disseminated www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

What the fuck....?

People throw around “neoliberalism” far too much, but the meaning of neoliberalism is to use markets to solve any and all problems. In a way it’s a “relief” to face the barest, most gunmetal version of the thing, if only to marvel at it before it eradicates us.

“I can’t count the number of developers who had similar stories like this, or like mine, where existing on these mainstream space is an absolute nightmare. Games aren’t viewed as art here, but as products. That’s always going to create friction…”

Has anyone else watched S2 of "A Man on the Inside"? Because I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!!!!

Judging from the quotes in here, university admins are some of the least “ai literate” people in existence. No wonder they think students need to be taught how to use it.

You know, it makes sense that gen-x women are hitting (peri)menopause during this time where everything is literally falling apart. It’s perfect? Shitty? Shittily perfect? Perfectly shitty?

AD-ROCK: Yo Ebenezer you gotta show re- BEASTIES: MORSE AD-ROCK: Redemption is not a mere matter of Beasties: COURSE MIKE D: We’ll show you Bob Cratchit’s not a lazy BEASTIES: MOOCHER MCA: We’re Christmas Past MIKE D: Christmas Present BEASTIES: AND CHRISTMAS FUTURE

The Dec/Jan issue of National Teaching and Learning Forum is out! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/21663327...