This is what I think about the Turing test, and the urgent needs for new measures www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We know OpenAI is not making enough money to cover its insane costs, so by creating these kinds of tools, what they are doing is opening additional markets for disinformation, political intervention, scammers, conspiracy theorists, blackmail, and other types of crimes. Crime pays off, apparently...

RIP to Jane Goodall, who opened the world's eyes to our closest relatives. (Photo by NatGeo's Hugo Van Lawick)

The printed version is out today! Here we discussed how social credit system, an Orwellian Chinese Other, becomes a stand-in for Western anxieties about authoritarianism, technology goes wrong, quantification of everyday life, and shifting global power. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🚨🚀🌐 Based on an analysis of 592 fact-checks published by 50 organizations in 15 languages, a new report from ISOC-IL provides the first systematic mapping of disinformation spread during the Israel-Iran war, and the response of the global fact-checking organizations. Here are some main takeaways🧵:

I don't know how well this is reflected outside Israel but Israelis want the war to end. The Israeli majority is laser focused on the hostage issue, worried about Israel's international standing, exhausted from reserve service and soldier deaths, and some even Palestinian suffering.

מה שגאונים כמו ברק היימן לא מבינים, זה שכשהם מצהירים שהם "מייחלים לקריסת הישות הציונית במתכונתה הנוכחית", הם מפיצים שנאה. full stop. ומעבר לזה, ישראלים רבים יבינו קריאות כאלה כקריאה לטיהור אתני שלהם ממולדתם. כאילו, הזעם הקדוש הזה לא עוזר לאף אחד, והוא רק עושה נזק. www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/202...

Netanyahu’s foreign minister supports ending the war. Ben Gvir is against. Smotrich hasn’t responded yet, but I’m guessing he’ll be against. Gantz sounds like he’s ready to give Netanyahu a safety net if need be.

This is such a good article on how the undermining of universities is part of an anti-democratic movement: “Anti-university rhetoric is the language of an international pro-authoritarian movement opposed to centers of learning that model liberal-democratic values”

This video is really important. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/o... It connects the dots between A.I. and climate disasters and is just a perfectly crafted piece of investigation and exposition. @katecrawford.bsky.social

מצב נפשי

Apropos tech giants, hyperscale clouds, and Israel, here are some facts (and some thoughts) about Project Nimbus, the controversial plan (according to some) to transfer the entire Israeli state into Google’s and Amazon’s clouds. doi.org/10.1080/1369...

🕊️🍎🍯🎗️🤞🙏

I wrote about strongmen, spyware, and the surveillance state for @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

can't really begin to explain the extent to which I do Not want to be filmed without my knowledge by someone wearing smart glasses while out and about

🍂רוחות סתיו מנשבות בחיפה. בעבר הן היו מביאות איתן אווירת חג - החגים תכף כאן, הגשם בפתח, פסטיבל הסרטים מתקרב, אפשר לחזור לטייל בוואדיות. היום הרוח הזו נושאת איתה קול שופרות מאנשים שלא יבקשו סליחה על כלום ולא יסלחו לאיש, שמתערבב עם קול זמבורות של מפגינים מיואשים, מותשים, חסרי תקווה. >

איך עובדים היום? איך נושמים היום?

Other Tech Worlds Are Possible. Comic book is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese! Partnership with the Tech Sector of the Homeless Workers’ Movement in Brazil (MTST), @germana-fazgibi.bsky.social English: digilabour.com.br/comic-book-o... Portuguese: www.nucleodetecnologia.com.br/hq

Fantastic panel today on 'AI Hype: Between Power and Resistance' with amazing contributions by Kat Fuller, @danmk.bsky.social, Tianqi Kou, Dana Calacci, Nasser Eledroos, and Jacek Mańko who also acted as stellar chair, debating power across multiple themes, from anti-trans hype to AGI!

We’re excited to share the final programme for the first Hype Studies Conference: (Don’t) Believe the Hype?! 📅 10–12 September 2025 📍 Universitat Oberta de Catalunya 🌐 Fully hybrid & free 👉 Full schedule: hypestudies.org/media/pages/... 👉 All speakers & abstracts: hypestudies.org/media/pages/...

Incredible clip of tech CEOs fawning over Donald Trump. Someone store this clip in the underground archive vault

Reading in the first week of Critical AI and Curation class: 🗒️ Bender and Hanna (2025) “Chapter 2: It’s Alive! The Hype of Thinking Machines In The AI Con 🗒️ Kotliar (2024) “Can't stop the hype: scrutinizing AI’s realities” www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/...

At the weekly anti-Netanyahu, anti-war demonstration in Haifa, a mother of two active IDF soldiers is speaking out against the war in Gaza and is calling on soldiers to refuse. "Let us all choose life, and end this war. Stop this war NOW".

My latest on Trumpian craziness/neo-fascism

I was interviewed for France24 about the USA reviving a contract between ICE and the owner of the Paragorn spyware in order to "help" ICE's work. www.france24.com/fr/%C3%A9co-... Some of the things that I said that didn't get into the article were ->

פגשתי לאחרונה אבא של ילד מהכיתה של הבת שלי. איש מאוד נחמד, קיבוצניק אם זה משנה משהו. כ400 ימי מילואים מאחוריו. הוא לבש חולצת "חרבות ברזל". שאלתי אותו (בתקווה) אם הסבבים כבר מאחוריו. אמר שהוא זומן לעזה. עוד שבוע. >>

We need to stop taking seriously every half-baked idea that that man, and the other silicon valley overlords, fart into the air. Instead of a media that treats them like prophets, we need journalists who ask "how will you do this?" "who are the scientists working on it?" "when will see a prototype?"

Thirty years ago today, Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron published “The Californian Ideology” in Mute magazine and circulated on the early-adopter email list nettime, writes Nathan Schneider. Its diagnosis of what makes Silicon Valley tick is worth revisiting:

Heya. I got a bit bored by people asking me how to navigate away from the cycles of exhaustion and exploitation that the academia seems exceptionally well inclined to produce. So I decided to run a workshop on it. An antiwork-antishop, in effect. Sign up below. janabacevic.net/against-acad...

Hey Firefox users.

Meta created celebrity romance chatbot replicas of Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson and Selena Gomez. Reuters found these "parody" bots would generate hyperrealistic images of the women in lingerie with their legs spread and invite users to the women's homes.

🧵 In the wake of numerous reports of interactions with AI chatbots that resulted in deadly consequences, the Center for Democracy & Technology's Dr. Michal Luria says AI firms should stop designing products that pretend to be human.

הפגשנו היום את אייבי עם הבן שלה (הם לא נפגשו מאז שהוא היה גור), והם פשוט העתק מושלם אחד של השני. 🐶🐶

Call for Papers! "Technology and Inequality in Culture, Media, and the Arts"-a special issue of Poetics, coedited with @jticona.bsky.social + Angèle Christin www.ias.edu/stsv-lab/pla...

I just found this little treasure at my mom’s place. Now I really want to know what was so important about those (Netscape?) bookmarks that made me want to back them up. 🤔

Anybody who speaks English as a second language and/or has a "non standard" accent could tell you this for free for centuries

הקשבתי לפרק של דן סינור עם עמית סגל על המצב הבינלאומי הנורא של ישראל כדי שאתם לא תצטרכו. סינור שואל אותו לגבי ההתבטאויות הג'נוסיידיות של שרי הממשלה, סגל עונה שאלה שרים זוטרים. סינור מקשה ושואל אם שר האוצר הוא זוטר, או השר לבטחון לאומי. סגל עונה שבעצם, בישראל, האדם היחיד שקובע זה ראש הממשלה. אז, >

כמה חם בחוץ? לוקחים את הכלב לפארק כלבים, וזה מה שהוא בוחר לעשות. #שיגיעכברהחורף

So much think-piecing and op-ed'ing about data centers. I wish folks knew that some scholars have been studying these things — as real estate, as geopolitical battlegrounds, as ecological disasters — for a decade+. Mél Hogan, Alix Johnson, Ingrid Burrington, Jen Holt, Patrick Brodie, et al

🆕New article in New Media & Society!🆕 On how cross-cultural encounters shape techies' perceptions of algorithms and their ethics. Focusing on immigrants to Silicon Valley, it calls for a more diverse view of SV's ideologies and their entanglement with algorithmic production. 🧵👇 tinyurl.com/dmknms

או, אשאל אחרת: נניח שנותנים למישהו/י מכונת תפירה במתנה, ולאותו מישהו/י אין נסיון. איזה starting pack נחמד כדאי להביא לו/ה עם המכונה? גזרות פשוטות? בדים? חוטים?

מישהו מכיר סדנאות/שיעורי תפירה בחיפה? #פידתפירה #פידחיפה

Tenured!

✨ New Report: Worker-Owned Intersectional Platforms: Shared Learning Between Brazil and Argentina. Read it in English, Spanish or Portuguese digilabour.com.br/report-launc...

Hundreds of thousands march in Tel Aviv demanding a hostage deal and end to the war on Gaza. (1/2)

Thousands of Israelis stayed home from work, flooded city streets and blocked roads and highways across the country on Sunday, staging some of the largest anti-war protests in months as the military prepares for a major assault on Gaza City. wapo.st/4mvMVfK

“By sharing Content on Bluesky, you grant us a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to: …Use your Content to develop, operate & enhance Bluesky, the AT Protocol & FUTURE PRODUCTS & SERVICES.” This is extremely broad. How does it apply to AI @bsky.app? bsky.social/about/blog/0...