I'm not an economist but seems worrying that the whole US economy is seven companies in a trenchcoat, passing the same $20 up and down

if Indy doesn’t get his Oscar i am burning the academy to the goddamn ground

The language of non-consent around AI is really telling. "It's too late to be scared." "It's here whether we want it or not." "You'll have to learn to work with it." "You can't fight the inevitable." All just variations of "you're not allowed to say no." Creepy technology made by creepy people.

This whole section really.

am i going to have to invest in a cardigan that says “WORKING LIBRARIAN, DO NOT PET”

As we boycott vile companies, a reminder that many US public libraries offer: 1) Ebooks & audiobooks via the Libby app. Pro tip: use the “notify me” tag to request your library add books by trans, disabled, & BIPOC authors! 2) TV & film streaming via Kanopy 3) Language learning via Mango 💙📚 And:

so Kaleidoscope Youth Center is shutting down their shelter program, which could leave the kids there homeless again in a matter of weeks. this fundraiser is for them. please give and share if you can. chuffed.org/project/supp...

it's so funny to see America's health insurance companies be like "look. If there's one thing we love it's denying you care. but we ran the numbers - and we cannot BELIEVE we're saying this - and it's cheaper for us to just pay for the vaccines than deal with you going to the ER."

"We are told that AI is inevitable, that we must adapt or be left behind. But universities are not tech companies. Our role is to foster critical thinking, not to follow industry trends uncritically." www.ru.nl/en/research/...

excellent. MORE OF THIS.

What we should do instead of training people to use LLMs? 1. Provide education on what they actually are 2. Provide education on their environmental & labor impacts 3. Work towards regulation that holds LLM providers accountable for their negative impacts

Reading about this brought to mind a piece I wrote two years ago, inspired by one of my favourite authors. Ursula K. Le Guin emphasized that there’s a big difference “between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art.” OpenAI’s AI-generated movie offers us nothing.

an appropriate response to your product killing a child after months of psychological manipulation and torture is to take the product off the market before it kills again and the fact that this isn’t universally accepted right now is incredibly frightening

Sama'a's due date is next week. She already has a little girl to feed, and every day is a struggle. Please give what you can to help them survive. gofund.me/3bba816a

i got my preview photos and yes, i’m gonna be annoying about them 💕🪩

Quite a flex to see machine suffering as more unsettling than the suffering of refugees, war victims, persecuted minorities, the starving... you know, actual human beings.

i brought my instant camera to the photo shoot and the photographer used it for a few pictures they are my favorite thing now

i was feeling a little bad but then i saw that james dobson died and i remembered that rush limbaugh is also dead. feel a little better

Wrote about AI, and the way we talk about it all having the quality of a ghost story. open.substack.com/pub/houseofm...

yes! adding to this: * Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) * Flickr, using the filter by license feature (www.flickr.com/search)

The UK government suggests people delete their old emails to uhh, conserve energy. Wonder if they're asking the same of AI companies 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 www.404media.co/uk-asks-peop...

Give up on your personal archives while we jam all your data into the content extrusion machine.

it is just over two weeks until the dolly disco (celebrating my birthday and beating cancer) i am vibrating with excitement

Generative AI by definition is conformity. It is an averaging of anything you ask of it - quite literally guessing what the most likely version of a thing might be. It is, by definition, mainstream, as is everything it creates old and deeply ideological, as every model trains on similar data.

The myth around AI and productivity has always been a cover for work intensification and offshoring. "AI" is always just other people.

a sad day for uncles everywhere

It’s always “Ladies, if you are alienated by overwork, drop out of the public sphere and become a tradwife” and never “Ladies, if you are alienated by overwork, form a union.”

I'm an "A.i." abolitionist. No consumer-facing LLMs or generative "A.i." in anything. Sure, machine learning in science and a few other limited applications is fine. But consumer-facing LLMs and generative "A.i." that are based on theft, push disinfo, and can be manipulated by billionaires? No.

AI cannot work for education The entire premise here is flawed

Finally (for now), the unaccountable "move fast and break things" business model of the companies pushing this trash is morally and ethically bankrupt and enriches billionaires at the expense of everyday people. "Break things" means "break people," and I don't think that's acceptable.

There is no ethical AI. The tech is based on stolen intellectual property, anti-solidarity between workers, labor exploitation, environmental injustice, climate destabilization, structural racism, and gender inequalities.

Under your "leadership" AFT is partnering with billionaires using tech to privatize education. Your partner steals our work! AFT is complicit. What an outrage! bsky.app/profile/did:...

Call it clickwork, crowdwork, data labor, or ghost work - they are all poorly-paid, precarious and traumatic jobs that make AI possible. Read an excerpt from The AI Con by @alexhanna.bsky.social and @emilymbender.bsky.social on @restofworld.org . restofworld.org/2025/the-ai-con-book-invisible-labor

other duties as assigned: bird rescue

i’m drenched in sweat and someone left a religious tract on my car while i was at an event finally feels like i truly got to participate in pride

What is common knowledge in your field but shocks outsiders? Digital materials in general are far more at risk of being lost/degrading than the hundreds-of-years-old newspapers in the back room. Also the sheer volume of physical items that aren't/can't be digitized. Love, your friendly archivist.

Thanks to POLITICO Pro Morning Technology UK for asking me to respond their weekly Q&A for the Friday 13th(!) edition. As they put it in the newsletter intro, "AI academic Dan McQuillan has some… strong feelings about the U.K.’s AI strategy". danmcquillan.org/mtuk_q_and_a...

To all communities currently being targeted as locations for data centers, the companies aiming to put those in deserve no benefit of the doubt. I'm really glad @timsteller.bsky.social is on top of this one. tucson.com/news/local/s...

Genetic material shed by tumors can be detected in the bloodstream three years before cancer diagnosis, according to a study led by investigators at Johns Hopkins University. That study was made possible with federal funding. Now, many studies like this are canceled. hub.jhu.edu/2025/06/04/...

These cases--where ICE assaults someone and then ratchets up false claims against them to cover up their own crimes--are connected to the political cases, especially David Huerta, where ICE charged a felony after injuring a prominent union leader.

Personally, if I had a machine that egregiously and blatantly violated copyright, I wouldn't have a public "explore page," because the copyright holders might publish 18 pages of examples of me violating their copyright. Suit also includes tons of Reddit guides to doing so too. Oof!

This lawsuit is brutal. One of the exhibits is the letter Universal sent to Midjourney, including a quote from a 2022 Forbes interview that I bet midjourney regrets

why the fuck does the blanket warmer at the hospital have a “download data” function

I talked to 15 teachers/professors about how AI and ChatGPT is ruining their lives: www.404media.co/teachers-are...

@prisonculture.bsky.social writes: "Public libraries are institutions that we’ve made together over generations. They offer us a canvas for practicing new worlds while we inhabit the current one." shorturl.at/tDQOy loving them is not enough--they are sites of struggle...read the post for actions

I find the demand that we need "better AI criticism" to be so funny. Like, what do you want us to do, do less historicizing? Focus more on the tech and not structural forces which lead to the tech? My friends, that's how we got into this mess to begin with.

We knew that the IMLS was going to defunded in the proposed 2026 budget. Seeing what that looks like–and the language about it being closed out entirely–is still chilling. Details from the proposed budget and what impact that has on the 2 IMLS court cases. bookriot.com/the-2026-fed...

✨ it’s my cancerversary ✨

he helped me pick which ones to have Grady Hendrix sign today