Wanna see real-life miracles? Fund scientific research. A team of US scientists just cured Alzheimer’s in mice — and there is now hope that the disease can be reversed in humans. futurism.com/health-medic...

"There are some things we ought not to do even though people will pay us to do them" - Joseph Weizenbaum, the creator of the ELIZA chat bot in 1965, advising computer scientists on AI. Cited in McCray's README, p. 93.

"Friction too, let it be said, is how fire is made." Reflecting on a couple great articles on knowledge creation. bruderrudmann.org/2025/12/17/f...

One time Eric and I were at the Princeton Record Exchange and in the famous two-dollar pins we found a treasure trove of Joe Ely records. We bought them and wow did we get schooled about Texas music. A great and genuine troubadour. We just lost him. RIP www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NpD...

Framing GenAI as a battle between teachers and students is a red herring. Students and educators are on the same side. The real opposition are the data extraction firms and brokerages and their allies among the managerial class.

A disrespect for me as an educator means that a basic piece of sociality and trust has been broken and so I don’t owe anyone generous feedback. But I don’t need to be punitive either. That’s what those who are selling these products want. They want to exhaust us into resignation.

"As a late liberal artist, David Foster Wallace, once said, in the day-to-day trenches of adult life there is no such thing as not worshipping: the only choice we get, is what to worship. Liberty and art – or market needs?" The latest from Bruder & Rudmann bruderrudmann.org/2025/11/30/i...

But what if recognised institutions as a barrier towards mutual aid; institutions are not inherently good or bad, there are historical and scaling effects the abstract efficacies. We don't inherently 'need' "a better matrix". We need better social relations, and the more direct, the less bad?

You know what we won't need once handwriting recognition software has done its thing? Archivists, curators, conservators, catalogers, codicologists, or paleographers. We won't need archives either. We won't need diplomatics, editorial theory, book or media history, or material culture studies 🗃️🧵

OA

A treasure trove of rare and historic American music—including songs by Memphis Minnie, the Carter Family, Blind Willie Johnson, and more—is now freely available to the public thanks to a new collaboration between the UC Santa Barbara Library and Dust-to-Digital Foundation https://ow.ly/J8Bg50Xpuf2

Currently doing some marking. A reminder to everyone involved in archives and collections: digitisation is not preservation. If I digitise a box of records and put the files on a USB stick I haven't preserved a thing. It's all about what you do with the files post-digitisation. #archives #digipres

Love after Love. Derek Walcott.

Librarians *should* be exercising more judgement and objective expertise, looking at the whole picture, thinking about long term & bibliodiversity. Libraries do not receive budget to "buy content" they receive budget to "disseminate knowledge".

oh for real, wow

The far-right majority in the Dutch parliament (BBB-FvD-JA21-PVV-SGP-VVD) has just designated “Antifa” a terrorist organization. This is a dark day for Dutch democracy and the final nail in the coffin of the VVD as a serious liberal democratic party.

How will #openscience be effected by current politics? If you're at #OSFAIR2025, you can hear a great panel discussing this topic, moderated by @rouhiroo.bsky.social ! www.opensciencefair.eu/panels/how-t...

My job remains designing situations within which it is both desirable and possible to become more human, more capable of thinking and asking questions, more capable of being alive with others, on earth

I like that this piece argues for a democratising understanding of open science over the more neoliberal one they view as common. I've always felt that a more robust understanding of democratisation is needed for open movements, rather than just assuming that democracy is implied in free culture.

We made you a rigorously cited timeline of major moves, cases, changes, and other wildass developments in the immigration system since January 20. This is one of the most complicated things I've ever worked on, but we think it needs to be done. The thread breaks down the kinds of things we found.

New open access book out from our MORPHSS project lead @samuelmoore.org: "By deploying theoretical literature on science & technology studies, care ethics, & the commons, the book critically interrogates open access & reimagines a more ethical future for researcher-led publishing." #OA #AHSS

lmao which one of you did this

I'm not sure what can be done for staff, authors, books...But this is a real loss, and I hope there can be some collective effort at salvage and succor.

Efficiency is a demonic word justifying cutting out much that is pleasurable, meaningful, even essential in the name of speeding the productivity machine or maximizing profit (aka taking) while minimizing outlay (or giving).

So, if you think it’s just about whether repros are “good” or “bad,” you get mired (as the combatants of the Facsimile Debate did) in some petty moral quicksand. It’s not the tech that’s good or bad, it’s the politics and cultural practices and economics in which a given tech is situated.

If anything, I think the point of the surveillance tech is to remove the need for basic human interaction so that profoundly antisocial people can still benefit from the transactional effects of having real human relationships

Doubling down on "believing in science" doesn't accurately acknowledge what "science" is: (constitutively) a messy social process of cultivating trust and accountability Sorry, we can't moralize or strongarm our way out of that; and to recognize this will place us on stronger footing

This 1942 pamphlet from the YMCA is quite instructive, and has a fantastic dramatic cover and title that makes me think of an educational film umedia.lib.umn.edu/item/p16022c...

This piece is about the value of music listings, but also about much more: the nature of criticism, the myth of the high/low divide, criticism itself. Read and share! www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

It is only mildly hyperbolic to drop a zero and suggest that "There is absolutely no way that any digital media that exists today will be accessible in 30 years." I'm not kidding. What digital media do you have from 1995 that you can access easily right now?

Ed tech has been snake oil from the start, designed to dilute expertise, cheapen relations between teacher and student, and line the pockets of people who have absolutely no interest in—and no useful contributions to offer to—education.

"Science is a process, not an output" would look mighty fine crocheted

“I’m good at this job. Rather, I *was* good at this job—and I’ll become so again in an environment whose values align with those that animate my work: the small, the weird, the local, the public, the principled.” https://wordsinspace.net/2025/06/30/i-prefer-weeds-to-ivy/

I'm so glad this happened. The uncritical aspect of Metascience proponents is precisely why I've not embraced the term

This is incredibly beautiful storytelling.

they demand that we actually increase the non-contemplative features of education. In-class exercises are fine, and I have been doing them long before this moment, but the *ideal* experience of higher education (yes, it's an ideal, and students have jobs, I know) is to have TIME FOR THOUGHT.

Thanks to @bookmouse2.bsky.social for finding a poem in my recent report on AI governance!

What is a University Press? On the acquisition of AUP by T&F (and my anger at it), the governance link between universities and university presses, and putting one's labour where one's values are. eve.gd/2025/06/08/w...

I plan to write something about my extreme disappointment of the sale of Amsterdam University Press and the entities it owns to T&F given my OA business model work for some of these presses. Turns my stomach.

Academia in 2025: For weeks I’ve been working through botched copy-edits of my monograph, outsourced by the publisher to a company I’d never heard of, until it finally dawned on me the terrible job might be AI. A quick search confirmed the company recently launched new AI software, which now means..

If you are mad about a newspaper's summer reading list including made-up books, maybe you don't actually like fiction and have a mind bereft of Borgesian imagination. You're mad you can't "buy" these books? Good. Some things are not for the market, actually, you capitalist bootlicker.

It brings me no joy to share this, but here's an open letter to the leadership of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) on what is to me a very serious issue with it's autonomy and political scope. (Note: I've worked for and with PKP for decades). ahemnason.notion.site/open-letter-...

Big thank you to @hldejonge.bsky.social @cwts.nl for the invitation to dialogue with the brilliant Dan Rudmann on #openscience and #authoritarianism this Friday: www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20... #academicsky join us if you can. #DefendResearch #StandUpForScience

I mean, it doesn't stand outside these issues. There's a re-organisation of knowledge production currently taking place due to a ton of financial, political and technological pressures, and open research either helps us reimagine a better knowledge production or it doesn't (I think it should!)

What are the consequences of current attacks on science by the Trump administration on #openscience? Join this webinar with the fabulous @rouhiroo.bsky.social and @danrdmnn.bsky.social!

Stephen Fry Reads Nick Cave’s Stirring Letter About ChatGPT and Human Creativity: “We Are Fighting for the Very Soul of the World”

Now more than ever

“The US of AI,” public draft of a talk given yesterday at Princeton. drive.google.com/file/d/1O2qk...

Which is to say that no amount of "opening up science" will really help if the underlying material conditions remain the same.

This is the most comprehensive document I have ever read on library censorship. Extensive, well-researched, and deeply important work. It will send chills up your spine.