public goods "47% have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher ed institutions, w a net positive rating of 33—up 13 points since 2023. more confidence in higher ed than in the police (44%), the medical system (38%)+large tech companies (25%)" www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

What if NIH had been 40% smaller? "We analyze 27 years of NIH extramural awards & their review scores to identify the bottom 40% of grants that would have been eliminated from 1980 to 2007... We then identify new molecular entity drugs, approved in the 21st century, that are linked to these grants"

Q. Who aligns the aligners? A. alignmentalignment.ai Today I’m humbled to announce an epoch-defining event: the launch of the 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀.

Cuts to and closures of university presses are 100% part of the separation (or as @mattseybold.bsky.social has called it "unbundling") of research and teaching in the humanities and the devaluation of both quite frankly--in this case at the expense of the career training admin claims to care about.

Incl. @kanarinka.bsky.social and yrs truly!

"higher ed is an economic engine, health-care engine, technological-innovation engine. it should be a common public good for everyone. the vast majority of Americans of any political stripe need education for their kids, their families, in order to move forward." www.chronicle.com/article/is-t...

@aiainetwork.bsky.social is hosting Vauhini Vara at Emory on Thursday Oct 16 for the talk, “If Computers Can Write, Why Should We?” Vara was a Pulitzer finalist for fiction in 2023. Her latest, Searches, investigates what is at stake for writing with the rise of AI www.eventbrite.com/e/vauhini-va...

“Keep your head down, follow without questioning, adjust field of study” It’s alarming how many academics are already lining up to join this camp and publicly recruiting others to do the same, including US citizens and profs with tenure.

A few days ago, amidst everything else, I pressed send on the book I've been working on (and off) for over a decade. It's still a long way from finished, but the final phase has begun. Watch for DATA BY DESIGN: FROM THE HISTORY OF VISUALIZATION TO THE FUTURE WE NEED in print and online in Fall 2026!

Guess how many articles about this topic have been written in 2025, since Trump started demanding political retribution against universities who taught the wrong thing or allowed students to protest the wrong thing

Today in small victories, this pairing of Chris Wiggins and Matt Jones's chapter on the "average man" from HOW DATA HAPPENED with @seyiolojo.bsky.social's essay on counterdata from @datasociety.bsky.social's DATAFIED STATE is the first time I've felt happy with the framing for my "what is data" day

Let that sink in. What DOGE burned through in six months, through sheer stupidity, carelessness, and cruelty, could have funded the NEH for more than a century. This was never an attempt to save money, it was a mugging.

Just to reiterate: What this administration is doing right now is orders of magnitude more dangerous for academic freedom and free speech than anything the right has spent the last 30 years complaining about.

I got braces in the first few weeks of the current administration, and it's never not been a metaphor in my mouth. But this morning I got my wires tightened, and if you've ever had braces and you've also read the news today, well, you know

Proud to have @aiainetwork.bsky.social sign on to the much-needed People's AI Action Plan, launched today. More at: peoplesaiaction.com

The 90+ organizations supporting a People's AI Action Plan all have concrete, actionable ideas for an AI agenda that furthers the interests of everyday people and challenges the tech billionaire agenda we’ll see from the White House. Learn more about them: peoplesaiaction.com

Staving off today's despair (DOE news and everything else) by tracking down this old Ikea collection inspired by... giant Swiss chard? www.ikea.com/global/en/st...

Sunday! Free! Join us!

Very minor news but my review of @merbroussard.bsky.social's MORE THAN A GLITCH is finally out in Critical AI! Thanks to @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social for the invitation and to Meredith for writing such a necessary book! read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/...

Very minor news but my review of @merbroussard.bsky.social's MORE THAN A GLITCH is finally out in Critical AI! Thanks to @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social for the invitation and to Meredith for writing such a necessary book! read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/...

July 13: We’re collaborating with the High Museum of Art & ‪@aiainetwork.bsky.social‬ for a discussion about the evolving relationship between data, design, & human perception. Register for free Second Sunday museum access to join this on-site Atlanta event! high.org/event/ups-se...

Part of the story about the war on US higher ed right now is university board members who want to see changes for the school that they can’t achieve structurally or politically – their power not in fact being unqualified – inviting and enabling federal incursion to make those changes

Reposting for more visibility! JOB OPENING! Come work with me! I’ve been refraining from trophy posting about the collections but you could be part of the literary legacy of Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton, Salman Rushdie, Seamus Heaney. Even better, YOU can determine who joins them in posterity!

ICE is attempting to deport an Atlanta-based Spanish-language reporter from El Salvador who has been covering their immigration abductions. He has legal work authorization and a path to a green card. This is pretty obviously an assault on the free press. www.ajc.com/news/2025/06...

Popping back on here to express my profound gratitude to @brettbobley.bsky.social for his vision and dedication. The field of digital humanities is so much more rich and capacious for his efforts, and his work with the ODH is in no small part what will ensure that the field will endure. #ThanksBrett

Worth noting today that the entire budget of the NEH is about $200M.

This appeals to my interests

We guess that Monday miracle for #NEH employees won't be happening after all. Tomorrow over 100 staff and public servants of the #humanities will be terminated from their positions. It's heartbreaking and so completely unnecessary.

VIS4DH is back at @ieeevis.bsky.social, November 2025 in Vienna! Find the Call for Papers here, focusing on the Visualization of Conflict and Peace: vis4dh.dbvis.de/cfp/

The news, the news

Many of us who read Project 2025 have been saying from the start that The Regime has a unifying goal of destroying US scientific infrastructure and causing the collapse of Universities. We were called “hysterical”. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Oh, Lake Lanier, always tragedy and farce: www.ajc.com/news/2025/05...

Super excited to present some new work (virtually) at Sciences Po next month!

Was not expecting this particular Venn diagram of editorial studies, a NYT scrollytell, my current employer, and Usher, but I am here for it! www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Highly recommend following the work of the Southern Environmental Law Center who have tracking this and other polluting data center projects in the South www.selc.org/topic/data-c...

Thrilled for @lucy3.bsky.social and students, apply apply!

#CFP for Debates in Digital Humanities edited by Gabriela Baeza Ventura, María E. Cotera, Annemarie Perez, and Carolina Villarroel. Deadline for 500-word abstracts, including proposed title and short bio: May 15, 2025. dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/page/debates... #digitalhumanities #usLdh

I guess revision has to start somewhere

May 15 deadline for the forthcoming _Debates in US Latinx DH_ volume from @uminnpress.bsky.social, part of the Debates in DH series -- please check it out and consider proposing a chapter. @apprecovery.bsky.social @gbaezaventura.bsky.social @laurenfklein.bsky.social

Three more weeks to submit to the CFP for Debates in the Digital Humanities 2028! Cannot wait to see what @lindsaythomas.net and Kelly Baker Josephs do with this book!

Good gravy, if ever there was an advertisement for why we need the humanities and social sciences. What a depressingly nonsense take on the supposed neutrality of a discipline.

New, from me: I am dorky enough to actually read (ok, skim) budgets, and have never seen anything like Trump’s, which has converted a formal and professional document into a propagandistic screed to justify draconian cuts. Lets take a look. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/budgets-as...

"We are in the midst of a political coup that, if successful, would forever change the nature of US government. It is not taking place in the streets. There is no martial law. It is taking place cubicle by cubicle in federal agencies and in the mundane automation of bureaucracy." @eryk.bsky.social

Suggestion: stop talking about AI as “hype,” start talking about AI as a (very real) political and ideological instrument.

Elon Musk may or may not fulfill his promise to step back from DOGE. But his legacy is already clear: He is assembling a sprawling domestic surveillance system — the likes of which we have never seen in the United States. My latest for NYT Opinion (gift link): www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/o...

"A new dataset, visualized as maps, reveals the extent to which African workers are indirectly employed in the tech sector, doing content moderation, customer service, and data annotation for AI models, among other jobs." restofworld.org/2025/big-tec...

Among other choice bits, you can read a bit of new thinking by @docdre.distributedblackness.net about the American Technological Object and how, because of AI, we are all Others now

Some beauty on the TL today, via @literaturegeek.bsky.social