"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...

Here's your period reminder that "Luddite" does not mean "hates technology/progress". It means "hates how technology/progress benefit only the bosses while the workers get the shaft".

Seems like people now broadly understand that data centers use a ton of energy but pols are happy to trade that for "high tech jobs." But just bc it's big computer doesn't means it's big jobs! It's a big storage facility. The jobs are mostly in construction, with a tiny maintenance crew thereafter.

A longish thread to announce that the Themed Issue "Digital Platform Economies: Value from Data?" is now fully available online "https://journals.sagepub.com/topic/collections-pns/pns-1-digital_platform_economies_value_from_data/pns

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."

💹 As the political underpinnings of value creation become ever more pressing, Science as Culture is making available free access the commentary "On the Political Vernaculars of Value Creation," by Fabian Muniesa, released almost ten years ago. 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/0950...

Is it possible to design a world where production is organised according to social, #community #needs and respecting #planetary #boundaries? What are the techno-political basics needed for #democratically building such an alternative? Join us in Geneva at a once in a lifetime workshop 👇👇

A second mass shooting of a homeless encampment in Minneapolis. Five more people died. Meanwhile, congress is working on passing the ability to jail homeless people for up to 30 days or charge them $500. It bans camping on public property. abcnews.go.com/US/people-hu...

New from me. The biggest labor story in the US is happening at Microsoft. More people should be talking about it. I spoke with 5 tech workers who have all been fired for protesting Microsoft's complicity in genocide. They don't regret it & won't stop @therealnews.com therealnews.com/the-biggest-...

On August 5, the Iowa City Council unanimously voted to boycott and divest from Israel bonds and all companies complicit in the Gaza genocide and occupation of Palestine. mondoweiss.net/2025/08/iowa...

Curious as well how the move toward digital transformation and “data driven health” exists alongside any commitments to invest in the people and social infrastructures of care..? Particularly the community health and primary care doctors that make a wellness model possible..

Good morning to everyone except @umich.edu Medicine, the latest to capitulate. To trans youth in Michigan & surrounding states, we see you & are fighting for you.

Behind all the copyright battles on AI, there are some much more substantial conceptual rearrangements taking shape. For instance, since when did we call music, prose, and visual art 'data'? And who does it benefit? My new OA piece in Platforms and Society: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

@radicalgraffiti.bsky.social in Philly, PA

many benchmarks used to measure AI capabilities are, I think, contrived and lenient. here's a good real-life study, on whether AI can do your (US) tax returns; a domain with plentiful training data and documentation. the result: the best model only got 33% of returns correct arxiv.org/pdf/2507.16126

Join us!

good morning happy back to school to all who celebrate, happy one week of summer left to all the syllabus scramblers, happy grr to the quarter system people, here's some help for all of us in the college classroom against-a-i.com

Happening Tuesday! Last call for RSVPs!

Bloomberg is covering some important stories of AI data center resistance! Over 2000 residents asked their city council to vote against an Amazon data center, only 11 were in favor. The vote never mattered. Anyone currently mapping this expansion of data infra? www.tiktok.com/t/ZT6u5aomt/

"Last year there were ten murders in the NYC subway system, with well over a billion total rides taken. During the same time period, there were 253 traffic fatalities in New York City. One person dead every day and a half. Cars? Those things are fucking dangerous."

Nothing in my next book on this, but I did try to set out some thoughts on it here: www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap-o... I've attached a list of some other texts I've found useful too

Killed for doing reporting: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/w...

I can’t help but speculate that the data interoperability infrastructures advanced under the Biden administration around prior auth will now be used by these “AI” technology intermediaries to *expand* the use, and the harms, of prior auth…

“The procedures will be reviewed by AI for coverage determinations, although final decisions will be made by people. The companies contracting to do the review process will receive payments when they reduce costs, essentially being incentivized to deny service, critics say.”

Incredibly instructive reporting on what appears well on its way to becoming the biggest, most concentrated, most energy- and resource-intensive, and most speculative wave of capital investment ever. ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...

Birzeit University is hosting this conference, "Engineering Destruction: Militarization and the War Economy" yesterday through the 31st, including some excellent live-streamed sessions... highly recommend tuning in if you can. ialiis.birzeit.edu/conference/en/

The UN's Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) has declared that Famine is now unfolding in Gaza. They describe this as "the worst case scenario." The World Food Programme describes the famine as "unlike anything this century"

Don't miss this @forbes.com article by @shalinjyotishi.bsky.social on our brand new searchable inventory of contract provisions from over 175 union agreements that address workplace technologies, protect worker rights, and shape technology adoption, use, and oversight. www.forbes.com/sites/shalin...

In our latest, we survey the effects the recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill” will have on the healthcare system for years to come, the effects we’re already seeing, and why it’s one of the biggest blows to the US welfare state in modern history www.patreon.com/posts/135176...

With the emergence of the slur Sloppers for AI-users may I also suggest that we call the AI-lobby ”Big Slop”

Great press! "Ypsilanti-area residents are protesting the data center, raising concerns about the power and water-hungry project’s potential to harm the Huron River, increase water and electricity rates, and possibly support drone warfare and surveillance technology."

New paper hot off the press www.nature.com/articles/s41... We analysed over 40,000 computer vision papers from CVPR (the longest standing CV conf) & associated patents tracing pathways from research to application. We found that 90% of papers & 86% of downstream patents power surveillance 1/

Great blog — plenty of evidence of ‘care stripping’ in our ongoing research on the social/welfare crowdfunding economy

Tomorrow’s Guardian front page

The sheer quantity of bullshit here. The solution to instructor exhaustion and overwork is not outsourcing grading (if that’s not direct mentoring of students, I don’t know what is) but hiring more faculty and reducing class sizes. Give the money to teachers, not Sam Altman

Very excited to share this workshop I'm helping to host on August 19: "From Tech Lash To Tech Fash: Strategic reflections on a decade of collective organizing in computing" tech-organizing-reflections.github.io

.. what the fuck

lots of "by any means necessary" guys amped up by the possibility that the necessary means might be "risking horrifically violent death at the hands of militias and/or the state" but strangely unwilling to consider that they might be "doing the dishes" or "making common cause with winemoms"

last person out the door at the Department of Education needs to rm -rf * the student loan database, please

Hi friends 👋 My new paper argues that datafication reproduces market-solutionist modes of governance. I draw parallels between new data policies in the US healthcare industry - and the governance of climate change through markets + data. Check it out, #datagovernance nerds!

Some thoughts on the disappointing result of Philly’s DC33 strike (the IG version has captions: www.instagram.com/reel/DL6ApRi...)

every example of how AI could be useful is like “if you were eating cereal, AI could tell you what cereal you were eating”

"Unless the relationship of power between patients, health care staff, and corporations is altered, universal coverage will simply continue to funnel billions into the hands of companies eager to exploit our health for profit."

I hate that feeling when your union is shilling for the bosses. We need better leadership

What if I told you that the point of unions is to fight for the world we want, rather than to divvy up the scraps?

Tomorrow, Philly! Come stand with @afscme.bsky.social DC33 at City Hall. These municipal workers make our city work and they need a fair contract!

Much of the rural hospital system set to close has been scooped up by private equity, which has already been profiting from their destruction. PE people like Marc Rowan, head of Apollo Global, the holder of the largest portfolio of these hospitals, are a key part of the Trump coalition.

I finally got to the part of the reconciliation bill that says $25 million will be allocated for AI that will help recoup payments for ineligible Medicaid cases and I didn’t think I could be more disgusted but alas.

"Of the 29 healthcare workers in our study, 14 say they could not make a living if on-demand nursing apps were their only source of income. Four workers earn so little that they qualify for Medicare or Medicaid. Two others, rather ironically given their profession, had no health insurance at all."