A genuinely alarming piece in the NYT about how the developers, scientists and assorted techbros behind "AI companions"/"synthetic care" do not even know or understand the potential harms of the tech they're developing but they're too greedy to stop themselves from developing it.

can't find a single *local* #ROC TV or print clip covering this! (plz send if you see one!) more info: www.yahoo.com/entertainmen...

great performances! (folks who didn't watch the [sadly separate] signed stream may not know that the halftime show was signed in Puerto Rican Sign Language by a Puerto Rican deaf interpreter who tours with Bad Bunny!)

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Every morning I wake up with a hollow anger that I have been enrolled, as a university worker, into a long-term objective of “enhancing” AI integration (“where appropriate”) into my undergraduate teaching

just finished @thewaroncars.bsky.social 'Life After Cars' - so good, myth-busting and oriented towards action + community building. excited to co-host a book club discussion w/ local walk/bike grp at library next month and dream up next steps for our (car-centric 😭) town

how your email finds me (until everything starts up again tmw...)

not exactly a resolution but read a lot of poetry + cut off a foot of hair to welcome in the new year

This book is titled “Disabling Intelligences” for many reasons. First, because so-called “AI” is built from historical commitments to the excision of disability from the classification of humanity. link.springer.com/book/10.1007/9…

kid#2 found a US history book in the little free lib nearby. it seemed ... off from even the first page. looked up the pub-- turns out it's a phonics reader published by a higher ed institution that doesn't allow women to wear pants on campus

👀👀👀

OTD in 1950, Judy Wajcman was born. A pioneering sociologist and feminist theorist, Wajcman reshaped the philosophy and sociology of technology by showing how technological systems are deeply entwined with gender, power, and social organization. 1/

tis the season (meals based around chex mix)

the pond is frozen

It’s an incredible success of ADA+IDEA: many disabled students can make it to college now. We should be thrilled to have student pool that better reflects society and shows the benefits of inclusion and accommodations in k-12. Celebrate that we have so many disabled students! This is a win.

We need to be able to see that the line "accommodations have gone too far" is an expression of the ableist notion that disabled students do not belong in higher ed. Its fundamentally an anxiety about the fact that disabled students get an "advantage" over abled students.

night walk in the snow

stumbled upon in the woods

went to wonderful talk by @maryfissell.bsky.social on the history of abortion that had the audience reflecting, making lots of connections, even laughing-- thanks to @slobogin.bsky.social and Corner Society for organizing

My doctoral dissertation, ‘Chasing flames: Racial capitalism in fire ecology research and praxis,’ is finally online! yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/items/9c832f...

a tree I met today

New OnlineFirst article: "Design, Disability, and Critical Pedagogy in STS" by Kaitlin Stack Whitney, Kristoffer Whitney, Katie Healey, Jessica Hardin, Anna Carter, Angeline Hamele, + Lee Smith @kstackwhitney.bsky.social #criticalSTS #pedagogy #technoableism journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

first snow of the season

these bubs are everywhere around now

rust belt riverway

spending the time change extra hour figuring out if the thing found in the woods is bone or rock 🤔

look down

looking down

look up

look up

ecology of a half dead mall

took a long walk in the woods. saw a red tail take a squirrel.

this is the website for elder millenials with humanities degrees. everyone has done the reading on why people invest meaning in public buildings. you can’t fool me

If you want a good laugh, you will find Reuters' AI assistant pop up the minute you click on this link from Reuters about how AI assistants make widespread errors about the news

yellow was the color of the day

someone left william gibson quotes in my office mailbox 🤔

As a deaf person with a deaf kid, I'm the first to admit IDEA isn't perfect. I fight people's (often willful) misinterpretations of the Least Restrictive Environment every day. Just gave a lecture at BU about how change is needed. Deleting all legal oversight in the middle of the night isn't it.

If you are a supporter and reader of @contingent-mag.bsky.social one of the biggest things you can do to help us at the moment is get this CFP to the NTT folks in your life. The fracturing of social media has made it very difficult to get the word out esp. to adjuncts and VAPs.

the sidewalk has questions for passerby

@rebeccapscales.bsky.social lolsob

saw the poster for @mw-m.bsky.social upcoming Conable Futures lecture and cackled, very excited: "Thanatocapitalism, or, the death drive of complacency and accumulation in the Anthropocen"

hey buddy

welp, just got a peer review probably written by AI (comments on things not in the paper and full of headers/bullet point lists not in the review Qs). sucks that student-led work is treated so poorly by colleagues.

sigh. (seen in a kid toy section of store)

Oct is when the reality of a changing climate and local traditions are in stark contrast. Stuff starts "closing for winter" and it's 80 degrees out.

a beautiful if alarmingly warm fall day in #ROC

welp, a new first - scheduling a guest speaker months ago + realizing today, the day of the visit, that I scheduled them not for the class time 😱🙃😭