All of this stuff is fundamentally about the erasure of consent. At the core of these products is the assertion that your very existence is a tacit agreement to feed the machine.

Such a good point. Reminds me of bit in Woolf’s Between the Acts about newspapers. I argue she makes this same point about faux engagement that replaces real community or political action. I hadn’t made the connection to LLM transactions. I keep thinking Woolf’s critiques are imp for 21st cent tech.

The more the hype-guys push “consciousness” narratives and forced adoption, the more grounds individuals, unions, and institutions have for conscientious objection.

If I can’t unionize Claude then it’s not conscious, next question

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his substack depends on his not understanding it".

Gender Studies is the most vindicated academic field of all time

A few things I've learnt from writing >4,000 word pieces: - They tend to be more popular than my short pieces! - They're more definitive - like reference material, not a hot take. - Not everyone will reach the end, and that's okay. - Write so that the people who do find it incredibly satisfying.

Harper to the judge: "Your driver's license doesn't list your height and weight at birth. It doesn't list where you used to live. It identifies who you are now."

My bet is they don’t actually believe this crap, it’s just something they say for hype purposes because it makes for a clickbaity headline. Still, “maybe we’ve enslaved a conscious mind which is suffering” is a pretty weird flex.

Thinking a lot more about lineage-based documentation right now than I ever expected to on a random Friday in March.

SHOULD THE U.S BLOT OUT THE SUN AND USHER IN AN AGE OF ETERNAL DARKNESS? - Gallup 2/20/26-3/5/26 NO - 41% YES - 38% UNSURE - 21%

Anyone have a favorite or go-to text about citation praxis good for undergrads? Thinking about community, knowledge construction and sharing, etc.

I see this attitude a lot among disabled people in the west, and I think the issue of gAI demands critical thinking and choice from disabled people, too. We aren’t exempt from doing so because of our access needs, all the more so because disability is so often used to justify tech monstrosities

This sounds like an ad, but it's about murder.

Guardian posted today genai principles and even the gentle doubt here is completely off planet bonkers "However ‘intelligent’ AI may appear, it doesn’t experience the world as we do" WHAT IT DOESN'T EXPERIENCE ANYTHING AT ALL NEITHER DOES MICROSOFT EXCEL FMD www.theguardian.com/help/insideg...

Amazing site here via @timnitgebru.bsky.social - a map of big tech influence on media and media companies. imo this goes a decent way to explaining why coverage of AI specifically has been so shockingly bad recently. Very useful resource!! nananwachukwu.github.io/media-captur...

Daily reminder that calling ai dead labor and stolen labor is literal.

If you can provide $3k checks for the entire middle class of America by taxing 900 people a little more, not only should you do it, but you should take it as a signal that your monetary system is broken

Thursday @ AWP 2026! Join Carmen Maria Machado, Umair Kazi, @vauhinivara.bsky.social, and myself as we discuss how to Resist AI in Writing and Teaching. Sponsored by @authorsguild.org. 12:10 PM in Room 310. See you in Baltimore! authorsguild.org/event/awp-20...

Nothing easier than making online software not exist, it's not like when they had to get all the lawn darts off the store shelves

I am really curious about the lack of consent around all of this. Has anyone communicated with folks at Grammarly about the use of their name, intellectual “likeness,” or intellectual property?

This morning in WBUR Today: Cambridge not only leaves X, but bans all city departments from using the platform Also: — Last night's election results in Mass. and beyond — Museums for All expands in Boston — Shrewsbury's record recycling grant www.wbur.org/news/2026/03... @wbur.org

Something I find telling is how frequently and reflexively AI boosters resort to cliches to make their case for its inevitability (“it’s here to stay!” “you can‘t put the genie back in the bottle!”). It’s rhetorical hand-waving, what you do when you cannot in fact make a strong argument

AI-generated artwork is officially not eligible for copyright protection after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the appeal. The court ruled that a work must have a human creator to qualify for copyright protection. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

This is what I get when I do click it. Not particularly helpful or useful suggestion.

Ok I think I know what team I’m rooting for now

I think more folks are going to rely on the AI summaries in internet searches or bypass internet search altogether and go straight to chatbots bc internet search is so bad and getting worse. It’s that image of a footpath across grass to bypass sidewalks, except the sidewalks are covered in sh*t.

“I had never even changed my sex marker. All I did was change my name in December, so that’s the only way they could’ve flagged me.”

Exactly this. And turning to the marketing language of the tech companies to “explain” it.

Absolutely! As someone explained it to me once, it's designed for engagement, not accuracy.

Yes, of course. Because LLMs are being built by people who made social networks before, which were algorithms designed to amplify content that would reflect back your priors in another person’s voice. It’s ex-Facebook product managers making ChatGPT! Except more emotionally addictive this time.

"I apologize for this; I was attempting to visualize what a search result should look like based on the data I believed I had" setting aside the programmed misleading use of first person, THIS IS WHAT IT ALWAYS DOES

Kafka understood that an even greater indignity than being turned into a giant insect was still being required to go to work afterward.

As terrible as Harrelson’s introduction was, I was not expecting Harrison Ford’s speech to be that good. Maybe that was his plan all along?

Not to jinx it, but SNL was good.

The first self-identified Luddite I ever met was an IT manager.

But you can only slip on so many Brownshirt banana peels and claim it's all just a bunch of oopsies

So very 2026

To kick off Women's History Month, I'm sharing a booklet that we made for our Radical Black Women of Harlem walking tour. It's free to download and you can organize your own self-guided tours using the booklet. bcrw.barnard.edu/publications... - made this when I was a researcher in residence.

My neighbor saw me struggling to get into the building and built me a ramp 🥹

The nightmarish combination of nuclear weapons and AI no longer feels like some far-fetched science fiction to me. Yesterday was the first day I truly contemplated the danger of nuclear holocaust in my lifetime. It will be hard to use AI to cultivate “co-intelligence” if we are all dead.

Congrats to @ncaaup.bsky.social & all who fought against this surveillance policy that would've allowed admin to hijack microphones in the classroom for secret recordings. This move would've chilled classroom discussion & suppressed students' willingness to ask questions & take intellectual risks.

#tdih 1954: Green Feather Movement launched. Creative student effort to expose & resist #RedScare attempt by Indiana Textbook Commission to ban Robin Hood from all school books for "promoting communism because he stole from the rich to give to the poor." 🧵 ⬇️ www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/gr...

This is a devastating story. I don’t understand why there are still people who think this has potential for “partnership” in schools. It’s like saying cocaine should be adopted for optimizing learning, or leeches are partners for medical practice.

Watching PONIES on Peacock about Soviet surveillance schemes … sponsored by Meta glasses ads.

The timing of the initial strikes is unusual. Often you see these types of operations launched in the pre-dawn hours at the target site partly to limit civilian casualties. This operation began at the beginning of a work and school day, with millions of adult civilians and children in harms way.

"Human-caused warming has already melted so much ice in Greenland and Antarctica that Earth’s rotation has slowed and its axis has shifted, slightly altering the length of the day and disrupting the precision of satellite tracking, global positioning systems and timekeeping."