It's union or bust, folks. This is expensive, we need taxes to make it happen. This is labor-led, we need need labor power to make it happen. Same dynamic in primary and secondary ed, in hospitals, in libraries, in childcare, etc etc

it's ok to not be polite

ooh, extremely open-source e-reader project!! "Open Book Touch is yours in a way most devices aren’t. The battery is one you can swap yourself. The library is one you load yourself. Nothing phones home, and nobody can reach in to delete a book you own." www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specif...

yes!! it absolutely does not have to be this way!

immediate pre-order

A message for the class of 2026: We need more friction!

"Ok I know about all these harms of generative AI. But what about when their coding tools are actually useful? I built this amazing thing that wouldn't have existed otherwise, what do you think about that?" I've had a lot of these conversations with socially-aware engineers and I have thoughts: 🧵

Reading a lot of speculative fiction where the preface is like "we must tell our own stories of hope, activism is world-building" and then the stories are like "yes, the plague after the fourth nuclear war had worsened the racism in Impoverishment City. But we never stopped dancing."

Super excited to be speaking tomorrow at my alma mater! axl.hmc.edu/conference.h... The keynote I'll be giving is a talk I've been developing for quite a while— phrases like "AI Ethics" have come to mean a *lot* of different things. How do we actually orient ourselves in tech ethics conversations?

Also big props to Yemariam Mamo (www.yemariam.com) and @paulinewee.bsky.social for this gorgeous design 🤩

So excited to finally announce this project! This has been such a labor of love from the whole team and I'm so pleased to see how it turned out 🥹❤️

"we know the mechanistic structure of such models because we designed and built them" thank youuuuu

This Wednesday! 🎉⬇️

“the data center fight, with farmers and environmentalists and indigenous and working class people side by side, is an opportunity to grow and catalyze working class power. Fighting data centers is where good AI governance begins, not ends.” — @bcmerchant.bsky.social

I wanted to share a blackout poem I made at the last Possible Futures workshop bc it captures how I feel a lot of the time: "I'm often accused of being an optimist, and it's true As angry as I may be As disappointed as I may be My heart is a strategic opening" [excavated from a Reagan speech]

New workshop next week, this time in New York! ⬇️

become ungovernable. install benches sfbabc.org

public bathrooms that are accessible to all: a simple, necessary, revolutionary ask that we can all work on making happen right now

Psst I'm over making videos on ig now @dylantechnofutures, follow me and you can catch great content such as: me ranting about "critical" Substack bros shilling for the Torment Nexus in their hand-wringing thinkpieces while walking my dog www.instagram.com/reel/DXKz5ty...

I'm still thinking about one of my favorite tech demos from SXSW this year. Are you also stressed about the e-waste of single-use vapes getting tossed every day? Turns out, you can turn them into rechargeable, universal tool/e-bike batteries!! Other things are possible ✨ 2ndchancemnd.com

Lots of us in the tech critical space get hit with the "do you even code bro" "do you even understand how this stuff works" all the time... meanwhile:

I'll be running another virtual Possible Futures workshop as part of the Refugees in AI event ⬇️

🔇🔇🔇 On Friday April 17th (9am PDT/5pm CET/7pm EAT), we'll have a virtual event introducing our Refugees, Migrants and AI research program which centers the lived experiences of refugees and migrants and puts power back into their hands🧵 ☘️☘️☘️ Register at www.eventbrite.com/e/refugees-a...

PNW folks, please consider joining us at PDX 350 for an in-person art-making workshop. @dylnbkr.bsky.social and I will lead this event, designed to prompt us to imagine alternative technofutures and be in community at such difficult times. Registration/Info: www.eventbrite.com/e/dair-data-...

If you need a 1-hour break from doomscrolling, I recommend this interview with Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, the creator of BlackTransArchive.com. Art can challenge us, hold us accountable, AND still give us hope. postgame.substack.com/p/video-game...

Got another workshop coming up this weekend in Portland! ✨

File under "a lot of damage isn't irreversible and other things are possible" ⬇️

I had an experience in a meeting today which showed how old school note taking can actually get you ahead of the game. The meeting involved a document that's about 400 pages long. It's exactly the kind of thing that AI fans would suggest should be summarized by AI. Instead...

Game developers share their deliberately crude placeholders to make the point that AI illustration for placeholders isn't offensive, it's poor practice because it could make it into production. kotaku.com/crimson-dese...

So happy to bring this event to Oregon with @dylnbkr.bsky.social 🥹

New in-person workshop incoming, this time co-hosted with @datasociety.bsky.social in Portland, OR! Saturday, April 11, 1pm-3pm at 350 PDX. For tickets and more info, head over to Eventbrite ⬇️ www.eventbrite.com/e/dair-data-...

see? here's the thing. A lot of people are like, the earth is fucked, it's beyond salvation, it's hit the tipping point, but time and time again we see that if we just fucking fixed the problem, it rebounds so incredibly fast. Imagine what could be done if people actually cared

every time somebody promotes something like that all I can see is this toy from like 2009

Said it last year when this article came out, this is why "just brainstorming" is still impactful bsky.app/profile/dyln... See: gizmodo.com/chatgpts-pol...

can't roll my eyes enough at the QuitGPT initiative telling people to switch to Anthropic as the "more ethical" option. we gotta raise our standards for the alternatives we imagine for ourselves y'all

If you still want to spend several $$$ on tacky sunglasses, consider instead: www.reflectacles.com (This whole fiasco did inspire me to go see what people in anti-surveillance fashion have been up to lately and it is kinda fun ⬇️)

Very much builds on the weird notion that coding (or STEM) is somehow the hardest and most complex discipline, a true aptitude for which little boys are granted at age 12 and the rest of us can only ever hope to emulate

"I have seen the word “flawed” used to describe it. As shipped and on a basic technical level this is true, but spiritually it is not." Honestly, I want to reclaim the idea of "personalized" tech to refer to stuff like this. aftermath.site/xteink-x4-ch...

This whole thread is 🎯 If you've written software with a team, you know that most of the time, most of the work is having meetings sorting out minutiae. & even in the coding, SO much work is in the testing, maintaining, documenting— where "vibes" won't cut it.

god a total aside but if the longtermists are sooo preoccupied with the hypothetical lives of billions of people in the distant future, why can't they be obsessed with like, ending single-use plastic production 😭

Across the US, people fed up with Flock cameras surveilling their communities, and with local governments that are often unwilling to listen to concerns over privacy violations and ICE data sharing practices, are taking matters into their own hands—and tearing them down.

A scrolling break of artistic delight: I went to a trans art show/zine fair and got some new gems for my zine collection! Wanted to share a few of my favorites 🧵 (and stay for some Dylan lore at the end)

truly! take it from me, an engineer with many lefty engineering friends, there are many of us writing longingly about high-speed rail and building stuff like this www.hackster.io/news/a-porta...

incredible, no notes

🧵 1/ It’s hard to find hope amidst so much collapse. But in the wreckage of today’s crises, people are also powering solutions — and The 51st, backed by the community of D.C., is one of them. Will you help us build a local newsroom that a billionaire can’t break?

sigh

I wanted to write more about this recent piece of art I love from a few weeks back. Quili.ai, or, a town's ambitious initiative to save its water from AI. Want a picture of a dog eating spaghetti? Ask Benji. 🧵 (h/t to @karenhao.bsky.social for posting about this initially)

@timnitgebru.bsky.social tells us how “frugal AI” is actually an old concept—what’s new is the billionaire pipe dream of building a machine god. www.themaybe.org/reframing-im...

Ok technically this is only half not in English but I will always take the opportunity to plug one of my fave artists, if you don't listen to Lana Lubany she's a Palestinian artist and her music is SICK www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q701...