Whatever you do, please don’t stop reading. Read for joy. Read for education. Read for resistance. Read banned books. Read books by marginalized authors. Read about experiences that differ from your own. Just. Keep. Reading.

Idk if everyone has seen this already, but I'm really impressed by the resources being compiled over at against-a-i.com. Assignment ideas, background reading, syllabus language, start-of-the-school-year speeches... Shout out to @annakornbluh.bsky.social @ehayot.bsky.social, this is rad.

Fascinating to be included here. I stand by what I said— it is natural for anyone to be drawn to escapism and fantastical thinking in response to fear and uncertainty. Billionaires are not immune. I'll add: Their fantasies aren't better, worthier, or truer than yours. apnews.com/article/arti...

tl;dr - I don't think coaching people on how to use ai is an effective form of harm reduction - I think we should use different messages for the people pushing AI and the people they're pushing it on - People who know better shouldn't use it or encourage others to use it

currently almost 2 hours into listening/waiting to give comment and it's been 🔥🔥🔥

The first in-person Possible Futures workshop was amazing! As I run more of these, it strikes me how many themes are so consistent: desire for ecological restoration. Connection. Autonomy. Privacy. Dignity. Leisure. Peace. Again and again, we find common ground and shared visions. 🌱

I would rather listen to 10,000 hours of annoying dudes yammering about nonsense from their garage-turned-podcast-studio tbh

DAIR is returning from a brief, institution-wide summer break, which I used as an excuse to take a break from social media as well. 10/10 would recommend.

This is profoundly bad. The data generated by NASA feeds research in many, MANY disciplines. I, for instance, am a historian, and my dissertation (now book project) uses satellite imagery as a major source for exploring the historical relationship between people and the environment.

ALL Haymarket Books are 40% off through August 22nd! ✊🏾✊🏿✊🏽

the final insult of AI is going to be forcing us all to become linux guys. we're all going to be like oh yeah downloading stuff on linux is super easy you just juice the tarball and compile the pulp in the sudo command line. not like windows where you have to click on things

unironically this. nobody is stopping these people from getting behind the most outlandish conceivable ideas! don't limit yourself!

This, very much. I have about two decades of professional tech background and I definitely understand *how* GenAI works. It is in part because I understand how it works that I would rather stick my face in a box fan than use GenAI.

Came back from a neighborhood organizing meeting where we spent some time doing imagination work. What really struck me was the somatic focus this facilitator used to open the workshop: 🧵

This from @tressiemcphd.bsky.social hit me over the head like a mallet of truth. This is the thing. This is what I’ve been trying to warn people about perfectly crystallized. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/o...

Noooo, not the "your personal carbon footprint" argument, are you serious 😭

I'm so humbled, it is officially fully booked*! Thank you so much to everyone who registered, I'm really excited to create with you 🥹 If you missed it this time around, don't worry. More are in the works! *but please feel free to join the waitlist if you're still interested!

🤖 Thanks to the many experts who responded to me to help me unpack the new landmark AI bill from Illinois! Sharing a thread of my summary of what I've learned about it and how significant it is (It's significant!!) 🧵 statescoop.com/illinois-ban...

what drives me nuts about people using chatGPT for math in particular is that wolframalpha has existed for a fucking decade and a half and people act like it never existed

Was just served this ad, great news for any researchers recently out of work! 🙃

"Speculation, as a form of situated knowledge production, can repair and reimagine the worlds that colonialism sought to destroy" 🔥🔥🔥 So very excited to check this out :)

Big news: we'll be hosting a free, IN-PERSON workshop in Seattle on September 6th! Details in the Eventbrite link. Space is very limited so be sure to reserve a spot ✨ www.eventbrite.com/e/dair-prese...

Fun announcement: I'll be running a Possible Futures workshop in-person in Seattle in a month! Details are in the event link. Space is VERY limited so go snag a seat now (they're free)! I would love to meet y'all and make art with you :) www.eventbrite.com/e/dair-prese...

New from 404 Media: we've seen and verified video of a CBP agent wearing Meta's AI glasses during immigration raid in LA. Glasses capable of recording, live-streaming, Meta plans to add facial recognition. Experts deeply concerned about this tech being abused by DHS www.404media.co/a-cbp-agent-...

Y'all remember when they used to just put cocaine & laudanum in drinks you could buy at a grocery store, & their marketing called it energizing, mood-lifting, & even outright healthy? I think about that a lot these days the more these people try to convince us every product should be jammed w/ "AI"

I say this a lot but one of the #1 reasons I fought so hard to get a job at Google was having ~$70k of debt at 21. I felt weird and conflicted about taking the job but getting that offer felt like winning the lottery. I was starting to understand what that much debt could mean and I was terrified.

Folks who work around tech ethics of some kind, what advice do you give to students about entering the field? Most people I work closely with had pretty nonlinear paths into this work, myself included.

"What we really need is a sense that life could be transformationally better" 💯

"If you’re pasting in contracts, asking legal questions, or asking [the chatbot] for strategy, you're not getting legal advice…You’re generating discoverable evidence. No attorney-client privilege. No confidentiality. No ethical duty. No one to protect you."

If you or someone you love goes to e.g. ChatGPT for random, general questions or "life advice" or whatever, PLEASE consider breaking that habit now. Be prepared for what's happening, and don't outsource any amount of your thinking, brainstorming, reasoning, or writing to these models.

The tech industry has no vested interested in ethics, only profit. They are already in the ear of educators, because the ultimate agenda are your children and ensuring that any future generations to not only use AI in any form they deem fit, but also never question why it's there.

I want this on a t-shirt so bad

Reading Empire of AI and thinking about how sooo many so-called "AI experts" popping up out of nowhere to help everyone get on board with the "AI revolution" are woefully unaware of who they're parroting, where those messages came from, and towards what end they're building. 🧵

Today in "AI slop polluting the news ecosystem", just ran into @yahoonews.com reprinting garbage from a scammy website. It reported, as fact, a gag that comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan recently posted. It's funny, but I hate that clearly no human was involved in this process in any way that matters 🫠

Public document from a big data labeling company gives hard truths about AI, makes news Or… You could just listen to academic researchers that will tell you this every day if the week

This is such an incredibly moving, important piece of work. It is something else to read an essay and know, as the words move from your brain to a deeper place within you, that it will be recognized with awards. That is not why Hanif Abdurraqib wrote this, but it is undoubtedly true.

An unbelievably prolific and brilliant human, it was such an honor to share a fellowship cohort with her. What a profound loss.

To be clear on what they're proposing: human beings using water for drinking, washing, and growing crops will be rationed. The AI datacenters will have all the water they can contaminate.

"Oh, you think AI sounds bad? Consider: what if a magical AI-powered fish could grant wishes? Doesn't sound so bad now does it"

“Out of the 82 centre stage speakers, … only five were from academia and just three came from civil society organisations. This means that what “good” means is overwhelmingly shaped, defined, and actively curated by the tech industry” w/vested interest “regardless of its risk or harm.”

Reminds me of something Danny Lavery said, about how people are experts in their own experience but they can also be wrong. Techbros get so defensive that they might be making decisions based on vibes. I hope we see more studies like this, and also rigorous qualitative studies such as ethnography

University colleagues (especially in The Netherlands) -- sign onto this open letter -- "Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia" Thank you to Olivia Guest and @irisvanrooij.bsky.social for leading on this. openletter.earth/open-letter-...

Finally finished Careless People and oooof. Lots to unpack, but what's really sitting with me is Wynn-Williams' insider perspective on what happened with Facebook in Myanmar. It was both gutting and unsurprising. Bc this is still happening. rampantly. in a *lot* of languages. 🧵

"The Trump administration, which recently froze nearly $7 billion in funding for schools, has called on industry to pony up for A.I." pretty much spells it out!

And there it is: "$23 million in funding from three leading chatbot makers: Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic" and "tech executives [who] hope A.I. will become the fourth R."

The push for more "AI" in education is fundamentally about power. It seeks to undermine care for epistemic soundness, denies student and faculty agency, erodes academic freedom, and doubles down on transactionalism. Please read the letter and consider signing.

Over the past months, I had the privilege to be part of a great team of scholars, practitioners, and data workers who developed ethical principles for academic data work requesters. These principles have now been published @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social: www.weizenbaum-institut.de/publikatione...

Gotta plug @timnitgebru.bsky.social @alexhanna.bsky.social and Asmelash Teka Hadgu's piece: www.dair-institute.org/blog/elders/ And @anikacolliernavaroli.com's excellent interview with Timnit on the subject: www.techpolicy.press/through-to-t...

For the past year, I've been working with dozens of my most admired humans on the planet to put some new thoughts to think with out in the world. Storytellers, may I present the uncensorable, decentralized Stop Surveillance Tech Copaganda Toolkit: stopcopaganda.compost.digital

There is *ample* evidence that a mostly unnamed factor in widespread LLM adoption is covid (and no, I don't mean 2020 lockdowns, I mean covid itself). Is anyone writing about this yet? Many studies have shown for years that it causes brain damage. Brain fog, trouble with language, exhaustion...