BREAKING: In AAUP et al v. Trump (wall-to-wall union lawsuit challenging the administration’s unlawful use of TItle VI to reshape the University of California system), the faculty and staff of the UC system WON!!! We were granted our preliminary injunction! @aaup.org

Amelia Acker: "Each chapter introduces data archiving processes that relate to the evolution of data sovereignty...: from magnetic tape + timesharing computer models from the 1950s,... to file structures + virtual containers in cloud-based information services over the past 40 yrs" — open access!

What a fun "Ghostwriters" issue of Limn released at time when we reflect on seasons' passing and other haunting concerns, featuring Tamara Kneese, Brooklyne Gipson + more. It was truly a pleasure to write this piece with Jeremy Butman on the epistemic function of giants. limn.press/article/ther...

In the media coverage of Amazon layoffs this week, how many of the headlines and press hits conveyed the point below?… or are most media outlets lazily providing a completely different message to the public? www.cnn.com/2025/10/28/b...

Thank you to the Daily Bruin for reporting on the latest of a string of big-ticket IT failures (article from May, but ever-relevant, esp in light of current efforts to centralize IT) dailybruin.com/2025/05/13/o...

🚨NEW PAPER ALERT 🚨 @tamigraph.bsky.social @briana-v.bsky.social and I discuss wellness chatbots, their labor implications, & "private vibes" vs "privacy". We call for critical human-AI communication scholarship that takes into account context & political economy: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

From an Amazon Employees for Climate Justice statement: “They’re pushing this narrative that AI is transformative and that’s why they’re making these cuts. But leadership is spending 100 billion this year alone on the new data centers; they have to find that money elsewhere,” said one AWS engineer.

"Cooperatively run structures are a path forward when we're seeing systems collapse." Proud to be one of 6(+???) worker-led newsrooms in @tinynewscollective.bsky.social. Here's how to join us, feat. interviews with our co-founder @maddiepoore.bsky.social and @soleilho.com of @coyotemedia.org:

It's not going to be fun when the bubble pops (and it won't even make AI go away). Disaster capitalism will be ready. I think we need to figure out what it would mean for us to get ready in turn.

New preprint alert! 🚨 “Let Them Eat Large Language Models: Artificial Intelligence and Austerity in the Neoliberal University”

Please understand that the only reason this has been released is because of the UCLA faculty association who filed a request and challenged the refusal in court. If you are a UC faculty member, join your FA!

Together we can push back on big brother software & more! cucfa.org/2025/10/lett...

Great article—AI in higher ed is about the crisis of higher ed, long in the making. Cites the AAUP report on AI. we are seeing cracks in the inevitability framing of AI—the only way out of this is together!

Belgian AI scientists call on colleagues to keep AI out of the classroom. apache.be/2025/10/24/-...

UC faculty and the @aaup.org demand the end of mandatory surveillance software use across the UC system. The future belongs to people, not to big brother! www.science.org/content/arti...

Actual panopticon.

"unless you are building war tools for a US government program" *glares at the university of michigan's planned billion-dollar AI datacenter project in collaboration with los alamos national laboratories*

Next Weds 10/29 at 7 PM, we're having a party and panel at Busboys Takoma DC for @jacobsilverman.com's Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley. All welcome! Because we're in DC, Corey Frayer, Sandeep Vaheesan, and I will join Jacob to talk DOGE, crypto, and the tech right.

brother it *is* the trap

In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.

On November 18, join organizers and experts for a cross-issue panel discussion exploring how workers and communities are pushing back: From Our Workplaces to Our Communities: Stop the AI Surveillance Pipeline Now! bit.ly/stopAIsurveillance

"chill is an especially harmful but efficient form of speech control, as the Administration well knows. Direct censorship is laborious, ad hoc, and happens only after the fact. Chill, by contrast, is a form of prior restraint administered by the speaker themselves out of fear"

📊 New in Big Data & Society! Lindsay Weinberg examines how Microsoft’s Power BI is reshaping Danish higher ed governance—turning students into data points, linking programs to job metrics, and pushing new forms of accountability. 🔗 Read here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

i made this meme which is better than the article:

WE WON: "This case -– perhaps the most important ever to fall w/in..this district court squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in US..have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally “yes, they do.”"

You all probably saw this already. www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

Rutgers LIS is hiring in information policy, ad here: jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/258... Applications due 10/15. Rutgers - in NJ - is a good place ot be, given the state of things. Strong union. Close to NYC and Philly. Holler if you have questions.

It is funny all these super modern rational actors have resorted to essentially divine blood lines and augury.

Must read investigation. “Now [with access to more federal databases] Ice can use this type of surveillance apparatus on anyone – not only anyone who is undocumented but anyone who this administration wants to criminalize and anyone who the administration wants to put under surveillance”

Librarians are on the front lines of dealing with the harm these systems are inflicting. www.404media.co/librarians-a...

“Educational technology has become, in its ontological infrastructures, increasingly centralised, less open and more powerful. Through GenAI, it is less truthful, less trustworthy and more epistemologically nihilistic.” @eam0.bsky.social & @steviegow.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

An important listen on the current state of higher ed and how to both defend it & build a better system in the future! TL;DR: Things are really bad, getting worse, & the only way we are going to change that is to unionize & build power together as a sector. Come organize w/ us & join @aaup.org.

The idea that we have to "encourage responsible AI usage" is a core part of the inevitability narrative driving the institutional adoption that makes people think it's worth trying out. it contributes to the very problem it supposedly tries to solve. we can't let it go unchallenged.

"It suggests that developing a commons-based, scholar-led publishing landscape through [presses] managed by working academics cld offer a productive counterpoint to marketised systems of open access + subscription publishing [—] a counter-hegemonic project based on mutual reliance and care"

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

In this short piece, I lean on embodied cog sci to argue that we should refuse & resist llms in education (pp. 53-58) unesdoc.unesco.org/in/documentV... "the classroom is an environment where love, trust, empathy, care & humility are fostered & mutually cultivated through dialogical interactions"

"AI is not going to take your job. The people who know how to use AI will take your job.” Actually, the firms that profit from pushing AI, the VC funds that back them, and employers that want even more power and control over workers will take your job. abc7news.com/post/ai-driv...

NJ students in grades 6-12 will now learn about “the history of organized labor, notable strikes throughout history, unionization drives, and the collective bargaining process and existing legal protections in the workplace.” This is genuinely so important, and so good to see. Jersey strong, baby!!

This is the essence of the business case for using Data Fairy tech in almost all instances.

“This article shows how interlibrary loan, conceived as a form of academic traffic, played a crucial role in postwar reconstruction efforts, facilitating the xchg of resources + info among libraries… [It] focuses on the elaborate procedures librarians developed to create union catalogs.”

the full complaint is such a difficult read. but I think it's important we confront, without flinching, what's happening here www.404media.co/chatgpt-enco...

not hard to see where this is all heading www.404media.co/flock-wants-...

This is what it looks like when the UX is the product. Everything in this is interface related with no effort to talk about the underlying product because any suggestion that it was made *for* any specific task will expose how much it can't do that thing well at all. openai.com/index/helpin...

📣 Members! Join the discussion with the @aaup.org Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Academic Professions with our own @hellobrittparis.bsky.social this Wednesday! Look for an aaup member email with instructions on how to join!

Rutgers LIS is hiring in information policy, ad here: jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/258... Applications due 10/15. Rutgers - in NJ - is a good place ot be, given the state of things. Strong union. Close to NYC and Philly. Holler if you have questions.

21 arguments against AI in education in thread form below or my post here: codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2024/02/22/a...

University of Oregon is attacking its faculty and the right to tenure. Help them fight back by signing here: actionnetwork.org/petitions/fi...

More of this, please. Also this is wild: "Concerns remain, however, over the impact of the county’s three other data centers that are in different stages of development, none of which were required to go through the conditional use permitting process that allows for more community input."