Any tech that doesn’t help directly address ongoing genocides, income inequality, the climate crisis, and the rise of global fascism is nonsense and should not be funded.

As an aside, if any editor out there wants to pay me to write a piece on why measuring the immense social and environmental impacts of AI is getting us nowhere, and how we can reframe the discourse, I have a number of things brewing. Plus I’m poor and need some extra cash plzzzz.

Maxine Berg shows how the “nimble fingers” stereotype first arose in the early Industrial Revolution as a way for managers to de-skill the labor of women workers. It was also used to exoticize labor of Navajo semiconductor manufacturers at Shiprock in the 60s. The term has a long sordid history.

It’s The Rizzler.

In addition to the plagiarism, energy use, and general deterioration of critical thinking, AI (as currently deployed) is a less an existential risk to humanity, and more a management ideology that begets extreme wealth consolidation and labor exploitation.

AI is a plagiarism engine built on stolen data, exploited labour, and enviro harm. Marketed as “intelligent,” it erodes critical thinking, empathy, and causes psychological harm. Run by authoritarian billionaires, it’s used for surveillance, profiling, and genocide—whether it works or makes up shit.

Notice they went with the RED lightsaber

🤌🤌🤌🤌 www.404media.co/nfts-that-co...

This is a fantastic piece, and exactly what I try to impart to my students. Things can, and should be different. The first step in this long and arduous process is imagination, pure and simple.

I love how @zgtcooper.bsky.social uses his ethnographic work in Greenland to take down the vacuous concept of the Network State, which is so detached from land and the people who live in a place, with tech bros grafting AI generated crypto fascist nightmares onto topographies they don’t understand

A sneak peek at histories of environmental justice and transnational solidarity, from Oakland to Taiwan, we’ll be talking about on Saturday in my fireside chat with @alexis-madrigal.bsky.social and @xrw.bsky.social as part of SF Climate Week

In his essay for our series “The Cloud is Dead,” D&S affiliate @zgtcooper.bsky.social examines resource extraction in the Arctic and how fantasies of the Network State run counter to the reality of life in Greenland. datasociety.net/points/the-n...

It’s Earth Week! In this new series, members of our research network explore how communities have addressed the unequal power dynamics between tech production and deployment, and how tech impacts people’s everyday lives and the environment around them. datasociety.net/points/the-c...

THE NETWORK STATE AND TOPOLOGICAL FETISHISM IN GREENLAND The Cloud is Dead: A Series on Living with Legacies of Resource Extraction By ZANE GRIFFIN TALLEY COOPER datasociety.net/points/the-n...

My pal @zgtcooper.bsky.social with a great piece on Greenland and the nitwit Dryden Brown attn: @gilduran.com datasociety.net/points/the-n...

The Cloud is Dead! Spread the word! Through the lens of an experimental farm in South Greenland, I advocate for a shift from what I call the "topological fetishism" of tech industry imaginaries, toward a more local, situated idea of technological futures. datasociety.net/points/the-n...

At the top of Earth Week, we are launching this series of essays for @datasociety.bsky.social Points, The Cloud is Dead: Living with Legacies of Resource Extraction with contributions from @xrw.bsky.social, @zgtcooper.bsky.social, Jen Liu, and Ana Carolina de Assis Nunes, with an intro by me

In today’s episode of “Maps are political objects,” someone has labeled El Salvador’s CECOT prison as a “D3ATH CAMP” on Google Maps

Coming out of an unexpected hibernation to encourage y’all at @appliedanthro.bsky.social to come talk with us about the increasingly complex relationships between data infrastructures, energy, and place! Wednesday, just before dinner. Be there, or be somewhere else!

I'm very excited to join @dawnnafus.bsky.social, @tamigraph.bsky.social, Ana Carolina de Assis Nunes, and Tony Salvador in Portland for my very first @appliedanthro.bsky.social conference! I will be talking about data center development in rural North Country, New York.

FYI: It IS being studied, but it has little to do with tech, and mostly to do with labor, precarity, and austerity.

🐈

This was only 1 year ago???

Oh fuck yeah. Inject this into my veins.

Old crone in the woods predicted the ruin of the realm and also that the future is in SaaS products that are capable of serving enterprise SMB and b2c customers with the emphasis on smb. We pulled her cottage down.

Brb gonna 3-D print a useless plastic brick and sell it for $116 million.

This is somehow a win for democracy. Go Birds 🦅

Hey there #filmstudies #filmsky folks! I'm designing an avant-garde cinema seminar/production course for the Fall and I'm wondering if anyone has any example syllabi for something like this? Also, who is doing the best experimental work these days? Any recs?

Really cool that federal funding for basically any kind of research that isn’t “AI-blockchain for whites” is just completely over now.

I feel like Titus Andronicus isn’t talked about enough, but they put out at least 2 of the best rock albums in the last 15 or so years (this and The Monitor). They’re ind of like if Green Day were Bruce Springsteen covering The Replacements. titusandronicus.bandcamp.com/album/the-mo...

@thelever.bsky.social with an insightful dive into the deep entanglements between Trump and the tech industry’s entanglements in Greenland. Even more, for them, 🇬🇱 is a blank surface on which to project and build TESCREAL technofuedalist ideologies. www.levernews.com/trumps-tech-...

@eryk.bsky.social spittin’: “AI is not only a technology, it's a new excuse to try bad ideas again – a spectacle designed as pretext to resist empathy and create emotional distance from consequences.” Straight into the syllabus 🫡 mail.cyberneticforests.com/a-fork-in-th...

Omg I can now fly direct from Ottawa to Nuuk. This is incredible.

Does anyone have access to this article? I YEARN to read it! www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Finally finishing Battlestar Galactica and man does this show fall off hard after New Caprica. It’s almost a completely different show.

On day one Trump's EO said we were harmful to kids. On day two, it said we were dishonorable and disloyal. On day three, it said we were unAmerican. Transgender people have been a part of this country for centuries. We are not going anywhere. Do not comply with these EOs, they are not law.

📣Led by @tamigraph.bsky.social, w @xrw.bsky.social & @zgtcooper.bsky.social, our new climate program will demonstrate the impact AI & other data-driven technologies are having on the environment & communities. It's a critical time & we’re excited to get to work. 1/4 datasociety.net/announcement...

I'm elated to formally announce the launch of @datasociety.bsky.social's new research program: Climate, Technology, & Justice! @tamigraph.bsky.social is leading this charge along with myself and @xrw.bsky.social as research affiliates. I can't wait to get started! datasociety.net/announcement...

Meanwhile, on Facebook…

Looking forward to congressional and senate Dems posting all day about how someone should do something about all this law-breaking.

Has a single university president made any kind of statement on the federal grant and loan pause?? How has no one said anything?

Anxious Nation Waits For Democratic Party To Do Something, Anything In Face of Republican Assault On Life And Liberty

If you’re in the US and you’d like to know what projects and vital services federal grants currently fund in your state, you can search here: www.usaspending.gov And you can find the contact information for your elected representatives here: www.usa.gov/elected-offi... They need to hear from you.

"Meta is building a 2GW+ data center that is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan," 🫠🫠🫠https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/meta-plans-60-65bn-capex-on-ai-data-center-boom-will-bring-1gw-of-compute-online-this-year/

Omg this looks amazing. This is 100% my shit.

Some of the OPM memos ordering hiring freezes, return to offices, etc were directly written by people who worked on Project 2025, according to metadata left embedded in the memos www.404media.co/opm-memos-to...

One of the things to know about edtech is that many, many people involved in it have no experience teaching, and particularly not at the grade level the intervention is designed to target. They’re tech guys who think tech is Very Hard and teaching is a skill-free avocation for ladies.

My department is hiring TWO assistant teaching professors of media studies! This is a great opportunity for people who are passionate teachers eager to explore new approaches to cultivating media literacy among diverse students. Learn more & apply here: jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...