Delightful

NEW: xAI appears to have added more than 500 MW (!) of unpermitted gas turbines to its Colossus 2 campus in a matter of weeks, according to internal emails between the company and regulators

Time again to send my thanks to Caleb McDaniel, wherever/whoever you are, for this extremely handy syllabus date generator tool! wcaleb.rice.edu/syllabusmake...

I'm super excited about this book!!! mitpress.mit.edu/978026205136...

There's definitely a weird dynamic in the interplay between academics and journalists where you learn that something just happened because a bunch of reporters blow up your inbox looking for a comment. I've been offering a lot of hot takes on the 'sovereign' AI Cloud that got announced in Vancouver!

Even when Microsoft says "we pinkie swear we will actually pay local taxes" that doesn't mean that the whole infrastructure chain is playing by the same rules!

My chat on AI-as-trash is up at The Informed Educator podcast! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a... I chat with my very nice colleagues Lauren + Anne (in a beautiful forest) about the values of a deflationary, grumpy approach to LLMs in teaching & learning contexts.

reference.mp4

Very cool multilingual CFP for a special issue to be published in JEM! machineagencies.milieux.ca/cfp-model-an... "Model and the Reactor: AI as and against Environmental Media"

I have a new favourite website that I will never visit: julianoliver.com/projects/sci... scienceispoetry.net

Thanks I hate it

Very cool conference coming up in Vienna on the 'residues' of AI. I'm looking forward to it!

Yeah I don't like it!

I was lucky to write the lead article for a special issue of Academe on AI in the Corporate University. In "What does AI do?" I offer a provisional balance sheet of this technology's effects on our work, our finances, and our management, in a moment of rising fascist attacks on higher education.

Back in America and celebrating its cultural traditions the only way I know how: enjoying a delicious arepa and eating a rotissery chicken with my bare hands

This looks like an amazing job! If I hadn’t managed to find a great place to land in France, I’d be applying. Check it out!!

Thinking #AI through its future ruins: We just published Anne Pasek’s lovely ride of a keynote from the Before Ruins #STS conference, which took place at Ruhr University in #Bochum. With hot beats by Mace. www.youtube.com/watch @apasek.bsky.social#AI#STS#Bochumepa@[email protected]

I made the switch to Vivaldi! Firefox was getting fucky and into fights with too many websites, plus its dev team is too enthusiastic about AI. It's been pretty smooth sailing so far! Zotero plug in even works.

RAYE dropped a whole album of femme anthems. Today we pay our respects. youtu.be/BjqAX_cCNwY?...

gotta keep iterating on the STS program shirt design, probably

I spent the past week absolutely kicked in the ass by a bug, in which my only constructive actions were social isolation and marathoning both seasons of The Pitt. This is now a Dr. King fan account. Fabulous stuff Mel; I hope you succeed in finding a hobby next season.

On the value of actually tracking corporate sustainability pledges, rather than just reporting the headline and assuming it's going to be fine...

"Users can choose between light, medium, and heavy sabotage modes depending on how closely their boss is observing the process, and the agent rewrites the material into generic, non-actionable language that would produce a less useful AI stand-in." Heavy sabotage mode, let's go

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... What's up with AI and energy? In this article we explore the growing hunger of AI for energy and the growing intertwining of the energy industry and the AI infrastructure investment through power purchase agreements, especially for nuclear power

Later in the month I'll be in Copenhagen for this 2 day workshop on using zines in (place-based) research and teaching. Zines are fun! This will be fun! sustainablefutures.ku.dk/events/2026/...

I'm joining in this very cool panel today on data centre resistance to share some thoughts on what to do when the AI bubble pops and potentially leaves a lot of empty data centres behind: bits-und-baeume.org/posts/policy...

www.trainjazz.com TRAIN JAZZ

I'm filling in for Paris Marx (because we need to maintain Canadian representation levels) at this very cool panel on data centre resistance at the Weizenbaum Institute on Monday. Catch you in Berlin, or on the Livestream? www.weizenbaum-institut.de/veranstaltun...

New special issue of academic zines! journals.library.unt.edu/index.php/un...

Starting in an hour!

ACM FAccT lines up with a free (!) Angine de Poitrine concert at Montreal Jazz Fest so I want to see all you AI/big data watchdogs getting wild with these weirdos montrealjazzfest.com/en/program/a...

Hey Canadians/AI skeptics/Data Centre Resistors: Registration is now open for the AI ^ Civil Society Summit planned for Montreal on May 22 It looks to be excellent. I'm going! Let's hang out and power map/geek out. aicivilsociety.ca

I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow

Y'all got 19 days left to dream up your cool research zine pitches for our conferences. Ok, you have even more days that that (we're sweetie pies when it comes to extensions) but maybe you need that 19 day motivation?

"Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution" is published today. Readers with US mailing address can get a 30% discounted copy with this discount code "MITP30" for orders made today (Mar 31) on this PenguinRandomHouse link: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/814367...

The People's Consultation on AI has released the submissions it received! Posted below and available in a shared dropbox. I took a peak as they rolled in, and it was really heartening reading how much it meant to people to have this chance to engage with the issues & provide meaningful input. #PCAI

Yani Kong will be reading from our chapter “Reimagining Networks: Speculative Thinking for Low-Carbon Research Networks” at the April 6 event. Looking forward to it!

This is really very good and reminds me yet again of how we need to start pulling together an Actual Political Economy of AI.

This is a hell of a good article. It lays out the history of failures leading up to the horrific bombing of Iranian school children and demonstrates that what they have in common isn’t any single technology but the unreflective push to speed up targeting selection at the expense of getting it right.

Stockholm: Join us April 1st for a seminar on AI before the ruins! Anne Pasek, visiting us from Trent University where she is associate professor, will dive into what might happen to the massive rollout of datacentres when the AI bubble bursts www.kth.se/anthropocene...

"What you made with Sora mattered" is one of the least true things that has ever been written

We're doing an online book launch for our new book on climate action, equity, and research methods. Register for whichever date works best for you + tune in for some short readings, further musings, and good company :) April 6: trentu.zoom.us/meeting/regi... April 7: trentu.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

🎥 Video essay “Latent Heat” is out now in [in]Transition. It reappropriates technical imagery from the digital cooling industry—turning it into a critical tool. intransition.openlibhums.org/article/id/1...

once you learn how much training data images of women come from porn, it illuminates so much. this is more than bad to look at, it's the rot of misogyny in full display. arxiv.org/pdf/2110.01963

Angine de Poitrine, please help me meet my deadlines this week www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoCs...

It's Open Panel submissions season for 4S and @thehanopticon.bsky.social putting on a sweet one!

this is in no sense how it should have happened. but it is precisely because we find ourselves in a situation that requires war, death, and destruction to get well positioned political actors behind accelerating energy transition that we should demolish fossil capital as decisively as we can

Read on for interesting geopolitical constellations plus weirdly gorgeous shipping container glow up photos?