And that’s usually achieved via implicit violence or the threat of

I collected some materials on critical AI from my perspective; hope it's useful: olivia.science/ai "CAIL is as an umbrella for all the prerequisite knowledge required to have an expert-level critical perspective, such as to tell apart nonsense hype from true theoretical computer scientific claims"

Wild stuff. Wild

One of COVID’s premier researchers on Violet Affleck’s plea to take the abundant data on COVID’s continuing dangers and the need for clean air seriously, the belittling, dismissive language of the pushback, and why some of us continue to protect ourselves from the virus however we can.

“one also feels betrayed, because the repetition of genocidal violence once again dishonours the memories of loved ones lost long ago” Betrayed, and that I have betrayed. Betrayed, and that I have betrayed. www.aljazeera.com/opinions/202...

I spent the week at the police surveillance convention and let me tell you my biggest observation: The name of the game now is consolidating as much information as humanely possible from surveillance devices, the internet, other governmental data, and literally a million other places. 🧵

How many times do we have to tell these people, 1984 was not a how-to book.

Today’s good news. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

This is really bad. It won’t get the popular opposition the Kimmel incident did, but it’s way more sweeping and authoritarian. This is an effort to bring the full force of government down on any and all opposition to this administration. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

avoiding rushing out any take on this new order because I can’t tell you off the top of my head how much of it simply reiterates what Joint Terrorism Task Forces are already empowered to do? but this part leapt out, because this designation sounds possibly new: www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

2020: lol dumb libs think words are violence 2025: president trump issues memo declaring words are violence

It seems pretty consistent now that the regime has landed on the idea that speaking critically of their actions (or drawing attention to them at all) is “violence” and “terrorism”

THIS is political violence. Why haven’t all of the national political leaders decried it? @governor.ny.gov has said nothing.

Microsoft will no longer allow Israel to use its cloud services to enable its mass surveillance of occupied Palestinians – "the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza"

This is, without any exaggeration, exactly how Putin and Orbán proceeded — using antisemitism to discredit the idea of civil society and political opposition, and as an excuse to undo the rule of law. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/u...

“Acts of cowardice from the people best positioned to resist Trump’s authoritarian power grabs have made Trump seem exponentially more powerful than he actually is, sapping strength from others who might have discovered the courage to stand up.” Strongly seconded. I’d third it too if possible.

I'm going to leave this here because I even see a lot of leftists regularly speaking about 'what the country wants' when in fact NO. MOST PEOPLE DID NOT VOTE FOR THIS MAN and LESS THAN 50% of people who voted actually voted for him.

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

Benny Gantz with an op-ed in the New York Times today in which he openly states that opposition to Palestinian statehood is at the heart of the national consensus of the Israeli body politic, something that virtually all Israeli Jews agree with Netanyahu on.

Gantz claims that recognition of Palestine is an affront to the 'democratically determined consensus' of the State of Israel which rejects such a state's existence. Israel rules over 5,000,000 people who do not have the right to vote.

It's alarming how many people need to hear this: racism is not the natural and inevitable response to the presence of (the wrong number of) racialised Others. It is a learned response, and as such it is contestable and replaceable. This is anti-racism 101. Entry level stuff.

I’m hearing one academic department has over-recruited 500 students. Double the planned number and not enough staff to teach them. Whilst another department has recruited 2 students even after clearing. Who is going to sort out the shitshow that is UK HE?

Probably not good that the President is simultaneously attempting to invent broad authorities to: (a) label people terrorists; and (b) blow up people he labels terrorists.

Settlers just attacked the village of Al-Mughayir, in the northern West Bank. In the attack, one of the settlers shot and killed a 20-year-old Palestinian man, Saeed Murad Al-Nassan. All the settlers were wearing white, in honor of the Jewish holiday.

The band whose practice space I sometimes pass by was playing “Holiday in Cambodia” tonight. The Dead Kennedys had a view on Kissinger, and then there’s …whatever this is.

Trump: "We've got a lot of stupid people in this country running things."

Important to note that Congress has never passed any law giving the President authority to designate anything as a “domestic terrorist organization.” As a result, this would appear to have no direct legal effect beyond acting as a statement of policy for the Executive Branch.

An ICE detainee died in custody out here on Long Island, just a couple days ago. 42 years old! I have questions. longisland.news12.com/ice-detainee...

This is great youtu.be/3HsartoltcE

Thousands of Italian workers and students are on strike for Gaza apnews.com/article/ital...

“getting its foes obsessed with arguing instead of fighting” as a key trap of the right encapsulates so much.

Meanwhile this is effectively already the policy at many UK institutions

Keir Starmer’s spokesperson asked for the PM's response to Nigel Farage’s plan to deport hundreds of thousands of people living and working completely legally in the UK, replies that he thinks it is “unworkable” and “unfunded”. So his objection is that they’ve got their sums wrong

😡😡😡

Rather than leading with something like "Farage plans to deport your friends, neighbours, parents and partners" this is what we get. The media as handmaidens for national socialism.

This is it, essentially. The core of it. The goal of ICE detention in the mass deportation system is to make people give up their case without fighting; to have an officer say “if you want to see a judge and plead your case, you’re going to be jailed for months and months, so why not give up now?”

“Over half of the ice detainees held in New York jails between January and July — and 62 percent in Nassau County — had no criminal charges or conviction, the federal data shows.”

Your reminder to delete that period tracking app "Senior executives at leading menstrual-cycle tracking apps said they are “in disbelief” at new UK police guidance that suggests officers could check women’s phones for the apps after an unexpected pregnancy loss" observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Another day, another fascist threatening to strip people of their homes while mainstream parties do little more than shake their heads.

In addition to scraping your uploads for "generative AI" training, Academia dot edu is going to start claiming rights to your personal info— *including your signature & voice*— for anything they see fit. So now'd be a good time to remove all of your uploaded works, & then delete your whole account.

This is what I mean when I say they can't fix it. it's not broken, it's structurally indifferent to truth It's built on "likely" Sometimes likely = true Often it isn't

nope nope nope

EVERY ICE AGENT WILL BE HELD TO ACCOUNT.

HARDEST PHOTO OF 2025 JUST DROPPED

Initial expressions for interest for Leverhulme postdoc fellowships at Sheffield due 10 October. Feel free to get in touch if you’re interested in applying with a project in my area sheffield.ac.uk/social-scien...

Friday morning reminder that there is lots of back-of-house stuff--coordinated & not, though coordinated is more efficient usually--that you can do to keep the warriors alive & well, make their work smoother, hold up people they'd usually support but can't right now, etc.

Protest discourse has dominated the last couple days but resisting fascism can also look somewhat mundane rather than flashy. Making a different hire. Buying a meal for a homeless person. Sending $20 a month to a bail fund, an abortion fund. Stuff that helps the lives of people most targeted MOVING.

🤦🏻‍♀️