ICE agents are walking around with a list of 20 million people to detain in their pockets because of this Palantir database: www.404media.co/ice-agents-h...

Now's a great time to support LaVonnia Moore, a rural Georgia librarian who was fired because she approved a library display (set up by community members) that included a book featuring a transgender character. Her legal case enters the mediation process this week. 📚 www.gofundme.com/f/help-lavon...

3 actual quotes from this piece: “Can I afford the tax? Yes. Is it going to deter me? No. But I think it’s shameful. I provide a lot of money to people who are blue-collar workers who work for me, servers in restaurants." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

"The journal publisher also stated that 'the authors had not responded to correspondence regarding the retraction.'" arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/i...

I’m quoted in this @latimes.com article about trying to teach amid the Canvas hack. www.latimes.com/california/s... Many thanks to @jaweedkaleem.bsky.social and Queenie Wong for writing abt the impact on teachers and students.

Hee hee

SC law silent on no-bid operators of some public schools share.google/KQrUw11WcZrf...

I'd like to alert you to an upcoming event from the Computer History Museum on June 23 at 7pm Pacific: "Out Online." Featuring Avery Dame-Griff to talk about his book "The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet." More info and registration link: computerhistory.org/events/out-o...

“The English we were taught was not the fluid, evolving language of modern-day London or California, filled with slang and convenient abbreviations. It was the Queen's English, the language of the colonial administrator, the missionary, the headmaster.” marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-...

Sweet 6yo made me breakfast in bed and it’s butter with cheese on it and now she wants to watch me eat it 😬

UK Deepmind staff are unionizing in an attempt to prevent Google from using Deepmind's models for military purposes. Even if this falls through I think it sets a really positive precedent and hopefully makes researchers realize how important to the labs they currently are.

“Let me be clear: this is not a golden calf” is pretty funny.

To download your Canvas content: Settings -> Export Course Content wait, reload, download It's an .imscc extension file. That's rebranded .zip; change the file extension to .zip then unzip. Your main files are in web_resources. #AcademicSky #HigherEd community.instructure.com/en/kb/articl...

New interview is coming on Monday with the fantastic @laurenfklein.bsky.social

A lot of people are gleefully pointing out various data elements this gets wrong, but the thing is, that doesn’t matter; this all gets lumped into a sellable product anyway. They’re not trying to individually identify you because they care about *you*; it’s just a way to add value to a data product.

Jeez, things are not great inside Google www.linkedin.com/posts/amshal...

Bots are breaking the web. This sucks.

It seems to me that companies are spending a lot of money on this technology and firing humans not because they think it will be profitable but in an effort to appear AI-optimized to investors. Colleges are doing it because they enjoy thinking of themselves as startups.

"The list of platforms that now mediate the basic functions of education ... is almost comically long ... most schools are running 10–15 different EdTech products that all promise efficiency, but in reality create confusion, frustration, and complicate what was once much simpler." 🎯

Discourse about finding "the Rogan of the Left" or "the liberal answer to Fox News" rarely accounts for the reality that the entire conservative media universe is the enormously unprofitable vanity project of a few rich sociopaths. It "succeeds" because they don't care how much it costs.

Recommendations for a documentary about the Renaissance? (For a teen interested in history.)

I knew I wasn’t just hallucinating it: Jim Groom talking about “edupunk” from 2012 (!) sites.udel.edu/openteaching...

My former spouse has had luck working at a data analyst in higher ed and public policy at the county level. There is a lot of justice work in making sure your county data analysis is done accurately and reflects the reality of the lived experiences of poor or otherwise disenfranchised folks!

Nice moment in class yesterday talking about, where does one go if one is good with data analysis and tech stuff but also cares about structural injustice? I keep seeing students like that. We talked about policy, data journalism, labor research—but I’m afraid it might be a harder path than others.

On library management systems

But given the near-universal pressure to reduce cost centers (employees), we will only be more and more vulnerable. Those guys over there can do it cheaper, so why wouldn’t we pay them instead of having our own staff? (That’s sarcasm, in case it wasn’t clear)

On the edupunk discussion of Long, Long, Ago, about rolling your own LMS!

Having run things in a university that used Moodle - most don't contribute development back (I've never met a university dev team that do; there are usually bigger priorities). It's often open source in name only as you're running it as hosted SaaS from a provider.

We’re recruiting a (Senior) Research Software Engineer. We work closely with researchers, developing thoughtful, impactful digital research projects. We’re looking for someone who enjoys collaborative, applied work at the intersection of research and technology. www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/145925-...

To be fair, we did have our own open-source (Moodle)-based LMS at UCLA for many years, which everyone also hated. As far as I can tell, the major benefit to Canvas, as the admin sees it, is outsourcing development labor; it’s not the actual software, clearly.

universities have the brainpower, resources,+ community obligation to develop on-site secure NON PROFIT learning management systems + ed tech overseen by actual educators, not data-extraction censorious surveillance profiteers! VOID THE CONTRACTS theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/mamdani-wi...

"In sum, every aspect of the termination process – the NEH DEI ratings, DOGE’s DEI-based ChatGPT filter, & the spreadsheet sorting grants by “DEI Rationale” – reflects a single, unconstitutional purpose: to drive a particular disfavored viewpoint from the marketplace of humanistic inquiry" (104)

New from 404 Media: ICE plans to develop its own smart glasses to "supplement" its facial recognition app, according to a DHS official told about the plans in a meeting. A second person who attended a conference this week heard a senior ICE official discuss the plans www.404media.co/ice-plans-to...

Overnight this Omni ICE flight landed in Guam, where it sat for 7+ hours, before continuing west. It is about to make its first deportation stop, in Cambodia. Migrants passengers onboard have likely been shackled for at least 63 hours.

"The structural problem the breach exposes is vendor concentration."

The timing of this Canvas hack made me laugh, since this is my class’s very next assigned reading (which they now can’t access lol) eric.ed.gov?q=lms+AND+k1...

There will be more to say - and this is far from over - but this is one giant step toward justice for our grantees at the National Endowment for the Humanities. #NEH staff have awaited this day for more than a year - for you, and for us. 🙏✊

Happy to see this news. www.historians.org/news/federal...

This is an amazing video.

This is incredibly smart and effective from Chris. See thread for archive version.

So cool how UCLA Transportation randomly kicks us out of the parking spaces they make us pay through the nose for, I love it

The results from India's elections are indeed bleak. A disastrous defeat for the left. A massive mandate for Hindu fascism. Terrible, and very frightening for minorities and for the poor.

A cyber incident disrupted operations this weekend at Instructure, the educational company behind popular learning tool Canvas. therecord.media/infrastructu...

Spent the early part of the week researching for a class on technofascism and had to spend some time lying down, staring blankly at the ceiling. It’s so bad, so worrisome.

the best part of post-tenure academia has been having the career space to slow down. the damage done by the contraction of tenure track positions + poor security/working conditions of non tenure track faculty + quantification of academic contributions is incalculable

What are we DOING

It was a privilege to accept the Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism with @katie-drummond.bsky.social and @timmarchman.bsky.social for @wired.com’s DOGE coverage last night! Our team uncovered a government takeover in real-time, and our reporting was unparalleled-an honor to have that recognized!

Greene: "AI is welcomed as a silver bullet precisely because there is no silver bullet for high-quality, accessible education, just the usual boring solutions: small classes, cheap or free tuition, well-resourced students."

Lots to appreciate about this piece. Among them, a careful answer to the question of what in God’s name university administrators are thinking in the headlong, apparently suicidal rush to embrace AI. +

We are THRILLED to announce DAIR x GHOST fundraiser: if you haven't seen the film - or if you have - May 10 - 13 pay what you can to rent GHOST IN THE MACHINE on Kinema, all proceeds go to the freshest research in the space! Register and rent: notaidoc.com/dairxghost