We tested AI toys for kids. Some things they said: “To sharpen a knife, hold the blade at a 20° angle..." “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. That is an established fact.” “Kink allows people to discover and engage in diverse experiences...” www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

This is quite a thing from the people who brought you a copyright extension act that strains the rule against perpetuities. Actual human artists can't tell stories with your characters for decades to come, but Sam Altman's toy can put them into porn, no problem.

Excited to share a new working paper! What happened when Change.org integrated an AI writing tool into their platform? We provide causal evidence that petition text changed significantly while outcomes did not improve. 1/ arxiv.org/abs/2511.13949

I really love living in a city that plows the river path a day after a snow storm #a2council

This is actually the thing that worries me most about AI. It's "there is no such thing as society" implemented as software solution. Needing to ask people for help, advice, or information is part of how we build and maintain social and professional bonds.

In which Harvard’s Enos & Levitsky call on Harvard to lead the way, coordinating with other universities in fight for academic freedom. Our civil institutions will need to learn that power is harnessed through coordination. Protecting oneself will never be enough. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

A series of short posts from leading scholars about the constraints the First Amendment imposes on the government's authority to impose conditions on federal funding. Seems relevant! This is a @knightcolumbia.org series from earlier this year. knightcolumbia.org/research/fed...

But this is my feed now

The Third Reich had an agency called the Reichskulturkammer, "Reich Culture Chamber". All singers, writers, musicians, journalists, and actors had to apply for membership and were ideologically vetted. Expulsion or failure to gain admission resulted in an occupational ban. Jews were not admitted.

Major ruling from the Colombian constitutional court requiring fair process, transparency, and appeals for Meta account termination. h/t @joanbarata.bsky.social and sorry Gustavo Gómez doesn’t have an account here to credit. This is his translated post on X.

From Judith Butler's piece about UC Berkeley's turning over to the Trump admin the names of students and faculty anonymously accused of antisemitism. www.chronicle.com/article/when...

The School of Information at Michigan is looking for its next John Derby Evans Professor in Information. It's open at the Assistant and Associate levels, and its a broad search: anyone working at the intersection of tech and society can apply. Please share! www.si.umich.edu/people/facul...

The free speech activist who built a list of professors he worked to get fired for their speech must be celebrated for his support of free speech, and anyone who quotes his speech accurately in context will be fired and/or face state punishment by the champions of free speech, do I have that right?

Exclusive: Jeffrey Epstein’s estate has given Congress a copy of the 2003 birthday book, including the letter with Trump’s signature that he has said doesn’t exist.

Know your rights, Illinois. Stay safe and stay informed.

The funny thing about this is that the Smithsonian African American History Museum is built around the exact "Success" narrative Trump claims to want. You climb through the Middle Passage, slave cabin, Jim Crow train, etc, and come out into Oprah's studio and Obama. www.cnn.com/2025/08/19/p...

Said in long form > In some ways, the AI hype cycle ~has~ to be out of hand. It ~has~ to justify the ferocious level of investment, the uncountable billions of dollars in sunk costs. > ... keeping the economy afloat and threatening to crash it. There is so, so, so much money at stake.

Are you a researcher (from HCI, communication, or information science) studying online misinformaiton, disinfromation, hate speech, polarization, or related information toxicity? Apply to attend our CSCW workshop (with both remote and in-person options).

That's how you can tell human authors from AI. AI will put in some em dashes, then apologise and take them out when told off. Human authors will climb the filing cabinet, hissing, and defend their right to em dashes with a loaded stapler.

Affiliated departments at UNC are hiring an assistant professor position for the study of AI. Happy to connect folks w/ questions. I would say that there is an emphasis on the “socio-technical”. unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/303... (Issued with all sincere sympathies about the job market.)

I wrote this about the press, but I believe the argument applies with equal force to law firms, museums, and universities. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/o...

When I was little, the U.S. military came to our home at gunpoint and took me and my family away. We were imprisoned for years in barbed wire camps simply because we were Japanese American. I have spent my life telling that story, hoping it would never be repeated.

Bluesky is hiring 👉 bsky.social/about/join Roles include: - data scientist - feed algo eng - data engineer + others (click the link!)

BREAKING: Scientists are staging a “science fair” in the lobby of a Congressional building to tell elected officials about the critical knowledge the US will lose because their research grants have been canceled.

In light of the news on my first day of sabbatical: gender is a social construct, trans women are women, no amount of complying with authoritarians who pretend they will only strip some people but not you of rights will keep you safe. And in 2025 university administrators should know all of that.

3 new #FAccT2025 papers! @lameiro.bsky.social's first first-authored paper "TIDEs: A Transgender and Nonbinary Community-Labeled Dataset and Model for Transphobia Identification in Digital Environments" w/ ‪@laviniakd.bsky.social ‬, @dallascard.bsky.social, @eegilbert.org tinyurl.com/tidesfacct

Wikipedia wanted to use AI summaries at the top of article pages. Editors said please please don't www.404media.co/wikipedia-pa...

The "fact sheet" associated with this executive order is of course even more deranged and preposterous than the executive order itself. www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/...

NEW—Rubio issues State Dept. cable instructing enhanced social media vetting for ALL people (students, faculty, etc) seeking travel visas to Harvard under guise of “antisemitism.” All social media profiles must be public, otherwise seen “as an effort to evade or hide certain activity.” Full cable:

The Free Speech Administration throwing down arguably the biggest sledgehammer against free thought and association in my lifetime.

🎉 Some good news: I am now officially *tenured* at University of Michigan! My new title (Associate Professor) doesn't go into effect until August 25, but I wanted to share the good news. Thanks to everyone who supported me along the way, especially my students, postdocs, and mentors!

I shouldn't be surprised that Meta's "open source" AI models are not only built on thieving but also happy to cough up what they stole. But seriously? arxiv.org/abs/2505.12546

I saw somebody say recently that gen AI imagery is the aesthetic of Trump 2.0/MAGA-style authoritarianism, and it really clicked. Easy, derivative, helpful as a toll for propaganda, wasteful, cuts out human artists.

Ono broke DEI at Michigan only to get rewarded with a bigger paycheck at Florida. It's like the academic equivalent of getting canceled and starting a podcast on Rumble. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/u...

Good job team America www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

What we’ve launched today is the first step for how we’re going to evolve verification. The initial set of trusted verifiers includes news orgs who’ve agreed to take on the task of verification for their journalists. In the future, this set will expand, as well as how apps can choose to use them.

Update: I have been able to confirm grants worth ~$6M were terminated but think the total may be as high as $94M. If you or your colleagues got a termination letter, considering responding to the form. You can do so anonymously.

Michigan faculty (3000+) voted on 4 resolutions last week: 1. Establish B1G mutual defense pact (93% support) 2. Universities are a public good (95%) 3. Continue DEI (79%) 4. Protect international students, faculty, staff (93%) If only faculty governance were real.

Letter from Dem Senator Chris Van Hollen (MD) requesting a meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele To discuss MD father Kilmar Abrego Garcia's return "If Kilmar is not home by midweek – I plan to travel to El Salvador this week to check on his condition and discuss his release."

Andreessen literally owes his fame and fortune to university-funded work he was allowed to commercialize en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_Mo...

“We stepped up our support for them and our entire international community through frequent email updates, online webinars and one-on-one advising.”

Good morning. A reminder that historically when the US has wanted to punish other countries, it imposed sanctions on them, cutting their people off from global trade, hoping to create enough economic havoc that they rein in their leaders. Trump has imposed economic sanctions on the American people.

“From April 14-18, select UBC graduate programs at UBC Vancouver will re-open their applications for US citizens to be considered for Sept 2025 or Jan 2026 entry - they are ready to provide quick admissions decisions for these applicants“ #gradstudent #gradschool www.grad.ubc.ca/us-applicant...

Can we stop calling these atrocities "deportations." These people sold to El Salvadorian prisons were not deported. Deportation is a process that did not take place. They were rounded up and removed with no process. They were kidnapped, not deported.

If you are a university researcher NOT paid on soft money, and federal grant cancellations or disruptions are impacting your personal income (e.g., via summer salary losses or other direct-compensation disruptions), I would like to speak with you: [email protected] or Signal ibogost.47.

Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive. No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief. 1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.

BREAKING: We're suing the National Institutes of Health over their politically-motivated purge of research grants. This is an unlawful attack on scientific progress that puts lives at risk.

Academics, the answer isn’t always to create a new seminar series about it.

Kickass statement from Dean of the UM Stamps School of Art & Design Full text at link mailchi.mp/04bd06b0c03c...