Republicans: "transgenderism must be eradicated." Trans people: "they're trying to eradicate us." Republicans: "Saying we want to eradicate you is violent extremism."

My dad was a storyboard artist for a commercial art studio for 30 years, and he'd tell me how the transition from alcohol markers to digital in the early 2000s was quite rough and led to a lot of labor intensification. But it's stories like these that make me glad he's retired.

Sharing a snapshot of a project I’ve been working on w/collaborators Zoe West & Sanjay Pinto at Cornell ILR School, looking at genAI in the fashion modeling industry. AI-generated models have been turning up a lot - H&M, a Guess ad, Luigi(!) in Shein’s catalog… datasociety.net/points/fashi...

NEWS ALERT: Early bird tickets now available for Circuit Breakers, our annual US tech labor conference! Repost please! 🗽 New York City, Oct. 18-19th ✊ Conference will feature workers from the wider tech labor movement 🎟️ Snag your early bird tickets here: techworkerscoalition.org/circuit-breakers

CRAFT FAIR FOR GAZA! Tomorrow! 629 Nostrand Ave. 12-6 PM

🙃

Administrative burden by design- but with even less ability to trace decision-making processes. Mind you, OIG & Senate were previously investigating Medicare Advantage insurers for their high rates of denied payments oig.hhs.gov/reports/all/...

Black markets always reveal how things really work: "This is a colonial model adjusted in the digital age: European citizens may use their status and residency to be paid for doing nothing, while taskers in the Global South only get a fraction to do all the work” algorithmwatch.org/en/scams-and...

I wrote about this in 2020. This shit isn’t new and people are just capitalizing on the AI hype cycle slate.com/technology/2...

"Reductions could come in several forms. States could place further restrictions on who qualifies for coverage, cover fewer hours of care or lower pay for home health workers. Or they could eliminate waiver programs altogether." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/w...

In our new policy brief for @datasociety.bsky.social, @mwoluchem.bsky.social and I break down the myths and industry talking points attached to data centers. Who benefits from unbridled data center growth and who is most at risk when such speculative ventures fail?

National Guard at the LA riots in 1992, by photographer Gary Leonard.

Really lovely essay on photography, grief, and the pandemic: "But our very real pandemic had no shortage of documentation. You remember. We showed every bit of evidence of our deterioration to each other as it happened..." www.thegeorgiareview.com/posts/polaro...

🚨 Support Los Angeles immigrant communities 🚨 Please consider donating to one or all of the following orgs: Immigrant Defenders Law Center: give.immdef.org/donate LA Jail Support / Bail Fund: account.venmo.com/u/jailsuppor... Unión del Barrio: uniondelbarrio.org/main/support...

I want to report some good news from LA: ICE picked a hotel in Pasadena to be their headquarters for this side of the city. The residents of Pasadena (myself included) would not stand for this and protested all yesterday in front of the hotel until, eventually, the hotel kicked out ICE!!

“Shareholders can rejoice as less worker organizing means fewer problems for companies...And if the people who work the closest with this technology don't get a say in it, who will?” From Luca Belli in @techpolicypress.bsky.social www.techpolicy.press/ai-gig-worke...

"We could call it spreadsheet culture in hyperdrive, a world in which all data can be translated into summary language and all language into optimized data with nothing more than a prompt. " www.theideasletter.org/essay/our-sp...

I'm fascinated by this notion that professional knowledge, experience, and skill have somehow been rendered so obsolete that employers can just hire any fungible, featureless human and have make them climb into the AI machine like it's a mecha robot. Journalist Gundam.

One of the scifi novels that feels too real for me these days is The Lathe of Heaven. I feel like George Orr waking up every morning to find some major, world-shattering event from like, the day before, has been wiped from collective public memory. Did it even happen? The forgetting is horrifying.

"I rely on Medicaid to cover a personal care attendant...And yet, if I earn more than the narrow income limits set by Supplemental Security Income — which is often tied to Medicaid eligibility — I risk losing that care altogether." thehill.com/opinion/heal...

"Be indigestible. Grow spikes." is such a perfect motto for this age. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

"Ethnic cleansing has become the official policy of Israel. The nation’s leaders are admitting it, without apology. There was barely a pretense before. But now there’s not even that. And these admissions, combined with mass killing on the ground, point to something even more horrific: genocide."

Please continue to donate to the Sameer Project. They continue to provide support, risking their own lives to deliver water and food to the most under-served areas of Gaza. They do this work while suffering unbearable losses of their own, as 'humanitarian' orgs retreat. chuffed.org/project/help...

I guess time to speed read all those articles I bookmarked to read "later." :( www.theverge.com/news/672924/...

"Precisely because they’re overlooked, administrative burdens are an excellent political tool to accomplish unpopular policy goals." www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/o...

The underlying ideology of AI enforcers is that optimizing the individual will improve humanity: given the scope of collective actions needed to address climate change, this approach is absurd, wrong, and dangerous. But it conveniently lines up with the subscription-based economy of attention.

"The local police arrived to prevent the community from protecting their neighbor from an unlawful kidnapping. They succeeded, and in the process arrested two of the people who tried to stop it."

At which point she will have spent nearly two months behind bars for the crime of writing an op-ed.

“I hope this writing will startle you into understanding that a democracy for some — a democracy of convenience — is no democracy at all. I hope it will shake you into acting before it is too late.” www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Data centers are expanding globally; destroying the climate, exploiting labor, and creating toxic conditions for those nearby In this webinar we'll unpack what they are, why they're expanding, how we can organize against them. 📆 April 18, 2025 ⏰ 3pm PDT / 6pm EDT Register at bit.ly/datacenters101

"Palantir is running adverts at U.S. colleges which say “a moment of reckoning has arrived for the West. Our culture has fallen into shallow consumerism while abandoning national purpose. Too few in Silicon Valley have asked what ought to be built—and why. We did.”"

At this point maybe we just need to band together and set up a fake ChatGPT website, but it's actually just a chat window that connects our elected officials to constituents pretending to be AI in real time. Democracy in action...

“xAI has essentially built a power plant in South Memphis with no oversight, no permitting, and no regard for families living in nearby communities... These dozens of gas turbines are doing significant harm to the air Memphians breathe every day.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I cannot overstate the crisis in basic access and inclusion rights the disability community is facing right now as Trump shreds all the agencies and entities responsible for upholding the laws tha protect us.

Rümeysa's legal team is coordinating a fundraiser for her and her family to help them deal with this crisis, including medical costs since ICE has kept Rümeysa from accessing all her medications. Please donate if you're able:

They're black bagging students all over the US. This is unconscionable.

Am so looking forward to this conversation with @xriskology.bsky.social skology.bsky.social, @timnitgebru.bsky.social itgebru.bsky.social, @mwoluchem.bsky.social chem.bsky.social & @datasociety.bsky.social on the 21st century eugenics revival in big tech and how to resist it. Join us April 10 online

Not to be a wide-eyed naïf about such things but... am I right in thinking that they levelled an entire building to get to one guy and *that* is not controversial to anyone in the American media or political class, only that this information was recklessly shared in an unsecured chat?

DOGE uses AI to decide who to fire and what to shut down, with little no domain expertise. Yes, AI can also increase your productivity writing emails. But which use case do YOU think excites management/owners more — your fast emails or the regulatory-resistant means of firing labor?

Today in cursed images: defense tech company faux protesting itself with graffiti as ad campaign all over Boston South Station.

Join us and hundreds of thousands of people demanding that DHS immediately release Mahmoud, and that Columbia University - and all college administrators - start protecting their students from the reach of the Trump regime. Sign here: actionnetwork.org/letters/dema...

Fun time to be Romanian American. 😒 www.bbc.com/news/article...

Join us March 5 in DC to discuss what happens when nurses use AI to bid against each other for shifts. @veenadubal.bsky.social @daveyseligman.bsky.social @geoplace.bsky.social @fundaustek.bsky.social & @chenjerai.bsky.social will guide us through the new tech wilderness. Register: lnkd.in/eCsiWVye

“What if, rather than blaming Palestinians, Arab Americans, and American Muslims, these pundits had seen their treatment—under Biden and for decades before him—as central to the Trump-led repression looming before us?” Noura Erakat:

"You can’t rip the wiring out of the walls to map the circuitry. For many parts of the bureaucracy, including those that could use renovation, the mantra is the opposite of Silicon Valley’s: Move slowly and try not to break anything because human lives hang in the balance." nymag.com/intelligence...

This is my suspicion as to why they are trying to download data as well. This is a solid first primer on why AI for governance determinations has historically been disastrous for regular people

Leavitt says they’ve begun flying deportees to Guantanamo Bay. This is functionally disappearing human beings. There is no consular access to Guantanamo, making it nearly impossible for those held there to be represented by their governments. There is virtually no media access, either.