yes!! would LOVE a PF hackathon

Dylan Baker on Instagram: "come walk my dog with me because I have some Thoughts on "Torment Nexus Critical" Substack bros (dog reveal at the end 🐕) ✨keep imagining otherwise✨" 4 likes, 0 comments - dylantechnofutures on April 15, 2026: "come walk my dog with me because I have some Thoughts on "Torment Nexus Critical" Substack bros (dog reveal at the end 🐕) ✨keep imagining...

Psst I'm over making videos on ig now @dylantechnofutures, follow me and you can catch great content such as: me ranting about "critical" Substack bros shilling for the Torment Nexus in their hand-wringing thinkpieces while walking my dog

www.instagram.com/reel/DXKz5ty...

Other 👏 things 👏 are 👏 possible 👏

& I know I'm usually talking about AI, but the problem is the same there— AI generates tons of e-waste, in part by quickly deprecating chips: www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/28/1...

And folks like Dr. Keolu Fox, who I've written about before, are repurposing them: iem.ucsd.edu/_files/GEMST...

Also, there are instructions online for how to reuse these batteries yourself! I wouldn't recommend it to a beginner, the information is out there: www.instructables.com/How-to-Reuse...

It is so neat! He powered a leaf blower!! And these batteries are cheaper to the consumer than a traditional power tool battery, safety tested, & universally adaptable.

Anyways, love a reminder that tech progress doesn't have to mean Some Big AI Thing, especially at SXSW which was a sea of... that.

Text from Second Chance's website. It reads: Our Solution From Waste to Universal Power Packs We transform discarded vape batteries into a product line of different universal power packs for consumer electronics that range from 12V to 48V Battery packs. These battery packs are compatible with major tool brands like Milwaukee, DeWalt, and Makita, along with various E-bike and E-Scooter makes and models. Our recycled battery packs deliver the same performance as OEM batteries while keeping harmful waste out of landfills. 01. Collection Partner shops collect used vapes in our specialized bins 02. Processing Batteries are safely extracted and tested for capacity 03. Remanufacturing Quality cells are assembled into tool battery packs 04. New Life Power tools, leaf blowers, and more run on recycled energy

A booth at sxsw labeled "Second Chance Material & Design". There is a table covered in power tools and large white 3d-printed batteries. There are also two clear plastic bins, one of which contains used vape cartridges (many look like Elf Bars), and another contains many circuit boards.

I'm still thinking about one of my favorite tech demos from SXSW this year.

Are you also stressed about the e-waste of single-use vapes getting tossed every day?

Turns out, you can turn them into rechargeable, universal tool/e-bike batteries!! Other things are possible ✨

2ndchancemnd.com

Lots of us in the tech critical space get hit with the "do you even code bro" "do you even understand how this stuff works" all the time... meanwhile:

I'll be running another virtual Possible Futures workshop as part of the Refugees in AI event ⬇️

Refugees and AI Centering the lived experiences of refugees and their power building work in fighting against surveillance technologies.

🔇🔇🔇 On Friday April 17th (9am PDT/5pm CET/7pm EAT), we'll have a virtual event introducing our Refugees, Migrants and AI research program which centers the lived experiences of refugees and migrants and puts power back into their hands🧵

☘️☘️☘️ Register at www.eventbrite.com/e/refugees-a...

DAIR + Data & Society Present: Imagining Possible Futures, Portland Imagine alternative technofutures with the Distributed AI Research Institute and Data & Society in this free, in-person art-making workshop.

PNW folks, please consider joining us at PDX 350 for an in-person art-making workshop.

@dylnbkr.bsky.social and I will lead this event, designed to prompt us to imagine alternative technofutures and be in community at such difficult times.

Registration/Info: www.eventbrite.com/e/dair-data-...

If you need a 1-hour break from doomscrolling, I recommend this interview with Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, the creator of BlackTransArchive.com.

Art can challenge us, hold us accountable, AND still give us hope.

postgame.substack.com/p/video-game...

Got another workshop coming up this weekend in Portland! ✨

File under "a lot of damage isn't irreversible and other things are possible" ⬇️

Evaluating the Social Impact of Generative AI Systems AbstractGenerative artificial intelligence (AI) systems across modalities, ranging from text, code, image, audio, and video, have broad social impacts, but

Oh also written from a generative-AI-specific lens, I worked on a book chapter that has a section about ways of trying to evaluate the ethics of data work:

academic.oup.com/edited-volum...

(free here: zeerak.org/papers/Evalu...)

Data Workers' Inquiry A global, radically participatory research initiative, where data workers themselves become community researchers, identifying urgent issues, formulating their own questions, and choosing the formats ...

Data Workers' Inquiry for sure! data-workers.org

Data Labelers' Association
datalabelers.org

oooh a few of these are going in my backdrop for sure!

I had an experience in a meeting today which showed how old school note taking can actually get you ahead of the game. The meeting involved a document that's about 400 pages long. It's exactly the kind of thing that AI fans would suggest should be summarized by AI. Instead...

Game Devs Reveal All Their Ugly Placeholder Assets Made Without AI Crimson Desert's AI placeholder art controversy has led to many devs sharing sillier temp assets made by humans and MS Paint

Game developers share their deliberately crude placeholders to make the point that AI illustration for placeholders isn't offensive, it's poor practice because it could make it into production.

kotaku.com/crimson-dese...

So happy to bring this event to Oregon with @dylnbkr.bsky.social 🥹

A promotional image for the workshop. Imagining Possible Futures Portland Saturday, April 11, 2026 1pm-3pm 3639 N Mississippi Ave Portland, OR

New in-person workshop incoming, this time co-hosted with @datasociety.bsky.social in Portland, OR!

Saturday, April 11, 1pm-3pm at 350 PDX. For tickets and more info, head over to Eventbrite ⬇️

www.eventbrite.com/e/dair-data-...

A screenshot from Google Maps indicating a driving time of 18 minutes (with traffic) from downtown Seattle to downtown Bellevue.

Income & Poverty Median households income (in 2024 dollars), 2020-2024. Bellevue city, Washington: $165,576. Per capita income in past 12 months (in 2024 dollars), 2020-2024 Bellevue city, Washington: $97,015

Seattle's gotten too expensive for me, saying goodbye to my big-city life to settle down in Bellevue, Washington

see?
here's the thing. A lot of people are like, the earth is fucked, it's beyond salvation, it's hit the tipping point, but time and time again we see that if we just fucking fixed the problem, it rebounds so incredibly fast. Imagine what could be done if people actually cared

every time somebody promotes something like that all I can see is this toy from like 2009

Said it last year when this article came out, this is why "just brainstorming" is still impactful bsky.app/profile/dyln...

See: gizmodo.com/chatgpts-pol...

A plane dropping bombs with snippets of Anthropic's Claude advertising on it: "There has never been a better time to have a problem" "Keep thinking" and the Claude logo.

can't roll my eyes enough at the QuitGPT initiative telling people to switch to Anthropic as the "more ethical" option. we gotta raise our standards for the alternatives we imagine for ourselves y'all

OFLAIN I the anti-tracking Faraday bag blocks WLAN, GPS, WIFI, RFID Digital detox to go: Put your cell phone in the bag and all signals such as mobile networks, WiFi, GPS, RFID and Bluetooth are blocked. Online compartment included! Now you decide when to be available...

Plus, things like this very chic Faraday phone bag *are* effective.

(You don't need to spend $100 on one though. You can make one with tin foil and an envelope.)

urban-privacy.com/products/ofl...

Now, plenty of improvements in surveillance tech (e.g. gait detection) would render most anti-surveillance fashion ineffective in many scenarios (would LOVE to see robust testing on this). But I think even making a fashion statement of "evading surveillance is cool" is meaningful.

A person against a white backdrop wearing bright yellow sneakers, black pants, and a very colorful sweater. The sweater looks somewhat like blurred, abstract figures of people, in blobs of pink, blue, white, green, red, and black. There are two bounding boxes superimposed over the sweater, both significantly offset from the figure, which read "PERSON CONFIDENCE: 70%" and "PERSON CONFIDENCE: 50%".

A picture of a person's torso wearing a shirt. The shirt looks like a poorly AI-generated image of an endless crowd of white people in what appear to be hippie costumes, as if in an endless uncanny valley music festival. Colorful swirls emerge around the top of the crowd. The shirt looks very strange and unsettling.

And there are still people in the "trick object detection with this shirt" game! The vibe still ranges from "eccentric but wearable" to "rather upsetting to perceive"

Sources: www.capable.design and antiai.biz

(if anyone wants to buy me a $600 Capable Design sweater... dms are open 👀)