my ongoing chapter officially becomes a Frankenstein now

Emmmm

PhD Student Jiaqi Wen is Named 2026-2027 Adelle and Erwin Tomash Fellow

PhD student Jiaqi Wen has been named the 2026-2027 Adelle and Erwin Tomash Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute for her research on the history of computing.

Read the full story about her research and this prestigious Fellowship: www.sfu.ca/communicatio...

Anthropic’s AI tool Claude central to U.S. campaign in Iran, amid a bitter feud Anthropic’s AI tool Claude is playing a key role in the U.S. military’s campaign in Iran, amid a bitter fight with the Pentagon over the terms of its use in war.

Pentagon bombs Iranians w/Palantir, Anthropic for rapid AI target selection and "speeding the pace of the campaign."

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Were the Minab schoolgirls murdered because of an AI? Hegseth and Trump should be held responsible when AI is put on the job.

Why language models hallucinate OpenAI’s new research explains why language models hallucinate. The findings show how improved evaluations can enhance AI reliability, honesty, and safety.

openai.com/index/why-la...

I am so grateful and honoured to receive this fellowship! Thanks to CBI for helping me get access to the materials needed during such a volatile period. I wish my research on computation and containment would somehow contribute to the discussion on historical and political alternatives.

Writing writing
Writing is hard

You can often see a unique language convergence of media studies and CS. Makes you think there ought to be a better way to bring these works together.

3M once manufactured hard disk drives for 2 years, which is kinda suprising

Especially when LLM becomes ever harder to optimize + vast energy consumption + larger AI requires more outsourcing of hardware and data service, it might be time to consider smaller and strategically regulated AIs.

This policy piece is also a companion project to the AI whitepaper that I wrote in collaboration with a larger group of amazing scholars. Both texts oppose the idea of “winner-takes-all race to construct the biggest general-purpose AI model.”

AI development should consider its deeper environmental, technical, and sociopolitica infrastructures for the sake of sovreignty, sustainability, and fairness (not endless imaginary scalability!) - we argue for this (and many more) in this piece. So glad it's now out!

German far right setting agenda as opponents amplify its ideas, study finds Normalisation of far-right stances likely to affect success of such parties at ballot boxes across Europe, say researchers

Research in Germany shows what most intelligent people who aren't strategists for major political parties already knew: mainstream politicians are both allowing #far-right parties to set the agenda and normalizing far-right policies. #authoritarianism #fascism

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Link to the PDF ver. of the full white paper - www.uottawa.ca/research-inn...

So excited to see it out and honored to be part of this group!! Rare opportunity to learn about the real-world entanglements between policy and AI's pasts and futures. My special gratitute to @apasek.bsky.social and Kelly Bronson for their guidance.

❤️🌴🌮❤️

A Subway banner ad that reads “I’ll ride the subway with you.” Friend.com You’re paying for company to surveil you!!!

Another banner ad on the subway that reads “I’ll never leave dirty dishes in the sink.” Friend.com. Of course you won’t! You’re not a person nor are you my friend.

I’m on the subway and these ads are as creepy and off putting as the product itself.

Of course, so many works have already offered this argument

Mediation dies and revives and is seemingly trapped in such impasse, precisely because we all long for the immediacy of that gratification

At Least 15 Million YouTube Videos Have Been Snatched by AI Companies Creators have unknowingly fueled tools that may eventually make their work obsolete.

Tech companies have snatched millions of YouTube videos to train their AI models. Search The Atlantic’s new AI Watchdog tool to see if yours have been used:

Post-Zoom self care: reading Barad

Author Meets Critics: Dr. Susan Erikson's Book Launch Dr. Susan Erikson, SFU Distinguished Professor, launches her book 'Investable! When Pandemic Risk Meets Speculative Finance'

📆 Event Alert: Join in for an electric conversation with Dr. Susan Erikson, an SFU Distinguished Professor, who studies highly complex political economies that shape human health.
Link - investable.eventbrite.ca

#BookLaunch #Investable #SFUVancouver
@sfucmns.bsky.social

Open box of books with two out showing front and back covers propped up on the balcony railing of my Minneapolis condo. Trees and sunshine are in the background. The book's full title is JUST CODE: Power, Inequality, & the Global Political Economy of IT, and it is in bold black lettering with pastel fading trails of the letters.

Copies of JUST CODE just arrived! Partnering w Con & teaming w 19 brilliant STS authors on the vital topic of code/codes & inequality was so special! Authors (full list ToC below) On bsky: @mysdick.bsky.social @histoftech.bsky.social @dmulvin.bsky.social & blurb from @anitachan.bsky.social #histtech

Making Plagues Investable The World Bank’s pandemic bonds tried to turn public health crises into speculative opportunities.

"A compelling case for treating this misguided financial product as a cultural artifact — one that reflects the values, assumptions, and contradictions of a particular global order."

@jacobinmag.bsky.social reviews Susan Erikson's "Investable!: When Pandemic Risk Meets Speculative Finance":

Let history note: what's happening on the streets of LA is an extension of DOGE. Musk's guys illegally consolidated data from across government and cut a corrupt contract with Palantir to build an immigrant-hunting computer system. Presumably in use now.

Fatal

This is sending me

Been looking for this for soooo long 😭🥹

Making your paper logical is like riding a roller coaster and doing slow flow yoga at the same time... I died 🥲