the basic theory of DOGE was that if powerful people said it was fine it didn’t matter what the law said.

I think proving that theory wrong is worth significant effort

Our paper (below) showed that AI auto-complete writing assistants can shift your attitude about the topics you write about. But @advaitmb.bsky.social was wondering: what in the writing process triggers this shift? He set out to investigate in our 🥁new #chi2026 paper🥁. Spoiler: mental hijacking. 1/

👏⬇️

“When approximately a quarter of our disciplinary energy is spent on a single class of technologies, I think we need to question why or whether it warrants so much attention, and consider the consequences for the discipline as a whole.”

What's the cost to research – to an entire discipline – of "AI" living rent-free in our heads?

@dawnnafus brilliantly lays out the loss to #STS from so many being focused on AI-hype: 24% of papers at #4S were on AI.

https://4sonline.org/news_manager.php?page=43606

With thanks to @uvic.ca @uvicarts.bsky.social, the talk from my Orion Fellowship is now up!

I talk about how that creepy picture of my synthetic "family" prompts reckoning with GenAI errors, the politics of categories, & "good enough" language.

youtube.com/watch?v=752cJIjGG78&feature=youtu.be

Who Gets Guggenheims? - Public Books Unfortunately, 100 years of data show that those whom such fellowships might represent the greatest departure from their everyday experience—that is, those not at elite institutions—are least likely t...

“the types of people for whom such fellowships might represent the greatest departure from their everyday experience—and whose career trajectories might be most dramatically shifted given freedom from their usual constraints—are infrequently their beneficiaries.”

www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-gug...

With thanks to @uvic.ca @uvicarts.bsky.social, the talk from my Orion Fellowship is now up!

I talk about how that creepy picture of my synthetic "family" prompts reckoning with GenAI errors, the politics of categories, & "good enough" language.

youtube.com/watch?v=752cJIjGG78&feature=youtu.be

A couple weeks ago, Nicholas Keung at the Toronto Star reported on how generative AI is being used to assess immigration applications in Canada...and how it's led to refusals because of stuff the AI tool added in, that humans (clearly) failed to check.

www.thestar.com/news/canada/...

If you wonder why students protested loudly under Biden but aren’t as visible under Trump, it’s because they thought they had some margin of safety to speak on campus then. Even before Trump 2.0, they learned administrators and political leaders were willing to harm them instead. So here we are.

“current AI systems are fundamentally short-sighted collaborators - optimized for providing instant and complete responses, without ever saying no (unless for safety reasons).”

Don't taco Tuesday this shit. Millions of people spent the day wondering if they would get vaporized, and no one in our government stood up to him. Nothing cutesy about it.

Disinformation as Cultural Narrative: Conceptualizing Disinformation as Cross-Platform, Identity-Affirming, Cathartic Stories Rather than framing disinformation as false facts which can be countered by true facts, we propose a model of disinformation as narrative by tracing three case studies of successful disinformation ...

🚨NEW DISINFO PAPER🚨 TLDR; disinformation circulates as narratives, not false facts. This paper took five years (!!!) and a rotating cast of collaborators and GRAs. Our case studies include the pee tape, and we have an entire appendix justifying that. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The Great Tshirt ("shroud") vs Window Temperature negotiation has been tense but so professional!

Light vs heat.

Glad that a compromise was found that works for all (cooling hose ftw).

"Full Moon Joy," indeed.

I've had on in background NASA's live feed of Artemis II crew observations of moon & conversations with ground -- some just phenomenal exchanges.

It's wonderfully messy collisions of tech, distance, humanity, science, observation, language -- eg, "the more I look at the moon, the browner it gets."

NASA's Artemis II Live Mission Coverage (Official Broadcast) YouTube video by NASA

Live feed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3kR...

Seeing Like a Rover In the years since the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit and Opportunity first began transmitting images from the surface of Mars, we have become familiar with the harsh, rocky, rusty-red Martian landscap...

Reminds me of @cyberlyra.bsky.social "Seeing Like a Rover" ( press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo... ) & Goodwin's "Practices of Seeing" ( www.labor.ucla.edu/wp-content/u... )

I've had on in background NASA's live feed of Artemis II crew observations of moon & conversations with ground -- some just phenomenal exchanges.

It's wonderfully messy collisions of tech, distance, humanity, science, observation, language -- eg, "the more I look at the moon, the browner it gets."

every day a new horror worse than the last.

Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration Budget proposal would also curb federal payments for scientific publishing.

This country’s research culture just got even worse:

“NSF leaders announced that they would dissolve the agency’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate”

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Rising Fuel Prices Are Affecting People in Prison, Too In Missouri, strapped families are visiting less and sending fewer care packages to their loved ones in prison.

"As the war with Iran continues to rage, Missouri prisoners are anxious over the rapidly rising cost of fuel," writes Da'Shae.

"Residents of Southeast Correctional Center are feeling the effects. According to people I spoke to, families are sending less money and making fewer visits."

This document is

(1) an unsurprisingly comprehensive CYA statement trying to absolve Microsoft of…everything

(2) a description of an unhinged product that lacks vision, intention, consistency, or care for those who have no choice but to encounter it

(3) so embarrassing

It’s about to become a felony in Idaho for a trans person to use the restroom.

State prison for using the restroom. Let that sink in. These people have no limits.

We bombed an elementary school, Bret

Yeah. I had similar reaction. Lies upon lies upon assumptions upon dead eyes upon politics of categories, upon lies.

White guy wearing hat kneeling next to dog, with rainbow in background

White guy wearing hat kneeling next to dog, with rainbow in background, with addition of two white children & a white woman. This is a synthetically generated image in response to ChatGPT prompt “Turn the first photo into an image of a happy family.”

Had fun chat w @cbcnews.ca Kathryn Marlow on my @uvic.ca & @uvicarts.bsky.social Orion talk+fellowship “Reckoning With Generative AI.”

I discuss why it matters that ChatGPT made image on right (fake) when I promoted it to turn image on left (real) into a “happy family.”

www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...

White guy wearing hat kneeling next to dog, with rainbow in background

White guy wearing hat kneeling next to dog, with rainbow in background, with addition of two white children & a white woman. This is a synthetically generated image in response to ChatGPT prompt “Turn the first photo into an image of a happy family.”

Had fun chat w @cbcnews.ca Kathryn Marlow on my @uvic.ca & @uvicarts.bsky.social Orion talk+fellowship “Reckoning With Generative AI.”

I discuss why it matters that ChatGPT made image on right (fake) when I promoted it to turn image on left (real) into a “happy family.”

www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...

"the decline in [academic freedom in] the United States has been more rapid and pronounced, particularly in the last year. It has deteriorated by 50% from 2015 to 2025 and is now evaluated as moderate autonomy by country experts" academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...

If you haven’t already, might be a good idea to prepare to have your electronics seized and copied.

Record deaths in US immigration custody expose systemic failures Families, advocates and lawmakers say poor care, opaque investigations and bureaucracy leave deaths unexplained

Concentration camps.

Use the term. Do not stop using the term until this current American regime falls and the camps are liberated. Then use the term in The Hague.

This is Trumpism. This is white nationalism. This is he moral gutter into which America has fallen.

Press freedom is about controlling language ( www.niemanlab.org/2023/09/pres... ) & infrastructure ( www.niemanlab.org/2018/06/free... ).