Alexandra Mateescu
@cariatida.bsky.social
RIP Social Media. Researcher @ Data & Society, living in Boston | labor, technology, care | tetrapyloctomy | Labor & Tech newsletter: http://bit.ly/2Fv5xfX | https://acmateescu.com/
It's Medicaid's 61st birthday! I wrote a piece lifting up the perspectives of people who rely on it. Here's what they told me: cuts hurt people, paperwork requirements burden families, fraud is a red herring, & elected leaders are out of touch. Read more here: www.syracuse.com/opinion/2026...
Historic Medicaid cuts are a body blow to vulnerable Americans (Guest Opinion by Jamila Michener)
Cornell researcher's team interviewed dozens of enrollees. They said H.R. 1 will create impossible burdens and reflect a double standard between how rich and poor are treated.
syracuse.com
Given that we are all upset today about Anthropic-shredding-books, I’ll add that I address this here, and it’s part of the same infrastructure threatening the preservation and profession of history but people don’t want to talk about that if the same industry is paying for their research.
Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · last wk.“AI has become a blunt instrument in the enterprise to impose precisely this form of sanctioned ignorance about America’s past...Taken together, [Trump’s & Musk’s] plans amount to a one-two punch, history in the hands of the corporate state.” My latest on AI & history: www.salon.com/2026/07/28/t...
ICE shared Medicaid data it wasn't supposed to have in the first place with Palantir. First Medicaid officials shared data about millions of people with ICE. ICE then shared that data with Palantir, according to a new court filing reported on by @NPR. /1
ICE shared Medicaid data it wasn't supposed to have with Palantir
The revelations came out in a federal court case brought by Democratic states challenging ICE's access to Medicaid data to aid in deportation efforts.
npr.org
“…AI cannot account for consent. For women and other marginalized communities, what matters is not the content of the image, but the lack of consent, the harm experienced, and the intention with which the abuse is perpetrated.”
The problem AI content moderation cannot solve
Meta and other big tech companies are increasingly using AI for content moderation, but as the backlash to Muse Image shows, it cannot protect users because it does not account for consent.
restofworld.org
“Journalists could be reduced to mere raw-material suppliers for this new information ecosystem.” www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
A Peter Thiel-backed startup makes a surprising bet: Putting reporters in statehouses
State Affairs combines media and technology at a time when tensions between the two industries are at a fever pitch.
washingtonpost.com
"Functionally, there is no difference between not being able to microwave a burrito at 3 a.m. because an in-person watchman prevented you from doing so, or because an AI tool warned your family members about it and they then chastised you from afar." www.disabilityculturelab.org/posts/from-i...
From Inside The House: How Surveillance Tech Further Threatens Independent Living — Disability Culture Lab
Independent living is facing a threat from a less obvious source: tech tools often marketed explicitly as facilitating the ability of aging and disabled people to stay at home. The use and proliferati...
disabilityculturelab.org
Amazing sentence: “D’Souza is concerned about what he views as the affliction of journalism on the powerful. ('I’ll accept that I’m powerful-adjacent,' he told TechCrunch in April.)" www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...
A Peter Thiel-Backed Tribunal Is Putting Journalists on Trial. I’m Its First Target
The billionaire has reteamed with the legal strategist who helped him bring down Gawker to start an AI-powered appeals court for the rich and aggrieved.
hollywoodreporter.com
Encountered Romania's last functioning Jacquard loom in Brașov's ethnography museum. Somehow I hadn't known that the Romanian word for war (război) is also the word for loom, probably from Slavic verbs related to "striking/beating."
People have been asking me if I know of a resource like StandWithMinnesota for New Jersey, and I haven't found something comprehensive. So, for the moment, I have put together all the links to NJ orgs, crowdfunding links, events, and stuck them on a page of SWM. standwithminnesota.org/jersey
New Jersey — Stand With Minnesota
standwithminnesota.org
Today is the last day to comment to the FCC that LGBTQIA2S+ names, stories, identities don't need a warning label. This new potential rulemaking is an attempt at criminalizing the mere fact of being trans or otherwise queer, in the name of discrimination, bigotry, and persecution. Tell them no, now.
Tell the FCC that LGBTQ Stories Don’t Need a Warning Label | GLAAD
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is targeting LGBTQ stories. They are trying to control what you see on television. This government overreach is dangerous...
glaad.org
Tilly Bridges@tillybridges.bsky.social · 3mo agoCIS PEOPLE TIME TO STEP UP it’s once again time to yell at our bad government via online comment form the FCC is trying to make trans and nonbinary content require special ratings on shows GLAAD has a good writeup on it below TELL ‘EM NO direct link to comment form: www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings...
“His actions without a doubt delayed, distracted and ultimately deterred these two individuals from gaining access to the greater areas of the mosque where as many as 140 kids were within 15ft of these suspects”
Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans)@iwriteok.bsky.social · 3mo agohard to exaggerate how heroic these men were. they likely saved dozens of children's lives. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
The strongest protections against AI at work have not come from Congress, nor have they come from lawsuits - no. They've come from collective bargaining by organized labor. My new essay for @washingtonmonthly.bsky.social (feat. Hanumankind & Elf-on-a-Shelf) washingtonmonthly.com/2026/05/20/a...
The Workers Who Defy Gravity
AI companies want to monetize what makes us human. Organized labor may be the only force strong enough to stop them.
washingtonmonthly.com
Anthropic partnering with the Gates Foundation on health and economic mobility while also making a deal to use the Memphis xAI data center polluting Boxtown, every day is a winding road
It feels a bit on the nose to be reading a WaPo article about ProPublica employees going on strike for, among other things, guardrails on AI in journalism, and seeing a little button telling me to “dive deeper” into this story using AI. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
The obvious question is to ask what is the point of the article. And the answer is means testing. By saying the rich don't deserve public goods it makes it easier to say someone just above the poverty line doesn't either. They want public goods to be shit.
Mekka Okereke@mekka.mekka-tech.com · 4mo agoThey pay $34 for burgers. Should their fire department service be free? Opening a new fire department in one of NYC's richest neighborhoods has some of America's pettiest journalists asking silly questions in headlines again.🤡 The article acknowledges the fire department analogy, then blows past it
📣 New! @cariatida.bsky.social, @aihathing.bsky.social & Sanjay Pinto argue for understanding the sprint to create the "AI-first economy" not as the logical march of progress, but as a series of deliberate economic decisions that risk harming workers in ways old & new. datasociety.net/library/last...
Endlessly grotesque the way he's talking like some feudal lord invoking droit du seigneur over one of his female vassals...
The Bulwark@thebulwark.com · 5mo agoTrump: "I do believe I'll be the honor of having the honor of taking Cuba. That's a big honor." Q: "Taking Cuba?" Trump: "Taking Cuba in some form, yeah…I think I could do anything I want with it."
A while back I saw an AI-generated "anti-woke comedian" Insta account advertising itself as "uncancellable." Which, I feel like, is probably a more direct endgame of these AI personas in cultural production; more so than job displacement, it's just the ambition of crafting an unaccountable cipher.
John Lubbock@jwsal.bsky.social · 5mo agoAnother insane AI story here, and great work as usual from TBIJ - new far right party Advance have paid a secretive AI operation to make its political campaign content. The same group created Danny Bones, an AI generated white-nationalist rapper. www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...
"But as sex work has become an increasingly digital field, their major concern is the contract’s threat to their ability to protect their image and likeness, especially from potential AI uses." www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Nevada brothel workers are unionizing to protect their digital rights
Management's new contract demands “everything”—and could hand their likenesses over to AI porn and sex bots.
motherjones.com
Abolish ICE is not enough. It's not about training -- Ross who killed Renee Good was a TRAINER. It's not about body cams -- we saw Alex Pretti killed with our own eyes. We have to abolish the idea that violence ever made us safer, before it's too late. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Abolishing ICE isn’t enough – it’s time to center people’s humanity | Heba Gowayed and Victor Ray
It’s far from radical to reject a system predicated on violence – despite what thinktanks might claim
theguardian.com
AI use for progress notes is causing serious privacy and clinical risks in aged care. Professional bodies need to act. AI shouldnt be used for client notes and reports hellocare.com.au/ai-use-for-p...
AI use for progress notes is causing serious privacy and clinical risks in aged care - Hellocare
Workforce pressure is pushing aged care staff towards AI for clinical documentation, but public tools come with hidden dangers. From Privacy Act breaches to misleading progress notes, poorly governed ...
hellocare.com.au
Donation link to the Sameer Project's "Give Warmth to Gaza" campaign is here: chuffed.org/project/1491...
RETURN HOME x The Sameer Project
"GIVE WARMTH TO GAZA" this Winter season...
chuffed.org
ICE agents shot a woman yesterday, but that wasn't enough cruelty, so Border Patrol went to a school and attacked people.
Eric Michael Garcia@ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 7mo agoMinneapolis public schools canceled classes officials after Roosevelt High School said armed Border Patrol officers came on school property during dismissal Wednesday and began tackling people, handcuffed two staff members and released chemical weapons on bystanders www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...
If he fixes the 17th Ave pedestrian footbridge over the Belt Parkway in Bath Beach that's been """"under construction"""" since 2021, I will truly believe in miracles.
Miser@misernyc.bsky.social · 7mo agoZohran just went out and fixed the Williamsburg Bridge bike entrance. Just did it. No faffing, no nonsense. Bam. Fixed.
Featuring a trans woman so prominently at his inauguration like this was an absolutely baller move by Zohran
Our study, using over 400 volunteer shoppers, found that Instacart offered different prices to different shoppers on 74% of the grocery items tested.
One Haitian woman “showed up as scheduled, and when she arrived, officers were asking everyone what country they were from, and if they said a certain country, they were told to step out of line and that their oath ceremonies were canceled,” her attorney said.
A disaster in the making for millions of care workers and the people they support: "[The Trump administration proposal] reopens a loophole allowing employers to broadly classify care workers as “companions” who can be paid less than minimum wage and are not eligible for overtime pay."
David Weil@profsheenalives.bsky.social · 8mo agoI led the DOL's Wage and Hour Division when the homecare rule was affirmed and we implemented it for 2+million workers and the people they help. This article captures the cost of Trump's effort to take away those protections. capitalandmain.com/home-care-wo... @nelp.org @capitalandmain.bsky.social