I do not need a $135 gay disco ghost www.michaels.com/product/disc... ... right?

Click through for the details: eBay employees (incl. execs) sent them "a bloody pig mask, pornography, a package of fly larvae and live spiders, and live cockroaches...They also listed Craiglist ads for a swinger party, a threesome, and an estate sale, all pointing to the Steiner’s home address."

Josh Sternberg@joshsternberg.com · last wk.

May this be a lesson to companies: don't harass journalists. www.wired.com/story/ebay-h...

A twelve thousand percent increase in articles about "the trans probem" in a decade. Manufacturing "the trans problem" out of thin air and bile.

elia ayoub@ayoub.bsky.social · 2w ago

Worth adding some numbers to this. The British press decided to make trans rights into an issue. It just wasn’t an issue before. This was a top-down decision. shado-mag.com/articles/opi...

UT President interfering with faculty tenure. Just the latest egregious example of administrator overreach and political capitulation. Non-paywall follows.

UT border surveillance scholar was a shoo-in for tenure. UT denied him.

American Studies scholar Iván Chaar López fears UT’s unexplained tenure denial violated his academic freedom amid scrutiny of controversial fields.

statesman.com

It’s infuriating when chatbots talk like a person with a history when they are not! in another case Claude talked rapturously about “the most stylish women I have ever met” bitch you’re a prediction algorithm not a street style photographer. (“Look” in the screenshot is supposed to be “lol,” obvs)

While Republicans and Democrats are growing suspicious of AI at roughly the same pace, right-wing politicians and influencers have embraced AI slop in a way that the left has not. Why? @alicetiara.bsky.social on the right's love affair with AI slop:

The Slop Doctrine

Why the right has overwhelmingly embraced terrible AI-generated imagery.

lnk.thebulwark.com

The right loves AI slop. Why? I investigate in @thebulwark.com today: www.thebulwark.com/p/the-slop-d...

The Slop Doctrine

Why the right has overwhelmingly embraced terrible AI-generated imagery.

thebulwark.com

Another job at D&S!!! Are you a participatory researcher? Are you interested in civic participation? Do you have connections to K-12, labor, faith communities, advocacy groups? If so, please apply. Deadline 7/30!!!

Data & Society@datasociety.bsky.social · 3w ago

🚨 Job alert: We're hiring a senior researcher for our AI Civics program! This subject-matter expert will be a lead contributor to our ambitious work on civic action and community control over AI. Learn more and apply by July 30! job-boards.greenhouse.io/datasocietyr...

Thank you Odyssey press tour for giving me so many eye-popping Zendaya, Lupita, and Anne Hathaway lewks this week. Nice break from climate death orange skies and creeping intestinal parasites.

yayyyy aoir27 is going to be in Italy. I've never been!!!!

Soundtrack of summer: Madonna - Confessions II, Olivia Rodrigo's amazing new album, Slayyyter - Wor$t Girl in America. (I also LOVE Charli's Wink Wink and am excited for the full length!) Almost makes up for not getting Act III this year

Enormous congrats to @thecoalition.bsky.social @knightcolumbia.org @protectdemocracy.org for prevailing in their lawsuit against the Trump administration's immigration policy that targeted fact-checkers & disinformation researchers. More like this please. knightcolumbia.org/content/fede...

Federal Court Suspends Trump Immigration Policy Targeting Technology Researchers

knightcolumbia.org

HYPERSCALE is hitting bookstores on October 20. Preorder it now! In the book, I dig into how the data center boom is pushing our planet past its breaking point, and the incredible efforts of people pushing back against the profit-driven interests of Big Tech. Get your copy: hyperscalebook.com

I just wrote a bunch of Amazon reviews for stuff I bought for my Disney trip and realized I haven't updated my Amazon bio since 2000. Here it is, in all its glory. Hoo boy.

As Kels from @dfwsupportcommitt.bsky.social told me: "they’re being given extraordinary sentences for things that are supposed to be protected actions. Fireworks on the Fourth of July being called explosives and terrorism? Political literature is something worth taking 30 years of someone’s life?”

The Prairieland Sentences Are a National Emergency

A federal court has punished Texas ICE demonstrators with decades in prison. This is dark news, not just for them but for anyone who may want to register political dissent.

newrepublic.com

I am hiring a qualitative postdoc to start this fall for the @datasociety.bsky.social project AI-Enabled Scams as a Systemic Security Challenge. Fully remote but must be US-based. Interested in youth, scams, hustle/financial/consumer culture? More here: job-boards.greenhouse.io/datasocietyr...

Post-Doctoral Fellow, AI-Enabled Scams as a Systemic Security Challenge

Remote

job-boards.greenhouse.io

Wow Avery Wilson has a beautiful voice

"My mayor Muslim / my bagels Jewish / my Christian Dior / Knicks in Four" is basically Keats to me

!!!NOW #HIRING!!! - Postdoc: design for societal impact apply.interfolio.com/187187 - Codesign specialist apply.interfolio.com/187163 - Lecturer in design apply.interfolio.com/187186 Join the Keller Center at @princeton.edu & keep #tech #design centered in societal responsibility! #academicsky

On this site in the last week or so someone linked to a truly amazing rant about facebook being a billboard with minimum viable product and i cannot find it anywhere and want to quote it in a talk, help a lady out

New Pub Alert: “Activating Prejudice: Refugee Disinformation as Information Warfare in Russia’s War on Ukraine” (w/ Julie Terebekov & @alicetiara.bsky.social). #openaccess #disinformation #refugees doi.org/10.5210/fm.v...

Shocked, I'm shocked (not shocked, we've been beating the drum on this for more than two years)

Fight for the Future@fightforthefuture.org · 2mo ago

"So a law sold as protecting children’s data will, in reality, build databases of children’s and parents’ government IDs, held by the same tech companies the bill treats as untrustworthy." Age verification has never been about protecting children. reclaimthenet.org/south-caroli...

WIRED got a copy of a New York Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau report that has a curious term for opposition to AI development and data centers: "anti-tech violent extremist activity." Great reporting here on how law enforcement is tracking big tech opponents www.wired.com/story/us-law...

US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ as AI Hatred Grows

As Americans stew over the looming risk of job-stealing AI and data centers in their back yards, the feds are raising the alarm about a new category of threat, documents obtained by WIRED show.

wired.com

A new lawsuit against White House visa restrictions could transform online safety research.

Tech researchers are suing the Trump administration over the future of online safety

In a lawsuit, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research argues the government is using immigration policy to stifle free speech and tech regulation.

technologyreview.com

Guys, I'm going to a puzzle swap tomorrow and I am so excited

Murad Ali Bhatti and Siddharth Muchhal discuss amicus briefs supporting a challenge to a Trump administration immigration policy targeting researchers, fact-checkers, and trust & safety workers. The three briefs warn that the policy is already chilling online speech, research, and press freedom.

Amicus Briefs Say Trump Immigration Policy Chills Researchers’ Speech

Murad Ali Bhatti and Siddharth Muchhal discuss amicus briefs supporting challenge of immigration policy threatening the work of trust and safety researchers.

techpolicy.press

@alicetiara.bsky.social and her team take a novel theory-generating case study approach to trace flows of disinformative narratives on two social media platforms. These authors’ analysis highlights the oft-overlooked but significant cultural aspects of disinfo & the relevance of systemic approaches

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 ...

tandfonline.com

If one of my papers was critiqued in this way I would crawl into a hole and die

Ned Resnikoff@resnikoff.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Woof. I've been critical of this Urban Institute study since it first dropped, but it turns out that the methodological errors were even more serious than I understood. econjwatch.org/file_downloa...

Man, the Chess soundtrack has so many absolute bangers

In @socialmedia-soc.bsky.social, Director of Research @alicetiara.bsky.social reflects on her experience of '90s & early 2000s internet culture to examine how online communication once fostered intimacy, community, & meaningful social ties — and what’s been lost. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com