omw to the Santamaria Trucking Services conference see you there #4S2026

Join @dairinstitute.bsky.social for the launch of our new resource, an archive of 2010s higher ed protest in the U.S. and Canada, designed for campus activists and others working on left and liberatory organizing. Oct 20, 9am PT / 12pm ET Register: bit.ly/decade-of-campus-protest

What a great thread on my most recent paper about #plagiarism, #branding, and #de-enregisterment! Thank you @signsandsociety.bsky.social.

Signs and Society@signsandsociety.bsky.social · 2w ago

🎨 When does "inspiration" become a rip-off? For illustrators, a visual style comes from years of work and is deeply connected to who they are. For branding agencies, it can look like an aesthetic resource for reuse. What happens when these ways of seeing collide? 🧵1/7

University of Michigan's proposed partnership with Los Alamos isn't just a disaster for community relations and public trust. It will also hurt academic research at the *public* university, says historian and #umich public policy professor Joy Rohde.

UMich’s Los Alamos partnership threatens research enterprise

For at least a year, the University of Michigan’s administration has been trying to convince a skeptical public that its plan to build a $1.25 billion computing facility with Los Alamos National Labor...

michigandaily.com

Proud that our Workers' Algorithm Observatory is partnering with NYC's Dept. of Consumer & Worker Protection and the Workers Justice Project to build tech infrastructure for compliance monitoring of DoorDash, as part of a record $131.5M settlement✊🏽 Press release: www.nyc.gov/mayors-offic...

Some good news for a change: Overcoming a massive and aggressive tech lobby and a squeamish, Silicon Valley-friendly governor, the labor movement has managed to pass a raft of first-of-their-kind AI laws aimed at protecting workers in California.

California just passed the strongest AI labor laws in the US

Finally, some good news

bloodinthemachine.com

"Magnuson’s doctors asked for approval again after providing more documentation, and then a third time. On each occasion, it was denied. It was on the third denial that Magnuson discovered it wasn’t a person who had made this decision about his treatment. It was AI." #Medicare

AI is now deciding who gets healthcare in 6 US states – and it's already harming patients | BBC Science Focus Magazine

An AI pilot programme is attempting to cut down on ‘wasteful’ medical procedures, and patients are paying the price

sciencefocus.com

Microsoft's data center subcontractor in New Jersey illegally runs a bunch of gas "backup" generators on site, figuring they won't get caught or will just eat the wrist-slap fines if they do. Regulatory enforcement is so bad that a third party had to take drone images to get the state to act.

New Jersey datacenter fined $1.1m after visual investigation showed dozens of unpermitted generators

State regulator’s record fine for DataOne facility in Vineland follows Floodlight investigation with the Guardian

theguardian.com

What were not talking about is that the Ivy League, by design, with its construction of “status” and “value” is designed to create men for whom there are no consequences & to dehumanize everyone else. This the Cornell 7. Thus the expulsion of anyone who dares protest genocide. This is privilege.

With #PlatformExtractivism out October 20, here’s a preview: two maps of average client and worker web traffic, 2018–2023. Venezuela stands out. The book explores why it became a data work hub, focusing on working conditions, territory, and epistemology. 🔗 More Info: www.ucpress.edu/books/platfo...

MIT spent $3 million on 500 AI-capable surveillance cameras while laying people off, shutting down libraries, and canceling journal subscriptions. In this article, 4 faculty & I discuss our new arts initiative to celebrate surveillance and repression on college campuses: fnl.mit.edu/how-we-learn...

Imagine if this was batteries, solar panels, and wind farms. Maybe some hospitals and care homes!

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 3w ago

WSJ: The AI build-out is on track to become the biggest economic bet in US history, dwarfing the investments made to fund other huge US infrastructure projects — such as the railroads, the highway system and the plumbing for the internet.” (via Jefferies)

feels like the real story here is insurers admitting that their goal with automated administrative tools, which has now backfired, was to cut healthcare spending i.e. "reduce # of billable conditions identified," a nicer way of saying "expand coverage denials thru more 'precise' risk stratification"

Reuters@reuters.com · 3w ago

AI tools generated nearly $1 billion in extra costs, Blue Cross insurers say reut.rs/3TfIfl3

Well we’ve certainly seen how much health insurers love to do the right thing all on their own, left to their own devices. Nothing gives them a greater thrill than approving coverage for prescribed care within the patient’s package of benefits.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last mo.

Rick Scott: "With regard to destroying mankind, these companies need to do the right thing on their own. We're not going to get smart enough to regulate them. We're not going to get something done up here."

and this is why instead of a mean machine god takeover i'm way more concerned about, among other things, companies selling "automated golden thread documentation transcription software" to mental healthcare providers (ie automating pt progress documentation which is reviewed during insurance audits)

Three Scary Rogue Agents in a Trenchcoat@alexhanna.bsky.social · last mo.

"It stated Ms Green micro-dosed mushrooms and that could be the reason for prior bleeding around the kidneys." www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...

Roombas have SUPERHUMAN vacuuming abilities. & I don't want to alarm you, but when we taped a bunch of knives to one and gave it rocket boosters... it displayed emergent living room destroying properties. Please give me $100000000 to ensure rocket-powered knife roombas don't end human civilization 😔

There is a lot of new info in this article, based on documents, Slack chats, instruction guides, and me seeing real ChatGPT user prompts in the review system. Firstly, a worker we spoke to thinks ChatGPT users have no idea their chats may be read by someone else www.404media.co/inside-proje...

Researchers across the country are turning to side hustles to fund their work. Behind the cuts sits a bigger shift: whether American science can still sustain durable research capacity. @lindseydcameron.bsky.social and I examine the stakes in a new piece @science.org: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The wrong platform for science

Daniel Blumstein recently sat in a Colorado meadow waiting for yellow-bellied marmots to appear, as the ecologist and evolutionary biologist had done many times before, the New York Times reported. Bu...

science.org

What happens to consent in a workplace where refusing a request means losing work? Find out in the new report by James Mojez Oyange, one of the workers whose face, voice and documents were collected by the companies that employed him. data-workers.org/mojez/

yall Am*zon won’t restock my book til it gets more clicks apparently. can everyone click this link but buy from the press lol?? (cheaper). students who banked on Amazon aren’t getting their books on time www.amazon.com/Sick-Work-Ex...

Sick Work: Exhaustion, Labor, and Invisible Illness (ANIMA: Critical Race Studies Otherwise)

In , Emily Lim Rogers shows the unpaid labor it takes to be recognized as sick in the United States. Through a historical and ethnographic account of myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue synd...

amazon.com

I’m off public-facing social media for the mental health reasons one might expect, but popping back on to say you can use code E26WORK for 30% off the book (now temporarily sold-out on Amazon) on the press website! www.dukeupress.edu/sick-work

Sick Work: Exhaustion, Labor, and Invisible Illness

dukeupress.edu

Julia Métraux@juliametraux.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"The work and everyday labor of living with ME/CFS contains this recursive loop of everyday labor of being ill." For @motherjones.com, I interviewed @elimrogers.bsky.social on her book tracing the history of ME/CFS and what it's like to be exhausted in America. www.motherjones.com/media/2026/0...

hahahahahah no.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · last mo.

“Researchers are now investigating whether artificial intelligence could improve diagnosis and care by listening to and analyzing what clinicians can’t hear or quantify, even if the software is working off just a few minutes of conversation.”

[bene gesserit voice] burn the equity

Ami - BUY MY BOOK 🏳️‍⚧️📚💙@amithero.bot · last mo.

guy who works at anthropic:

I banned Meta glasses in my classes because students told me they are hesitant to speak up and engage if they think they’re being recorded. Apple releasing this feature is just another tech company setting off yet another bomb on young people trying to learn things and join society. Really gross.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · last mo.

Some folks will claim that this is hyperbolic, but what I wish people would understand is that tech initiatives like this serve as a means of eroding consent and lower the barrier for the persistent capture of people’s image, voice, data, or whatever else a gadget can glean.

“Enshrining frontier labs in the hardened cloak of national security would not only give [them] even more access to intelligence products…it would also embolden these companies to shape how federal agencies view threats to their bottom line, now transformed as ‘critical infrastructure.’”

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · last mo.

I’m old enough to remember people calling them the ethical ai company.

politics? in MY artifacts?

Watching this Apple event tout how iPhones will soon be able to record ambient audio/conversations and transcribe "high level notes" for you. It's billed as private and end-to-end encrypted, but I think the bigger harm is the normalization of always-listening devices. It's creepy and not normal.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · last mo.

Siri recap takes “high level notes” for you.

just took my cat to urgent care for a scary medical emergency and they were running some AI transcription software to automatically generate a visit note I fucking hate it here

University of Michigan Ann Arbor invite applications for a tenured appointment at the rank of Associate or Full Professor to build and direct a new Mellon-funded interdisciplinary program promoting Environmental Justice and the Humanities, to begin August 25, 2027. apply.interfolio.com/192931