Was a lucky early user of TractorBeam!! Both a really great tool and also such a cool experience to unpack my underlying beliefs and how they update when going literature reviews!

Sireesh Gururaja @UIST'26@siree.sh · last wk.

So excited to talk about something that I've been working on for a while: TractorBeam, a tool for customizable AI highlighting on PDFs. Highlighting in TractorBeam is based on categories that you define and can update at any point, to reflect how your mental model changes as you read.

So excited to talk about something that I've been working on for a while: TractorBeam, a tool for customizable AI highlighting on PDFs. Highlighting in TractorBeam is based on categories that you define and can update at any point, to reflect how your mental model changes as you read.

TractorBeam: Malleable AI support for the way that you read

Introducing TractorBeam, a browser extension to develop custom AI highlighting systems on PDFs

lastmile-ai.leaflet.pub

Hey @lea.ac, any plans for UIST next week? I'm seeing the EMNLP feed and the fomo is hitting 🥺

I need a media studies essay on the Cities By Diana aesthetic

There are two academic disciplines, computer science and sociology. Biology? Computer science. Physics? Computer science. Economics? Computer science. Computer Science? Actually, Sociology.

Please join us at Carnegie Mellon University and online on October 2nd, 2026 for the Community-Centered AI Infrastructure Summit, a statewide convening to consider the opportunities, challenges, and governance of AI infrastructure development in Pennsylvania. RSVP here: communityaisummit.org

hindley milner tripe system

garrison@garrison.corporate.fm · 2mo ago

hindley milner gripe system

Back to school. ❤️

If you want people to engage with a technology you care about, you have to find ways to frame it around providing them with some agency. You also have to be ready for people to just say "fuck you, no" and be OK with that. You have to learn to center people and not the technology itself.

My impression is that AI coding is on a "pick two of three" triangle: scope, ship speed, and correctness. Small tools are (speed + correctness) fast prototypes are (speed + scope) and big projects are (scope + correctness). Every project that tries to be all three degrades to "fast prototype."

This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b

@atls.city !set US-PA-Pittsburgh

It's finally out! At a time when basic research funding through the NSF and NIH in the US is under threat, it's important to understand what "basic" means in the context of more available DoD funding. For a lot of academics, the DoD's "basic" might not be be as basic as you think!

🌶 David Gray Widder@davidthewid.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🚨Finally published: How does the US Military enlist AI researchers in war? @siree.sh, Lucy Suchman and I examine 7k US Military grant solicitations for AI research, and show how even "Basic Research" enlists researchers in a warfighting agenda. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

40 minute headways in Pittsburgh are fine, apparently?

Remember, both the Iliad and the Odyssey were originally audiobooks.

Great thread from a book that has lived rent-free in my head since it argued that computers are inherently and fundamentally conservative. I didn't even know it was out of print!!

M.J. Crockett@mjcrockett.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Joseph Weizenbaum's 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason, has long been out of print - used copies sell for hundreds of dollars. It's wild that this is not more widely available given how much his ideas still apply to the world we're in now. 🧵/

Extremely hype to read this 👀

Cat Hicks@grimalkina.bsky.social · 5mo ago

It's finally PREORDER DAY for The Psychology of Software Teams!!!!! Which means you are just a few clicks away from your own personal guidebook to being more human in tech 🥰 www.drcathicks.com#book

good ML: * carefully designed for narrow contexts (or with awareness of context limits) * designed by ML and topical experts, with expert curated data and expert reviewed outputs * designed for specific needs and consumers, and kept up to date for both * clear training / comms on use and limits

The implicit compositionality born of English's status as a bastard language is a gift that calls for audacity, chutzpah, moxie, panache, etc

arr@arr.bsky.social · 5mo ago

english isn't for cowards. if you're not saying 'torpify,' that's a skill issue. there's no Académie Française telling you what to do. if you try to type 'pallific' and freak out when you see a little red underline, maybe you're not ready to roll with the big dogs.

I am beginning new research, and would like recommendations on your favorite writing on the "strange bedfellows" phenomenon. Unlikely coalitions fighting for a common goal, and the ethical quandaries therein.

Truly wonderful conversation with my lyft driver this morning, which started by discussing how he wanted to go on vacation in Florida, to see alligators in the wild. Normal, relatable, etc - until he reveals that he in fact raises alligators as pets - but only until they're eight (8) feet long!

‘dialectics’ is grad school for ‘there’s two of them’

> looking at tech sector layoffs > ask the hr manager if the layoffs are from ai or from the end of zirp > she doesn't understand > pull out illustrated diagram explaining what is ai replacement and what is zirp > she laughs and says "they’re good layoffs sir” > check the data > its zirp

A short reflection on "interdisciplinary" in AI, from Lucy Suchman, @siree.sh, and myself: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Cambridge University Press - Law@cambup-law.cambridge.org · 7mo ago

Top download from Cambridge Forum on #AI: Culture and Society's Cultures of AI Interdisciplinarity Issue: AI interdisciplinarity as critical technical practice by Lucy Suchman, Sireesh Gururaja and Gray Widder 📖Read it here: https://cup.org/4dIH2dE

As someone that came of age in a time where the linux distros I used had easy access to a *huge* variety of loyal clients (xmpp, so many web things), this paper and its framing are a lovely way to describe the thing I'd love for computing to return to ❤️

Ethan Zuckerman@ethanz.bsky.social · 6mo ago

"The loyal client" is a concept that's been important to our lab over the past five years as we've tried to make social media better: it's the idea that the tools you use to access social media should meet your needs, not those of the platform owner. Spencer Lane wrote a great paper on this as part

It's me! I am both this type of guy and, regrettably, this guy

LelainaV@lelainav.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Fiancé and I are doing first dance practice Instead of the music, he keeps “accidentally” playing the audiobook of The Power Broker

at this point anyone who sees any actual value in these tools has to be rooting for the bubble to pop so the moneyed freaks propping it up move on to quantum computing already

Jesse Hawken@jessehawken.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Jesus Christ, this is more dystopic than anything Philip K Dick ever wrote but it’s what the Russo Brothers want for your AI Slop future

Great quote from a great article, and it drives me *nuts* how big the gap is between the real affordances of AI, which can be fun and adaptive and agency affirming the political project it is inextricable from, software-brained imperialism :/

Hypervisible@hypervisible.blacksky.app · 7mo ago

“…all I can tell you is that it is a failure when you ask people to adapt to computers. Computers should adapt to people. Asking people to make themselves more legible to software —to turn themselves into a database — is a doomed idea.”

Me agreeing to a new project knowing full well it’s gonna add stress 🇲🇽

My hot take is that the median social system breaks under too much optimization pressure, and we should stop trying to optimize things

Ethan Mollick@emollick.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Every system that was regulated, either explicitly or implicitly, by the fact that they were effortful for humans (letters of recommendation, government filings, essays, or, as this paper finds, lawsuits) will break under a wave of AI.