This is both infuriating (as reminder of how much money is being thrown at this fascist ethnic cleansing campaign of mass deportations) and exciting (as a means of prompting people to think otherwise). NYC costs at $9,814,566,134 or $3,544 per taxpayer. What are our priorities as a country?

Ben Zipperer@benzipperer.org · 10h ago

You're paying $2,358 in federal taxes for Trump's mass deportations. @epi.org 's new calculator shows what your community could have instead www.epi.org/deportation-...

Glad to see in the latest issue of ANZSW Journal: a critical (and scathing) commentary by @lizbeddoe.bsky.social and @eileenjoy.bsky.social, responding to a particularly infuriating (and fallacious) special issue of a US-based social work journal: doi.org/10.11157/anz...

Part of today's background music for the academic summer grind: a lovely performance in Berlin by thereminist and vocalist Carolina Eyck. www.youtube.com/watch?v=M96t...

Carolina Eyck – live Theremin concert @SUPERBOOTH21

YouTube video by Superbooth Berlin

youtube.com

This is neat and will be a handy reference when I step into a more DH-adjacent role as a Digital Fellow with @cunygcdi.bsky.social this fall and will have to recall and practice lots of foundational skills. Agree that adapting this to writing could be helpful too.

Brandon Walsh@walshbr.bsky.social · last wk.

New post applies Kenny Werner's concept of Effortless Mastery to DH. Maps out a semester-long, daily practice with the very basics of terminal, Git, HTML, CSS. Intended to help students find inner confidence as they navigate difficulty, frustration, and GenAI. walshbr.com/blog/effortl...

I got to see this film in a screening for Digital IDEAS 2026 this June at @umichdigital.bsky.social. Left a very strong impression & affective resonance; we had a really good discussion with the filmmakers after. I recommend signing up for this screening if you're interested & can watch war footage.

Ian G. Williams@igraywill.bsky.social · yesterday

The Longer You Bleed is a beautiful, difficult film exploring the psychological costs of phone-mediated consumption of violence and war. Screening on Kinema on August 22nd, 7pm CEST / 1pm EDT / 10am PDT, followed by a discussion w/ the filmmakers & Heal Ukraine Trauma. kinema.com/events/The-L...

The Longer You Bleed is a beautiful, difficult film exploring the psychological costs of phone-mediated consumption of violence and war. Screening on Kinema on August 22nd, 7pm CEST / 1pm EDT / 10am PDT, followed by a discussion w/ the filmmakers & Heal Ukraine Trauma. kinema.com/events/The-L...

The Longer You Bleed

Get tickets for the virtual screening of The Longer You Bleed

kinema.com

And meanwhile the actual current HHS secretary is openly promoting sending children to work camps in lieu of mental health treatment but sure, imaginary quarantine camps that never happened are the real threat

Seriously. It’s like Black Mirror made an episode about Ceefax being taken over by Nazis who can’t shut up.

Dave Vetter@davidrvetter.bsky.social · last wk.

It's increasingly clear that spending any amount of time on X in 2026 is tantamount to incurring a head injury.

Happy to report that the water temperatures have been declining over the past week, dropping us below critical bleaching temps of 30.5C (86.9F) 🌡️📉🥰🪸🌈🌈🐠🐠🪸 #rainbowparrotfish #parrotfishjungle #parrotfishcapitaloftheworld #coralbleaching #coralcitycamera

It is about time, I hope this echoes to other places like the GDPR did.

European Commission@ec.europa.eu · 4d ago

🔹 AI-generated media, ‘deepfakes’ must be clearly labelled as such 🔸Chatbots and virtual agents must explicitly state they aren't human 🔹You must be told when AI is actively analysing you, like biometrics, emotion tracking → link.europa.eu/gTvhRX

A demand for loyalty oaths, essentially. bsky.app/profile/nate...

David Kaye@davidakaye.bsky.social · 2d ago

the department of education today issued a 'national call to action' - which, in plain english, is a call for capitulation to trump administration's assault on higher ed. www.ed.gov/media/docume... note how this doc deploys recent yale & vanderbilt reports

This gets a lot more legible if you stop thinking of prisons as a failed effort to reduce harm and start thinking of them as a supply chain for involuntary labor

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 4d ago

It was inevitable that reactionary centrists would turn against harm reduction and call for a return to mass incarceration

🧵on the AAUP endorsement of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed for U.S. Senate in the Michigan Democratic primary, the first-ever electoral endorsement in the organization's 110-year history. 1

In @techpolicypress.bsky.social shirin anlen and I on a foreseeable fiasco: how Google briefly turned 1 of world's most trusted sources of evidence into a generator of plausible fakes, and why tech cos must consult civil society experts before launch, not after www.techpolicy.press/google-earth...

Google Earth AI Fiasco Underscores Why Tech Firms Must Listen to Outside Experts

It's just one more parable in a long line of product releases by AI firms with potentially dangerous consequences, write shirin anlen and Sam Gregory.

techpolicy.press

Marginalized communities and creators are forming data cooperatives to claw back control from Big Tech’s scraping practices https://restofworld.org/2026/ai-data-collectives-mozilla/?utm_campaign=row-social

Fed up with Big Tech, communities turn to data collectives for control

Data collectives and cooperatives, which let creators control the collection and distribution of their data, are emerging as preferred alternatives to big tech companies.

restofworld.org

Really interesting working paper by The Social Work Meta-Data Project that used local LLMs (w/ human researcher oversight & checking) to scrape & analyze 36 years of social work conference presentations & journal articles on artificial intelligence from 1989-2026. beperron.github.io/SocialWork-M...

christ if that’s not a metaphor for our times

NEW FROM ME: A frenzy of cruel and unusual ICE flights over the last few days suggests the Trump admin is ratcheting up its ethnic cleansing campaign. And it may be increasingly desperate to find willing collaborators. My breakdown: gillianbrockell.com/frenzy-of-cr...

Frenzy of cruel and unusual ICE flights shows Trump’s ethnic cleansing campaign is escalating – again

Seven apparent ICE removal flights in the last few days – including third-country removals, prolonged shackling, and failed deportations – reveal an agency ratcheting up.

gillianbrockell.com

Nature’s original video diffusion model

'Anthropic described the project as “our effort to disruptively scan all the world’s books” in an internal memo, which noted “we do not want it to be known that we are pursuing this project”.'

Dr. Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele@drdragases.bsky.social · last wk.

No longer content with pillaging intellectual work and dismembering our environment (already critically weakened), AI companies are now hellbent on destroying books galore including rare editions. Shut down these nefarious enterprises already.

More in the electronic music and synth world, Dorit Chrysler's music is also absolutely fantastic & such creative use of the MOOG Theremini. Check out this session from 2020: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CFP...

DORIT CHRYSLER Electric Eclectics LIVE IN LOCKDOWN 12 07 2020

YouTube video by electriceclectics1

youtube.com

Ian G. Williams@igraywill.bsky.social · last wk.

Went to the Berlin Synthesizer Museum this summer & took a theremin workshop w/ Dorit Chryster. My YouTube searches for synths changed algorithmic recommendations to obscure instruments, most recently the glass armonica. Watch Dennis James play here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzSr...

Dennis James' album, Cristal: Glass Music Through The Ages, is also quite something & worth a listen: open.spotify.com/album/7HSWj7.... The Internet is awash with slop & horrors, but also contains beauty, joy, (good) surprises, & things worth sharing because they are lovely. I often forget this.

Cristal: Glass Music Through The Ages - Album by Dennis James | Spotify

Dennis James · album · 2001 · 16 songs

open.spotify.com

Ian G. Williams@igraywill.bsky.social · last wk.

Went to the Berlin Synthesizer Museum this summer & took a theremin workshop w/ Dorit Chryster. My YouTube searches for synths changed algorithmic recommendations to obscure instruments, most recently the glass armonica. Watch Dennis James play here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzSr...

Went to the Berlin Synthesizer Museum this summer & took a theremin workshop w/ Dorit Chryster. My YouTube searches for synths changed algorithmic recommendations to obscure instruments, most recently the glass armonica. Watch Dennis James play here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzSr...

Adagio in C (on Glass Armonica) - full performance by Dennis James

YouTube video by RobScallon2

youtube.com

"Then there are the other New Yorkers -- the ones who populate the worlds of Friends and Seinfeld. They’re the white people who generally only talk to white people about white people."

W. Kamau Bell@wkamaubell.bsky.social · last wk.

Ross Douthat has been hired by Bari Weiss to be a correspondent on SIXTY FREAKING MINUTES! I decided to repost my review of an episode of Ross’s New York Times podcast that he titled “Did Women Ruin The Workplace?” I stand by it.😬 wkamaubell.substack.com/p/did-the-ne...

Having managed academic social media accounts for the last four years as part of a doctoral student fellowship... this is not really surprising. We (including the more than human world) are indeed all content creators in the attention economy.

Rachel Coldicutt@rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · last wk.

I was offline all weekend, which is the only reason I can imagine missing this very important news, because we are all content creators now, even the marmots www.livescience.com/animals/land...

@publicai.network starter pack just dropped. I am often a more critical + skeptical voice re: AI, I enjoy dialogue w/ folks building public options & alternatives to corporate tech infrastructures. Many cool folks here. Thanks @b-cavello.bsky.social for pulling me in. bsky.app/profile/did:...

This is great. The "just one more pull" logic of interacting with generative AI, and the token-based economy of expenditure that underlies many narratives about increased productivity via more GenAI use, feels very on point.

Dan Rosen@danrosen.xyz · 2mo ago

Wrote a short post about how GenAI makes us into gamblers who confuse judgment and probability

CAIL created this AI use disclosure generator following the Generative AI Delegation Taxonomy (paywalled article about GAIDet here: doi.org/10.1080/0898...). cc: @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social @minareeslibrary.bsky.social @cunygcdi.bsky.social @gctlc.bsky.social @writingcentergc.bsky.social

GAIDeT (Generative AI Delegation Taxonomy): A taxonomy for humans to delegate tasks to generative artificial intelligence in scientific research and publishing

The integration of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) in research raises concerns about transparency, accountability, and task delegation. While frameworks such as CRediT and the NIST AI Use ...

doi.org

Serhii Nazarovets@serhiinazarovets.bsky.social · last mo.

A nice surprise: @cunyailab.bsky.social has launched an #AI Use Disclosure tool based on the #GAIDeT framework. Researchers can now generate publication-ready, structured disclosures of how #genAI was used across different stages of the research workflow: tools.ailab.gc.cuny.edu/ai-disclosure/

Summer's been so busy I haven't yet had time to dive into these... but I'm glad to see they are out in the world, in advance of the Fall 2026 semester.

CUNY AI Lab@cunyailab.bsky.social · last mo.

We’re glad to share the CUNY Graduate Center AI Guidelines, co-drafted by three of the CUNY AI Lab’s co-founders. The guidelines are meant to support thoughtful, transparent, and critically engaged uses of AI in teaching, research, and administrative work across the GC community.

A few glimpses from a mostly offline week in Maine, enjoying natural beauty, the outdoors, and having seemingly nothing to do with deadlines, AI, or LinkedIn.