Jay D. Aronson
@jaydaronson.bsky.social
History, STS, human rights documentation, deaths in custody, criminal legal system, etc. New Book: https://deathincustodybook.com Podcast: https://officialignorance.com
This is a good time to remind everyone that AIPAC is not a Jewish organization, does not explicitly claim to represent American Jews (though it is often implied in stories about their political work), and ABSOLUTELY does NOT represent the actual views of the majority of American Jews.
This is a really interesting read paired with that AEJ paper I shared at some point this week. Both show no clear evidence that faculty affect students' partisanship. Again, no priors will be updated. (I'll find my post with the other paper and reply with it below)
Annaliese Paulson@annaliesep.bsky.social · 6h agoNew Working Paper with Micah Baum and Joaquin Endara: Students tend to become more liberal during college. We study whether individual faculty make their students more liberal. We find no evidence that faculty affect student partisanship. Working Paper: edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1538 1/
The best YouTube channel ever made has just dropped another of the best YouTube videos ever made. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGt7...
Johnny Depp's Bed
YouTube video by Bobby Fingers
youtube.com
Brown University has a widget that tracks the cost of the Iran war to American consumers (as contrasted to whatever the Pentagon is spending). Per-household cost now exceeds $600. iranwarcost.watson.brown.edu
Small drones are killing more civilians than ever before - and we need to act. Here’s my thoughts on what we need to do, like establishing a center dedicated to evaluating and investigating drone attacks, training investigators, and explaining how IHL applies to self-defense against drones:
What Can We Do About Drone Attacks on Civilians? Some Thoughts
Lately, I've been spending a lot of time analyzing, reporting on, and researching the horrifying global uptick in the use of small, cheap, short-range drones to intentionally target and kill civilians...
little-flying-robots.ghost.io
U.S. troops killed or wounded since July 7 are now counted separately from casualties during the first months of the Iran war. theintercept.com/2026/08/04/u...
The Pentagon Found a New Way to Undercount U.S. Casualties in Iran
U.S. troops killed or wounded since July 7 are now counted separately from casualties during the first months of the Iran war.
theintercept.com
this should get so much more attention — two states within 3 weeks have made major moves on rights restoration.
Alex Burness@burness.bsky.social · yesterdayA combined 100,000+ people with past felony convictions have either already gained or will soon gain voting rights in Missouri and Virginia, which both have elections today. More: boltsmag.org/gop-run-miss... boltsmag.org/virginia-gov...
Edwin Lopez-Cornejo died at Delaney Hall in Newark, six weeks into ICE custody. He is the 23rd person to die in ICE detention this year and the second at Delaney Hall since it reopened under Trump. austinkocher.substack.com/p/edwin-lope...
Edwin Lopez-Cornejo Is the 23rd Person to Die in ICE Custody in 2026
Edwin Lopez-Cornejo died at Delaney Hall in Newark, six weeks into ICE custody. He is the 23rd person to die in ICE detention this year and the second at Delaney Hall since it reopened under Trump.
austinkocher.substack.com
Read this article by the great John Warner, who articulates his disgust at Harvard's firing of the also-great Jane Rosenzweig, whose work at Harvard has been invaluable and whose public work on writing in the age of "AI" is precient and vital. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...
Harvard Administrators Don’t Care About Student Learning
I know, news flash, right?
insidehighered.com
ANOTHER death in ICE custody, this time at the controversial Delaney Hall facility. This makes 54 deaths since Trump took office; 1 every 8 days in 2026. His mother says he was denied adequate medical care for chronic conditions, a common accusation ICE has strenuously denied.
Luca Migo@victinibcn.bsky.social · 2d agoBreaking: Another victim, Edwin Jovanny Lopez Cornejo, has died in ICE custody at Delaney Hall prison after being denied vital medication and family visits. Depriving sick detainees of care until they die is murder by neglect. We demand complete transparency and justice for Edwin! 🎥 Statuscoup
Good on @weareravenous.com for being so thoughtful about freelance commissions, and also … man, things are bleak www.weareravenous.com/ai-freelance...
"Artificial intelligence is not just a market product or a scientific achievement. It is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy." connect the dots! Dr. McMillan Cottom has homework! go to the library, host a reading group, organize your neighbors www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/o...
Opinion | A Reading List for Our Age of A.I. (Gift Article)
A.I. is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy.
nytimes.com
Rest in Power to Johanna Fernández, leading historian of NYC amsterdamnews.com/news/2026/08...
Johanna Fernández, Young Lords historian and prison abolitionist, makes her transition
Dr. Johanna Fernández, the Dominican American historian, prison abolitionist, and movement scholar, died on July 30.
amsterdamnews.com
here is another response to “well AI is good at ___” —the race to make LLMs the omniscient multitool is diverting resources and attention from the bespoke models like this protein folder, because a) most people don’t know the difference and b) this is about selling a product.
Dan McQuillan@danmcquillan.bsky.social · 5d agoAlphaFold was always bait-and-switch; now Google confirms it. A hyper-narrow bioinformatrics model with actual science bolted on whose guesses can be experimentally checked was never a licence for socially-applied slop at scale, but it's done its job. Effort transferred to LLMs.
Thoughts on the dead singer. Yesterday, my middle aged straight hairy biker son went on one on social media about the dead singer and those eulogising him. He did not hold back. What was unusual was that he took to social media to vent knowing it would attract vile bile. I asked him why.
IMPACT: that company that was offering to buy books for AI companies’ training data — and probably destroy them in the process — says it will no longer offer this service following 404 Media’s exposure of it www.404media.co/ai-company-t...
Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage
Citing backlash, ISBNdb removed its webpages about training AI, denied ever buying, scanning, or selling a book for AI training, and said the site was a "test of market interest."
404media.co
UEFA spokesperson Dietmar Fumm said to reporters "This decision effectively signals that Gianni Infantino is an enemy of world football". tl;dr: FIFA "foe" - Fumm
Coming in November from Johns Hopkins University Press. Pre-order available now: www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...
"The system uses isolation as its ultimate weapon of control... they wield it against anyone who dares to maintain their dignity or fight for basic human rights" Incarcerated writers @kwanetaharris.bsky.social & @chriswblackwell.bsky.social on the torturous reality of solitary:
“Designed to Break You:” Two Incarcerated Writers on the Heavy Toll of Solitary Confinement
The authors of a new book on solitary answer your questions about their experiences with isolation and the movement to end the torturous practice.
boltsmag.org
A U.S. government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a global conference www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Color me skeptical. The comments are solid, especially the one that points out that the guy featured named his company Polsia, which is “AI slop” backwards. Also, he was losing money using Claude so he switched to “free” open source Chinese models. No risks there! www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-...
The Rise of Million-Dollar Companies With Just One Employee
AI tools make it easier for founders to get started alone, and many stay that way as they grow.
wsj.com
Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain A visual project from Airwars and @ainowinstitute.bsky.social breaks down how artificial intelligence is transforming every aspect of war - and how militaries are offloading life and death decisions to flawed technologies ai-killchain.airwars.org
Interactive: Anatomy Of An AI Kill Chain
Breaking down how militaries are offloading life and death decisions to flawed technologies
ai-killchain.airwars.org
This mock-up of AI-based targeting in modern warfare is cool as hell. I saw it this morning and it's already on my "Killer Robots" syllabus for the fall semester. I think that's the fastest discovery to inclusion time ever!
Airwars@airwars.bsky.social · last wk.Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain A visual project from Airwars and @ainowinstitute.bsky.social breaks down how artificial intelligence is transforming every aspect of war - and how militaries are offloading life and death decisions to flawed technologies ai-killchain.airwars.org
Copyright laws, digital distribution deals, & publishing monopolies are the reason destructive book scanning is putting books at risk. I get why folks are angry at AI companies buying books to destroy them. However, these issues predate them and hang a lot on books being subject to "market forces."
Proponents of jail construction often use "compassionate" arguments to sway people. But the reality is that incarceration itself is inherently harmful to physical and mental health while hurting entire communities. A newly designed cage won't change that.
Cautionary jails: Deconstructing the three “C”s of jail construction arguments
Communities across the country have been told that investing in new jail construction is the only way to solve old policy problems, but arguments for ...
prisonpolicy.org
