1. The new Trump / Kratsios plan for US science appears explicitly designed to destroy US universities. Diverting money to tech donors is probably just a bonus. Gift link.

Trump’s Plan for Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities (Gift Article)

Michael Kratsios, President Trump’s science adviser, proposed overhauling how the government funds research. Democrats said Mr. Trump’s actions had weakened science.

nytimes.com

holy shit www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx15...

What You Know x Xue Hua Piao Piao (Two Door Cinema Club x Fei Yuqing) [EZEKIEL Mashup]

YouTube video by EZEKIEL

youtube.com

Interested in accessibility, visualization, or data ethics? I'm looking for Ph.D. students to join @data-and-design.org in Fall 2027. I've updated this post with additional information about this year's focus area. data-and-design.org/recruiting/phd

Recruiting Ph.D. Students for Fall 2027

We are an interdisciplinary research group at the University of Colorado Boulder that uses design to understand and reimagine socio-technical systems.

data-and-design.org

just saw the furious. can't believe more people aren't talking about it. a perfect kung fu movie AND there was a taekwondo guy ...

Favourite Ayo Edebiri picture just dropped.

Updates to Umwelt, an accessible editor for screen reader users to create multi-modal data representations that include visualization, text, and sonification! New documentation site with example gallery: umwelt-data.github.io/umwelt/ Full writeup: data-and-design.org/blog/2026/07...

Umwelt Updates: Example Gallery, Sonification Improvements, Editable Text Structures

Umwelt is an open-source editor for creating accessible, multimodal data representations. From a single specification, Umwelt produces three coordinated views of a dataset: a visualization, a sonifica...

data-and-design.org

jetblue got me stranded in boston for so long i may as well just move back

i just signed an open letter in support of workers at Scientific American after the staff recently voted to form a union, Springer Nature sold the company with no warning, laid off union leaders, and cut salaries—3 days before the union election was ratified by NLRB join me? wgaea.st/sciam-letter

An Open Letter In Support of Scientific American

We are looking for your support by signing the letter below. It calls on Springer Nature to ensure that as part of the sale, LabX Media will rehire laid off union workers, restore staff salaries to pr...

wgaea.st

NIH grants have been under political scrutiny since early 2025. But what does the screening process actually look like? What is being flagged? I spent a month digging into leaked docs and emails. We've published the 235-word list that are being flagged by an internal AI tool. And so much more. 🧵

Inside the new political screening that’s stalling NIH grants

Mandatory reviews by top health officials and checks for 235 disfavoured terms have left hundreds of vetted grant applications in administrative limbo.

nature.com

who needs therapist when we have mon mothma crashout core playlist

please apply! come do something weird in the Media Archaeology Lab!

media archaeology lab@mediaarchaeology.bsky.social · last mo.

Our residency call for the 26/27 academic year is live! The theme this year is Creative Misuse - interpret as you will. Read the full prompt: https:// drive.google.com/file/d/16zB-7J4UoajGAooans30yEgQKlzys2hD/view Fill out the application: https:// forms.gle/KNfcAGBVCbyURiWJA

If you're an anthropologist of science/tech in the Boston area and want to teach an intro-level class at Tufts on the same this fall, well you're in luck: apply.interfolio.com/188534

@jonathanzong.com I'm still thinking about your article on how tech companies exploit accessibility design in ways that make environments less accessible. Another example is this case of self-driving cars that veer into bike lanes in order to do pickups and drop-offs. futurism.com/future-socie...

Waymo Has a Bike Lane Problem

Waymo has reportedly told traffic safety advocates that avoiding driving in bike lanes is "too high a bar" to pass.

futurism.com

We're over halfway to our funding goal. Yay! But we have more to go before the match deadline on June 30. If you haven’t had a chance to give yet, now is a great time—your gift still counts for 2x. Funds support undergrads facing financial difficulty, senior capstone projects, and student travel.

jonathan zong@jonathanzong.com · 2mo ago

I’m helping the CU Information Science department launch a crowdfunding campaign to support undergraduate students through emergency financial assistance, senior capstone projects, conference travel, and visiting speakers. Every dollar matched through June 30! giveto.colorado.edu/double-your-...

why do they call it road work if road not work while it happen

I know this place is no 🐦app when it comes to crowdsourcing creative ideas, but... Might anyone be able to share e.g. of urban exploration-oriented viewfinders — e.g. kits to focus + frame observation in the physical world? Here's my class experimenting w/ Katie Giritlian's photo frames.... [1/2]

super excited to share a big update to olli! olli is a library for converting visualizations into accessible, keyboard-navigable descriptions. in v3, we expand support for new types of charts, introduce support for diagrams, and more data-and-design.org/blog/2026/05...

Announcing Olli v3: Diagrams, Choropleths, and Customizable Descriptions

Data visualizations are one of the most common ways information is communicated on the web, and they are frequently inaccessible to blind or low-vision screen reader users. Olli is an open-source Java...

data-and-design.org

I’m helping the CU Information Science department launch a crowdfunding campaign to support undergraduate students through emergency financial assistance, senior capstone projects, conference travel, and visiting speakers. Every dollar matched through June 30! giveto.colorado.edu/double-your-...

Double Your Impact: Information Science Student Opportunity Fund

Support CU Boulder Info Science students — every dollar matched through June 30! 🎓

giveto.colorado.edu

For years, people have tried hard to get websites to build accessibility affordances. Now developers are willingly building them for AI.

Affordances for me, but not for thee

For years, people have tried hard to get websites to build accessibility affordances. Now developers are willingly building them for AI.

werd.io

i've been thinking about the work we're doing at varying levels to organize against AI, and maybe i've also been in the headspace of gardening and getting rid of weeds. i can't shake the feeling that AI takes up space opportunistically where people's needs are not being met. a little like weeds.

Ali Alkhatib: Weeds tend not to grow where they can't take root

ali-alkhatib.com

New piece out with @jonathanzong.com where we look at how accessible infrastructure has been continually coopted by technological advancements, and both people with disabilities and everyone else now must compete for use of these spaces.

Tech Policy Press@techpolicypress.bsky.social · 3mo ago

AI companies are now getting accommodations that disabled people spent decades fighting for. Jonathan Zong and Frank Elavsky argue this reflects a broader pattern, where accessibility gains become politically possible only once industry needs the same changes.

As agentic AI rapidly transforms internet infrastructure, how do we ensure disabled people's needs are not displaced? In a new article by me and @frank.computer, we argue that accessibility must not be treated as an incidental benefit of rapid AI expansion. Read below:

Tech Policy Press@techpolicypress.bsky.social · 3mo ago

AI companies are now getting accommodations that disabled people spent decades fighting for. Jonathan Zong and Frank Elavsky argue this reflects a broader pattern, where accessibility gains become politically possible only once industry needs the same changes.

A very interesting and important new piece from Dave Pozen and Daniel Hemel! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

From the creator of #ButterflySoup and #PomGetsWiFi, The Crane Rider's Tale is a mystery game inspired by Disco Elysium, Zero Escape, and Chinese folktales. 🪽On Kickstarter now! www.kickstarter.com/projects/psy...

gotta keep iterating on the STS program shirt design, probably

Fun to see that "Bears Will Be Boys," which I wrote with folks from the @puddingviz.bsky.social, won a 2025 Digital Humanities Award! pudding.cool/2025/07/kids...

A common misconception holds that LLM-based text-to-speech is relevant to accessibility for blind users. This is a great explainer from a blind person working in accessibility tech. The starvation of resources and presumptions made by sighted people are poised to cause regressions in accessibility.

the top horse girl in all of japan (with the exception of gojo satoru of course)

New trailer for "Sekiro: No Defeat" anime series (based on the game). Directed by Kenichi Kutsuna at Qzil.la studio. Coming to Crunchyroll this year. >> www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Mi...

Catsuka@catsuka.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Crunchyroll is unveiling a sneak peek of "Sekiro: No Defeat" today at SXSW festival (Austin, USA) during a panel with director Kenichi Kutsuna. schedule.sxsw.com/2026/events/...

Amidst overwhelming Epstein revelations, I've heard from many scientists, especially women, about the deafening silence from so many corners. Many ask "how could things be different?" In this post, I answer with three metaphors, grounded in the science he tried to own medium.com/p/61a537ee8e...

The Manacle, the Network, and the Tree

New Epstein revelations have many in science asking me “how can things be different?”

medium.com