Flashed onto a potential near future with jingoist Americans "Rollin' Coal" not with their excessive trucks, but with generators to fuel the greediest of GenAI tech. It'll be the truck in Nate Powell's "About Face", but for a changing same of abusive, aggressive petro-masculinity.

About Face

Death and surrender to power in the clothing of men.

popula.com

Ben Williamson@benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 2h ago

Super intriguing that my university's head of tech today asked AI users to use Qwen running on institutional infrastructure instead of commercial LLMs ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini that "incur token based charges" in order to "significantly save money." US big tech LLMs getting too pricy for HE now?

The AI+OER Institute starts Friday. Two half-days. Virtual. FREE. Two tracks: Applied Pedagogy & Ethical Accountability. Robin DeRosa opens by asking where AI's promise of democratization runs against the equity goals the open movement was built on. Info/register: cptc.libguides.com/TLC/AIOER2026

LibGuides: Teaching & Learning Center: 2026 AI+OER Institute

Use this guide as a central hub of information from the TLC

cptc.libguides.com

I don't believe it'd be asking for too much, and I thoroughly believe it'd be great if the world could create some sort of ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) indicator & reset button for when your brain has been braining too intensely for far too long and can't stop won't stop go go go thoughts

I'd never knock other people's slash ships, but I maintain that NASA/Trek remains undefeated.

NASA/TREK

This wry and highly readable investigation of the role of space travel in popular imagination looks at the way NASA has openly borrowed from the TV show Star Trek to reinforce its public standing. It ...

versobooks.com

Will Burrows 🖖🥖🥀@reforest-kelley.bsky.social · 20h ago

If 60s / 70s Trekkies hadn't invented slash fiction, 90s Trekkies would have had to, because the canon ships can be abysmal. Bashir and Ezri? Chakotay and Seven? Chakotay and anyone for that matter? GTFO Worf and Troi? Worf and Jadzia? Neelix and Kes!?What the hell are you even doing?

Others have said this better, but it's incredibly crazymaking to be generally disposed to believe that technology has the potential to improve aspects of our lives, then see the same folks who were Big Skeptics 8 years ago now buy wholesale into a Fantasy Sports League deformation of said potential.

many of the companies deeply invested in hyperscaler expansion control or own the biggest legacy and social media spaces in the world. it's remarkable to see public opinion move against them like this.

Christopher Mims@mims.bsky.social · 2d ago

Do you have any idea how unpopular your industry has to be to get the governor of Texas to pause approvals of your newest facilities? Abbott just halted all data center approvals in his state until they're properly vetted: www.texastribune.org/2026/08/03/t...

We are all in the gutter socialism, but some of us are looking at the (Pleiades / Seven Sisters / Subaru logo) stars socialism.

Biblioraptor, PhD@biblioraptorphd.bsky.social · yesterday

SUBARU SOCIALISTS

here's a fun lil exercise for cis people: how many articles would a publication have to print calling for your extermination before you would expect people who care about you to stop giving them money? and how would you feel if their excuse for still supporting them is some fuckass crossword puzzle?

They tried to prosecute people they knew were innocent. This is an authoritarian move.

MeidasTouch@meidastouch.com · 2d ago

Federal prosecutors just dropped charges against 3 MORE defendants who were falsely accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool www.cbsnews.com/news/lincoln...

It's probably a bit gauche to start calling that platform things like, oh, off the top of my head: - QuislingStack - BootLickerStack - SpinelessStack But for feck's sake, it's far worse than gauche to knowingly, callously make a Nazi bar part of your personal brand in 2026. leavesubstack.com

yyyyyep.

Paris Marx@parismarx.com · 2d ago

getting tired of people on the left still launching substack newsletters after all the reporting on that company in recent years

juggalo juggalas juggalat juggalamus juggalatis juggalant

It's been a smoky month from nearby wildfires, and I've gotten a bit of cabin fever. So this week I've particularly appreciated our small backyard container garden. Check out my other enthusiasms & realizations in this week's #weeknotes. #Blaugust2026 #100DaysToOffload

Weekly Assemblage for 2026 Week 31

Pablo the Poblano and backyard mood lifters. OEN Engage! 2026. Wild sage.

ryanpatrickrandall.com

As far as "in retrospect, this surprise was in fact entirely predictable" news goes, the Discord for Blaugust is doubling as an impromptu ADHD support / commiseration forum.

I think when people make that goofy joke "how do you know someone's vegan, don't worry they'll tell you" they maybe don't grasp that we regularly have to argue just to get our food.

Really enjoying how today's sunlight doesn't appear prematurely sepia toned. Let's see if we can keep the wildfire conflagrations to a minimum for the rest of the season / decade / millennium, both for aesthetic & anthropocentric purposes, please?

STRIKE ALERT: Prisoners across the U.S. will stage a National Prisoners' Human Rights Strike from May Day through June 19 (Juneteenth), 2027, uniting the fight to end legalized slavery with the struggle to restore voting rights to the prison class Jailhouselawyersspeak.com @jaillawspeak.bsky.social

Watching all the R horrors today—RFK lies, the accused abuser Rep, Trump and war crimes—and thinking about why things don’t change. Dana Bash won’t hold people accountable, Biden didn’t, Dem leaders are about to cut a budget deal with Rs. No wonder outrage fades. We need accountability.

Dan Mitchell@danmitchell.bsky.social · 3d ago

The severity of this case, partly because it was happening at the same time as the coup case (and everything else) was and is grossly underappreciated. Part of the problem was people on the left noting that lots of government info is over-classified. And that's true, but it's kind of irrelevant.

This is everything I feel both as a library worker and an academic trying to figure out how to teach libraries to be better. It took me until late this year to realize why discussing AI feels like the moral injury I sustained trying to get people I trusted to care about COVID. They’re the same.

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 3d ago

If useful, here's my attempt to process my feelings about how I feel sadly kinda — or rather very — sick from all this AI fascist nonsense as an academic. 😶‍🌫️ I'd be pleased if even one person finds something useful because there's something to be said for processing this all together, so, um, enjoy?

Thinking of that tweet re:everyone in academia knows a 60yo woman only known by her 1st name, who actually runs the dept/uni. (Which is almost at an anarchist understanding: not "make Dolores president" but "many Doloreses, no president" and "how can you Dolores too") +

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 4d ago

Anyway, your problem isn‘t finding the time to take notes. The problem is that taking notes is thinking and thinking has to be done by someone. women have been doing a lot of metacognition that looks like a task when it’s really thinking.

The Big Grass fire is big enough that it took an hour and thirty-five minutes for the King Air to fly the IR mission over it tonight. 95 minutes, averaging 300mph, over just this one fire... and they had a 40mph wind from the west at 20,000' 😉 #IdahoFire

The genre of the month for Book Club for Masochists: A Readers' Advisory Podcast is... Post-Apocalyptic Fiction! What are your favourites? What do you recommend? Is this popular at your library? 📚

Very cool that Starfleet has a ship named after @chanda.blacksky.app! From the Star Trek: Zero Point ashcan I picked up from @idwpublishing.com at SDCC ‘26 last weekend, written by @charliejane.bsky.social, art by Isaac Sánchez González & lettering by @longtalljodie.com.

Other things that demand reliable executive function elude me far more than I wish, but I at least know that no one who's worked with me would say I'm not willing to take the notes. Not only one of my better skills, but also a preferred way of working. www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/our-conferen...

Our Conference Notes

A Better Info Sharing is Possible

ryanpatrickrandall.com

Now here's a challenge for the men of @ach.bsky.social: volunteer to be next in line for secretary and mix things up so it's not always women and enbies doing that work. The last male secretary was Stéfan Sinclair from 2004-2007. It's been 20 years, my dudes!

Sarah Werner@wynkenhimself.bsky.social · 4d ago

Hoo boy when I was the Secretary on a board and couldn’t find a man to take my place when my term ended because having to do that work of metacognition was too feminized

Today's the first day of #Blaugust2026 , and I stumbled into the concept of "reginnings" as I was rearranging my books. www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/reginnings If you're also into blogging, it's not to late to join in the #Blaugust fun! #indieWeb #personalSites #blogging

Reginnings

Conscious rituals for beginning anew. First Blaugust2026 post in earnest.

ryanpatrickrandall.com

The Republican regime is too busy attacking immigrants who make our country stronger to deal with the very real threats to our security.

Simon Rosenberg@simonwdc.bsky.social · 4d ago

Where is our government? Trump? DHS Secretary Mullin? Is the American homeland under attack? www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/u...

get off the internet

This weekend I am riding 25 miles between today and tomorrow (from the comfort of my Peloton) to raise money for Cancer research and to push myself to do hard things. If you want to support me I'm the #panmasschallenge here's my fundraising page! profile.pmc.org/pmc/CB0678 Starting now!

Cara Berg Powers | PMC Profiles

Support Cara Berg Powers in the Pan-Mass Challenge – a bike-a-thon raising funds for cancer research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

profile.pmc.org