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Alex Hanna-ween

@alexhanna.bsky.social

20K followers 1.2K following 3.6K posts

Director of Research, @dairinstitute.bsky.social Roller derby athlete https://alex-hanna.com Book: thecon.ai Pod+newsletter: https://dair-institute.org/maiht3k 🇪🇬🏳️‍⚧️ She/هي 📸 @willtoft.bsky.social Rep📘 @ianbonaparte.bsky.social

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · May 13

It's book press day! The AI Con is available where ever you find fine books! Check out thecon.ai for details.

@emilymbender.bsky.social and I think we wrote a damn fine book, and we hope you'll enjoy it too.

For a taste, check out the preview of Chapter 1, graciously published by LitHub.

On the Very Real Dangers of the Artificial Intelligence Hype Machine

As long as there’s been research on AI, there’s been AI hype. In the most commonly told narrative about the research field’s development, mathematician John McCarthy and computer scientist Marvin M…

lithub.com

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Kate Clancy @kateclancy.bsky.social · 3h

I am being asked to tell my department which pieces of lab equipment should be supported with backup power because they expect rolling blackouts and brownouts in 2026 due to increased energy demands from AI. In case you're wondering how my day is going.

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The Transfeminine Review @thetransfemininereview.com · 16h

"You make the best of it all and hope you can help make it a little better for the gurl after you."

- Miss Major, 2023 💔

One of the things I hear with some younger trans people I know is they feel, "I'm gonna get this surgery, and I'm gonna learn that way of speaking, and I'm gonna be done." You're never done. If you're a straight, cisgender person, you're never done. Things are always happening that have the potential to change you. So all I am today is not who I'm gonna be tomorrow, because of the things that happened to me today and later tonight. People forget that. "Oh, after I transition, I'm gonna be through." Well, good luck with that. 'Cause if you're through, then it's time to leave, you know, and I don't wanna go anywhere yet.
I'm in my seventies. Why didn't I stop? Number one is community. My gurls. I've had moments of thinking about stopping, but I didn't. I made sure I would step back, reju- venate myself, and then got back out there, and that's how you make a way. Our stories are not all the same, but the destination is: to get some place where we have some peace and harmony, and we can be at ease with ourselves and the people around us. You make the best of it all and hope you can help make it a little better for the gurl after you.

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Jathan Sadowski @jathansadowski.com · 12d

What an unsurprising decision by corporations that desperately need to make money with AI. If every other company with a chatbot isn't already doing this, then expect them to be following Meta's lead soon. The chatbot is not your friend; it's a corporate listening device. www.ft.com/content/22f7...

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour.
https://www.ft.com/content/22f7afc3-8ac0-4ca1-9877-fd3f8ddcc986?desktop=true&segmentId=7c8f09b9-9b61-4fbb-9430-9208a9e233c8#myft:notification:daily-email:content

Meta will use conversations people have with its chatbots to personalise advertising and content across its platforms, in a sign of how tech companies plan to make money from artificial intelligence.

The owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp on Wednesday said it would use the content of chats with its Meta AI to create advertising recommendations across its suite of apps.

“People will already expect that their Meta AI interactions are being used for these personalisation purposes,” said Christy Harris, privacy and data policy manager at Meta.

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 14h

Yikes

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jam @socialistboat.dad · 5d

"This website is free" No. This website comes at a terrible cost

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bleary @bleary.off-the-records.com · 23h

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?

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Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 16h

Du Bois basically did a version of this in his bibliography in Black Reconstruction

BIB L I OGRAPH Y
STAN DARD - A N TI-NEGRO
(These authors believe the Negro to be sub-human and congenitally un-
fitted for citizenship and the suffrage.)
Burgess, John W., Reconstruction and the Constitution, 1 866-1 876.
Coulter, E. Merton, Civil War and Reconstruction in Kentucky.
Davis, William W ., The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida.
Dunning, William A., Reconstruction, Political and Economic .
Eckenrode, F. Hamilton, Political History of Virginia During Reconstruc·
tion.
Fertig, James Walter, The Secession and Reconstruction of Tennessee.
Ficklen, John R., History of Reconstruction in Louisiana.
Fleming, Walter F., Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama.
--, Documentary History of Reconstruction, 1 906, 1907.
Hamilton, Joseph G. de R., Reconstruction in North Carolina.
Hollis, John Porter, The Early Period of Reconstruction in South Carolina.
Lonn, Ella, Reconstruction in Louisiana after 1 868 .
Ramsdell, Charles W., Reconstruction in Texas .
Rhodes, James F., History of United States from the Compromise of 1 850.
Scott, Eben G., Reconstruction During the Civil War.
Staples, Thomas S ., Reconstruction in Arkansas .
Studies in Southern History and Politics . Inscribed to William Archibald
Dunning.
Carpet-Baggers in the United States Senate. By C. Mildred Thompson.
The Literary Movement for Secession. By Ulrich B. Phillips.
Negro Suffrage in the South. By W. Roy Smith.
Some Phases of Educational History in the South Since 1 865. By Wil-
liam K. Boyd.
Southern Legislation in Respect to Freedmen, 1 865- 1 866. By J. G. de
Roulhac Hamilton.
The Federal Enforcement Acts . By William Watson Davis.
The New South, Economic and Social . By Holland Thompson.
Grant's Southern Policy. By Edwin C. Woolley.
Taylor, Richard, Destruction and Reconstruction.
Thompson, Clara M., Reconstruction in Georgia, Economic, Social, Po-
litical, l 805-1 872.
Wooley, Edwin C., The Reconstruction of Georgia.

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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 16h

What I learned from Miss Major was persistence and also keeping a sense of humor. I was lucky to see her work in various organizing meetings over the years. She was a model of how to be a good elder. Truly grateful for everything she did to make the world better. Time for the rest of us to continue.

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TransLash Media @translash.org · 17h

We honor the legacy of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a fierce protector of our collective freedom. Our hearts are with her loved ones and all who carry her vision forward.

"We will honor Miss Major forever." - @imarajones.bsky.social

An illustration of Miss Major surrounded by candles with blue background and a famous quote of hers written in gold. The quote reads“I don’t need their permission to exist; I exist in spite of them. I want you to train and teach and love on and create families within my community and gender non-conforming people, so that we can understand that we have a culture, we have a history, we have a reason to be here. We have a purpose. We’re entitled to be loved, and seek happiness, and share that with the people that we care about.” -Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 17h

Rest in power, Miss Major.

www.advocate.com/news/miss-ma...

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, activist since Stonewall, has died

The LGBTQ+ community — and particularly the transgender community — has lost an iconic activist.

www.advocate.com

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20h

Well, you're entitled to your internet take!

Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20h

That's really upsetting!

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20h

Yeah, I'm curious if someone has done an audit study on this.

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20h

8 months of winter will do that to ya

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20h

If you gotta tell the lie machine not to lie, maybe there are more fundamental issues

Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 22h

Seeing people nonchalantly post stuff like makes me feel like I'm going crazy honestly.

A post from an academic on blue sky that says: "I'm learning about "prompt engineering" when asking LLMs to extract data. I now add this to all instructions:

Style
Be concise, analytic, and specific (cite page/figure if provided). If essential info is missing, keep going but flag Unclear and exact data needed. Never invent data.

#academicsky"

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wendy copium @alicebennett.bsky.social · 21h

one thing LLMs have revealed is that the belief that there is a magical incantation that will give you what you want is not just confined to pick-up artists and freemen on the land

Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 22h

Seeing people nonchalantly post stuff like makes me feel like I'm going crazy honestly.

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20h

And I did disagree with that point. And the latter points are not simply "templated" or "throwaway" -- we wrote a whole book on that and they are core to my concerns about AI and "art".

Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20h

? I'm just disagreeing with your latter point. Not all disagreement is hostile!

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20h

Meanwhile my mother has sent me her first shared piece of AI slop on Facebook, spreading a deepfake of Trump saying that kids can't keep their parents' house after they die.

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20h

That itself is quite a take? While I hate the contenti-zation of social media, there's at least more effort and creativity being put into the production of TikToks rather than "hahaha I made MLK do a DJ set". Along the usual gripes about the massive theft of content and the amount of energy it takes

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20h

The Information confirming what most of us already seemed to get a handle on -- "AI" has been profitable for only the chip manufacturers, and the circular network of cloud providers.

www.theinformation.com/articles/ai-...

Meanwhile, we’ve seen precious little evidence that AI is a profitable business for those using the servers to sell AI apps or those developing AI models. The cost of AI models weighs on all AI-powered applications, although those costs have come down over time. Coding assistants, for instance, aren’t exactly high margin. We’d bet that’s true of other AI apps, whether they’re run by big companies or startups, although we don’t really know. Few of the big public companies have said much about the revenue they’re getting from AI apps, let alone the profits.

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20h

"While AI-generated content is often derided by the term “slop,” I find it riveting—or at least no dumber than a lot of the social media stuff I waste my time on."

Big yikes.

www.theinformation.com/articles/slo...

Slop Takes Over My Social Media Feed. I Don’t Hate It

I’m not sure what everyone else’s social media feeds are looking like these days, but over the past 72 hours mine has become unrecognizable to me. On TikTok, I’ve been inundated with short clips of sl...

www.theinformation.com

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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 21h

I don't know how many times to point out that is absolutely ghoulish and non-consensual and disgusting behavior.
To exploit the image of a dead woman who was also exploited in real life so you can live out your momentary fantasies of "what is possible" with AI is bad science journalism, also.
Sick.

October 10, 2025

4 min read

Marilyn Monroe in Game of Thrones? AI Could Make It Happen Soon

Despite early, and familiar, copyright growing pains, Sora may be the prelude to AI-generated on-demand TV and movies

Screenshot includes an AI generated image of what looks like a human cross between Daenaerys Targaryen and Marilyn Monroe on the back of a dragon.

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Deborah McDowell @dem8z.bsky.social · 1d

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!!

The University of Texas-Austin is beginning a process to eliminate the Black Studies, Latino Studies, and Gender Studies departments in the College of Liberal Arts. This is a grave threat to the educational liberty of students, faculty, staff, and the people of Texas. 1/

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 23h

Hi Jose, you can find my contact information from my CV on my website