Albert S. Fu
@novumsimulacrum.com
2.5K followers 2.4K following 320 posts
#Sociology prof that plays video games & studies the #BuiltEnvironment. Taiwanese American in PA. Irvine + Binghamton alum. Author of Risky Cities: The Physical and Fiscal Nature of Disaster Capitalism https://tinyurl.com/jkvbxcn4 Views are my own
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novumsimulacrum.com
What is also sad about this is we are only a few degrees of separation via Benita Roth who also recently passed.
novumsimulacrum.com
Today, 9 y/o read an excerpt from CLR James, On Dialectics. Of course, I had to explain dialectics to her. Yes, I'm starting her early.
novumsimulacrum.com
It's kind of amazing how much archival material has been digitized & made public in the last decade+. When I was a grad student in the 2000s I was still using microfiche or original docs in physical libraries and paying for print outs. Now I'm able to stick PDFs & screenshots into Zotero directly.
novumsimulacrum.com
Playing with #Obsidian . It's interesting. Trying to figure out how it might help my new book.
novumsimulacrum.com
Government shutdown making it hard for my students to do Census assignment. Sux. Thankfully, there are data projects out there that help with alternative assignments.
Reposted by Albert S. Fu
alondra.bsky.social
"Data centers are proliferating in VA and a blind man in [MD] is suddenly contending with sharply higher power bills...It’s an increasingly dramatic ripple effect of the AI boom as energy-hungry data centers...[pull]...households into paying for the digital economy" www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...
AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring
Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.
www.bloomberg.com
novumsimulacrum.com
Good game. Reminds me of Double Dragon.
novumsimulacrum.com
It's true that the craft beer bubble burst. That said Iron Hill totally over expanded, especially into high rent locations with large footprints. I'm sad, because I like their beer.
novumsimulacrum.com
I like that my kid likes indoor activities in facilities with WiFi. I get soooo much work done during Lara's gymnastics practices and Chinese classes.
novumsimulacrum.com
"We treat a low acceptance rate, and as a result a higher yield, as proof of quality when it’s just a proxy, and a flimsy one at that." = higher ed loves bad metrics.
Opinion | The College Game Is Changing. It’s Still Rigged.
The frantic competition that we’ve normalized is based on a lie about what makes a college education truly valuable.
www.nytimes.com
novumsimulacrum.com
I'm kind of baffled by YouTube Music's weak podcast selection versus Spotify - since many podcasters also have a YouTube channel. Also often YTM will be missing episodes that's available on Spotify.
novumsimulacrum.com
This certainly played a role in the strike this summer. Philly promises these waste management companies to incinerate trash. These companies were the other player in the room. whyy.org/articles/phi...
Philadelphia could stop burning its trash if this bill passes City Council
The proposal would require the city to rethink its waste disposal contracts after they expire next summer.
whyy.org
novumsimulacrum.com
I'm regretting not buying fancy cookware before this tariff stuff.
novumsimulacrum.com
Totally, I'm thinking it's Gemini AI eating itself
novumsimulacrum.com
Is it just me or did Google products on Android slow down? Chrome, News, etc. I tested out websites on Firefox and it's loading much faster.
novumsimulacrum.com
This sure feels like 1930s
novumsimulacrum.com
My daughter wishes there were more male figures in Lego Friends sets. She wants it to be more even even if she prefers female figures. You also can't order figures the same way as regular mini figs.
novumsimulacrum.com
Let's not also forget Russian drones over Poland and an airstrike in Qatar. ISIS rebels killed 50+ people in DR Congo. The world right now in 2025 is a mess. Global insurance industry reports are not optimistic.
www.washingtonpost.c...
novumsimulacrum.com
Let's be real if it's not in place yet, certainly COINTELPRO 2.0 is coming.
novumsimulacrum.com
I wrote a piece on tech contracts in higher ed. for Jacobin. The endless outsourcing is troubling for a variety of reasons. Not helping is vendors jumping on the AI hype to offer ever-more-advanced and expensive programs to universities. #CheatGPT
Universities Are Selling Themselves Off Piece by Piece
American higher ed has become a mesh of corporate contracts and outsourced services. From dining halls to student records, private vendors now run many institutions’ most basic operations — atomizing workers and undermining the university’s public mission.
jacobin.com