Doctora Malka Older
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older.bsky.social
Doctora Malka Older
@older.bsky.social
nerd with narrative disorder • humanitarian • sociopunk • evidence-based creativity • speculative resistance • predictive fictions • INFOMOCRACY • THE MIMICKING OF KNOWN SUCCESSES • …AND OTHER DISASTERS • GlobalVoices.org • ASU-CSI • opinions my own
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
A thing I got into an argument about with the research ethics board where I'm at is...well, I'm not putting non-anonymized interviews in a server where they might be implicated in AI in deeply unethical ways.

How does research ethics get implicated in this, on top of everything else?
Nothing to see here other than a university telling its research community that AI can appropriately be used to "generate first drafts."

unbcloud.sharepoint.com/sites/AI-at-...
February 12, 2026 at 3:45 PM
please stop calling this "immigration enforcement": if they're not checking immigration status or violation of immigration laws, then it is not immigration enforcement.
Border czar Tom Homan announces end of the aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that began late last year and resulted in thousands of arrests, as well as the shootings of three people. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02...
Trump Administration Live Updates: President’s Border Czar Says Minnesota Enforcement Surge Is Ending
www.nytimes.com
February 12, 2026 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
A US Marshal who is part of Trump's surge of feds in DC shot and killed someone in DC yesterday evening and there is barely any coverage and not a single post on here yet about it? wtop.com/dc/2026/02/u...
Member of US Marshals Service shoots, kills person in DC’s Mayfair neighborhood - WTOP News
Members of the U.S. Marshals Service shot and killed a person Wednesday afternoon in Northeast D.C.’s Mayfair neighborhood, a law enforcement source told WTOP.
wtop.com
February 12, 2026 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
As I finish reviewing for FAccT I'd love to get other opinions on a topic. (I'm trying to decide if this is worth raising to decision makers or if I'm overreacting.)

TL;DR Ethical considerations should be in the methods section, so explicitly instructing authors to put them at the end is bad. 🧵
February 12, 2026 at 1:35 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
The U.S. Steel explosion, the company’s new owner and a rookie mayor have hands folded in the industrial Mon Valley’s City of Prayer.

From @publicsource.org
Clairton sees hope but a history of disappointment six months after explosion • Pennsylvania Capital-Star
This article first appeared on Pittsburgh’s Public Source and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: fu...
penncapital-star.com
February 12, 2026 at 1:45 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
📣 Call for abstracts 📣
✅ Submit: 300-word abstract & bio to: forms.gle/qR2w3tbkyYDV...
🗓️ Deadline: April 30, 2026 (notification: May 24, 2026; full chapter: January 15, 2027)
Editors: Paul Meighan, Bedrettin Yazan, Waqar Ali Shah, Leonardo Veliz
🔎 Info: drive.google.com/file/d/1ypWn...
February 12, 2026 at 1:45 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
I gotta say, "the Pentagon uses a high powered laser to shoot down a party balloon" feels like enough symbolism for awhile. all full up thanks
February 11, 2026 at 8:02 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
That they told border patrol to watch out for cartel drones and then border patrol shot down an errant party balloon is just the perfect metaphor for all of this.
According to multiple NYT sources, it wasn’t even military personnel at Fort Bliss that fired an anti-drone laser at alleged cartel drones. It was CBP who used the weapon on loan from DoD against a child’s party balloon they mistook for a drone. The Pentagon gave CBP an anti-aircraft weapon.
February 12, 2026 at 1:46 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
Spend FIVE MINUTES protesting the genocide of Palestinians, and

1) be forced into hiding
2) have Google share your bank and credit card info due to a secret subpoena with ICE
Google Fulfilled ICE Subpoena Demanding Student Journalist’s Bank and Credit Card Numbers
Amandla Thomas-Johnson didn't know how much information ICE requested in a subpoena now. Google never gave him a chance to fight it.
theintercept.com
February 12, 2026 at 1:26 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
Calling on other UK immigrants and pro immigration citizens, today is the last day (til 11.59pm) to fill in the public consultation on the proposed changes to Earned Settlement, most notably moving the timeline from 5 years to 10 years www.gov.uk/government/c...
Earned settlement
The government is consulting on how the current settlement system should be reformed and how those reforms should be implemented.
www.gov.uk
February 12, 2026 at 1:28 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
Not surprising, as the press was telling them, “We’ve seen it before, it won’t be that bad,”, with a side dish of “she’s not really competent”
New poll: In 2024, low-engagement voters went for Trump over Harris by 11 percentage points. But now they disapprove of the way he's handling the presidency by 13. They have moved 25 points against Trump — 2x as large as the shift for high-knowledge voters www.gelliottmorris.com/p/trump-lost...
Trump has lost the voters who weren’t paying attention in 2024
The least-engaged Americans have swung 25 points against him since 2024 — about twice the shift among everyone else. Trump has flattened the engagement gap.
www.gelliottmorris.com
February 12, 2026 at 1:23 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
None of this makes sense.
"Ukrainian skeleton slider Vladyslav Heraskevych has been disqualified from the Winter Olympics for “refusing to adhere” to the IOC's athlete expression guidelines regarding his insistence on wearing a helmet featuring images of athletes killed during the war in Ukraine in competition."
Ukrainian skeleton slider disqualified from Olympics after breaking IOC rules on helmet honoring dead compatriots | CNN
Ukrainian skeleton slider Vladyslav Heraskevych has been disqualified from the Winter Olympics for “refusing to adhere” to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) athlete expression guidelines reg...
www.cnn.com
February 12, 2026 at 1:24 PM
"race" should be in quotes there, just as "sorted" is in the OP. write "skin color" or "language" if that's what they're using.
racism doesn't need the quotes though. this is racism, and this is hate.
This is the second account - the first being in Chicago - of DHS agents mass detaining people and then *sorting them by race*.
More than 400 people, including hundreds of citizens, were “sorted” at gun point into racial and ethnic groups by 200 ICE agents who fired flash-bang grenades into cars with people inside, pointed guns at children & demanded their zip tied parents not comfort them. apple.news/Ausdx6kWtT0e...
February 12, 2026 at 1:25 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
With millions of Bangladeshis active online, platforms such as Facebook and TikTok play an increasingly important role in shaping political awareness. Digital campaigning is no longer peripheral; it has become central to how political messages are delivered and received.
The social media battlefield: Political campaigns in Bangladesh’s national elections
Bangladeshi political parties compete for Gen Z’s attention with viral content, while battling misinformation alongside street campaigning, as Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube become central arenas for political messaging and debate.
advox.globalvoices.org
February 12, 2026 at 1:20 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
"What must be done? We must abolish ICE and the entire DHS. We must proclaim a general amnesty to all undocumented immigrants currently residing in America. We must decriminalize unauthorized immigration. And we must enshrine freedom of movement in the constitution."
Abolition, Amnesty, Decriminalization, Open Borders
You may not believe immigration restrictions are racist, but racists believe immigration restrictions are racist.
www.liberalcurrents.com
February 12, 2026 at 1:20 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
This is the second account - the first being in Chicago - of DHS agents mass detaining people and then *sorting them by race*.
More than 400 people, including hundreds of citizens, were “sorted” at gun point into racial and ethnic groups by 200 ICE agents who fired flash-bang grenades into cars with people inside, pointed guns at children & demanded their zip tied parents not comfort them. apple.news/Ausdx6kWtT0e...
Idaho families sue over immigration raid that swept up hundreds, including U.S. citizens — NBC News
About 400 people, including children and U.S. citizens, were detained for four hours while they were denied food and water in the raid, according to the lawsuit.
apple.news
February 12, 2026 at 2:26 AM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
This would do a lot more good than another data center.
February 12, 2026 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
I want to give a big, big thank you to Emily Barone for her enormous help in finding the story within the mountain of data and plots I buried myself in at the start of this project and writing a fantastic story 🙌
February 12, 2026 at 10:02 AM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
If you enjoy data, visuals, photos of adorable birds or just neat internet things, please check it out, and please share it onward if you enjoyed it! 🐦 (as I'm self-publishing this I could really _really_ use your help to spread the word, thank you! 🙏🙏🙏)
February 12, 2026 at 10:02 AM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
Full of custom, interactive visuals (a giant nest, a giant egg, the US made up of eggs!) to explore people’s experience with birds. It’s full of insights, funny outliers and visuals you can lose yourself in trying to explore all that the vast amount of bird data has to offer.
February 12, 2026 at 10:02 AM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
After several months of analysis, design, drawing, writing, and coding (and a little bit of birdwatching), it turned into a fully dataviz-driven, vibrant, whimsical and fun interactive story for birders and anybody even remotely interested in birds 🦉
February 12, 2026 at 10:02 AM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
📣 NEW! I’ve just released the BIGGEST and perhaps most creative project I’ve ever worked on!

“Searching for Birds” searchingforbirds.visualcinnamon.com 🐤

A project, an article, an exploration that dives into the data that connects humans with birds, by looking at how we search for birds.
February 12, 2026 at 10:02 AM
Reposted by Doctora Malka Older
2. This delightfully furry individual is a White Ermine.
February 12, 2026 at 11:56 AM