"higher ed is an economic engine, health-care engine, technological-innovation engine.

it should be a common public good for everyone. the vast majority of Americans of any political stripe need education for their kids, their families, in order to move forward."
www.chronicle.com/article/is-t...

Here's your period reminder that "Luddite" does not mean "hates technology/progress".

It means "hates how technology/progress benefit only the bosses while the workers get the shaft".

Seems like people now broadly understand that data centers use a ton of energy but pols are happy to trade that for "high tech jobs." But just bc it's big computer doesn't means it's big jobs! It's a big storage facility. The jobs are mostly in construction, with a tiny maintenance crew thereafter.

A longish thread to announce that the Themed Issue "Digital Platform Economies: Value from Data?" is now fully available online
"https://journals.sagepub.com/topic/collections-pns/pns-1-digital_platform_economies_value_from_data/pns

it's so funny to see America's health insurance companies be like "look. If there's one thing we love it's denying you care. but we ran the numbers - and we cannot BELIEVE we're saying this - and it's cheaper for us to just pay for the vaccines than deal with you going to the ER."

💹 As the political underpinnings of value creation become ever more pressing, Science as Culture is making available free access the commentary "On the Political Vernaculars of Value Creation," by Fabian Muniesa, released almost ten years ago.

🔗 doi.org/10.1080/0950...

Is it possible to design a world where production is organised according to social, #community #needs and respecting #planetary #boundaries?

What are the techno-political basics needed for #democratically building such an alternative?

Join us in Geneva at a once in a lifetime workshop 👇👇

A second mass shooting of a homeless encampment in Minneapolis. Five more people died. Meanwhile, congress is working on passing the ability to jail homeless people for up to 30 days or charge them $500. It bans camping on public property. abcnews.go.com/US/people-hu...

New from me. The biggest labor story in the US is happening at Microsoft. More people should be talking about it. I spoke with 5 tech workers who have all been fired for protesting Microsoft's complicity in genocide. They don't regret it & won't stop

@therealnews.com
therealnews.com/the-biggest-...

On August 5, the Iowa City Council unanimously voted to boycott and divest from Israel bonds and all companies complicit in the Gaza genocide and occupation of Palestine. mondoweiss.net/2025/08/iowa...

Curious as well how the move toward digital transformation and “data driven health” exists alongside any commitments to invest in the people and social infrastructures of care..? Particularly the community health and primary care doctors that make a wellness model possible..

Good morning to everyone except @umich.edu Medicine, the latest to capitulate.

To trans youth in Michigan & surrounding states, we see you & are fighting for you.

Behind all the copyright battles on AI, there are some much more substantial conceptual rearrangements taking shape. For instance, since when did we call music, prose, and visual art 'data'? And who does it benefit? My new OA piece in Platforms and Society: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

these systems *designed to be* hostile and unnavigable remain so in the face of the high volume, low accuracy bureaucracy machine

hmm, except that in some aspects of our life navigating the bureaucracy can become QUITE high stakes. Eg, choosing a health insurance plan, or figuring out how to correctly file visa renewal paperwork…

@radicalgraffiti.bsky.social in Philly, PA

I feel like the bleak part is less this actual state of affairs and more so the forces that make that “surrogate”asynchronous text appealing for students, or educators’ capacity to develop a new practice of assignment and assessment in the context of austerity and work intensification etc.

many benchmarks used to measure AI capabilities are, I think, contrived and lenient. here's a good real-life study, on whether AI can do your (US) tax returns; a domain with plentiful training data and documentation. the result: the best model only got 33% of returns correct arxiv.org/pdf/2507.16126

What pushback were you expecting? This seems like a well-bounded description of changes to a major aspect of assessment - or the “educational transaction” as you describe it 🤷

Join us!

good morning happy back to school to all who celebrate, happy one week of summer left to all the syllabus scramblers, happy grr to the quarter system people, here's some help for all of us in the college classroom

against-a-i.com

Happening Tuesday! Last call for RSVPs!

It’s also just because these stickers were *inordinately popular* and I need to get my shit together and print some more 😂

Bloomberg is covering some important stories of AI data center resistance!

Over 2000 residents asked their city council to vote against an Amazon data center, only 11 were in favor.

The vote never mattered.

Anyone currently mapping this expansion of data infra?

www.tiktok.com/t/ZT6u5aomt/