iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 12h

omw to the Santamaria Trucking Services conference see you there #4S2026

the back of a four wheeler truck passing by me on an New England high way in autumn. the truck says "STS" (which stands for "santamaria trucking services, inc) in bright red block and cursive text

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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Join @dairinstitute.bsky.social for the launch of our new resource, an archive of 2010s higher ed protest in the U.S. and Canada, designed for campus activists and others working on left and liberatory organizing. Oct 20, 9am PT / 12pm ET Register: bit.ly/decade-of-campus-protest

Event poster with a white background and black text, with the title "A Decade of Mass Campus Protests, Website Launch Event". At the bottom is a photo of a long line of people marching on a sidewalk in winter clothing, holding blue and white picket signs that say "On Legal Strike" in capital letters and "University of Toronto" at the bottom.

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Julien Porquet @julienporquet.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

What a great thread on my most recent paper about #plagiarism, #branding, and #de-enregisterment! Thank you @signsandsociety.bsky.social.

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

ahh bummed to be missing this (get in too late on wed) looks fantastic!!

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Shobita Parthasarathy @shobitap.org · 05/10/2026

University of Michigan's proposed partnership with Los Alamos isn't just a disaster for community relations and public trust. It will also hurt academic research at the *public* university, says historian and #umich public policy professor Joy Rohde.

michigandaily.com

UMich’s Los Alamos partnership threatens research enterprise

For at least a year, the University of Michigan’s administration has been trying to convince a skeptical public that its plan to build a $1.25 billion computing facility with Los Alamos National Labor...

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Andrés Monroy-Hernández @andresmh.com · 23/09/2026

Proud that our Workers' Algorithm Observatory is partnering with NYC's Dept. of Consumer & Worker Protection and the Workers Justice Project to build tech infrastructure for compliance monitoring of DoorDash, as part of a record $131.5M settlement✊🏽 Press release: www.nyc.gov/mayors-offic...

nyc.gov

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Some good news for a change: Overcoming a massive and aggressive tech lobby and a squeamish, Silicon Valley-friendly governor, the labor movement has managed to pass a raft of first-of-their-kind AI laws aimed at protecting workers in California.

bloodinthemachine.com

California just passed the strongest AI labor laws in the US

Finally, some good news

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Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA @arrianna-planey.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

"Magnuson’s doctors asked for approval again after providing more documentation, and then a third time. On each occasion, it was denied. It was on the third denial that Magnuson discovered it wasn’t a person who had made this decision about his treatment. It was AI." #Medicare

sciencefocus.com

AI is now deciding who gets healthcare in 6 US states – and it's already harming patients | BBC Science Focus Magazine

An AI pilot programme is attempting to cut down on ‘wasteful’ medical procedures, and patients are paying the price

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Kevin J. Kircher @kevinjkircher.com · 26/09/2026

Microsoft's data center subcontractor in New Jersey illegally runs a bunch of gas "backup" generators on site, figuring they won't get caught or will just eat the wrist-slap fines if they do. Regulatory enforcement is so bad that a third party had to take drone images to get the state to act.

theguardian.com

New Jersey datacenter fined $1.1m after visual investigation showed dozens of unpermitted generators

State regulator’s record fine for DataOne facility in Vineland follows Floodlight investigation with the Guardian

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Heba Gowayed هبة جويد @hebagowayed.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

What were not talking about is that the Ivy League, by design, with its construction of “status” and “value” is designed to create men for whom there are no consequences & to dehumanize everyone else. This the Cornell 7. Thus the expulsion of anyone who dares protest genocide. This is privilege.

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Julián Posada @posada.website · 28/09/2026

With #PlatformExtractivism out October 20, here’s a preview: two maps of average client and worker web traffic, 2018–2023. Venezuela stands out. The book explores why it became a data work hub, focusing on working conditions, territory, and epistemology. 🔗 More Info: www.ucpress.edu/books/platfo...

Two grayscale world maps show average client and worker web traffic across 20 platforms, 2018–2023. Darker shading indicates higher traffic shares; the lightest shade indicates no data.

Top map, client traffic: United States 34.6%; Netherlands and United Kingdom 9.8% each; Canada 5.2%; Russia and India 4.9% each; Belize 4.1%; Brazil 2.7%; France 2.5%; Philippines 2.4%.

Bottom map, worker traffic: United States 22.9%; India 12%; Brazil 8.6%; Philippines 8.5%; Venezuela and Kenya 6.2% each; Albania 5.8%; Colombia 4.2%; Nigeria 2.6%; Morocco 2.1%.

Source: Julián Posada, Platform Extractivism, University of California Press, 2026.

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Catherine D'Ignazio (she/her/ella) @kanarinka.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

MIT spent $3 million on 500 AI-capable surveillance cameras while laying people off, shutting down libraries, and canceling journal subscriptions. In this article, 4 faculty & I discuss our new arts initiative to celebrate surveillance and repression on college campuses: fnl.mit.edu/how-we-learn...

fnl.mit.edu

How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Campus Surveillance – MIT Faculty Newsletter

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Dan "Mr. Bones and Me" Greene @dmgreene.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Imagine if this was batteries, solar panels, and wind farms. Maybe some hospitals and care homes!

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

feels like the real story here is insurers admitting that their goal with automated administrative tools, which has now backfired, was to cut healthcare spending i.e. "reduce # of billable conditions identified," a nicer way of saying "expand coverage denials thru more 'precise' risk stratification"

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Miranda Yaver @mirandayaver.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Well we’ve certainly seen how much health insurers love to do the right thing all on their own, left to their own devices. Nothing gives them a greater thrill than approving coverage for prescribed care within the patient’s package of benefits.

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

and this is why instead of a mean machine god takeover i'm way more concerned about, among other things, companies selling "automated golden thread documentation transcription software" to mental healthcare providers (ie automating pt progress documentation which is reviewed during insurance audits)

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dylan baker @dylnbkr.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Roombas have SUPERHUMAN vacuuming abilities. & I don't want to alarm you, but when we taped a bunch of knives to one and gave it rocket boosters... it displayed emergent living room destroying properties. Please give me $100000000 to ensure rocket-powered knife roombas don't end human civilization 😔

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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

There is a lot of new info in this article, based on documents, Slack chats, instruction guides, and me seeing real ChatGPT user prompts in the review system. Firstly, a worker we spoke to thinks ChatGPT users have no idea their chats may be read by someone else www.404media.co/inside-proje...

“No,” someone who works with the prompts said when asked if they think ChatGPT users know that humans are reading their chats. “I don’t think they would imagine some contractor somewhere [...] is analyzing the conversations.”

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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Researchers across the country are turning to side hustles to fund their work. Behind the cuts sits a bigger shift: whether American science can still sustain durable research capacity. @lindseydcameron.bsky.social and I examine the stakes in a new piece @science.org: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

The wrong platform for science

Daniel Blumstein recently sat in a Colorado meadow waiting for yellow-bellied marmots to appear, as the ecologist and evolutionary biologist had done many times before, the New York Times reported. Bu...

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Data Workers’ Inquiry @dataworkersinquiry.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

What happens to consent in a workplace where refusing a request means losing work? Find out in the new report by James Mojez Oyange, one of the workers whose face, voice and documents were collected by the companies that employed him. data-workers.org/mojez/

data-workers.org

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Emily Lim Rogers @elimrogers.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

yall Am*zon won’t restock my book til it gets more clicks apparently. can everyone click this link but buy from the press lol?? (cheaper). students who banked on Amazon aren’t getting their books on time www.amazon.com/Sick-Work-Ex...

amazon.com

Sick Work: Exhaustion, Labor, and Invisible Illness (ANIMA: Critical Race Studies Otherwise)

In , Emily Lim Rogers shows the unpaid labor it takes to be recognized as sick in the United States. Through a historical and ethnographic account of myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue synd...

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Emily Lim Rogers @elimrogers.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I’m off public-facing social media for the mental health reasons one might expect, but popping back on to say you can use code E26WORK for 30% off the book (now temporarily sold-out on Amazon) on the press website! www.dukeupress.edu/sick-work

dukeupress.edu

Sick Work: Exhaustion, Labor, and Invisible Illness

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

ok logging off so i can finish my book that is about this very same topic and all of the reasons why it's a bad idea according to the people working on it at the time based on research i started 10 years ago :)))))

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

maybe clinical workers have trouble "listening to patients carefully" or whatever because (in the US at least) hospitals are mostly run by private equity firms and management pushes punishing "optimizing" schedules and poorer pay and insurance claims are reviewed by algorithmic management systems?

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

lol the closing quote: "Because of all these limitations, researchers don’t see A.I. becoming a schizophrenia diagnostician anytime soon." NO KIDDING STOP TRYING

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

at least i can rest assured my book will remain relevant as vocal biomarker AI seems to be reinvented regularly as a "new" endeavor on a 10-year cycle since the early 1950s !!!!!

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

lololnot the Tom Insel quote in this article. fun fact in ch 1 of my book: Insel founded once-digital psychiatry darling startup MindStrong which was disassembled after, among other things, their "digital biomarker" app failed to detect 2 suicide attempts during their pilot study w/ the state of CA

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

"now" lol try since 1953 (it can't). i'm tired......

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

[bene gesserit voice] burn the equity

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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 11/09/2026

I banned Meta glasses in my classes because students told me they are hesitant to speak up and engage if they think they’re being recorded. Apple releasing this feature is just another tech company setting off yet another bomb on young people trying to learn things and join society. Really gross.

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

damn: “ Last week, the security guards who patrol the campuses of OpenAI and Anthropic announced that they had authorized a strike over stalled pay negotiations. In response, Anthropic sent a company-wide email telling employees that it was best if they worked from home.”

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

“Enshrining frontier labs in the hardened cloak of national security would not only give [them] even more access to intelligence products…it would also embolden these companies to shape how federal agencies view threats to their bottom line, now transformed as ‘critical infrastructure.’”

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Aaahh!!! bstract Tesseract @abstracttesseract.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

politics? in MY artifacts?

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Zack Whittaker @zackwhittaker.com · 09/09/2026

Watching this Apple event tout how iPhones will soon be able to record ambient audio/conversations and transcribe "high level notes" for you. It's billed as private and end-to-end encrypted, but I think the bigger harm is the normalization of always-listening devices. It's creepy and not normal.

a screenshot from an iPhone and Apple Watch showing "recaps" of conversations from ambient audio.

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I mean it’s almost like automated medical listening tools ensure that even the most of banal of interactions are more alienated than ever + indelibly mediated by capital + proceduralism + in the name of “Freeing” patients and providers alike idk maybe someone should write a book about it 🫠

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

it’s almost like medical professionals forced to integrate these tools are interpolated by them and augment their speech in anticipation of how the tech will transform it into a “verbatim” medical record that in and of itself anticipates liability and malpractice suites..

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

no note or signage indicating the use of this tech (which I would not have consented to, and which doesn’t seem right since I’m in a 2party consent state atm). only knew about it bc mid-sentance, the vet was like, “sorry, I’m talking this way for the AI” ????

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

just took my cat to urgent care for a scary medical emergency and they were running some AI transcription software to automatically generate a visit note I fucking hate it here

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

truly at the vanguard of iterating new and expensive ways to internalize ableism and make eugenicist logic an essential part of your morning routine

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Society for Linguistic Anthropology @soclinganth.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

University of Michigan Ann Arbor invite applications for a tenured appointment at the rank of Associate or Full Professor to build and direct a new Mellon-funded interdisciplinary program promoting Environmental Justice and the Humanities, to begin August 25, 2027. apply.interfolio.com/192931

The Departments of Romance Languages and Literatures (RLL) and Anthropology in the College of Literature, Arts, and Science (LSA) at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor invite applications for a tenured appointment at the rank of Associate or Full Professor to build and direct a new Mellon-funded interdisciplinary program promoting Environmental Justice and the Humanities, to begin August 25, 2027.

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ana valdivia @anavaldi.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

🌱 "The Ecologies of Algorithmic Machines" is almost ready. This book draws on over three years of research into the supply chains of AI, offering a historical analysis of its materiality and environmental-making regimes while challenging the dichotomy between nature and algorithmic machines.

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

prednisone-free since February !! (do not pmo/curse me/get me sick)

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tunes to make you run away @whippoorwont.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

"people are anthropomorphizing LLMs because they are so astonishingly good at processing human thought and language" people will anthropomorphize a chair if you put the stitches in the right place.

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

was doing the exact same things yesterday too and kept wondering which manosphere podcast (/subreddit/x account/youtube channel) all the men in the comments saying "now make her land a plane" were listening to

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

lashes lifted, eyebrows microbladed, who is she

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s. e. smith @sesmith.lol · 03/09/2026

Gazans who need access to critical lifesaving care along with management of chronic illnesses are not being allowed to leave to get it while at the same time their medical infrastructure is in shambles. People are dying or experiencing unnecesary complications.

newlinesmag.com

The Patients Israel Won't Let Leave Gaza

For many Palestinians in the territory, survival depends on a chain of administrative decisions over which they have no control

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