iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 13h

Will teaching become more important in the age of #AI? I certainly think so, and others think so too. open.spotify.com/clip/0g3M2YI...

open.spotify.com

Clip - 101 — How Will AI Change Physics? (Ft. Yoni Kahn)

Why This Universe? · Clip · 1m

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 17h

I lived in Portland, Maine in my 20s and though I was probably too young and poor to appreciate it, Portland was an amazing food city. No city I have lived in since can compare.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Is AI making us better at predicting the weather? Any #meteorologist out there?

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The curse of being in an argument based field is that I’m always predicting counter arguments to my own arguments even as I am in the middle of verbally communicating them. This leads to the bad habit of being preemptive and interruptive. Anyone else?

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

When tech makes a job easier, the price paid for completing that task drops as labor supply rushes in. Productivity gains alone don't to win workers shorter hours or better pay. Only collective action can do that. www.forbes.com/sites/siladi...

forbes.com

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2026/10/08/jeff-bezos-claims-ai-could-allow-for-3-day-workweeks-and-one-income-families/

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

How are you not a materialist after witnessing the fights over data centers? Debates about biggest technological and economic change in recent history, the growth of ai, have boiled down to conflicts over land, infrastructure, pollution, energy, class, and water.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A little mountain biking before and behind work because there are mountains behind my work!

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I'll give up on teaching Marx if I can continue to teach Gallatin, and Fourier, and Owen, and Byllesby, and Skidmore, and Sylvis, and George and ect.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

"The democratic principle on which this nation was founded should not be restricted to the political processes but should be applied to industrial operations as well." US Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1761-1848)

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

There is this misconception that data centers = AI. That is simply not true. All aspects of our digital lives are resource intensive. Before you ask “should I enter this prompt?” you should ask “should I stream this video?” The digital is tangible.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Nick Bostrom, the guy who invented the paper clip problem, does not think the hugging face attack represents an alignment issue. open.spotify.com/episode/0jpo...

open.spotify.com

Could AI Really Kill Us All?

Science Vs · Episode

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

New office sign. My favorite meaningful and authentic labor movement joke from an 1840s Maine artisan demonstration

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Ai is capital; intellectual property. If ai replaces workers we need to continue to contest the composition of capital. In this case it’s simple, this technology is built on our writing, our labor. It could not exist without labor appropriation.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

“The U.’s chapter of United Campus Workers instead suggested the school cull its top administrators’ salaries to save money, listing each in an Instagram post with a call to ‘CHOP FROM THE TOP!’” www.sltrib.com/news/educati...

sltrib.com

The University of Utah plans to lay off hundreds after seeking advice from national consulting firms. Here’s what we know.

The firms, Huron and McKinsey, are both known for suggesting staff cuts as a solution.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Interesting that a lot of the folks who think ai can destroy the world haven’t said a mumbling word about if ai can solve the socialist calculation problem.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Shouldn’t we get the most powerful AI working on biomedical solutions to novel virus outbreaks? Shouldn’t they be working on solutions to other existential threats? What am I missing here?

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

AI might be dangerous but you know what else is dangerous? Open collusion among these ultra wealthy and powerful AI companies.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I'm not an AI doomer nor an STS scholar but our moment shows that "charismatic" innovations can be dangerous. Social media and ICE (engines) are charismatic. They convince people to do things that are against our collective interests. AI might be one of these.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Don’t let them straw man you as a communist, prove to them you are a red-blooded American labor unionist, a national tradition older than the German Karl Marx.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Pulling up the meet the boys like… thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

If we don’t put the nascent labor movement at the front of our teaching on the Enlightenment and the liberal turn we give students an incomplete picture of those movements and our modern era.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

He also promised to pay his contractors for work they did on his buildings but then later he never paid them.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Historical scholarship has shifted toward rejecting “capitalism” as meaningless in favor of “capital.” I think the opposite: à la Marx, capital is dead labor. Capitalism is an historically specific organizational form in which people act collectively under particular incentives.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

History from the bottom up is easy. You don't mention Christopher Columbus at all. Instead you talk about the tens of thousands of seamen who, for good and for ill, made settler colonization happen. This way of teaching history can change the world.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I don’t see why we shouldn’t anthropomorphize AI. These things have very human-like behaviors and abilities. They are not human nor conscious, but they are human-like. They were designed that way.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Labor unions… lobbied towns to reject a [Carnegie] library… "I would sooner enter a building built with the dirty silver Judas received… than enter a Carnegie library," a… glassworker… commented. 225 communities turned down his money. www.pbs.org/wgbh/america...

pbs.org

Philanthropy 101 | American Experience | PBS

Andrew Carnegie made his fortune and then, unlike any industrialist of his time, began systematically to give it away.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Every time I jog by Joe Hill’s death site I will post a link to one of his songs. This time “Casey Jones, the Union Scab.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8oC...

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

À la Cowan’s _ More Work for Mother_: the increasing complexity of these mandatory water bottles for kids of all ages. They are weird and time consuming to clean. This was a service that used to be provided by municipal water fountains, built and unkept by cities and counties.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Want to read some really good historiography on methods, economics, categories of analysis, "class," and work? Check out the introduction of Bowes _Surviving Rome_. Great stuff!

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

What if the Weyland-Yutani corp from the movie Alien was unionized? The movie ends in the first 15 and everyone is safe. www.npr.org/2026/06/19/n...

npr.org

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Hot take: People should be able to bring their bikes onto the bus

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

For my book I drew inspiration from many natural resources, including coal. My thesis holds, when natural resources diminish bodies often take the brunt of exploitation. A spike in black lung due to thin coal seams. one.npr.org/i/nx-s1-5924...

one.npr.org

🔊 Listen Now: The black lung crisis deepens in Appalachia

Up First From NPR on NPR One | 37:54

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I think the Atlantic World concept is one of the most important revisionist fields in the last 50 years. It is impossible to ignore.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Olaudah Equiano's narrative is my favorite slave narrative. It is well written, emotional, and entertaining. It explains so much about slavery and the transatlantic world at this time.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

One instance where #AI replacing workers is an unalloyed good. Content moderation is low paid work performed mostly outside the US. The work is bad for mental health; workers are forced to look at graphic and disturbing videos and images all day long. finance.yahoo.com/technology/a...

finance.yahoo.com

Meta plans to replace 90% of content review staff with AI

Despite the recent Instagram breach, the company said 50% of its content review is done by artificial intelligence, and that number will grow by year’s end, per Axios.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Anyone want to partner up with me do an edited reader of the Dillingham Commission? It is such an important and interesting primary source but so immense as to make it useless for most undergrads. Short essays paired with report selections would be very useful.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Over the last week I've watched a spider and I've watched her clutch of eggs hatch in the corner of the shower of the airbnb I'm staying at until I move to Utah.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

On #ai and the future: If we have not learned from the long #history of industrialization and the China shock that workers must demand a say in our economic destiny, we deserve the worst of what the future might hold. History education is vital. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/p...

nytimes.com

What A.I. Is Actually Doing to the Economy

Some data suggest that artificial intelligence is causing job losses. Other sources show the opposite. Why is it so hard to figure out what’s going on?

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Can someone please give me a good critical take on the media coverage of #teentakeovers. To me it seems like young people rightfully reclaiming public space. What am I missing?

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

We were hesitant to get our kids a tablet but now that we have one we can’t live without it.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Packing up my books yet again and wondering why we haven’t mandated standard book dimensions. There is no reason most books can’t be 6x9.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

In the fall I have to teach all of American history, from time immemorial to now, in 15 weeks. If I have to be reductionist I'm going whole-hog. Here is my course title.

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Listen to what happens when you bank the unbanked: crippling, inescapable debt on a massive scale. www.wsj.com/podcasts/the...

wsj.com

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Jason L. Newton @jason-l-newton.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Here is a link to my talk "Do Trees Have Agency?" Even though this was for a popular audience I get into historiography, the liberal tradition, and unconventional views on the causes of historical change. www.canva.com/design/DAHPA...

canva.com

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