iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

The average SNAP benefit per month is $177 a person. The average ACA benefit per month is up to $550 a person. People want us to hold the line for a reason. This is not a matter of appealing to a base. It’s about people’s lives. And working people want leaders whose word means something to them.

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Linda Huber @puellaludens.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Very excited to share this workshop I'm helping to host on August 19: "From Tech Lash To Tech Fash: Strategic reflections on a decade of collective organizing in computing" tech-organizing-reflections.github.io

a simple, dark green flier with a bold, white text header:
From Tech Lash To Tech Fash: Strategic reflections on a decade of collective organizing in computing

The flier includes the following text and details:
Hybrid Workshop @ Aarhus - Tuesday August 19, 8:30–11:30 am EST / 2:30–5:30 pm CEST
Computing is a field plagued with presentism, oriented towards the new in ways that limit our design and research practices - as well as our capacity to understand and collectively respond to emerging crises. To improve our sensemaking and strategizing about today's crises, this workshop explores what Tamara Kneese has deemed the last decade's shift from "techlash" to "tech fash". What have we learned from the era of misinformation and bias, of "surveillance capitalism" and tech worker organizing that can inform our struggle against the increasing power of a techno-fascist oligarchy? We will also look towards previous generations of computing professionals and activists, who likewise sought to address the harms of emerging automated systems and the complicity of computing within violent, imperialist projects. This workshop will create space for participants to explore these questions collectively, bridging past and present moments in an effort to devise strategies moving forward.

RSVP by Aug 12 https://tech-organizing-reflections.github.io/

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Edward Ongweso Jr @edwardongwesojr.com · 03/03/2025

The Silicon Valley Consensus: a persistent but fragile pattern for overbuilding, overvaluing, and overinvesting in tech to enrich networks of capitalists & advance their (reactionary) political projects. 1st iteration focuses on AI capex, first half today. thetechbubble.substack.com/p/the-silico...

thetechbubble.substack.com

The Silicon Valley Consensus & AI Capex (Part 1)

On overbuilding AI infrastructure and its energy supply

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Julia Willett @jlewillett.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

"downsizes" is a weak way of saying "forced to cancel dozens of programs, which jeopardizes future STEM careers of talented undergrads" @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

science.org

NSF downsizes summer research program for undergraduates

Many participants are from groups underrepresented in science

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

just gonna be the thousandth person to remind you all that segregationists start the open bigotry with people they feel they can target most easily but do not end there

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

JFC. The US Economic Policy Uncertainty Index is at its highest level since 2000, higher than during the Financial Crisis, higher than during COVID

The US Economic Policy Uncertainty Index is at its highest level ever recorded, higher than during the Financial Crisis, higher than during COVID

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

SorryHat @sorryhat.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Lunch sketch.

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Joel Le Forestier @joelleforestier.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

It's a very good time to be part of a union. Getting a much more full-throated defense of diversity scholars like myself from them than from anywhere else. 👀

Finally, I want to be very clear that our union will work ardently to protect your academic freedom and to enforce the academic freedom protections in our contract. You have the right to post materials to websites controlled by your lab or research group, or to sites or accounts related to courses you are teaching (Article 3.1 and 3.2 of our CBA). You have the right to advocate about internal university policies, including vigorous disagreement about decisions made by your department, school, or the university (Article 5, last paragraph). You are free to make public statements as a private citizen (Article 3.3). And you have a right not to be adversely impacted by decisions the administration makes that treat your work differently from your colleagues'. If your research or teaching is related to "DEI," you have the right to continue doing that work: to present at conference, to use funds you control for that work, to maintain a website or post to social media about that work, and to access the same benefits as your colleagues, including to professional development opportunities, to promotional resources, to fair evaluations, and anything else that impacts the terms and conditions of your work.

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Jesse Rothstein @jrothst.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

To be clear: Even greater damage will be done by the loss of federal government productivity. The workers who are losing their jobs were worth more than they were being paid! We are all poorer when roads, planes, and food are unsafe, when parks are closed, etc.

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Jesse Rothstein @jrothst.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

It seems almost unavoidable at this point that we are headed for a deep, deep recession. Just based on 200K+ federal firings & pullback of contracts, the March employment report (to be released April 4) seems certain to show bigger job losses than any month ever outside of a few in 2008-9 and 2020.

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Bock Sam @bocksam.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

As we all near the end of the first month of the Fourth Reich, think about this today. Take the time you need for you. Catch your breath. Just remember to join back in when you can. 🩵💙🩵💙

The Hungover Pundit @hungover_the
A friend once shared what she called the Parable of the Choir: A choir can sing a beautiful note impossibly long because singers can individually drop out to breathe as necessary and the note goes on.
Social justice activism should be like that, she said.
That's stuck with me.

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Dr. Kate Ringland @kateringland.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

New blog post up, this one more for my non-academic readers who are wondering what is going on with all this NSF freeze business. www.kateringland.com/what-does-re...

kateringland.com

What the Heck Is ‘Research’ Anyway?

Buckle up for a behind-the-scenes tour—complete with snark, existential dread, and hopefully some clarity on why real-world science matters more than ever.

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Karla Ortiz @kortizart.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

I swear if this DeepSeek thing turns into “this is why we need more of ppl’s work and data for FREE so we can compete with CHINA” BS, instead of what it needs to be, a reveal of how pointless and inept the tech and its peddlers are and have always been, i’m gonna be so pissed.

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 27/01/2025

I don’t have a definitive source on this yet but it looks like NSF review panels have been canceled. Sixty-some years ago, Eisenhower transformed higher education because he viewed a science education gap as the single greatest threat to national security. This is absolutely an act of sabotage.

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Gabrielle Hecht 🇵🇷 • she/elle/ella/cis⚔️ • AOC 4USpresident @gabriellehecht.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Cancellation of federal grants, with alt text

Notices of cancellations of federal grants

Over the weekend, NYU‘s office of sponsored research received notification from the US Department of state of two grants being terminated. The only reason given in each instance is that “the award does not meet the agencies priorities.“ We have reached out to the affected researchers, taken required steps, and offered support. It is certainly possible, if not likely, that more such notices will come.

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

LeslieResists2TheEnd @spideymac.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

Did you notice the necklace Justice Ketanji Brown was wearing today? It's made of COWRIE shells, which had a special significance for Africans: Cowries were used as charms for protection, and historians speculate they were brought to America as talismans to resist enslavement. Seems appropriate!

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Amanda Marcotte @amandamarcotte.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

I got a lot of whataboutism defenses of TikTok along the lines of "what about Musk and Zuckerberg?" So let's just dispense with that. I tore into them this week as well. www.salon.com/2025/01/17/t...

salon.com

The tech billionaire war on "woke" is really a war on workers

Mark Zuckerberg wants "masculine energy" and "aggression" at the office — sounds like a toxic workplace

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

I will never stop being mad about how the media has treated the anti-trans movement as a group of ordinary people with legitimate concerns rather than the obvious frothing bigots they are.

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Tamara Kneese @tamigraph.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Thanks so much to @histoftech.bsky.social for putting together this critical, entirely virtual, and much needed conference on AI’s historical relationship to power, labor, and the environment. Catch you bright and early on Friday, December 6!

uva.theopenscholar.com

Rethinking the Inevitability of AI

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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

📢 NEW Paper! @siree.sh, Lucy Suchman, and I examine a corpus of 7,000 US Military grant solicitations to ask what the world’s largest military wants with to do with AI, by looking at what it seeks to fund. #STS 📄: arxiv.org/pdf/2411.17840 We find…

Basic Research, Lethal Effects: Military AI Research Funding as Enlistment David Gray Widder Digital Life Initiative, Cornell University Sireesh Gururaja School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University Lucy Suchman Department of Sociology, Lancaster University Abstract In the context of unprecedented U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) budgets, this paper examines the recent history of DoD funding for academic research in algorithmically based warfighting. We draw from a corpus of DoD grant solicitations from 2007 to 2023, focusing on those addressed to researchers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Considering the implications of DoD funding for academic research, the paper proceeds through three analytic sections. In the first, we offer a critical examination of the distinction between basic and applied research, showing how funding calls framed as basic research nonetheless enlist researchers in a war fighting agenda. In the second, we offer a diachronic analysis of the corpus, showing how a ‘one small problem’ caveat, in which affirmation of progress in military technologies is qualified by acknowledgement of outstanding problems, becomes justification for additional investments in research. We close with an analysis of DoD aspirations based on a subset of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant solicitations for the use of AI in battlefield applications. Taken together, we argue that grant solicitations work as a vehicle for the mutual enlistment of DoD funding agencies and the academic AI research community in setting research agendas. The trope of basic research in this context offers shelter from significant moral questions that military applications of one’s research would raise, by obscuring the connections that implicate researchers in U.S. militarism. Keywords: artificial intelligence; US Department of Defense; military; funding; investment, war

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Krista Pawloski @kristap.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Every corner of the world has gig work platforms that mistreat workers. Every industry, from food delivery to nursing, wants to gigify its workforce. Then they don't have to be treated like employees and the corporation does not have to abide by labor laws. labourreview.org/deep-organis...

labourreview.org

Deep Organising is the Path Forward

In much of Asia, gig work is highly individualised, and algorithmic management fragments the labour process, diminishing workers' structural power. Couriers and riders often work gruelling hours, driv...

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Reposted by Dr. Lynn Dombrowski

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

In my line of work, I use this line of questions to figure out which one it is: 1. What's your strategy for growing revenue? 2. What's your leading indicator for whether that strategy is working? 3. What customer behavior drives that metric? The place where they get stuck gives me my answer.

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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 05/12/2024

Students should study the humanities not because it makes them better workers but because it rips you open and breaks your brain and changes everything you thought you knew. I *promise* you this. I *promise* it has this ability, no matter how smart you think you are. I have seen it countless times.

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