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Rachel Fagen

@rachelfagen.bsky.social
248 followers 492 following 154 posts

Tech, democracy, and civil society // social internet platform and AI governance

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Reposted by Rachel Fagen
WIRED @wired.com · 28/09/2026
Over 500 candidates running for state legislator positions in November are members of far-right groups on Facebook that promote militias, gun rights, and Christian nationalism, according to data shared with WIRED.
wired.com
These Extremists Are Running for Election in November
With the threat of political violence at unprecedented levels, state and federal GOP candidates are openly sharing racist, pro-militia, anti-vaccine, sexist, antisemitic, and secessionist views.
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
If the Western Mass Lesbian Bar Discourse has hit your feed this week… 😭 @jgieseking.bsky.social brings together the reporting & historical context for this week’s QG: www.queergeographies.com/stuck-on-the...
queergeographies.com
Why We’re Stuck on the Last Ditch
Why does the public delight in watching lesbian bars unravel?
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Alignment & redteaming & quality review walk into a bar
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Quick, without looking, everybody count to three and name the industry. 1, 2, 3… (Whatever you named, yes.)
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
“The tiresomely old-school cost of supporting scholarship and pedagogy is so dull compared to the exciting opportunity of an Ambient.ai contract that will empower the tracking potential of our 500 new surveillance cameras!”
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Reposted by Rachel Fagen
Cyan Worlds @cyan.com · 25/09/2026
33 years ago today, the Stranger stepped onto the dock of Myst Island for the first time. We can still hear the water splashing against the pilings.
The dock of Myst Island from the original version of the game. A wooden dock ends at a spiral staircase that leads up to giant gears on a hillside. A ship is sunk in the water on the right, and parts of buildings are visible on the left.
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Reposted by Rachel Fagen
MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
In "The Patina of Distrust," Eugenia Mitchelstein, Pablo Boczkowski, María Celeste Wagner, and Facundo Suenzo explore how distrust of the media can protect audiences from both misinformation and attempts to correct it through the lens of Argentina's 2019 elections: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255076...
A copy of "The Patina of Distrust: What People Do with Misinformation" by Eugenia Mitchelstein, Pablo H. Boczkowski, Maria Celeste Wagner, and Facundo Suenzo on white background.
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
This one’s for everyone who gets misty over Carney’s “middle powers” speeches and measured leadership something something.
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Reposted by Rachel Fagen
Ambassador Ken Fairfax (ret) @portlandken.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
To put that into dollar terms: Oregon residents are now paying $1.6 billion more for electricity than they were paying just 5 years ago, which comes out to roughly $950 extra per household per year. Alternately, that $611,000 from the pockets of Oregonians each year for each data center job.
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Jack Stilgoe @jackstilgoe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The "culture" of accident reporting came about through regulation, in the face of massive opposition from airlines. The companies are forced to share their data and have their failures investigated independently.
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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Our new volume on Global Platform Governance is now available for pre-orders, gathering perspectives from academics and practitioners all over the world on key debates around regulating platforms so that folks are not just engaging what works for the US or the EU. www.bloomsbury.com/uk/global-pl...
bloomsbury.com
Global Platform Governance
This is a field-defining open access playbook for identifying and responding to the global regulatory challenges created by large digital platforms.Here Nanjala…
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Musicology Duck @musicologyduck.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
whew boy
Taps and glasses in a bar with a tv showing news with the chyron “no plans to have troops at the polls for now”
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dorian @doriantaylor.com · 07/09/2026
but the feeling is really visceral, like people deeply understand what eg an invasion of privacy feels like; they feel it in their bones even if they can't articulate it EXCEPT if you involve a computer, then the intuition seems to vanish
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boonque שארלוט משאול @kwstzhaderbonch.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Lex Jansen, in both personal and website forms, has died. blogs.sas.com/content/sgf/...
blogs.sas.com
Remembering Lex Jansen: Friend to SAS learners everywhere
For many SAS users, lexjansen.
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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Believing that other people are real is antifascist praxis.
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Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 01/09/2026
Someday I hope to have more rights than AI generated child sex abuse material
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Project Salt Box @projectsaltbox.com · 01/09/2026
Said another way: they want you to talk about the flashy, $2 million robot distraction. They do not want you talking about the $38 billion private prison and ICE prison camp expansion.
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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
*INDIANA JONES AND THE CLOSURE OF THE ARCHAEOLOGY DEPARTMENT*
A news story: "Disney Reportedly Planning Full Reboot of the INDIANA JONES Franchise"
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isaac @sevier.io · 28/08/2026
Weather forecasting in my lifetime has become nearly perfect thanks to the government investing in constant and high quality data collection up until now. Some dark ages shit is happening because there's enormous money to be made by breaking everything.
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Reposted by Rachel Fagen
Jaya Saxena @jayasaxena.com · 26/08/2026
The best way to honor the two who have left us recently, imo, is to keep being as gay as possible
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Lilly Irani @gleemie.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Mechanical Turk may be shutting down, but AI will always depend on data workers whose knowledge trains and tunes models. AI runs on extracted cultural skills and knowledge, and culture is always changing. Less the end of an era, but the end of an early prototype.
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I’ve read Charlotte’s Web aloud so often to my kids over the years, and I don’t think they’ll ever get tired of it or grow out of it. I never did either.
Text of the poem “Wondrous” by Sarah Freligh
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Reposted by Rachel Fagen
Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
My org @techtonicjustice.bsky.social is commissioning Arkansas-based art/design for an upcoming project! The first of what we hope will be many cultural organizing collabs to come. Apply by Aug 28th. Much more info + the submission link: secure.ngpvan.com/eWrCbJzkAE6o...
secure.ngpvan.com
Call to Artists: AI Injustice in Arkansas
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
This also works as a neat sum-up of Effective Altruism’s “AI safety” fieldbuilding / money sloshing network.
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Share the last picture of the sky from your camera roll. (I love these shared being/human-on-earth threads so much.)
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
“In 1938, 21-year-old Emma Tenayuca helped lead 12,000 Mexican and Chicana pecan shellers in San Antonio, TX on the largest strike the city had ever seen” — there is SO MUCH labor history willfully kept from us. I never knew most of these stories until today. Thank you @kimkelly.bsky.social
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
My org @techtonicjustice.bsky.social is commissioning Arkansas-based art/design for an upcoming project! The first of what we hope will be many cultural organizing collabs to come. Apply by Aug 28th. Much more info + the submission link: secure.ngpvan.com/eWrCbJzkAE6o...
secure.ngpvan.com
Call to Artists: AI Injustice in Arkansas
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Tone Goodfellow @goodfellow.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Andrew Bray on need for communities to organise, “usually the community is engaged at the end of the sausage factory when decisions have already been made and that has to change”
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Reposted by Rachel Fagen
Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 18/08/2026
In this sense a lot of accessibility tech is actually conservative, in the sense described here by Joseph Weizenbaum
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Reposted by Rachel Fagen
stewedChampion @stewedjon.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I find it so helpful to return to these framings of civility by @kwazana.bsky.social in this context: to think civility as “a mobile disciplinary discourse enacted against political dissidence,” (1/2)
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Silicon Valley invents the matchmaker again, this time outsourcing full cycle shidduch to chatbots. Calling it Known is amazing. Who is known here, who is doing any knowing? known.com/faq
known.com
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about Known — the waitlist, matching, your first date, and how to reach us.
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Reposted by Rachel Fagen
Evan Greer @evangreer.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
My JP Porchfest stage is somewhat legendary. This year, it won't be in my backyard! We're hosting outside First Baptist Church in collab with JP for Palestine! Come thru, my band plays last at 5pm
JAMAICA PLAIN PORCHFEST
QUEER STAGE JP FOR PALESTINE
MUSIC | FOOD I DRINKS | CRAFTS
abolish ice
1PM DABKE SIBLINGS & NAHDA PROJECT
2PM SONGS OF LIBERATION | 3PM CYPHER 4 CHANGE
4PM GENIE SANTIAGO | 5PM EVAN GREER BAND
SATURDAY, AUGUST 22
FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, CENTRE ST
FUNDRAISER FOR MANY LANDS MUTUAL AID
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Reposted by Rachel Fagen
Julia Poe @juliapoe.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
When I think about trans people in sports, I don’t think about lobbies or legislation. I think about my friends. Wrote about pick-up hoops, queer community and love:
chicagotribune.com
Column: When I think about transgender people in sports, I think about my friends
Despite the rabid fixation upon the concept of trans women in sports, those who beat the drum the loudest for exclusive policies rarely seem to care about trans people themselves.
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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
9/ Misinformation can work by bypassing reasoning. But this sets up reason and emotion as opposites. Emotion is how we register that something matters. A message isn't manipulative because it moves you. It's manipulative if the feeling it produces doesn't fit the facts.
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Tech facilitated gender based violence
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 11/08/2026
See also the term "activist scholar," which is applied derogatorily to academics who use their expertise to advocate for Left-leaning policy, but not to Right-leaning academics, even if they take money from Right-wing groups or advocate for Right-wing causes based on dubious evidence or none at all.
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balrog bongcloud @balrogbongcloud.silmarillionaire.moe · 09/08/2026
I don't know how easy it is to keep AI models that can write zero days contained, but I expect it's a lot *easier* if everyone involved isn't a part of a California New Religious Movement who considers "the AI escapes" to be advertisement for their company and their NRM simultaneously
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
If you didn’t know about this incredible project, now you do and thank goodness you’ll continue to get to do so. Hail the archivists.
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Rachel Fagen @rachelfagen.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Evergreen 🌲
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Reposted by Rachel Fagen
Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
I was struck by the extent to which this reviewer (and many other people, I'm afraid) have lost sight of the possibility of refusal. And so I want to reaffirm: There is no responsible use without the possibility of refusal. >>
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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
I feel like the fact that nearly half a million New Yorkers just lost their health insurance is not being talked about as much as it probably should be. www.politico.com/news/2026/07...
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Mallory Moore @sexabolition.blog · 08/08/2026
Ideas about the world are built on evidence and previous information gathering. Sometimes people get ideas wrong based on incorrect information gathering and then other people base their models on trusting erroneous research. Plagiarism breaks these chains that allowing evaluation of flows of info.
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Mallory Moore @sexabolition.blog · 08/08/2026
The thing is fairness is only a small part of why plagiarism is a serious problem. Plagiarism is inherently reality distorting. Academic standards around citation are only partly about mutual respect. A huge amount of the point of them is tracing ideas and explanations of the universe.
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Sanho Tree @sanho.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
I was a historian of the atomic bomb decision from 1989-95 and coauthored an 800+ page book on the politics behind the decision. I’ve seen a lot of documentaries, but this is new to me. There were 78 people who survived underneath the explosion. This is how some of them survived. One is still alive.
www3.nhk.or.jp
Hiroshima Ground Zero: Eyewitness Accounts of 78 A-Bomb Survivors | NHK WORLD-JAPAN
When the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, 78 people who were within 500 meters of the hypocenter survived. We visualize what happened at ground zero that day based on rare recordings of eyewitnesses. B...
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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
*That pulp-crumbly, dead-media, entropically gnawed cyberpunk artifact there, that's quite beautiful *If you wondered about my persistent interest in Robert Louis Stevenson and his long-lost mayonnaise, this is what that's about
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Alex Ip 葉清霖 @alexip718.com · 06/08/2026
BREAKING: in July 2026, *every single one* of the 2,528 refugees admitted in the U.S. were white South Africans. In FY 2026, the U.S. has admitted a total of 10,255 white South Africans, three Afghans (back in November), and nobody else. For reference, the U.S. admitted 100,060 refugees in 2024.
rpc.state.gov
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rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
every woman has wondered whether her dad would take her side or some man's. many of them have learned the answer and often it's not the answer that you'd assume would be the bare minimum expectation for a father
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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
People potentially subject to the nyc pied-à-terre tax are being treated with 1% of the administrative hostility of SNAP and Medicaid applicants, and they’re throwing 100x the fit
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norvid_studies @norvid-studies.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
actually there's conceptually a third 'distribution' although technically it's the latter: like "[Any] attention is all you need" leaning into the "sounds like a joke"/memeing/virality aspect to do intentionally joke-shaped things but for real
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