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Salomé Viljoen

@salome.bsky.social
6.6K followers 2.1K following 1.7K posts

Assistant Prof at Michigan Law || I think about how the law thinks about data || pro science and technology, anti scams

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Reposted by Salomé Viljoen
John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 05/10/2026
This is your occasional reminder that generative "AI" in particular could have been developed on public domain materials and/or licensed and compensated works but the major players intentionally, methodically and systemically chose to steal labor from working creative folks instead
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TPM @talkingpointsmemo.com · 05/10/2026
Because of federal rules, children covered by Medicaid won't be able to access vaccines that are no longer recommended by the federal government, even as children with private insurance will.
talkingpointsmemo.com
RFK Jr’s Relentless Anti-Vax Push Will Disproportionately Hurt Children on Medicaid
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already demonstrated his Department of Health and...
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Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Oh
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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 05/10/2026
for reference, in the Dobbs opinion, Alito was like, women generally don't _plan_ to get an abortion, so how could they have a reliance interest in abortion? which is kind of an extension of 'you want health insurance? what, you plan on being sick?'
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Paul Fairie @paulisci.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I'm glad we're finally outsourcing the horrible bits of life like making plans with friends so we can have more time to consume ads.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Counterpoint: It would be great if people read some of the things that have been written about AI surveillance of workers! press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/hilke... www.cambridge.org/core/books/q... www.ucpress.edu/books/uberla... jacobin.com/2026/09/amaz...
press.princeton.edu
Data Driven
A behind-the-scenes look at how digital surveillance is affecting the trucking way of life
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Pete Hegseth removing tenure protections shows precisely why they are needed. He wants to silence dissent by being able to fire anyone who questions his vision of the military. www.militarytimes.com/news/pentago...
militarytimes.com
Hegseth halts tenure appointments for civilian faculty at military academies
Military academies will no longer appoint civilian faculty to tenured positions as Hegseth says it can contribute to “academic stagnation.”
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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Omigod, this is the most heartwarming story possible! Backpack (bear 89) is the son of the 2019 winner of Fat Bear Week, Holly (bear 435). In 2007, he injured his foot & a practice of riding on momma's Holly's back had a new meaning: he was mobility-restricted while it healed. So Holly moved him.
From DISCVR blog's Facebook page, a momma bear & a yearling cub on her back in the shallow water.  I think the background has been swapped out, and I can't rule out some AI use there?  God, Facebook has become the social media for AI slop : (

The title of the article, which I link below, is "How Bear 89 earned the name Backpack"
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Tech industry is laser focused on solving the problem of humans enjoying each other’s company bsky.app/profile/down...
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David Kaye @davidakaye.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
to be clear, the admin is alleged to have deported AT LEAST 25,447 individuals TO COUNTRIES THAT ARE NOT THEIR OWN with, evidently, ZERO PROTECTIONS. this is a scandal and crime of historic proportions.
forbiddenstories.org
The Deportation Project Map
Between 2025 and August 2026, the Trump administration deported over 25,000 people to countries other than their country of origin. Very few of these removals were publicly announced by the US. The De...
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Hannah BW @hbwhbwhbw.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
new preprint: The Public Interest in Private Science. It explores how government grants & contracts became central ways to fund scientific research; argues that these agreements fail to effectively protect either scientific independence or the public interest; & sketches a few possible reforms
papers.ssrn.com
The Public Interest in Private Science
The federal government primarily relies on grants and contracts to fund scientific research. This arrangement emerged as a political compromise after World War
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
many such cases
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
for their (error-filled) citizenship verification system, which states *definitely will not* be using to mass purge their voter rolls...
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
today, SCOTUS essentially agreed that willful violations of the 1974 Privacy Act the Social Security Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act, resulting in the transfer of sensitive SSA data on basically every American, is fine...as long as you're handing that data off to ICE
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Hannah BW @hbwhbwhbw.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
If ever there were a post to force tenure and hiring committees to confront hard questions this might be it
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 25/09/2026
really fascinating to see isgur conduct this interview as if conservative election mistrust has materialized out of nowhere or as if liberal claims of voter suppression are totally baseless. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | How Worried Should We Be About the Midterm Elections?
And how we learn to trust elections again.
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
anyone with a child knows "we'll see" is just a euphemism for "it's not happening"
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
good to know his justification for massive fossil fuel expansion was just "trust me bro, and later well...we'll see"
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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
One of my most galaxy-brained takes is that politicians and political groups should talk more about workers’ share of national income. It's one of the clearest, simplest ways to describe how billionaires and corporate elites captured so much of the economy--and something policy can change.
axios.com
U.S. workers' share of national income falls to a new low
Labor's bargaining position has worsened markedly in the last half-decade.
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The old line that analytic philosophy is answering questions that come naturally to toddlers via methods that come naturally to lawyers remains undefeated.
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Eric Columbus @ericcolumbus.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
On two fronts—WH press access and third-country removals—the administration appears to be ignoring court orders.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Remember when they said (lied) that USAID was corrupt? $400 million was handed out to 30 countries, with no real oversight and with workarounds to bypass human rights safeguards typically given to U.S. foreign assistance payments. Immigration is just a giant trough of corruption right now.
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
trump can solve this by renaming "disapproval rating" to "approval rating"
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 21/09/2026
12. it is usually better to focus on people, and why people are doing things a) why are tech CEOs saying these things? b) why are bosses so excited about it? c) why do we write, draw, and make art? d) what is the fucking point?
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 21/09/2026
7. "some people find LLMs useful" is a different claim than any of the following: a) LLMs are good at doing the things people use them for b) LLMs are well suited to the tasks for which they are advertised c) LLMs "can do" something
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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Last week all my students hand-wrote their own pledges, according to their terms, to write in my courses without AI. Some of them were quite moving—their anger at AI’s attempt to steal their educations, their determination to learn & create anyway.
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
hahah yes exactly!!
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
like, I know you're claiming responsibility for it, that's the problem bud!
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I find it genuinely odd that people think claiming "full responsibility" for 100% AI written text is an adequate response?
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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
We’ve got an Ivy League provost over here who can’t use his own brain to write an OpEd, he needs ChatGPT to help him with his sentences and thoughts. He needs the bot to write emails clearly. I’m so disgusted and also laughing so hard somehow
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davidrlurie @davidrlurie.com · 18/09/2026
Voters are angry and concerned about the consequences of the emerging AI economy (including rapidly growing wealth disparities, inflation and invasions of communities by tech lord infrastructure); and Trump's blithely dismissing Americans' concerns. The emergent issue's sitting there for Ds to seize
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This framing is revealing re: who these university leaders view as their adversaries or "opposition to be convinced". The people saying "let's slow down" on AI are her own students and faculty. The people saying "go go go" are doners and AI billionaires.
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
what I find frustrating about this isn't so much where she lands (some balanced approach to AI) but the presumption behind how she frames getting there. Just once I'd love a leader who says "The right answer to AI is not just 'yes.' It can't be."
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 18/09/2026
This is why I hate "just a tool" so so so much. You can make a calculator without access to every calculation. You can make photoshop without access to all photos. Someone show me a genai tool that didn't require all of our labour in its production. It's plagiarism software.
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
ugh! www.wired.com/story/a-trum...
wired.com
The Census Bureau Is Overrun With Staffers From a MAGA Think Tank
The US Census is home to vast troves of sensitive data on nearly every person living in the country, which is used for apportioning and drawing congressional districts as well as allocating federal fu...
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
very important and highly recommended read here!!
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sarah jeong @sarahjeong.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
hugging face is the most terrifying indicator of where the ai race is, in the sense that the industry is facing completely solvable collective action problems while guided by entrenched, unoustable leaders with the foresight and moral fortitude of above-average pigeons
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Republicans really just rattling the shiny keys of islamaphobia and trans bashing and hoping its enough to make their voters not look around
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
A decade ago, if you aimed to predict Supreme Court decisions, which has proven a better heuristic? 1) Follow legal text and precedent according to a logically consistent judicial philosophy 2) Ignore or distort law to maximize GOP/right-wing power while mitigating risks of future court expansion
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
incredible shot / chaser here
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Josh Shepperd @joshshepperd.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
The professors and instructors who turn classrooms back into spaces for reading and discussion, are going to leave the biggest legacies in this world. Everyone one else will disappear into LLM wallpaper proxies and derivatives. 
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
it would be cool if this kind of thing had consequences
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Stephen James @stephen5150.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
yahoo.com
Elon Musk is Running a Fake Voter Registration Site Designed to Steal and Sell Data
Musk's "VoteSafe.org" is a scam that doesn't actually register voters
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Denny Carter @dennycarter.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
a nice little summary of our Moment gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/o...
The philosopher Susan Neiman’s new book, “Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era,” is a useful companion to “Profiles in Cowardice.” Like Weisberg, Neiman wanted to explain why so many institutions caved to Trump. She believes it begins with an ethos that disdains virtue as hypocritical or naïve. “When self-interest becomes the basis of reason, evil no longer needs to justify itself,” she writes. “It’s already been mistaken for rationality.”

Neiman cites research showing that “the longer people study economics, the more selfish they become.” The reason, as she interprets it, is that they grow convinced that maximizing self-interest is normal, and that to do otherwise makes you a sucker. The more the logic of capitalism pervades the rest of life, the less room there is for compassion, honor or heroism. Maybe that’s why some of the people most financially able to defend liberal democracy have decided it’s one of the few luxuries they can live without.
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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Yes, every billionaire is a policy failure. You know who else is a policy failure? Your Berkeley hippie grandpa who pays $100 in annual property taxes on a $2.5 million house and uses the leftover cash to sue people who try to build apartments in his neighborhood.
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Salomé Viljoen @salome.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
really!!?? disappointing, but I am here to welcome all converts. the language of the letter is also very good
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