Dominic DiFranzo

🧪 Data visualizations are often treated as objective, but they are frequently appropriated to mislead.

This new study examines "Data Visualization Lineages" to show how charts are remixed to support political frames; topics like anti-immigrant discourse, for example.

Worth checking it out!

The official home of the Python Programming Language

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-...
🧵

How would you describe that worldview? My father told me something when I was very small to instill confidence in me: “Nobody in the world is worth more than you, but nobody’s worth less.” It is an egalitarian view that I’ve carried around in my life. That’s why I am for free schools, free universities, free health care, and free babysitting. Because our society could afford it. In America, people think social democracy is some kind of communism. They think capitalism is freedom. It’s not. It’s only freedom to exploit people.

stellan skarsgård seems like a good dude

Higher Ed’s Rush To Adopt AI Is About So Much More Than AI | Defector If you don’t work at a university or have college-age kids, you may have missed the flurry of news stories and social media banter about AI adoption in higher ed, stories which have snowballed into th...

Not holding back ... "In the end, generative AI might be a blip in tech history, over-promising and under-delivering until finally the cash runs out. But it seems it’s arrived just in time to shove universities over a cliff edge they’d already walked themselves up to." defector.com/higher-eds-r...

In Search of Smart devices--including speakers, cameras, TVs, and sensors--are increasingly used to enhance comfort, efficiency, security, and entertainment in and outside the home. These devices collect significant audio, video, and environmental data, and that data ...

Tomorrow at #cscw2025, I'll be briefly taking off my General Chair hat to present a paper led by my student Sunyup Park on smart tech/incidental use/privacy. Read more about the paper here (it's open access!): dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Session: Perspectives on Data Privacy
Wed 14:30, Dovregubben-1

Money, muscles and anxiety: why the manosphere clicked with young men – a visual deep dive The manosphere is known for misogyny, but that’s not the only thing that influencers in this space offer. Young men explain the allure and the problems of the manosphere in their own words

Money, muscles and anxiety: why the manosphere clicked with young men – a visual deep dive

We welcomed new CSCW Steering Committee members, Sue Fussell (Chair) and Nat Poore. Karrie Karahalios ended her term as Chair. There was a lively discussion around governance, the need for senior member to volunteer to join the program committee, and the transition to rolling deadlines. #CSCW2025

Wake up, babe, the least subtle visual metaphor in history just dropped

I’m in a session at the CSCW conference featuring 6 papers focused on online misinformation. It’s one of at least 3 sessions this conference focusing on misinfo or similar. The room is completely packed. I’m concerned about how few papers and sessions we will see in 3-5 years due to funding cuts.

Understanding Decentralized Social Feed Curation on Mastodon In recent years, people using centralized social media platforms like Twitter (now X) and TikTok have grown increasingly concerned about…

Have you noticed the rise of decentralized alternatives to X? Our #CSCW2025 paper explores how people on Mastodon perceive, manage, and wish to manage their feeds. Read more at tinyurl.com/feed-curatio....

Exploring User Needs and Perception of AI’s Role in Ending Relationships By Yue Fu, Yixin Chen, Zelia Gomes da Costa Lai, and Alexis Hiniker.

This study found that AI has the potential to support people in going through a breakup in a long-term and holistic way. Interested in learning more about this topic? You can read this paper!
#CSCW2025

Word cloud of PACM HCI Volume 9, Issue 7 (CSCW) topics.

Exciting news! Just in time for the start of #cscw2025, the new issue of PACM HCI is out, featuring 400+ articles accepted at CSCW. All should be free to view now and many are open access. dl.acm.org/toc/pacmhci/...

Please use our official Starter Pack to follow many #CSCW2025 authors all at once before the in-person conference begins! go.bsky.app/SPumuMT Share this link far and wide to help everyone gather here! 👏

Complete this form to be added to the Starter Pack in the future: forms.gle/KeAMnuxbYXV3...

The #sauna #crew at #CSCW2025 are heating up 🔥 (and then cooling down 🧊) boatloads of fun!

(Yes, that water is freezing cold.)

one thing perhaps worth emphasizing is that under federal law an escaped enslaved person was a criminal. an "illegal," you might say.

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems... SIMON: What? SHAPIRO: ...Or saying... SIMON: You imagine that? SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over. SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level. SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this. SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

Image: A variation on Benjamin Franklin’s “Join, or Die” engraving, originally published in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754. Each segment of the snake has the name of a university sent Trump’s “compact”: Texas, AZ, Vanderbilt, USC, Dartmouth, UVA, Brown, Penn, MIT.

Shared courtesy of my Penn History colleague, Ben Nathans

“We could hear them laughing.”

Rev. David Black, the minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, speaks to #CNN’s Erin Burnett in his first television interview since he was shot in the head with pepper balls while praying in front of an ICE facility.

#OutFrontCNN #News #ICE #Chicago

MIT president rejects proposal to adopt Trump priorities for funding benefits The president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Friday she “cannot support” a White House proposal that asks MIT and eight other universities to adopt President Donald Trump's politica...

The president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Friday she “cannot support” a White House proposal that asks MIT and eight other universities to adopt President Donald Trump’s political agenda in exchange for favorable access to federal funding. https://to.pbs.org/4qadGZG

An important 🧵 ... with each new EO, the U.S. is taking yet another step closer to martial law.

@etbrooking.bsky.social nails it:

"But so long as it has descriptive value, it should still be used. My organization fights authoritarian information manipulation around the world -- if we start censoring our own language, we aren't doing a good job."

Though the aftermath of shootings and other manmade crisis events is often filled w/ uncertainty (as facts of the matter surface & crystallize), the online dynamics — esp. efforts to determine who the perpetrator(s) were & what motivated them — are fairly predictable. bsky.app/profile/kate...

Why parents need to talk to their teens about AI — and how to start the conversation Many teens are using artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT for everything from homework to relationship advice. Experts say parents must lead the way in helping them understand the technology.

Many teens are using artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT for everything from homework to relationship advice. Experts say parents must lead the way in helping them understand the technology.

Opinion | When Universities Become Informants A practice from the McCarthy era makes an ugly return.

Judith Butler:"It is important to refuse the notion that this is just how things are..invoking a feckless realpolitik that justifies complicity with a brutal & rising authoritarianism. It is time to resist the injustice that now threatens to be normalized" www.chronicle.com/article/when...

Introducing ChatPerson Joining ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta, and many other powerful chatbot services, we are proud to announce the release of our new RI (real intelligence) ser...

Q: Are there any other advantages to using ChatPerson over chatbots?

A: Each of our server centers (human beings) only consumes enough water and electricity to sustain a human body in a modest studio apartment.

UC Berkeley gives Trump administration 160 names in antisemitism probe UC Berkeley gave the Trump administration the names of 160 students, faculty and staff and info about their “potential connection to reports of alleged antisemitism” — sparking due-process...

UC-Berkeley gives Trump administration 160 names “related” to anti-semitism, mostly for voicing support for Palestinians. Judith Butler is among them, she calls this “McCarthyism” UC Berkeley gives Trump administration 160 names in antisemitism probe

www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

Einstein

MLK jr

Malcolm X

While we're talking about Albert Einstein and how people have tried to erase his 20+ year civil rights protest work from history:

The FBI didn't like MLK jr. They called him "the most dangerous negro." Because he was influential, brought people together, and was vocally against anti-Black racism.

i think it’s wild how many people are fine with leaving their children a totally uninhabitable world that’s inevitably pitched in constant bloody conflict over who gets the last resources so they can have copilot email tone rewriting and slop memes of trump as a taco with a drooping fold.