Nicole Pagowsky

If your economy is being kept afloat by an AI bubble, one thing you can do to keep it ticking is have a war to make AI look really useful for profitable things that you love doing - such as bombing countries.

Been to multiple practitioner workshops now where the convo is "AI governance is important there are so many risks we need to responsibly manage anyways we integrated a bunch of agentic tools into our workflows and we're not sure how to use them please help"

Broad claims about gender and behavior fall apart when studies include ethnically diverse samples Behavioral economics relies heavily on studies of Western, educated people. A recent analysis provides evidence that ignoring racial diversity within the United States has led to flawed generalization...

"The research suggests that generalizations about human behavior are often flawed because they rely on samples composed largely of White individuals."

Balint to Noem: "You're the secretary of DHS -- for now. And you think you're immune from accountability. But I promise you this: one day he is not gonna be president anymore. And when that day comes, we will still be here. And in hearings like this, we are going to continue to prove your guilt."

Trump’s War on Iran Could Screw Over US Farmers The Middle East supplies a huge amount of the world’s fertilizer. Conflict in the region has sent prices soaring ahead of the critical spring planting season.

there's a lot going on right now but did you know a massive amount of the world's fertilizer flows through the middle east, and did you know that that fertilizer needs to be shipped to the us *right now* for planting season, and uh did you know we are at war with iran

Neguse demolishes Noem (2/2)

Thank you, Symphony! Assuming all goes well, it should be accessible in our repository in May(?)!

Within the doubly-feminized subfield of academic library instruction, value discourse materializes in policy and practice through what I term the “value gaze”–a panoptic enterprise of seeking substantiations of value for audit, while also perpetually self-surveilling as anticipatory monitoring. Constructed from deficit, librarians are exhorted toward allowable subject positions, primarily the ethical professional, achieved through compliance. VAL intertwines objectives from the fantasy economy into its rationalizing discourse; and rather than problematizing this power/knowledge configuration, the library/librarians instead are identified as the problem for not aligning to VAL’s moral imperatives. Going beyond approaches to assessment, this is a study on how calls for demonstrating value that uncritically reproduce reform in fact reinforce the very sociopolitical structures that work against advocacy efforts. Problematization of the dominant discourse and its disarmament of critique can offer the field an opportunity to engage in self-study on how these projects can better materially advocate for workers.

Abstract text, part 3 of 3

In alignment with such neoliberal reform projects, VAL’s rationalizing practices naturalize audit’s inevitability and urgency, making critique virtually unsayable and imagining otherwise consequently unrealized, which calls for problematization. The following research questions guide this inquiry: (1) How does library value discourse materialize in the field through policies and practices? (2) Do value policy artifacts produce disciplining effects on the design and implementation of library instruction programs? and (3) What is the network(s) of institutions, individuals, practices, and policies that govern library valuation projects? Applying Bacchi’s “What is the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) policy discourse analysis framework for empirical analysis of a 21-document corpus and nine practitioner interviews shows that VAL’s purported advocacy remains in the potential rather than the actual, and runs counter to practitioner experiences of material outcomes.

Abstract text, part 2 of 3

Abstract: This study problematizes academic library value dominant discourse–or, the advised obligation toward demonstrating the library’s impact to campus using audit practices–through a Foucauldian-influenced poststructural analysis. Calls to demonstrate library value intensified with the commissioned 2010 Value of Academic Libraries (VAL) Report published by the Association of College & Research Libraries. Audit has been installed in higher education to operationalize divestment from public goods, reinforced by discourses of responsibilization and deficit. As a manifestation of audit culture, I position Kraus’ (2023) notion of the fantasy economy as a primary theoretical framework, which can be understood as ideological reframing of the disenfranchised labor market being the fault and responsibility of the education system.

Abstract text, part 1 of 3

Dissertation defense presentation title slide: Materializations of the value gaze: A poststructural analysis of academic library instruction value discourse in policy and practice. Nicole Pagowsky, University of Arizona College of InfoSci

Getting these slides together for my upcoming defense, open to advice on approaching the presentation from those who have done especially poststructural qualitative studies! Abstract is here: www.nicolepagowsky.com/phd & in 3 parts threaded below...
#qualitativemethods #phd #libraryinstruction

The “shield” is intolerable here as well.

“Parents tried to shield their children from water. Instead they died of dehydration.”

That’s what the @nytimes.com headline here says. Both “shield” and “instead” appallingly reinforce anti-vax attitudes and frames.

The Feds Targeted Charlotte. Now a Local Democrat Who Helped ICE Faces Voters. - Bolts North Carolina lawmaker Carla Cunningham voted to mandate compliance with ICE, and derided immigrants on the House floor. The Democrat faces an intense March primary.

JUST IN: North Carolina's Dem lawmaker Carla Cunningham gave the GOP the decisive vote to pass a law forcing police to comply with ICE. She said "all cultures are not equal."

She just lost reelection BIG in the Dem primary to a progressive pastor & activist, Rodney Sadler. 70% to 22%!

Context:

He’s Running to Fill Jasmine Crockett’s House Seat From Her Left. He’s Also Her Pastor. Justice Democrats is endorsing Frederick Haynes III, seeing him as their best shot to add a new Squad member from Texas.

JUST IN: Frederick Haynes III has won his primary.

after absolutely eviscerating Kristi Noem and calling for her resignation, Tillis is applauded. He thens threatens to hold up nominees if she doesn't stop stonewalling him. My God.

okay, Ill bite.
What do you think the point of reading for and writing a literature review is? The process of reading and writing is crucial for THINKING. Your ideas are shaped by all of this, offloading it to gAI, no matter how "good" you think gAI is at it defeats the purpose entirely.

Two posts from altnps.bsky.social: Amazing work, everyone the OpenAI boycott is working! And thank you to our international supporters who are joining us. Sam Altman is in panic mode he went on X tonight telling users to ask him anything about OpenAI’s Pentagon deal as the boycott of ChatGPT grows. We know a lot of people are choosing to boycott AI overall, and we support that. AI is terrible on the environment! At the same time, we understand many people still use AI tools. If you’re going use AI please delete the ChatGPT app, and switch to Claude by Anthropic instead.

As an author whose book was pirated by Anthropic: using Claude is not an ethical choice

Every senator who voted to confirm RFK Jr owns this tragedy. Every single one.

Years ago our admin did a red and black report. It took salaries & how much $ each instructor made in tuition $ for classes we taught-you were in the red or black. They released numbers once & shut it down bc humanities were producing huge $ for uni & engineers, business and scientists were losing $

Again, it is such a massive red flag that the anonymous people behind @quitgpt.bsky.social are promoting Anthropic chatbots and encouraging people to buy paid accounts.

Southern California air board rejected pollution rules after AI-generated flood of comments The opposition appeared overwhelming: Tens of thousands of emails poured into Southern California's top air pollution authority as its board weighed a June proposal to phase out gas-powered appliances...

They were going to pass rules to phase out gas stoves, until they received 20,000 public comments against the regulations. Except, oops, it turns out the comments were generated by AI.

What the Father of Black History Can Teach Us About Technology Danielle A. Davis Canty, Esq., says that while technology may be miseducated, we do not have to be.

Historian Carter G. Woodson showed that when systems are designed and governed without the people most affected, inequality is not a mistake – it is the expected result. Technological inequality, in this context, is not surprising. It is predictable, writes Danielle A. Davis Canty.

What stands out to me is the coordination between Trump and Netanyahu in spreading this propaganda, and to me it feels like a set up to have Jews take the blame when this war spins out of control

Revisions for Your Hopelessly Optimistic Dystopian YA Novel Dear Sir/Madam, While we are always on the lookout for the Next Big Thing, the editors regret to inform you that your manuscript, in its current fo...

"A government agent changes their opinion when presented with evidence. Maybe reintroduce the leopards from earlier and have them threaten to eat the agent’s face?"
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/rev...

A Cookie for Dario? — Anthropic and selling death - Anil Dash A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Agree with @anildash.com here, was just saying earlier how the volume of cheers for Anthropic deciding not to help build Terminator or the Panopticon shows just how low the bar is set for American tech firms. www.anildash.com/2026/02/27/a...

i’m tired of every paper (even critical ones) on societal impact of AI starting by both-siding the “benefits” and risks/harms of AI

in academia, i would like us to arrive at a collective reckoning that we don’t need to play both sides. it's totally legit to clearly state just the harms. period

Great point. One thing I'd add: in America, we now have an entire media ecosystem devoted to making billionaires feel like they're the oppressed heroes of an Ayn Rand novel.

Actually, the left is winning the AI debate But it does need to get organized.

"Rejecting or resisting a commercial technology designed to attempt a mass wealth transfer and to erode public institutions is a valid political position." - @bcmerchant.bsky.social