Alex H

most people want a quick and simple answer to why AI systems encode/exacerbate societal and historical bias/injustice and due to the reductive but common thinking of "bias in, bias out," the obvious culprit often is training data but this is not entirely true

1/

I might have lost funding but at least I can do what I want. :) And I want to teach people about AI ethics in 90 second increments! bit.ly/ai-ethics-sy...

A major AI training data set contains millions of examples of personal data Personally identifiable information has been found in DataComp CommonPool, one of the largest open-source data sets used to train image generation models.

One of the largest text-image datasets is full of PII, including credit card numbers and birth certificates. Excellent writeup by @eileenguo.bsky.social www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/18/1... Read our full audit and legal analysis arxiv.org/pdf/2506.17185

Palestinians are prisoners of geography, but statehood is possible France, Canada and the UK will recognise Palestine. But it is unclear if this will revive the stalled two-state solution

1/3 It’s a strange thing to say that anyone is a prisoner of geography. People are imprisoned by other people. Prisons are not natural, geographical features. We have to ask who created them and why. www.thetimes.com/world/middle...

Fantastic 77 song compilation raising money for stem cell charity Anthony Nolan featuring lots of Baba Yaga's favourites has just gone online

wrongpop.bandcamp.com/album/wrongp...

Sign the Petition Stop Mass Redundancies at Lancaster University – Hold Senior Management Accountable

Goodbye to the history department at Lancaster University, where the @socialhistsoc.bsky.social was founded 49 years ago. From tomorrow we are
part of a School of Global Affairs. Next year, who knows what will be - please sign our petition against mass redundancies chng.it/PZfTFDjNcr

We are proud to announce that South Asian Britain: Connecting Histories, a landmark educational website on the histories of South Asians in Britain, is now live!

Visit southasianbritain.org

@qmul.bsky.social @bristoluni.bsky.social @britishlibrary.bsky.social #AHRC @uobartsmatter.bsky.social

This is a laundry list of rhetorical strategies to defend the adoption of a given technology for the purposes of advancing an ideology & economic regime: inevitability, unquestioning praise of “innovation,” buy-in from concerned stakeholders, assurances that partnership is not capitulation. 1/n

Protesting over Gaza’s starvation feels like screaming into a void – but we mustn’t stop | Nesrine Malik Political platitudes and a few trucks of aid won’t save the children dying now. But they show leaders can’t ignore public opinion for ever, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

Once again @nesrinemalik.bsky.social with simple moral clarity cutting through the noise. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

5 questions for Danielle Citron

Read this interview with a personal hero, Professor @daniellecitron.bsky.social: "we have essentially presumed that data collection is a good...We have long ignored this important inclination that collection itself is endangering our privacy and civil liberties" www.politico.com/newsletters/...

All famines are man-made, all famines are political. Historians of empire and humanitarianism have known this forever. Gaza is not starving, Gaza is being starved, by Israel, and this starvation is enabled by our government and by every other government that does not step in to force food and aid.

One million starved children and no shortage of food

this is one of the worst crimes in human history and the entire global north and all of us in it share the responsibility

I’m witnessing the deliberate starvation of Gaza’s children – why is the world letting it happen? | Nick Maynard A permanent ceasefire, the free and safe flow of aid, and the lifting of the blockade are needed now – all could be achieved with political will, says UK surgeon Nick Maynard

“The UK government’s continued complicity in Israel’s atrocities is unconscionable, and I do not want to spend another day operating on children who have been shot and starved by a military our government supports.” Devastating reporting.

Call for applications 📢

The GHI London-India Research Programme and the @mwfdelhi.bsky.social invite applications for their joint fellowship for early career scholars whose research is situated in the broad field of the British Empire and the History of Colonialism!
1/3

"Shell and other leading energy groups have abandoned a six-year-long attempt to define a “net zero” emissions strategy after being told that such a standard would require them to stop developing new oil and gas fields, according to documents seen by the Financial Times."

Annual report and accounts 2024–25 Browse highlights from The National Archives' annual report and accounts or download the report in full.

It's been a busy year at work, 2024-25 annual report of The National Archives now laid before Parliament and published www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/annual-repor... #archives #DigiPres

Israel levelling thousands of Gaza civilian buildings in controlled demolitions - BBC News Investigation by BBC Verify using satellite images and verified footage to show the extent of destruction in Gaza, where the Israeli military have carried out demolitions to raze entire towns and subu...

Entire towns being reduced to rubble in Gaza www.bbc.co.uk/news/resourc...

The need for pro-democracy technology: some lessons from the USA This is the opening text from a talk given by Anna Dent and Peter Wells at the start of an event on pro-democracy public sector technology on 18 June 2025. We have all seen headlines and reporting ab...

A couple of weeks back @sycamore-collective.org ran an event on pro-democracy public sector technology. @annadent.bsky.social and I did an opening talk. We wrote it up in case it's useful for others ->

sycamore-collective.org/the-need-for...

Head of policy mentions 'system reform (including legislative changes)' around public sector use of data

Industrial Strategy (p62) also mentions data legislation www.gov.uk/government/p...

As does NHS 10yr Plan (p48) www.gov.uk/government/p...

So look out for Data Bill 2: Electric Boogaloo

"I mean, we haven't accidentally issued a legal mandate for a huge commercially invaluable data honeypot on everyone's browsing and web activity history linked to their government ID, have we?"

affirmative! read the entire post

Seeking bulldozer drivers to demolish Gaza: how a genocide is being outsourced | Arwa Mahdawi The systematic destruction of Gaza is hardly a secret. Now, the IDF is posting Facebook ads for bulldozer operators to help demolish the strip

Seeking bulldozer drivers to demolish Gaza: how a genocide is being outsourced | Arwa Mahdawi

On the day that the abolition of the right to jury trial is proposed, the basic digital infrastructure of the Crown Courts - procured by government at extortionate public cost - is once again not working.

Israeli military used 500lb bomb in strike on Gaza cafe, fragments reveal Exclusive: Experts say use of heavy munition in Monday’s strike that killed dozens may constitute a war crime

Israeli military are wracking up those war crimes. At least they didn't do an offensive chant at a music festival though.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

The Strange World Of… Part Chimp | The Quietus Stevie Chick offers ten points of entry into the heaviocious back catalogue of South London rock destroyers Part Chimp

The Strange World of Part Chimp just gone up on @thequietus.com ahead of their show with us at the end of the month!

thequietus.com/interviews/s...

Single panel cartoon in the style of Gary Larson Far side. Hacker T. Dog, a dog puppet in a flashy shirt, pulls a goofy smile behind a table of 4 crudely made tools as his co-host, Lauren, puts her thumb and forefinger to her nose trying to stifle laughter. Caption reads "just normal tools."

what do you mean 'normal tools'?

Ice cream truck funerals apparently produce the most horror movie ass sound you can hear in real life

the most basic, enduring plea from medicine: stop obsessing over tech solutions for tiny marginal returns when we haven't even mastered the basics of 19thC public health reform, let alone anything more sophisticated.

Today's headlines should be: Two nuclear powers (one of whose de facto head of state is wanted for crimes against humanity) illegally bomb a non nuclear power on the pretext it *almost* has WMD.

Over the last year I've heard more people in UK talk of bringing in the "once only" principle - where people provide info to state once and then it's made available to other public services based on user consent or legal need - I do hope more of those people also get to grips with things like this