Shannon Mattern

When you put it like this, a $75 million bribe to Melania and gutting the Washington Post seems like a small price to pay.

Informatics of the Oppressed An inquiry into the rich history of radical experiments to reorganize information.

Yes, it’s great! I have it! And I’ve included this piece — on Latin American genealogies — in our Search & Discovery class:

How “Archive” Became a Verb Debates over a proposed national data center in the 1960s reveal how privacy concerns led to corporate control of personal data.

"By failing to create a National Data Center, the government opened space for corporations to aggregate data for their own use and profit. Preventing a nationalized data center enabled a new market for privatized data banks and data integration solutions to take hold and thrive."

Artist Laurie Anderson -- in jeans, untucked white button-down, and apron -- standing before the entry wall text for the "Technologies of Relation" exhibition

And here's THE Laurie Anderson standing in front of the introductory wall text for the new Technologies of Relation show, which opened today at MASS MoCA! (A few friends — Taeyoon, Mashinka, Danny, et al — have work in the show)

A wooden stand holding a dozen magnifying glasses

Entrance to the Raffaella della Olga show, featuring three typewriters

A wall display featuring rings holding samples of the various substrates the artist used in her work

A close up of one of the artist's books, featuring wavy typewritten patterns -- one in orange, the other in red and purple

I love how, at the entrance to the Raffaella della Olga show at The Clark, they invite visitors to borrow a magnifying glass to examine all the little typewritten characters and the material nuances of her various substrates, including sandpaper

Karen has no criminal record. She is a grandmother who spent eight years working as an admin assistant at a primary school before her retirement. “I don’t even have parking tickets in the background anywhere,” she says. “I am not a dangerous criminal. I didn’t enter the country illegally and I had everything I needed to be there.” So why did ICE detain her, and keep her locked up for so long? A possible answer began to emerge over the weeks she was incarcerated. As Karen got to know the guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center where she was held, she kept hearing the same thing from them: that ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. “Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,” Karen says.

Border Patrol is operating as bounty hunters.

Agents are apparently getting paid for each person they put in detention. Even if those people are grandmothers traveling on valid tourist visas.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

kind of amazing that everything trump does can be understood through the lens of narcissism and it's related needs (e.g., self aggrandizement, revenge, domination, grievance validation). i don't think any character has been so one-dimensional, not even wile e coyote or scrooge mcduck

“Library funding has long been subject to what advocates describe as a recurring “budget dance,” with mayors proposing cuts or inadequate increases before restorations are negotiated later.

Mamdani had pledged to break that cycle.”

Thanks to @thecity.nyc for covering this broken promise!

Taking page from Adams, Mayor Mamdani proposes NYC library cuts Library advocates called the mayor’s proposed budget “terrible.”

From @gothamist.com :

““If you're just going to say, ‘Oh, I love the library,’ but you’re not actually supporting them, then that’s a real disappointment and, frankly, bulls---,” said Abby Emerson, a member of the NYC Public Library Action Network, or NYC PLAN.

gothamist.com/news/taking-...

To Read This, Please Upload Photo ID A primer on digital age assurance methods and a survey of the laws—both enacted and proposed—requiring them.

Librarians used to go to court (and jail) to prevent the government from seeing which books you had checked out.

But today the public is demanding that platforms ask for this info in the name of protecting children. "To Read This, Please Upload Photo ID." www.lawfaremedia.org/article/to-r...

'Oust Wexner' banner hung at Ohio State, drawing connection to Jeffrey Epstein The banner was hung from the top of the Ohio State School of Architecture on Wednesday before the university took it down.

The students are NOT HAPPY at The Ohio State University.

And of all the colleges on campus, this was done at the School of Architecture!

Come on Buckeye students and alumni!! #ReleaseAllTheEpsteinFiles

City Council, we demand half a percent of the overall city budget for libraries! In response to the NYC FY2026 Budget, adopted this June, the Brooklyn Public Library, the New York Public Library, and the Queens Public Library released a joint statement thanking City Leaders for in...

Can we get to 4500 letters to NY City Council by tomorrow? It only takes 30 seconds: actionnetwork.org/letters/city... - Also if you've already signed, can you please get 4 others to do the same?

The Misuses of the University - Public Books Have the funds that might have trained the next generation of scholars at the nation’s first research university have been blown on ostentatious new buildings?

“Everyone thinks universities have to do what donors want because they pay the bills. But that gets it backward. Giant donations, he’s come to realize, often increase the university’s bills, generating new operating expenses for projects that have only tenuous links to the university’s core mission”

Truly uncanny to see universities all doing the same suicidal things: centralizing decision-making, erecting bafflingly expensive new buildings, stacking the board with money guys, hiding info about the budget, throwing money at consultants. Atriums everywhere! They all got the same memo.

☺️

I hadn’t thought about the sonic aspect! Very ASMR! She made me listen to beans differently, too. Such beatific little percussive instruments :)

US-led Board of Peace a 'colonialist operation,' Cardinal Pizzaballa says Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, strongly criticized the U.S.-led Board of Peace, an international body chaired by President Donald Trump to oversee the governance and r...

"What do I think of the Board of Peace? I think it is a colonialist operation: others deciding for the Palestinians,” said Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa: www.ncronline.org/news/us-led-...

bicycles
trains
solar panels
windmills
vaccines

A line curve showing number of awards for fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021-2025 across NSF. The fiscal year 2026 curve lies well below curves for other fiscal years.

NSF Update

Funding curve overall. A little bit of progress in the past week, but only a little bit.

Now by Directorate...

1/11

The Misuses of the University - Public Books Have the funds that might have trained the next generation of scholars at the nation’s first research university have been blown on ostentatious new buildings?

“Maybe the leaders of our nation’s wealthiest universities can’t think a generation ahead anymore, beholden as they are to board members who think in terms of the next quarter….” - François Furstenberg @publicbooks.bsky.social
www.publicbooks.org/the-misuses-...

But these tech billionaires are just wholesale buying out the California Democratic Party apparatus. That is very obviously the strategy, and it works. The standard bearers of the California Democratic Party are now subsidiaries of Silicon Valley's worst billionaires.

Haven’t read the whole thing, but I’m here to remind y’all of another case re: prof at my former employer who used ChatGPT to write legal statement for which he was paid $600/hr

Shocker (not): No sanctions from uni that gets millions from Silicon Valley. Exhibit C for why I couldn’t take it anymore

the actual story of what happened at the National Endowment for the Humanities last year is even more infuriating than we thought

i've decided not to listen to the audio of a teacher reporting a kindergartender because frankly I don't want to become the person that that event would turn me into. but one thing I hope we are collectively coming to grips with is what it meant that we have lived among such people this whole time

I've been waiting for your assessment! :) I saw the ICA show yesterday!

"There is no dirt in heaven": Barns, brooms, bonnets may sound trad, but the Shakers stood for something more // new @bloomberg.com CityLab www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

“She has a message for other tourists considering a trip to America:

“‘Don’t go – not with Trump in charge. It’s totally out of control over there. There’s no accountability. They don’t seem to need a reason for detaining you.’”

I don't think school was formative for most of these people; they do it to network, find other schemers, and legitimate their eventual plunder.

Alison Knowles (1933–2025) Nicole Woods memorializes Fluxus pioneer Alison Knowles.

"In Alison’s final days, frail and lying in a hospital bed in the SoHo loft, she performed Nivea Cream Piece one last time with [her daughter] and a close family friend.... Ordinary gestures become art, revealing their deep and personal nature in heightened acts of attention."

André du Colombier. A Lyrical Point of View - Museu Tàpies First monographic exhibition in a contemporary art museum, in Catalonia and in Europe, of the work of André du Colombier.

"Another genre in du Colombier’s practice was his mise-en-scènes. Composed of toys, tourist souvenirs and accessories arranged and performed on café tables or in other casual situations, these were often staged for an invited audience of one and never documented."