Nancy Baym

Sometimes a nice evening out with a strong cocktail, a good dinner, and your best sweetie
really does make it all ok.

Hey a thing I really don’t want to get lost here is that while Tylenol doesn’t cause autism, IT’S FINE TO BE AUTISTIC. Let’s not grant them the premise that autism should be eradicated in our way to correct the science, okay? Okay.

How about if all the stellar journalists who have walked or been let go in the last year start a new news organization. I’ll subscribe.

Congrats to @aramsinn.bsky.social and
@jesgilbert.bsky.social! Their wonderful book "The Secret Life of Data: Navigating Hype and Uncertainty in the Age of Algorithmic Surveillance" won the 2025 AoIR Nancy Baym Book Award. 1/2
aoir.org/2025nb_booka...
@aoir.bsky.social @nancybaym.bsky.social

On a different topic, I threw away 25 years of teaching evals today. The most recent were 13 years old. LOL.

"We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent." —Justice Sonia Sotomayor

What Authors Need to Know About the $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement  - The Authors Guild Today, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle claims that it downloaded pirated books to train its AI systems—the largest U.S. copyright settlement in history. The parties in Bartz v Anthropic...

I’m seeing a lot of inaccurate info about the Anthropic settlement being passed around as fact, so here’s a good basic explainer from the Author’s Guild that I highly recommend reading so you understand it better if you’re potentially part of the class: authorsguild.org/news/what-au...

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars.

OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

😮😮😮

It was so reassuring to learn a few weeks ago that he is universal laughing stock and it wasn’t just that I didn’t get the appeal.

Interesting moment in language use to see so many wondering if “it” has happened. When I was a kid, “it” could refer to many things, not just that one.

“I can’t believe they’re still building buildings with nightmare stairs,” I said to the businessman in front of me as we struggled up scary stairs in my nightmare.

Happened in 2019 and I still think about it all the time.

That happened to me a few years ago and it was a major life highlight. Congratulations.

left end of a rainbow with each color vibrant arches down from a grey sky in front of a hillside covered with trees and disappears into the water of a lake in the foreground

Love a well defined rainbow

I remember someone who shall remain nameless saying (roughly) if his business didn’t get all music publishing moved to the blockchain by 2020 they’d failed.

Through dense fog you can make out a round glowing sun above a ridge of trees and reflected in the lake below. It’s nearly monochromatic and kind of eerie.

Today in sunrises…

framed poster for rem’s chronic town. says “a five song twelve inch $5.98 list ep”

I have the black and white record store version framed in my entry still.

Stephanie Shirley, Who Created a Tech World for Women, Dies at 91

@histoftech.bsky.social Am obit of interest that you might have seen already. Gift link:

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/b...

It’s a wonderful book!

Very amused to spend 48 hours in Canada and find myself staying in the same hotel as Mark Carney. Big of him to show up for me like that.

First sunrise over wooded New England hills reflected in a calm still lake below a moss covered boulder cascading toward the water.

A small peace offering

If you have the capacity to support a wonderful woman and her wonderful wife (with whom I’ve had the joy of working) in a very difficult time, please join me in helping Fobazi and Elena. Thank you @ysabel.bsky.social for pulling this together for them.

😳🙄😧😮😮😮😲😲😲😲😲

Yeah there have been too many bad flooding events in recent history

a sign that says " what is even happening " next to a dumpster Alt: an animated dumpster on fire floats through a flooded landscape passing a sign that says "what is even happening"

among other things

Sad sad sad at the shuttering of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

@mjcrockett.bsky.social Wonderful talk at MSR NY today. Brought several things on my mind and in our labs’ work together very nicely. Thank you!

Lovely recognition, congratulations.