🌶 David Gray Widder

Israel Agrees To Go Back To Killing Palestinians On Less Frequent Basis CAIRO—As part of a historic ceasefire agreement with Hamas following two years of war, the Israeli government reportedly agreed Thursday to go back to killing Palestinians on a less frequent basis. “I...

Israel Agrees To Go Back To Killing Palestinians On Less Frequent Basis

🫧The news is finally asking if we're in an AI Bubble, and when it will pop. Good!🎈

Our data shows how we got here: Big Cloud is frantically investing in AI startups to build cloud market share and justify their *massive* investments in AI infrastructure.

How Google, Microsoft & Amazon invests:

Every paper of Cella's is a banger, she's a pillar of the local organizing scene, a rare scholar who walks the walk.

Cella is amazing - hire her!

🫧The news is finally asking if we're in an AI Bubble, and when it will pop. Good!🎈

Our data shows how we got here: Big Cloud is frantically investing in AI startups to build cloud market share and justify their *massive* investments in AI infrastructure.

How Google, Microsoft & Amazon invests:

‘Big Cloud’ is Building Power via Pervasive Investments | TechPolicy.Press Dependence on Big Cloud is not just technical or infrastructural: it is also financial, write Nathan Kim and David Gray Widder.

Just three companies comprise “Big Cloud” — Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, which together control two thirds of the cloud computing market. But dependence on Big Cloud is not just technical or infrastructural: it is also financial, write Nathan Kim and David Gray Widder.

UMich says the Ypsi Data Center won’t “manufacture nuclear weapons.” What does Los Alamos think? University administration must make a choice: Will it side with the public and live up to its stated ideals of serving the public good and public interest? Or will it side with LANL and spend hundreds...

Did you know that the university of Michigan is building the world’s largest supercomputer for Los Alamos National Labs’ nuclear weapons production programs, and paying for $830 million of it despite not being able to use >90% of it?

I wrote about it here:

www.michigandaily.com/opinion/umic...

Israeli drone footage shows the destruction in Gaza:

You cannot, by definition, be eugenicist to an LLM.
Thats not what eugenics was, is or means.
But also, it should worry everyone when tech people like Hailey dehumanize the actual survivors and ongoing victims of eugenics by making comparisons like this--its alarming.

some instagram account has posted a screenshot of dan's post that says "My wife and I never talk baby talk to our kid. We enforce academic seminar norms and jargon. My child isnt even 2 yet and can interrupt presenters on the first slide. Adults at family gatherings are shocked when my child asks a questino that turns out to be more of a comment." it has THIRTY SIX THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIVE LIKES

jumpscare on instagram @dandekadt.bsky.social

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU.

Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

Findings of Fact & Conclusions of Law – #261 in American Association of University Professors v. Rubio (D. Mass., 1:25-cv-10685) – CourtListener.com Judge William G. Young: ORDER entered. FINDINGS OF FACT AND RULINGS OF LAW, PURSUANT TO FED. R. CIV. P. 52(A)(Sonnenberg, Elizabeth) (Additional attachment(s) added on 9/30/2025: # 1 Main Document) (J...

BREAKING: WE WON!!!
💥 💥 💥

Federal Judge William G. Young ruled today in our lawsuit against the Trump administration that the policy of arresting, detaining, & deporting noncitizen students & faculty members for their pro-Palestinian advocacy violates the 1st Amendment.

Full ruling here:

A wise man once said, “you get paid more for linear regression if you call it machine learning and data science.”

Cornell Cut Classes by a Pro-Palestinian Professor After an Israeli Student’s Discrimination Complaint Dr. Eric Cheyfitz, who has taught at Cornell for more than two decades, claims the university is attempting to silence him as part of a broader crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism.

Cornell admin overruled a faculty committee to suspend a professor who asked a disruptive Israeli student to leave his class on Gaza. Details in the article. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

The hype bubble popping won't fix things, though. Disastrous effects remain, you may find our short piece useful:

bsky.app/profile/davi...

Watching the Generative AI Hype Bubble Deflate – Ash Center

7/If there's one silver lining, I'm far from alone in feeling this way - ash.harvard.edu/resources/wa.... I think it's time to draw some lines in the sand b4 AI takes that from us too and say "no more". AI, if you're listening, we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore! 😏

this is what we've been saying :-)

loony tunes

After years of them going "oh it's just one big gov contract!! we don't know what they use it for in the gov! we can't switch off access for individual gov units!!!"

Wow, incredible. Huge win for the No Azure for Apartheid organizers.

I'm so excited to read this! Looks amazing. Thanks also for engaging with our work :)

At some point earlier I'd said I was willing to help onboard anyone considering joining Mastodon, & that I am also willing to speak candidly about drawbacks there. All that still stands...

And, I have a just-out paper about user safety & moderation there: openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/Jo...

heh full *swing* heheheh

Bluestockings Cooperative Bluestockings Cooperative: Established in 1999, Worker-Owned since 2021. Located at 116 Suffolk Street, New York, NY 10002. One of NYC's only queer, trans, sex-worker run bookstores.

Sorry to hear that Bluestockings is closing. www.bluestockings.com

Screencap from cspan of rfk jr speaking at the memorial for Charlie Kirk, saying, “we are all hooked into social algorithms that are hacked into the reptilian cores of our brain.”

At least half of my media studies lectures:

Manufactured outrage is killing academic freedom in Texas | Opinion Enough with the "gotcha" attacks like the recent firing of a Texas A&M instructor. Let professors teach. Let students learn, writes Pauline Turner Strong.

"Enough is enough. Texas must allow faculty and college students to explore freely the breadth of human knowledge, and administrators must support us in that time-honored quest."

– Pauline Strong, President @utaustinaaup.bsky.social

#AcademicFreedom
#AcademicSky
@texasaaup.bsky.social

Ohio Chaplain Freed From Jail as DHS Drops Deportation Case “This is beyond my dreams,” Ayman Soliman told ProPublica on his release from an Ohio jail. In a case marked by errors and inconsistencies, DHS had accused the children’s hospital chaplain of providin...

NEW: Ayman Soliman, whose detention sparked a community uproar and became a test of counterterrorism powers in immigration court, was released from an Ohio jail Friday as DHS abruptly withdrew its deportation case against the children's hospital chaplain.

By @hannahallam.bsky.social

Even as the generative AI hype bubble slowly deflates, its harmful effects will last: carbon can’t be put back in the ground, workers continue to face AI’s disciplining pressures, and the poisonous effect on our information commons will be hard to undo.

Fantastic essay by my colleague here @histoftech.bsky.social: Watching the Generative AI Hype Bubble Deflate ash.harvard.edu/resources/wa... (pdf: arxiv.org/pdf/2408.08778) 🧪

Undone Computer Science 2026 2nd conference on Undone Science in Computer Science

Tired of how AI somehow lives rent-free in your head? Done with the ways that it inhibits our collective ability to imagine how technologies could be, beyond next word prediction?

Now's your chance to gather with like-minded folks. Submissions due Oct 9. www.undonecs.org/2026/

Deflating “Hype” Won’t Save Us The problem with AI isn’t hype. The problem is who and what it’s useful for.

“The problem with AI isn’t hype. The problem is who and what it’s useful for.” www.liberalcurrents.com/deflating-hy...