Deborah Yun Caldwell

I feel like workers’ rights and folklore sharing the May Day space really should involve at least one billionaire being put into a wicker man.

There’s No Room for Police Unions in the Labor Movement No other union employees are allowed to kill other human beings.

And remember, cops aren’t workers :) www.teenvogue.com/story/what-t...

Stepping in here to defend Ann’s statement, which I’ve now seen framed this way by several technologists.

Ann is an author.

Her context is about usability, not technical capacity. On the merits of her context, she is correct.

Technical specificity does not change her conclusions.

If you want me to accept that LLMs are a general use technology — an unavoidable one at that — you will have to give up your expertise domain when people talk about it colloquially.

Headline: ICE came for their neighbor so these Tennesseans formed a human chain to protect him

I can't emphasize enough that the most important thing journalists can do right now is publish exactly this kind of article

The logic of filling in public swimming pools with dirt or cement instead of racially integrating them, applied to the whole country

Why the Ultrarich Are Unplugging From “Smart Homes” With wifi-enabled, voice-activated appliances too clever by half, analog, app-free abodes are suddenly tempting A-list L.A. buyers. Welcome to the new “Dumb House.”

Today in Luxury Surveillance

ht @webrant.bsky.social

of course people won’t need history when the machine god takes its rightful place as humanity’s ruler

I'm very excited about the potential for this part of DRP. I hope that it will represent the broader interests as well as the importance of academic research using this data.

It isn't hyperbole to say that these firings will cost people's lives.

Not just of workers, who will face all the hardships that come with job loss, but of the people their work saves.

The GOP is a literal death cult and they aren't pretending to not be anymore.

Meta fires 20 employees for leaking The company announced the firings after a string of leaks about CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s internal comments.

With Meta out there banging on the "snitches get stitches" drum, seemed like a good time to lay out my best guidance for tech industry employees who feel a need to speak up. Below are a few notes:

www.theverge.com/labor/621059...

If you have ever wondered why our safety net is so inadequate and so full of cruelties and indignities, it is because of anti-Black racism.

Surviving the Fall — What A Shrink Thinks Someone emailed me a big question last night. A question too big for me frankly. They asked (paraphrasing):  What if democracy falls ? What if extremism takes over? How can we stay grounded, h...

Democracy never got off the ground at all for Indigenous and Black folks, and has never fully operated for immigrant communities, the disabled, or queer folks

yea we did 😎

Libraries supporting data rescue Librarians are great at quickly pulling together resources to support their patrons, and in the face of recent data loss, this need has become more urgent. Our patrons rely on access to public governm...

We ❤️ all the libraries that have been supporting data rescue and their patrons. Our focus is the preservation of access for all. www.datarescueproject.org/libraries-su...

From @apduorg.bsky.social
Such a major loss. The data was restricted access so access to historical data also unclear. Some indicators are available. We can archive those unless someone has done already.

Farmers Sue Over Deletion of Climate Data From Government Websites (Gift Article) The data, which disappeared from Agriculture Department sites in recent weeks, was useful to farmers for business planning, the lawsuit said.

Farmers Sue Over Deletion of Climate Data From Government Websites

The data, which disappeared from Agriculture Department sites in recent weeks, was useful to farmers for business planning, the lawsuit said.

Gift link!

House Rs just passed the budget resolution, the first step in their process to enact a bill that'd kick millions off Medicaid & cut SNAP down to just $1.60 per person per meal on avg while cutting taxes for the top 0.1% by $278k - all while increasing the debt

🧵on what's to come and WHERE TO FIGHT

Gli archivisti che resistono a Donald Trump La nuova amministrazione vuole eliminare tutti i contenuti governativi online non allineati con le idee del presidente. Per questo, un gruppo di ricercatori sta provando a salvare le informazioni prim...

Hey @freegovinfo.bsky.social we are in Italian too! @datarescueproject.org www.internazionale.it/notizie/ales...

Postdocs and PhD students hit hard by Trump’s crackdown on science As US federal grants remain frozen and budget cuts loom, anxiety and fear grip early-career researchers.

"Postdocs and PhD students hit hard by Trump’s crackdown on science
As US federal grants remain frozen and budget cuts loom, anxiety and fear grip early-career researchers." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

There’s been a remarkable uptick in fragile, argumentative white people in Black people’s mentions on here

What Could DOGE Do With Federal Data? Potentially anything.

"No matter DOGE’s goal, putting so much information in one place and under the control of a small group of people with little government experience has raised substantial security concerns," Matteo Wong writes in the Atlantic Intelligence newsletter:

Trump’s Executive Orders Build Toward Dictatorial “Unitary Executive” Power The president’s power grab over federal agencies is the latest example of his use of the controversial legal theory.

Legal scholars and advocates are sounding the alarm that Trump’s seizure of dictatorial executive power may succeed with the Supreme Court’s approval.

Trump Is Planning to Take Control of the Postal Service, Officials Say The president is seeking to disband the mail provider’s governing board and put the USPS under the control of the Commerce Department.

Morning, all:

We remember what happened to USPS under Trump last time. Now, he's planning on taking control.

Please be aware. Yes, CALL YOUR REPS.

The foundations of America’s prosperity are being dismantled Federal scientists warn that Americans could feel the effects of the new administration's devastating cuts for decades to come

For decades, the US government has painstakingly kept American science #1 globally—and every facet of American life has improved because of it. The internet? Flu shot? Ozempic? All grew out of federally-funded research. Now all that's being dismantled. 1/ www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/21/1...

DHS Scraps Ban on Surveillance Based on Sexual Orientation (1) A Department of Homeland Security unit eliminated policies prohibiting personnel from conducting intelligence activities based solely on a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation.

DHS has removed manual guidance barring investigations solely based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

This is a prerequisite to targeting the LGBTQ community with criminal investigations solely based on being LGBTQ.

news.bgov.com/bloomberg-go...

Smart resource for restaurants.

5 Calls Spend 5 minutes. Make 5 calls. Make your voice heard.

I know there's dozens of things to contact reps about every single day, but today please contact them about keeping USPS independent. Privatizing USPS would be devastating for so many reasons, but personally it would destroy my small business if I can't have affordable/accessible service. 5calls.org

Long before Trump’s inauguration, user activity monitoring was already mandated for federal agencies and networks that handle classified information—the result of an executive order signed by President Barack Obama in the wake of a massive breach of classified diplomatic cables and information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. The capability is part of government-wide insider-threat programs that greatly expanded after Edward Snowden’s leak of classified surveillance documents in 2013 and again after an Army specialist murdered four colleagues and injured 16 others at Fort Hood in 2014. The US government’s current approach to digitally monitoring federal workers has largely been guided by a directive issued by the Committee on National Security Systems in 2014, which orders relevant agencies to tie user activity to “specific users.” The public portions of the document call for “every executive branch department and agency” handling classified information to have capabilities to take screenshots, capture keystrokes, and intercept chats and email on employee devices. They are also instructed to deploy “file shadowing,” meaning secretly producing facsimiles of every file a user edits or opens.

The insider threat programs at departments such as Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs, also have policies that protect unclassified government information, which enable them to monitor employees’ clicks and communications, according to notices in the Federal Register, an official source of rulemaking documents. Policies for the Department of the Interior, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporate, also allow collecting and assessing employees’ social media content. These internal agency programs, overseen by a national task force led by the attorney general and director of national intelligence, aim to identify behaviors that may indicate the heightened risk of not only leaks and workplace violence, but also the “loss” or "degradation" of a federal agency’s “resources or capabilities.” Over 60 percent of insider-threat incidents in the federal sector involve fraud, such as stealing money or taking someone's personal information, and are non-espionage related, according to analysis by Carnegie Mellon researchers. “Fraud,” “disgruntlement,” “ideological challenges,” “moral outrage,” or discussion of moral concerns deemed “unrelated to work duties” are some of the possible signs that a worker poses a threat, according to US government training literature.

NEW: We spoke with federal workers grappling with symptoms of paranoia around technology due to DOGE's incursion, including some fearful of their own home networks, and take a hard look at the range of tools the government currently uses to monitor its workforce:

www.wired.com/story/survei...