Aaron Kimbrell

This book is fantastic! I'm forever recommending it to colleagues.

Excerpt from Anna Tsing's "The Mushroom at the End of the World" "What we have is mushrooms, that is, fruiting bodies of underground fungi. The fungi require the traffic of the commons to flourish; no mushrooms emerge without forest disturbance. The privately owned mushroom is an offshoot from a communally living underground body, a body forged through the possibilities of latent commons, human and not human. That it is possible to cordon off the mushroom as an asset without taking its underground commons into account is both the ordinary way with privatization and a quite extraordinary outrage, when you stop to think about it. The contrast between private mushrooms and fungi-forming forest traffic might be an emblem for commoditization more generally: the continual, never-finished cutting off of entanglement."

Anna Tsing really cooked here

(from The Mushroom at the End of the World)

How I wish I could go to this! If you can make it, do so. Shannon and Kelli are both outright geniuses and in the same space for this... come on!

This will end the Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) program (schools with >25% Latino undergrads). For reference, current flagships that are HSIs include Arizona and Arizona State, 5 UCs (Irvine, Riverside, Merced, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz), Rutgers, U New Mexico & NM State, UT Austin & UT El Paso

a green square that says "fast food meals. new phenomenon burger taste. $19.90. order via seamless" and in the corner is a non-euclidean cluster of chicken finger.

a very normal 5-star review that says "I would be lost without restaurant. I would like to personally thank you for your outstanding product." - Nina Margaret, CEO apple.

another normal review that says "without food, we would have gone bankrupt by now. thanks food! the service was excellent." John Doe, manager.

an AI image of a pastrami sandwich. not to overuse the word non-euclidean but what else can I say to describe these layers of meat? this one also has some kind of yellow sauce leaking out of the bottom, and another yellow sauce being sensuously drizzled on top. in the lower right corner are baffling tubes that sort of look like if roasted carrots fucked a soft pretzel.

my roommate was trying to find the menu for a nearby bagel shop and instead found some of the most iconic slop I've ever seen. thanks food! :)

The biggest trick the devil ever pulled is to call LLMs “artificial intelligence.”

!!!

Congrats, Phil! Looking forward to reading this.

Cover of the book, Literacies in the Platform Society: Histories, Pedagogies, and Possibilities, edited by T. Philip Nichols and Antero Garcia, and published in the 'Expanding Literacies in Education' series at Routledge.

Text from the Table of the Contents. List of Figures, List of Tables, Contributor Biographies, Series Editors’ Introduction, Acknowledgments. Introduction: Literacies in the Platform Society by T. Philip Nichols and Antero Garcia PART I — Histories New Towers of Babel: A Conceptual Argument for Digital Platforms as Unstable Linguistic Constructs by Tom Liam Lynch and Mark A. Sulzer Literacy as a Framework for Computing Education: Affordances, Constraints, and New Directions by Jennifer Higgs, Sepehr Vakil and Charles Logan Waiting on the Platform: The Journey to and From Manuscript Central by Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant

Table of contents, continued. Racialized Labor and Digital Sites of Struggle on Asian American College YouTube by Sonia Kim Rethinking Affordances and Constraints in the Platform Era by Bradley Robinson PART II - Pedagogies Teachers’ Use of Technological Applications and Platforms: Classroom Management, Data Literacy,and Unexpected Labor by Jessica Zacher Pandya and Gwen Shaffer Human and Non-human Agency in Elementary Literacy Classrooms: Examining ClassDojo as Part of Pedagogical Practice by Evie Poyiadji and Stavroula Kontovourki Platforms as Texts: Restorying Platforms as Collective Resistance by Amy Stornaiuolo and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas Proceduralized Ideologies in Teacher Education: An Analysis of Student Teaching Simulation Software by Earl Aguilera and Mighty Chen Transforming Pedagogies Across Digital Platforms: Playgrid Ecologies as Sites of Emergent Identities and Literacies for Pre-service Teachers by José Ramón Lizárraga, Arturo Cortez, and Kaitlin Baca

Table of contents, continued. Part 3 - Possibilities As We May Mark by Remi Kalir Reimagining Digital Social Platforms and Youth Agency in Schools: Youth Participatory Design Research as an Agentic Curricular Approach by Emily Southerton Between Structure and Collective Care: A Humanizing Approach to Resource Curation by Shelley E. Rose, Mary Frances (Molly) Buckley-Marudas and Calida O’Brien Toward a Critical Race Algorithmic Literacy: Preparing Black Youth to “Talk Back” to Algorithmic Bias and Platformed Racism by Tiera Tanksley Afterword: Some Theoretical and Methodological Notes on Platform Literacies by Kris Gutiérrez Index

Literacies in the Platform Society: Histories, Pedagogies, and Possibilities—edited by me and @anterobot.bsky.social—is out today! 🎉

It's been an absolute privilege to work with so many brilliant people, over multiple years, to make this book a reality.

www.routledge.com/Literacies-i...

Not me thinking this was about Australian break dancing.

* undertake = underSTAND

I’ve seen several talks by arts + humanities researchers whose work I’ve long appreciated, now scaling up their inquiries through AI — primarily, it seems, to better undertake “how AI sees / reads / interprets” the work. It so often feels sad to me — obligatory, compensatory. A pander to funders.

This dude!

Today I met with a library director from a liberal arts college. She's working with anthro faculty + students to understand how people use the library; with design faculty + students to design-build new furnishings that facilitate new uses; etc. This is how it should be: campus as test kitchen.

Thanks! Looking forward to reading this.

Hi Peter, I’m seeing the same paper - conference learning - at both links or same links in each post (hard to say on Bluesky which is the issue). Looking forward to reading the noise musicians one! Thanks

This evening I met with Kelvin to ask about his project and tell him how much I appreciated it. He said he was informed partly by Arkadi Zaides's "documentary choreography," which I hadn't heard about (and which is clearly related to various forensic methods, dissident archives, etc)

[2/2] Here’s a nice write-up about the show: www.design.upenn.edu/post/dual-de...

And here’s a bit about the fantastic syllabus Kelvin created for our methods class: cimsmethods.wordsinspace.net/2024/our-fin...

TMITBD An Independent Studio Production By Kelvin Vu MLA + M.Arch 2025 Dept. of Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Spring 2025 Advisors: Robert Gerard Pietrusko & Catherine Seavitt PERFORMANCES Duhring Wing Gallery University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design S May 11 at 7:30pm M May 12 at 7:30pm T May 13 at 7:30pm FINAL REVIEW CONVERSATION Duhring Wing Gallery Annette Fierro (ARCH) Sharon Hayes (ENAR, Chair) Fernando Lara (ARCH) Robert G. Pietrusko (LARP) Catherine Seavitt (LARP, Chair) W May 14 at 10:00am Please join us if you're interested!

TMITBD Design, Choreography, & Performance: Kelvin Vu Text & Original Score (unless otherwise noted): Kelvin Vu Technical Assistance: Ariel Koltun-Fromm Stage Handling & Extra Role: Sol Kim Ushering: Noa Machover PROLOGUE "(Potter County Was Made By The Hand of God, But the Devil Made) Three Mile Island" by Al Shade & Jean Romaine (1979) ACT I / DEEP MAPPING ACT II / SCORES "Light of a Clear Blue Morning" by Dolly Parton (1977) "Baby I'm Burnin" by Dolly Parton (1978) "Meltdown Situation" by The 012 (1981) Interviews from Aileen M. Smith's Three Mile Island: The People's Testament. (1979-1989). In order of first appearance: Marie Holowka, Jim Gutshall, Molly Reinhart, Betty Fawber, Keith Malcodi, Evelyn Shields, Bill Peters, Clair Hoover, Ruth Hoover, Ella Gladfelter, Jean Trimmer. ACT III / DOCUMENTARY CHOREOGRAPHY Archival Images and Audio from Mary Stamos Osborn's Collection of Mutated Plants (1979-2019). Purportedly housed at the Smithsonian Institute of Natural History, Department of Botany. Full access provided by Scott Portzline, Three Mile Island Alert. EPILOGUE "The Meltdown" by Root Boy Slim (1979)

near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It housed two nuclear reactors and was the site of the worst commercial nuclear accident in US history. This intermedial project culminates my independent studio for the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Pennsylvania, Weitzman School of Design. It combines movement, sound, and animation to explore meaning making in the face of crisis, archival gaps, and the simultaneity of too much and too little information. The piece brings together materials and research from three phases I carried out through the semester: deep mapping, choreographic scores, and documentary choreography. The research led me on a rhizomatic journey based on uranium, took me deep into government documents and reports, and brought me to materials that local residents collected in the wake of the accident, from interviews to plant specimens to music. In its 1980 report to Congress, the US General Accounting Office referred to the accident at TMI as the "most studied nuclear accident in history." But there are still ongoing questions about the health and ecological effects of the radiation releases. This piece questions official and unofficial narratives, evidence collection, and bodily witnessing of landscape change. Today, the damaged reactor TMI-2 is still in the decommissioning process, and TMI-1 is scheduled to come back online to provide energy exclusively for Microsoft's artificial intelligence data centers. You can find more information abour this independent studio and about the materials and sources in the final production by following the links below.

Just saw the most spectacular thesis performance: Kelvin Vu, a ✨ student from my fall methods class, a MArch / MLA candidate;😋, and a professional dancer — created a multimodal video / 🗺️ / 🔈 / choreography piece abt Three Mile Island. I’ve asked him if I can share it after his final show 🥹 [1/2]

Graphic: From Detention to Development: Transforming Guantanamo Bay into a Prosperous Charter City . Illustration of a beachside resort with fairly high density condos and a road running along the shoreline. Looks moderately prosperous

Jimmy Ballard you should be here to witness

Wow! This will be so useful, Phil. I’m grateful for the timeliness of this publication for my own research. Can’t wait to read it.

Screenshot of the first page of a Learning, Media, and Technology article, titled "Parametrizing 'the digital': Education research methods for platform ecologies" by T. Philip Nichols, Robert Jean LeBlanc, and Alexandra Thrall

Thrilled to share "Parametrizing 'the digital': Education research methods for platform ecologies" — new from me, Robert LeBlanc, and @alliethrall.bsky.social in @lmt-journal.bsky.social.

Paywalled now, but will be OA soon (reach out for a PDF in the meantime)

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Ohh, likewise! I have a “P. Nichols”Zotero folder in my doctoral research, so this was such a treat. I will reach out sometime soon. Thanks again - and have a great weekend.

Absolutely!

Thanks to @civicsoftech.bsky.social and @philnichols.bsky.social for the book club session tonight on Phil’s book “Building the Innovation School” - these regular events are an incredible resource for connecting with others questioning the technology/education/civics

Photo of Judith Butler with a fake cable news chryon saying, "breaking news - Judith Butler Begins Holy War - Quoted as saying 'The Age of Thnking Machines is at an End.'"

mr beast tweet reads: I have a pilot living in a $2,500,000 private jet and if he doesn’t leave for 100 days he keeps it, a cop/criminal in a jail and if they don’t leave for 100 days they win $500,000, and someone living in a gym until he loses 100 pounds for $500,000. Can’t wait to upload these 🥰

mr beast talking about the human lives he has trapped in simultaneous simulations with "cant wait to upload these" is why black mirror can never be as good as it used to be

Superbloom — Civics of Technology A Review and Collaborative Discussion

Blog post today: A discussion of Superbloom by attendees of our book group this week.

Hear Dan Krutka, @jbpleasa.bsky.social, @seetedtalk.bsky.social, @drtiffpetricini.bsky.social, and Jeff Radloff share their thoughts and reflections.

www.civicsoftechnology.org/blog/superbl...

“You ever just mention a woman?” - @sofiaxaguilar.bsky.social