Dr. S.A. Applin

Michael D. Fischer and I have a chapter out in the new "Handbook of Anthropology and Artificial Intelligence."Open Access (free). Click on purple retangle: www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/han... See Chapter 5, Anthropology of artificial intelligence: agency, powerful knowledge, and the algorithmic other."

The SHACK!!! 🥳❤️

People take agency in unexpected ways.

This article does not discuss one major reason why chocolate in the West got worse - Ghana and Ivory Coast, the two African countries that are the biggest suppliers of cacao globally, got organised and started demanding fair prices for it. www.reuters.com/world/africa...

Did Claude write it?

“I am a stranger to my closest family members so ask AI basic questions about them.”

No one wants to get burnt wearing a "hot" wearable. Means the battery is working too hard. Seriously though, just don't wear them anyway for many reasons.

You asked AI for the cheapest flight. It dug through your emails, decided you could afford more, and suggested a ticket costing $100–$200 extra. Lindsay Owens explains ⬇️

Read her full investigation: www.levernews.com/walmart-says...

My voting tips: 1) Vote early if you can 2) Ignore all political ads and video. Instead, read about candidates where you can find objective sources (e.g. do NOT ask "AI"/LLMs.) 3) Check who funded propositions and people. 4) Check political parties of justices and their records. 5) Vote!

A paradox. They want to make a mother, but they wish to replace women bc all of them threaten them. Last week, Palantir co-founder wants AI to disempower "educated white liberal women voters" and replace w/working class men. I said before: this is straight up "womb envy"--and has been all along.

A large part of the problem is "linear thinking" (vs lateral thinking) in combination with not giving reps enough agency to help customers. If people can't think beyond the script, all the training won't help. We wrote about this 10 years ago here: algorithmsatwork.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...

This aired just the once in 1998 on the live SNL show for which McKay wrote it. It was effectively banned as it never aired again. I wonder why. MEDIA-OPOLY

The infuriating thing is that simultaneously, I've clocked early and wrong in published essays from years ago. And I was right. But there was no one listening. Not the press, not VCs, not the bros. Could have saved them so much time and money. Hire Anthropologists.

My voting tips: 1) Vote early if you can 2) Ignore all political ads and video. Instead, read about candidates where you can find objective sources (e.g. do NOT ask "AI"/LLMs.) 3) Check who funded propositions and people. 4) Check political parties of justices and their records. 5) Vote!

Machines cannot peer review "better." Folks "AI"/LLMs are text matching programs. There's no "there," there. No "thinking," no context awareness, no nothing.

Hello everyone, here is your daily update on what the Sun is doing: (Paraphrased from NOAA SWPC's recent forecast discussion) Low activity: the top flare was a C1.3 from Region 4560, the only spotted region on disk, which keeps decaying. No Earth-directed CMEs detected.

"I understand that there have been some experiments showing that LLM review may have similar outcomes to human peer review, but who cares? Either scholarship, research and publishing are human enterprises or they aren’t." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu... >>

"Don't be evil," Google!

🎶Somebody has womb envy....🎶

Who's sexualising girl's school uniforms? That would be men.

AND GATHER BIOMETRIC DATA ATTHE SAME TIME?

I warned about these in @fastcompany.com in 2022 "DHS enforces borders, which include the ports in major cities, as well as “immigration” areas (which could be anywhere). Thus, the agency’s robot dogs could be wandering the streets of our cities sooner than we might expect."

Corporations made trillions of dollars off of a foundation of open source software. The vulnerability apocalypse could destroy that foundation. It's time for corporations to pull their weight. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

Also worth noting that the Internet is a mess and "AI" won't save it: www.fastcompany.com/90976171/ove...

70 percent of the internet was vulnerable yesterday to very bad security flaws inside a coding language. Turns out, *one volunteer* is mostly responsible for maintaining that code & helping push updates. Yesterday Ondřej Surý saved the internet. So I called him up www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

"Warhound?" Woof. (Again, I warned @fastcompany.com in 2022...) www.fastcompany.com/90789666/who...

Narrator: No, it cannot do this. Microsoft can't even figure out email addressing in Outlook. Trust your health to Board Certified Humans.

A lovely Romano-British brooch in the form of a cheerful little hare! ❤️ Copper alloy decorated with enamel, 2nd-3rd century AD. 📷 British Museum www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o... #Archaeology

Oh um, hey, "Don't be evil," Google. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

They already don't pay tax so who cares if they leave. Buh bye Zuck, don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya...

Good. Maybe hosts will give up and housing can return to the communities who need it.

*Sure, enjoy rubbing your hands there, but those data-centers are giant, super-expensive glass palaces in a world of cheap, accurate flying bombs *What's protecting them, exactly? Some genteel regard for the needs of the oligarchy? *Even common, everyday climate-disasters could knock them out

Not just frats "What is new in the case of Jane Doe is that old patterns of sexual predation are being enabled and facilitated in terrifying ways by modern technology. Groups of men can now form and coordinate with far greater ease than they could in any previous era" www.nytimes.com/2026/10/20/o...

Immunology Institute Could Get $4 Billion From a Ballot Measure. It Has 3 Workers. www.medpagetoday.com/publichealth...

Maybe he should have read our three papers on this from 14, 11, and 11 years ago...and hired me. Please tell him I'm available for a job... before GM kills everyone. posr.org/w/images/a/a... and ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/706... and ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/731...

(Or not directed solely to Caucasian males...)

Gentle reminder. Make friends with Archeologists near you--learn how to safely find things and not disturb historic sites. Or animal habitats, etc. British Archeological Society: thebaa.org

Anyone have recommendations for a decent, not too expensive, digital microscope for amateur home use to look at things like diatoms, tardigrades, fungi, etc?

This Microsoft ad shows Microsoft tapping "anti DEI rage" and endorsing plagarism. And they're using this to try to "sell" Co-pilot to us. #FAIL

Look, GM and whomever else: driving is a social task. When you make things automated, you shift that social burden of accommodation and sociability to people who aren't automating. Either all cars need to be automated, or none of them. We said this in 2012 and later in 2015 posr.org/w/images/a/a...

This will not be the only example. Many projects that we work on collaboratively are foundations of community. If this and other communal projects become mediated (subsumed) by "AI"/LLM companies, it will further isolate us—and we need community to survive as humans. We're a group oriented species.