Lauren Woolsey

I sometimes get into "Earthrise" moods, which is to say that one of two things happens: 1) I go high and re-read Amanda Gorman 2) I go low and I channel Edgar Mitchell

And then for Astronaut Mitchell, his quote often echoes in my head. "You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.'" Image credit: www.reddit.com/r/QuotesPorn...

I created this photo using recent research so it relaxes your brain when you pause to look at the details. As I'm sometimes too unwell to post here (not good mental health due to PMDD & recovering from a breakdownA) it would help so much if you could maybe RT my photo. Many thanks 🌿

In my book I argue that IP fandoms are a crucial part of the economic model of the current media monopoly landscape, as fan campaigns drive down the value of creative labor via harassment and disposability, scare artists from taking risks with IP, and give execs a direct fan base all their own

I like ranked choice voting for this purpose. I can add my "meh" candidates to the bottom of my list and avoid ranking the really awful ones. I look forward to when that's more widespread.

I think the lesson from Lula is not never talk about the opposition; it's articulate a positive vision that's basically, We Can Just Do Things. That's why Mamdani-ism is so popular - voters have an intrinsic sense that their electeds have agency they're not using

"In response to Tommy's world of exclusion, El Sayed spoke of a world of solidarity with all humans simply because they are human, and exposed Tommy as somebody who had, by his own choice, excluded himself from that." www.the-reframe.com/taking-our-c...

The artist credit is in the alt text (Paisley Jensen Studios) and the link to buy it was helpfully added by someone in the replies:

This kid is so talented! Watch the clip! Inspired me to post my own little poem draft on the subject: We thrive in bright sunshine, so why must we return to dark and aged cave we left so long ago? No friction on slick walls shown shadows (badly cast) from stolen artifacts are mistaken for truth

I’m not a political journalist, so was gladly surprised at the community I found here last night. To Americans anxious about the upcoming elections, a key thing we learned in Brazil that might help you: DO NOT engage with the far-right online. Don’t share rage bait. Amplify your people. Ignore them.

Lula winning is great for the planet, great for Brazil, and great for people who aren't revanchist assholes everywhere in the world, but let's not forget that it's also going to make some of the worst people on Earth extremely sad and mad. We should enjoy that, as a little treat.

Mr. Rogers calling it back before the new millennium, and still so right. From Episode 1746 "When Things Get Broken" "You're a living human being! And a computer is just a machine. Human beings are far more wonderful than machines."

So, are we doomed? Will Silicon Valley triumph in its naked capitalism and will public education actually collapse? And with it, democracy in America? Fuck no. But we gotta organize and push back. I am going to spend the rest of my life doing this. These predatory wolves will be contained.

We need to be way angrier than we are. I'm all for adopting the framing from the End Times Fascism book, namely that these people - the techbros - are traitors to the human race.

appreciate well-intentioned invites to "important" AI discussions but most of the time folks have decided the outcome through their "it is inevitable" framing. no thanks i am much more interested in building my own table than coming to a table that's already set feel welcome to join my table

AI firms want you to believe their fraud bot is alive so they won’t be held responsible for the fraud bot’s crimes. But there is no gray area here, they hold the on/off switches in their very human, very prosecutable hands.

"By tasking us with AI assignments, professors do us a “favor” by removing our agency in school, rather than in our future workplace." Such a good essay by Naishu Vempali!

I'm begging everyone to please become a prison abolitionist and a luddite and to heal and decolonize yourself and find the love and compassion in your heart that they want turned into fear and hate for your fellow beings. Do this before it's too late for all of us. Here, I made it so easy for you:

Have any other solar folks noticed that the recent update to the sunspot charts from NOAA are all messed up? The data for sunspot number should go back to 1750, and the recent captures from Internet Archive show it was fine, but now the actual data isn't loading, just the prediction layers.

I've started the ISKME podcast episode on Open Education (20 minutes in, might need to pause it for my next meeting) and so far it's a breath of fresh air and such a wildly different effect on my body's regulatory system compared to the "OER and AI" webinar I sat in on last week.

“Why I Resist Generative “AI” – Esther Weidauer” https://estherweidauer.com/articles/why-resist-generative-ai.html > No technology fully vanishes again once it has been developed. That doesn’t mean though that it remains widely adopted, nor that it’s even a net good.

“Weizenbaum understood ELIZA’s use of the first person to be a lie and warned his colleagues against it; Turkle agrees. “Whenever a program says ‘I,’ it’s a deception,” she writes. “That is the original sin of artificial intimacy.”” www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Inside the humanities we’re slowly losing our minds as we shout this til we’re hoarse—of course education in the name of ROI is an ideological project! Of course, treating knowledge as a content strategy results in bullshit! Still bracing to read this eloquent call to close the business schools

This is what creeping tech fascism looks like. The same thing happened in the Brazilian elections. Moving forward it's clear we can no longer allow billionaires to control critical digital infrastructure. We need tech commons managed like public utilities. #CallThemOligarchs #BanTheBillionaire

That is to say, taxing billionaires, un-rigging the supreme court, regulating AI, abolishing ICE, undoing DOGE and restoring govt services people actually want and need, stopping funding for genocide...those are the moderate solutions. When govt actively opposes them, moderation becomes impossible.

“The triumph of AI will be a crime against humanness. It will bottle our brains in formaldehyde. It will destroy the world as we know it. The men who promote it and profit from it are cognizant of this, and have already made arrangements to exit into another realm.“ —Arundhati Roy

Audrey Watters, y'all. 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/mis-shift/

To support AI free independent media donate or become a member of Assigned here: assignedmedia.org/support/

How To Be An Informed Voter for Libraries and Books. That, plus this week's roundup of book censorship news: bookriot.com/how-to-be-an...

An important thing to note in this period of fascism is that fascists are historically not good at government. Their entire shtick is "oh yeah? Well that's so-and-so's fault." Actual governance requires you to have a solution that is not "well let's fuck those marginalized guys up."

I signed up for this as soon as I heard about it, but it was exactly at the same time as a class I teach 😭 I'm so pleased to hear it had such high attendance, and it's great to see slides shared from it!

I am entirely serious when I say that this should be seen as a moderate position. It specifically and surgically dismantles institutions that did not exist pre-9/11 and assigns their functions much as they were assigned pre-9/11.

It's not about placing themselves at the top. They're already at the top. It's about putting us more firmly under control. Deskilled, devalued, hyper-surveilled, desperate. That vision of fascism won't be defeated in the next two elections. It's a long fight.

I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.