Jenna Burrell

Jenna Burrell

@jburrell.bsky.social

Currently: visiting researcher, University of Tokyo, based in Yokohama (GMT+9) Formerly: Professor at UC-Berkeley, Director of Research, Data & Society.

1.1K followers334 following150 posts

The implicit messages we get about neutralizing emotion in our scholarship (even when writing about deeply emotional events) has always bothered me. Ruth Behar's 'Anthropology that breaks your heart' (1996) is a classic, but it's well past time to revive the conversation. Can't wait to read this.

David M. Perry@lollardfish.bsky.social

I just came back from a talk about this book. It's a genre-breaking braided academic narrative about horrific fires as a result of flamable pjs, the death of the author's daughter, and the meaning of a "life" - which is to say the history of the curriculum vitae. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Jenna Burrell reposted

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An Arizona judge awarded nearly $70,000 in damages to a man who sued for wrongful death of an embryo after his ex-wife had a wanted abortion at 8 weeks pregnant. It's a chilling escalation in fetal—or in this case, embryonic—personhood. This and more in our weekly news roundup:

autonomynews.coArizona Judge Awards Man $67,000 Over Aborted Embryo, Alabama Mom Dies in Jail: October 19 News RoundupPlus, what you missed on Autonomy News last week.

choice quote: "The tech oligarchs have somehow managed to enshittify thinking."

Elizabeth Spiers@espiers.bsky.social

The idea in here that business schools inherently train people to devalue labor reminds me that the same critique was made when the first business schools in America were started, which I mention here: www.elizabethspiers.com/the-anti-int...

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Good. Keep the pressure on ... let's reconsider where we have our academic conferences. It was great to go Tokyo direct to Toronto for 4S. Next year it's in Taipei. After that I've heard two possibilities, both non-USA. Lots of benefits to decentering the USA in our scholarly communities.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

New in PN: Who wants to visit an authoritarian America? "Data shows the US on its way to being as unpopular a tourist destination as Russia, & for roughly the same reasons. In both countries, a tourist who runs afoul of the govt might spend months in a freezing warehouse without no legal counsel."

Jenna Burrell reposted

I am a type 1 diabetic, and last night Dexcom forced me to agree to a new terms of use in order to continuing using the app and view my blood glucose data. Glad I had the foresight to "view agreements" and then copy the entire document. Because there appears to be NO WAY TO VIEW IT AGAIN. And...

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The professor is Carolyn Marvin, one of the founders of media history research in the US, one of my subfields. Now leading the resistance against robot replacement of human labor. 

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... Dr. John Money was determined to use him to prove that gender was a pure social construction. No amount of counterevidence could convince him otherwise. This book illustrates the damage done when researchers see the people they study as 'objects' for establishing their fame and reputation.

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This book about Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead is a history of how anthropology was established as a discipline in the USA. These scholars, though widely read and influential in American culture, and who successfully challenged racist eugenicist thought were nonetheless ...

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An unbelievable story of how far you can get if you ignore the institutional noise, follow your curiosity, and just get on with the science. Katalin Kariko discovered how mRNA could be used in vaccines - but was never tenure track at UPenn and was evicted from her lab at one point ...

I've read and cited Carolyn Marvin's book "when old technologies were new" many times. Good to know what historians of technology get up to once they retire. Love it!

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🧵🧵🧵 The NY Times posted a 15-minute video today in which I got to tell NYT what’s wrong with its coverage. They said they saw my critical posts on Bluesky and invited me to do a video with them to air my grievances. Weird, right? I didn’t hold back. I blasted their sanewashing of MAGA extremism.

nytimes.comVideo: A Reader on What He Thinks We Get Wrong About TrumpIn this first installment of “Sound Off,” Patrick Healy, assistant managing editor for The New York Times, speaks with Mark Jacob, former metro editor for The Chicago Tribune, who shares his criticism...

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To the person noting there is not enough money in the world to license every piece of intellectual property stolen for "AI" training: you're sooooo close to the point, friend, keep going, you'll get there if you try

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Yes! I'm in this book full of stellar chapters ... mine talks about embodied rural masculinity in the workplace and how it's challenged by and reconciled with digital tech!

Ken Wissoker @kwissoker.bsky.social

Great to see Darin Barney, co-editor of the timely and important “Media Rurality” collection at #4S2026! @dukepress.bsky.social

More data center work! I'm in Japan at a 公開市民フォーラム (public citizen's forum) bringing together data center protestors from 8 regions around Tokyo. There are also professors, experts, and other speakers. The press is here as well.

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City council meetings in Japan are open to the public, but there's no "public comments" portion of the meeting. The folks gathered at this forum didn't include government officials from what I could tell or any of the major developers.

But also dropping a link to what I observed at a city council meeting this summer in Salem, OR. Things are similar and also different between these two locales ... bsky.app/profile/jbur...

Jenna Burrell@jburrell.bsky.social

A few days ago I said a couple of things about data centers and noted the burgeoning resistance movement. I did end up going to the Salem city council meeting where data centers were discussed, got a seat in the basement overflow area and … I have a few observations...<a thread>

More data center work! I'm in Japan at a 公開市民フォーラム (public citizen's forum) bringing together data center protestors from 8 regions around Tokyo. There are also professors, experts, and other speakers. The press is here as well.

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Japan is famous for flexible zoning laws that many Westerners (myself included) have celebrated. High density housing, commercial, industrial co-exist and there are few avenues for citizens to stop this kind of mixed use.

More data center work! I'm in Japan at a 公開市民フォーラム (public citizen's forum) bringing together data center protestors from 8 regions around Tokyo. There are also professors, experts, and other speakers. The press is here as well.

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I am quickly disabused of this notion. I ask one protestor from Akishima what their goal is. She says stop the data center. There are a few references throughout the forum to the data center moratoriums sweeping through the USA.

There are very similar concerns here. People don't want to live near large facilities that block sunlight, replace their green spaces, emit noise, and reverse progress on climate change goals. One presenter mentions tech harms such as deepfakes and children's social media addiction.

More data center work! I'm in Japan at a 公開市民フォーラム (public citizen's forum) bringing together data center protestors from 8 regions around Tokyo. There are also professors, experts, and other speakers. The press is here as well.

The focus of the forum is sustainable co-existence between data centers and the communities who live nearby. I start with an assumption that there is perhaps a cultural difference at play. More collaboration, fewer mock 'guillotines' (as protestors brought to Salem, OR).

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Killed. NSF’s SBE was killed, in violation of law. The President does not have the power to choose to kill programs at a whim by defunding them. The imperial presidency was a mistake and we are in a separation of powers constitutional crisis.

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A major structural hazard with extreme media ownership concentration is that oligarchs impose their ideological agendas--which almost always skew to the far right--on everyone. This capture of core info and communication infrastructures must be dismantled if we're to have any semblance of democracy.

Dean Baker@deanbaker13.bsky.social

Elon Musk is shutting down the Catholic Bishops in Brazil account on X to help the right-wing win the election there paydayreport.com/x-blocks-acc...

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one of the 21st century’s great tragedies is seeing a media industry gutted by decisions made by the tech industry elevate a bunch of industry shills as the people meant to help the public understand how tech works and what impacts it’s having on the world

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