Dear everyone,
As per the post from the Bodleian librarian below, AI bots and scrapers are putting just about every website under great pressure, British History Online included.
A lot of excellent tech staff are working hard to keep everything working, but outages and siruptions are inevitable.
We are featured in MIT Tech Review's latest issue including a feature article on Chicago's surveillance panopticon. It's a long read but we hope you enjoy it.
www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/23/1...
Wow, this is so neat!
Huge NYT article on the back story of those two weeks in March/April 2025 when DOGE illegally terminated hundreds of NEH grants. Gift link!!
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/a...
you probably know the famous quote about “Shouting ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater”- what a lot of people forget was that the judge who said that was trying to jail a Yiddish-speaking socialist for distributing anti-draft pamphlets (zines) during WW1
so yeah, zines are actually really fucking important
Flow chart showing OpenAI, Google Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Perplexity, ProRate.ai, IBM, Mistral, Anthropic, Nvidia, in that order with the biggest deals, with OpenAI having 21 deals, Google 17, Meta 8, Microsoft 4, Amazon 3.
Check out this interactive website by Nana Mgbechikwere, showing BigTech and "AI" companies' media capture.
No wonder the public is getting misinformed.
They say it is inspired by @surveillancewatch.bsky.social, which ❤️
nananwachukwu.github.io
Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, Ep 72: How the War Department Learned to Stop Worrying and Love AI
www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis...
In which @naomiaklein.bsky.social joins me and @alexhanna.bsky.social to discuss the merger between the US Department of War and Big Tech.
Love it when our nation’s defense contractors all spend their Friday nights subtweeting each other about killing everyone in the world
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH
I don't know if we will win. But it's worth trying cuz we deserve better.
And I agree with Angela Y. Davis, who said, "We can never predict the outcome of our work. As Stuart Hall said, 'There are never any guarantees.' At the same time, you have to act as if it were possible to change the world."
thank you for introducing this to me, i am also cracking up
Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
One of the many sins of genAI is that the societal necessity of staying vigilant for it frequently turns into a policing strategy, often with punitive consequences for the handful of people who still write and make art with human integrity. I hope this student wins their suit.
Genealogies aren’t nostalgia, they’re accountability tools. Panel 2 asks how historical continuities can inform more critical approaches to data politics. Feb 18 uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105
#DataGovernance #STS
Cannot recommend this paper more.
A poster for the 2026 Queer Data Showcase in Manchester.
A photograph of the audience at the 2025 Queer Data Showcase in Edinburgh.
📢 Are you interested in queer data? The QUEER DATA SHOWCASE is returning in 2026 – and this time it’s coming to Manchester!
The CALL FOR PRESENTERS is now live! www.ai-ethics.org/queer-data-s...
Heartbreaking. 💔
In his forthcoming book, Your Data Will Be Used Against You, George Washington University Law School professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson explores how sensor-driven technologies, social media monitoring, and artificial intelligence can be weaponized against democratic values and personal freedoms.
Our final Sundance event is a FREE, VIRTUAL panel on a topic that we don't talk nearly enough about: the unseen labor costs of the AI industry.
More info below but here's the sign-up link, it's tomorrow morning!
Anyways, we have another free virtual workshop coming up and I would love to see you there 🌱
(and stay tuned at @dairfutures.bsky.social for future workshop announcements)
luma.com/46m6hul0
I think a lot of us get hope wrong. Hope, I do not believe, is an emotion. In fact, hope makes space for lots of emotions to exist alongside it. You can DO hope scared, angry, sad etc...
Hope doesn't find us. We make hope through action and struggle. It's a practice of living and is re-made daily.
This kid is awesome, actual hero.
wake up babe new one laptop per child dropped
An image in muted colours showing vague aesthetic animated illustrations of a light-brown-skinned man with curly hair, Black woman with a short afro, and red-headed white woman sitting in various poses on, respectively, a reclined chair, a bench, and a stool, in front of and facing an abstract geometrical image, as if considering it and mid-discussion about it.
The People's Consultation on AI launched today! Whether you have in-depth expertise in AI issues, or don't consider yourself an "expert" but have firsthand experience with AI or its impacts and want to have your say, this is for you. Participate by March 15, 2026: www.peoplesaiconsultation.ca
PhD here, built a website with other PhDs devoted to organizing PhDs and future well respected people to criticize and comprehend kleptomaniac grifter plagiarist incapacitating machine
against-a-i.com
Not quantitative or qualitative but a secret third thing.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH
my partner and i made a zine!! we'll post it on instagram and i'll link it once it's up, but it's exciting to see it physically printed. if you're anywhere near sour cherry comics in sf, they have lots of free copies there!
My puppy made it to another Christmas and that makes today great. She has a very regal and fluffy neck. Happy holidays yall.
Submitted my final grades for my first class as the Instructor of Record. Very grateful to have had the opportunity and looking forward to the next one. For now, resting and baking. :)
