I saw this on X, and it made me think. On one hand, I see the point that many critics may just be critics for the sake of it, impressing one another with how cool they are with how unimpressed they are of tech and AI; but on the other I wonder: isn't *discourse* a desired product of science.
1/8
Teaching can be draining, time consuming, and feel completely unrewarding at times. At other times, I'm reminded why I try, and why I care. As the quarter comes to a close, I have received unexpected, heartfelt thanks from numerous students who appreciated the time and care I put in. Not a bad day.
Karl Weick (organizational psychologist, foundational work on sensemaking) had a great refrain: “How can I know what I think until I see what I say?” I often think about this in relation to how AI can interfere w/ thinking by substituting its words for ours. This experimental study offers evidence.
Genius. Why didn't we think of this!?
not sure why everyone thinks this is such a big problem when an obvious solution exists
in case you've never seen it, this is Roger Ebert on The Mummy
In the midst of the geopolitical horror, I've been doing some processing around the most recent wave of Epstein files. While there's been no single presidency-destroying bombshell (could Trump even be destroyed that way?), there's a pattern of impunity and willful ignorance that's hard to accept.
This is a beautiful piece that articulates familiar, frustrating, themes surrounding recent events. I suspect there is a strong relationship between upstream reciprocity and well functioning democratic/collective systems in general. That is certainly the case for my experience.
I'm glad to see accountability for academia's bad apples. But I also hope that resignations like this one won't be the end of the story. Because we still need to reckon with how the structures and cultures in "elite" academia have created ripe conditions for rot. 1/🧵
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/u...
I've been holding onto my subscription to WaPo, mostly out of loyalty to #CarolynHax, but this is the last straw. Glyphosate does not need protection!!! The American people need protection from toxic chemicals & our regulatory system needs protection from corporate interference.
wapo.st/4tUf8Bf
This is the political movement that convinced a non-trivial amount of Americans that they were going to “protect women’s sports.”
This is well worth a reading for anyone curious about how fringe ideas can become mainstream. Old playbook, but incredibly effective.
Tech’s new generation and the end of thinking.
A very interesting read.
harpers.org/archive/2026...
Terrible headline for something that sounds so qualitatively different.
apnews.com/article/zohr...
Sowing fear of "ICE at the polls!" could do more to suppress votes than any actual ICE at the polls. Here's an explanation of the right's strategy on this, along with my recommendations for what to do instead of playing along.
katestarbird.substack.com/p/effective-...
As a historian of science, I was raised to think rejecting science was a pathology of anti-democratic governments. Well, this might be the proof of that.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/c...
Theme song of the modern age, been running through my head every time I read a new headline: youtu.be/7YvAYIJSSZY?...
I wrote this thread up into an article and revived my old Medium account to host: medium.com/@katestarbir...
I explain how Bannon's comments of "ICE surrounding polls" are a strategic attempt to exploit our outrage to advance his goals of voter suppression — and how we can redirect that attack.
🚨BREAKING: Steve Bannon said Tuesday that the federal government is planning to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to patrol polling stations during this year’s midterm elections. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
The right-wing bullshit machine is operating at full steam & across all cylinders today, strategically framing the horrific ICE killing of a MN woman to defend/bolster their political aims. For exampe, Trump's message (below) will shape how his supporters (willfully mis)interpret the video evidence.
The order creates an Justice Department task force to challenge state AI laws, and directs the Commerce Department to pull future broadband funding from states that pass “onerous” legislation. www.wired.com/story/trump-...
Recently accepted at ICWSM: arxiv.org/abs/2512.06129 (w/ @kayladuskin.bsky.social, @katestarbird.bsky.social, and @emmaspiro.bsky.social)
We look at how algorithmic feeds affect Twitter account visibility. More visible accounts:
-Are agitators
-Get attention from Elon Musk
-Are not legacy verified
New research on Twitter (right before rebranding to X) shows right leaning accounts got outsized visibility from the algorithm & suggests this bias stemmed from different content production techniques (more sensational, outrage-bait) and from direct interaction w/ the new king of the platform: Musk.
"there is little reason to doubt what the aim [of the massive investment in AI] is: to embed knowledge in machines—knowledge that previously belonged to the people working in these domains."
🧵
In the Trump administration’s war on truth, they have attempted to silence and intimidate those who stand in their way. In their latest attack, they try to strategically frame fact-checking as “censorship.” But fact-checking isn’t censorship, it’s speech.
www.poynter.org/news-release...
Dean Jackson does a great job here connecting three major stories from this week to the now years-long "'censorship' greivance fantasy" crafted by right-wing conspiracy theorists and embraced by the Trump regime and its supporters: www.techpolicy.press/white-house-...
Reupping this since it looks like X is ab to get hit with a wave of fines under the Digital Services Act and JD Vance is already tweeting about how not complying with transparency and data access laws in the market you operate in is "censorship".
Get caught up:
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/regu...
