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Highly recommended! Jewish radicalism shaped by life on the borderlands of empire in Europe and North America

After more than a decade, my relationship with @evernote.bsky.social is coming to an end. The steep subscription price hike really hits the long-time user. Guess they have to pay for all the new AI-related features I don't want or need. We had a good run, but I'm moving to @obsidian.md.

A story at the start of this book makes the obvious case for regulating automated systems. American Airlines created the first computer booking system, embedding bias toward their flights of course. After all CEOs say, “Why bother to build an expensive AI system if you can’t bias it in your favor?”

"She didn’t take crap from anyone, but taught with humor and acceptance, inspiring generations of students.” What a life! Mary Morello, Tom's mom, passes on at 102. chicago.suntimes.com/obituaries/2...

Mary Morello, Libertyville native, activist and mother of Rage Against the Machine's guitarist, dies at 102In 1990, Ms. Morello founded Parents for Rock and Rap, a group that sought to protect the free speech of musicians in the face of a censorship movement.chicago.suntimes.com

Was working all day and missed this big news: Feds drop their bogus case against SEIU leader David Huerta. DOJ lost nearly every case that went to trial www.latimes.com/california/s...

Feds drop case against California labor leader arrested at immigration protestThe government on Monday filed a motion to dismiss the case against David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union California. Huerta hailed the move as a victory.www.latimes.com

Why not a public bank rather than the public funding private banks with our business? Fascinating conversation that led me down a rabbit hole to the Bank of North Dakota, the Nonpartisan League, prairie populism, and post-WWI red scare that blunted but didn’t kill an alternative form of financing

Dear economists, please read scholarship outside your field before launching studies with statements like this: “Conscious thoughts are fundamental to the human experience, yet they remain remarkably understudied.” Really? Cognitive science, philosophy, religion?

Paying less attention to the news this summer? Catch up on the labor stories you missed this week with @uclairle.bsky.social's Weekly News Roundup: ▶️Trump's EEOC abandons it's mission (NYT) ▶️Labor's view of AI and the midterm elections with AFL-CIO chief @lizshuler.bsky.social and more!

More info on the Wikimedia Foundation union drive. Workers with @wikiworkersunited.org are concerned about deployment of AI, disbanding of team that works with volunteer editors. They are asking management @wikimediafoundation.org to negotiate.

Cutting to the chase on Trump admin science funding plans: “They want to keep all that money for themselves, to hand out to favored cronies who can help them get elected and to steer yet more money and more power back into their hands.” www.science.org/content/blog...

The Assault On Science Funding Continueswww.science.org

Workers at the Wikimedia Foundation ask for voluntary recognition for their union in another sign of growing tech worker unionization. The union is part of an international network of workers for the global foundation that powers Wikipedia.

Yes. Organizing gets the goods...

Great examples of academic workers organizing and winning *before* formal union recognition. Don’t wait for permission or recognition from the state or employer. When people recognize the union as their own, that’s the basis of power

🧵: Recommendations in new Trump admin report on future of federal funding for science would destroy US university research model, divert funding to tech companies, and halt advances in healthcare. The author is a Peter Thiel functionary w/ apparently no experience in organized science research

AAUP Report: "Higher education in the United States and the faculty members central to its mission are under unprecedented, destructive, and sustained attack, part of a larger assault on democratic governance, civil society, and knowledge itself." Faculty are pushing back.

A thoughtful dissection of headline-grabbing claims that AI is replacing humans in the workforce. Studies that say "yes" often based on dubious assumptions about work tasks and the nature of occupations (not just a collection of tasks). More rigorous studies don't often make the headlines

This op-ed prompted me to read the speeches by Rubio, Miller and Bessent proclaiming our new Red Scare. Easy to dismiss as overblown rhetoric except they control the levers of power and intend to use them, are using them. As in older Red Scares: state repression as political wedge

Three speeches on a single day signaled a dying American democracy | Robert ShpinerStephen Miller warned of a leftwing ‘cancer’ threatening civilization. As a critical care doctor, I have a response to his diagnosiswww.theguardian.com

“it’s hard to see how big tech’s sunk capital will allow the AI industry to climb down from its categorical and unjustified minimization of human capabilities,” says @cnewf.bsky.social. Will university leaders and state legislators simply accept that logic, or reinvest in human learning?

Liner Note 55. In the Empire of AI, Universities Will Reinvest or Die (Part 1)Leonora Carrington, Crookhey Hall seen July 17 2026   I want to talk about the relations among AI, university teaching, and university budge...utotherescue.blogspot.com

Another must-read post from @cnewf.bsky.social on the reckoning AI is forcing on public universities.

Note to university officials: “It turns out that firing all your employees, replacing them with extremely expensive software your deluded CEO thinks is magically sentient, and then layering it all on top of very broken and long-neglected systems results in fairly universally bad outcomes.”

The AI Hype Reckoning Is Upon UsThe massive chasm between AI hype and reality is finally reaching the breaking point.karlbode.com