Janet Vertesi / is on Nostr

Sociology Prof @PrincetonU; Science, Technology & Society; NASA teams; critical HCI; remote work. Longtime data economy resistor. Co-editor MIT Infrastructures. www.optoutproject.net

Last Notes

2024-08-19 04:19:59

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@npub1mmf…eknq Wow. He’s really saying the racist quiet part out loud there.

2024-08-14 12:45:48

I am really late to this party but the Breakdancing finals at the Olympics were amazing!! Also gold medal winner Phil Wizard's coach runs a fantastic dance studio with my bf's mom in my hometown <3 Super good people devoted to bringing the love of hip hop as an art form to the world! So excited and proud about this Canadian gold!

2024-08-14 01:59:56

Explaining WWI, its causes, and its aftermath morphing into WWII, all in terms a small human can understand, sure gives a lot of … context to what is going on now. Makes it easier to see ALL the connections when you have to talk it out in broad brush strokes in simple language in a broad swoop.

2024-08-13 23:36:51

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@npub1sfl…gczt
there are many climate crises large and small and many more globally critical but this... really brought it home for me.

2024-08-13 23:15:58

When I first went to Japan in the 1990s I encountered these enormous, yellow striped, thin legged spiders. They had a huge legspan, spun large chaotic webs, and absolutely terrified me as a life-long archnophobe. I was relieved to have an ocean and continent betwen me and those spiders.
This spring I saw the reports of their spread but I hoped they'd stay south where it's wamer. Nope. I've since discovered two of them settled in webs in my garden in NJ.
#climatechange
#aaagagghhh!!!!!!!!!

2024-08-13 11:37:54

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@npub1g57…y839
Cool! I allmost wrote a dissertation about 18th century chemistry that featured Priestley pretty heavily... Ended up working on Mars instead.
A fascinating life and complex time.

2024-08-07 12:03:03

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@npub1g57…y839 yep.sounds familiar, right?

2024-08-05 04:33:57

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@npub1t00…kx23 Truly, THE DOUCHIEST!!!

2024-07-30 04:26:48

Noticing heightened trolling of black, trans, and minority friends here. The temp has gone way up and people and communities are suffering. Also noticing more coming from new users & small instances, playing into well-known Masto weaknesses. If someone wanted to sow discord among liberals and minorities so they abandon the online networks they'd otherwise use to mobilize and share info, this is the way to do it...
If so, we need a concerted response to this multi-vector threat.

2024-07-19 12:13:16

'Visible upon breakdown,' one of my favourite of Leigh Star's rules for ethnography of infrastructure. Infrastructural components and politics are typically hard to observe and much labor goes into the appearance of seamlessness, so you can trace a lot about them that is otherwise invisible when they break down. Currently enjoying the map of who runs Linux and who runs Windows among trains, airlines, hospitals, banks, schools, and other affected systems. #crowdstrike

2024-06-13 15:40:01

"Ethics" is not the only problem with generative A.I. -- *epistemology* is broken too.
My latest for Public Books: in the face of #google telling us to eat rocks, we bought an encyclopedia.
https://www.publicbooks.org/the-encyclopedia-project-or-how-to-know-in-the-age-of-ai/
Companion blog post here:
https://www.optoutproject.net/what-is-true-on-the-internet/
#AI #ethics #EthicsInAI #knowledgeinfrastructures #libraries

2024-06-10 20:17:18

I wrote a few more posts for people looking to get away from #google (and #microsoft recall).
A review of three alternative laptops we own and regularly use at home— StarLabs, System76, and Framework
And three easy to use Linux distros— Elementary, Zorin, and Ubuntu
These are for beginners—my bar is, would my mom be willing to do this—so please pass along to friends and family you know are opt-out-curious
https://www.optoutproject.net/linux-is-like-ice-cream/
https://www.optoutproject.net/chromebook-schmomebook/

2024-06-01 01:52:16

Finally watching #starwars #clonewars. Fave do-not-miss episodes, fediverse?

2024-05-26 02:06:44

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@npub10cs…5prq wow, that is a laundry list of classic songs!

2024-05-20 19:29:45

Love love love what the #Jolla team is doing with AI — reimagining and building systems that are data-ownership centered to put privacy first —privacy as autonomy, not privacy as information security for cloud providers holding your data.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/20/jolla-takes-the-wraps-off-ai-hardware-with-a-privacy-centric-purpose/

2024-02-23 14:09:04

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@npub15kn…hql7 @npub1wq5…zwu4
$154 million came from NASA to do it, with promise of more nasa contracts if they did it. It’s basically what Suzanne Mettler calls the “submerged state.”

2023-08-21 23:46:52

Canadian friends, I applaud this push for a boycott of Facebook and Instagram August 23rd and 24th. I understand it's to encourage those companies to let Canadians share news again.
https://act.friends.ca/page/133505/action/1
But don''t stop there. OPT OUT FOR GOOD. Canadians don't need the "social" giants--for news or anything else. We need an independent media sharing infrastructure away from those toxic tools. Get off for good, invest in independence, resilience and community connection, and don't look back.