Jack Brighton

@vurnt22 WTF, no Bootsy? Verdeen White? AI is stupid.

The fact that Larry Graham is not number one on that list tells you everything you need to know.

@217Showers What, no MAGA flag?

something incredible has just come down the wire

@LuizaJarovsky Capitalism

When you think about AI, what is the first word that comes to your mind? One-word answers only.

@marcidale If I were building a website about puppies and kittens I would have a dev, a stage, and a production site.

🤯 “the described changes are not being tested in a dev environment (i.e., a not-live environment) but have already been pushed into production.”

@BrandonRichards @latimes @nytimes The farmers don't really need that water for their crops. They can use Gatorade from the nearest Dollar General.

Via @NYTimes… “Trump administration officials began releasing significant amounts of water from two dams in California’s Central Valley on Friday in a move that seemed intended to make a political point as President Trump continued to falsely blame the Los Angeles wildfires on water policies in the Democratic-run state.” “The releases, as ordered, have sent water toward low-lying land in the Central Valley, and none of it will reach Southern California, water experts said. Nonetheless, President Trump said on Friday that the same action would have prevented the Los Angeles wildfires on the other side of mountain ranges over which the water has no way of traveling.” “Experts expressed dismay on Friday that releasing so much water now served little use for farmers, who typically have higher irrigation needs in the spring and summer months when agricultural fields are abundant.” President Trump “has said incorrectly that California has access to great amounts of water from the Pacific Northwest and Canada, even though there is no pipeline that flows from the state’s northern neighbors.” “Water supplies from Northern California played no part in the ability of firefighters to combat the flames in Los Angeles County.” “A reservoir that fed the neighborhood was empty because of maintenance issues, not because of a lack of supply to Southern California.” “In an email to the Kings County Board of Supervisors, Jim Henderson, the county’s public works director, said that the water authorities had reached out with ‘serious concerns’ before a flurry of calls to local Republican members of Congress dramatically slowed the flows.” “‘If the purpose was to help with the fires in Southern California, we do not believe that it will, because that’s not where that water goes,’ Ms. Ramos said.” “Nor, she added, will the releases be of much use now to farmers because their fields are currently dormant. Rather, the water — which was being held for use during the region’s notoriously hot and dry summers — is likely to run through canals and either come to rest in low-lying basins or flow out to the Pacific Ocean.” “Sanjay Mohanty, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies water capture, said the release of the water this week could ultimately hurt farmers.” “Instead, the president’s order is depleting reserves that could help supply farmers with water if it ends up being a dry year, Mr. Mohanty said.” 🔗 nytimes.com/2025/01/31/us/…

As we end the week, I wanted to share some really good local reporting on how President Trump's water actions in California are being received by locals... THREAD ⬇️

@joshshepperd Somebody gotta call it like it is.

Thrilled to share that our article, "Examining Journalists’ Adoption of Social Media Tools in Contexts of Precarity," is out! Huge thanks to @KafiliSoheil and @rmoon 🙏😊tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… @tandfonline @journstudies

@joshshepperd Freire's approach to critical pedagogy is one of the first things we discuss in the @iSchoolUI class I teach. We also assign writings by Robin Wall Kimmerer the very first week. These are undergrad students and they *love* it.

I have a PhD in cultural studies and a doctoral minor in critical pedagogy. Part of a small group of leftist theory grads, an almost impossible combination to study anymore. Which is too bad. I love Paulo Freire. laprogressive.com/education-refo…

F-ing brilliant! The level of detail on the listed surveillance companies is impressive and so useful for my research. Not that you asked me, but great design as well, with maybe a few web accessibility issues. (Sorry, former front-end developer here.)

I've been saying for a while now that the future of local news cannot depend on predatory platforms: In the world’s tech capital, Gazetteer SF is staying off platforms to produce good local journalism niemanlab.org/2024/07/in-the… via @NiemanLab

Important article by @CharisPapaev on Google & Facebook as "funding intermediaries" in journalism space, leading to increased power for the platforms. With actual data to back it up.

Envisioning Information Access Systems: What Makes for Good Tools and a Healthy Web? | ACM Transactions on the Web dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/36…

Yes and we need a broader understanding that technology may have certain affordances and limitations, but the impact it has on society is shaped by humans. We should think critically about what impacts we do and don't want from AI before allowing the industry to just let it loose

@willthewordguy Such a good analysis. I rebelled against saying "user" when designing websites & regarded people who came to the sites as "people." Instead of "user-friendly" why not "people-friendly"? Language matters, especially as we describe pattern-matching technologies as "intelligent."

Why it’s time to retire the term “user” linkedin.com/pulse/why-its-…

@pbkauf Because it's none more black.

@willthewordguy A great paper on an issue largely ignored in newsrooms. I wrote a non-academic screed on this a while back that got some attention in my own newsroom, but not much beyond: jackbrighton.github.io/2016/11/09/arc…

The future of our past: The absence of memory infrastructure in journalism - Sharon Ringel, 2024 journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

@UFCJCLibrarian Even the most clever and carefully crafted 404 page can go 404.

Was talking to someone about news archives and said what I'm worried about is how we're going to archive born digital news. And they said "Well, that's online." And I said "Where do you think that local newspaper's website is going to be in 50 years - especially if they fold?"

@jayrosen_nyu On Friday it was "feisty," used by the press to convey that someone is strongly assertive and bold, but old.

The key word is "dueling."

@emilymbender I'm gonna use the phrase "synthetic text extruding machines" from now on. As in "we're pushing the envelope on innovating our news products by using synthetic text extruding machines."

1. Now that everyone has access to synthetic text extruding machines that can generate text on a requested topic and in a requested style, any unfamiliar source is suspect. >>

So proud of my NPR station @ILPublicMedia for launching @illinois_soul. Music, news, and local voices by and for the Black community. Tag line: "the Black public radio station you've been waiting for." On 101.1 FM and streaming here: will.illinois.edu/illinoissoul