@difrad
Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Lehigh University. I'm an HCI researcher that explores prosocial design in online communities, AI Mediated Communication, and Digital Literacy.
I wrote about Trump’s delusions as both a massive weakness for the regime and a major impediment to the Right’s authoritarian project – but also a dangerous source of further radicalization, as the Trumpists are hellbent on imposing their unreality on the rest of us.
MAGA Unreality vs the World:
theonion.com/this-war-wil...
Someone has sure already made this observation but the fact they can convert all those empty warehouses into prison camps means they could have converted them into housing, community centers, job training centers or, hell, libraries or schools all along. It’s always a matter of will not resources.
This is a very good article describing the Trump administration’s attacks on the midterm elections. We should be concerned about what’s happening, and ready to call out the BS, but not resigned to defeat (of democracy), b/c the attacks aren’t going to work. We (all) aren’t going to let that happen.
On Nov. 16, a mental health counselor recorded in Kamilla’s medical records that her mother reported the girl had lost her appetite after being “served food that contained worms.” A week later, the couple said, children were told to gather in the gym for what they believed would be a Thanksgiving celebration. Excitement spread as families saw tables set with turkey, sandwiches, pastries and pies, they said. The children waited expectantly. But when a parent asked when the celebration would begin, Oksana said, staff told them the holiday meal was for employees, not detainees. The children, she said, watched despondently as the feast was packed away.
On Thanksgiving, the immigrant children held at the Dilley detention center gathered in the gym for what they thought was a holiday feast.
The kids salivated over a spread of turkey, sandwiches, pastries and pies, a family told me.
But the food wasn’t for detainees — it was for the staff.
Tomorrow night, @noupside.bsky.social and I are talking Teens, Screens & Minds. Join us! interintellect.com/salons/teens...
Really feeling great (sarcastic) about Cornell’s willingness to pay $30 million to the extortionists currently running the Department of Education.
“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”
Props to Anthropic for studying the effects of their creation and reporting results that are not probably what they wished for
www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...
Within 4 hours of ICE (actually CBP) killing Alex Pretti, the data suggested that the right wing spin machine was having trouble gaining traction, even on their home turf over on X.
Here's a Substack I wrote analyzing X data from that time. katestarbird.substack.com/p/another-mu...
"We are concerned about the clashes between protestors and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. But we believe that confrontations with police are sometimes necessary to effect change. Provided the change in question is something positive, like overturning the results of an election."
"I wake before dawn, screaming from my nightmares. My three love interests burst into the room. They all have one-syllable names like Shale, and Bird, and Nine. I will repeatedly fall in love with them with over three books."
A group of fringe researchers thwarted safeguards at the NIH and gained access to genetic data from 20,000+ children – and they've used it to promote claims that white people are genetically superior. (by Mike McIntire) 🎁🔗 www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...
Assuming everyone is acting in good faith is one of the root causes of institutions failing to meet the moment
A key part of the struggle against encroaching authoritarianism is to reject rather than perpetuate the Trumpist assertions of absolute power, to push back against the notion that resistance is futile – that MAGA is inevitably marching towards triumph.
Oh. Well that explains literally everything
🚨HOLY CRAP. An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS's own legal training materials say is unconstitutional!
ICE then hid the memo from the public, passing it along by word of mouth and private conversation.
"The first 90 percent of an AI coding project comes in fast and amazes you. The last 10 percent involves tediously filling in the details through back-and-forth trial-and-error conversation with the agent."
Where we are as a species
The separation of church & state exists to protect both religion & democracy by keeping either from controlling the other, lessons learned the hard way after centuries of abuse & persecution, when faith & power were mixed. However, America is now determined to discard the lessons of its history.
I did not understand this: one of the five Europeans the US has barred from traveling to the United States...is a permanent resident who lives with his family in the US.
Now he is worried about being arrested and deported for the crime of monitoring online hate.
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/u...
<Pours whiskey in his cornflakes>
At 10 over 75? Non-zero chance his 'trial' is a note read aloud next to a burn pit.
You know the joke that in some extreme circumstances you 'stop being biology and start being physics'?
There is a point where your politics stop being law and start being history. It is not a good place to be.
In a personalist regime, the leader always gets a taste.
Republican administrations literally backed death squads to fight communism. And now Trump is expropriating domestic companies and it's just 🦗🦗🦗
🚨 New WP 🚨:
All states monitor the political activity of their citizens. But who do they choose to surveil, and why?
We study this question with the universe of Italian political surveillance files: 152,000 individuals born 1816–1932, across democracy and autocracy.
🧵 1/11
Title page) Title page with centered serif text reading “Close Race: Harnessing Multiracialism to Reduce Racial Prejudice*”. Below is the author name “Jasmine English†” and below that the date “October 31, 2025”, all centered with white background.
Screenshot of the paper’s abstract in serif font. The text explains that multiracial populations are the fastest growing in the U.S., and the paper examines how learning about African Americans with Irish ancestry influences racial attitudes among white Irish Americans. It reports experimental findings showing that such information reduces racial prejudice, especially among Republicans and those with higher baseline prejudice, and suggests multiracialism may reduce perceived racial distance.
Figure 1: Racial Resentment) Coefficient plot titled “Treatment Effects: Racial Resentment.” The x-axis is Coefficient Estimate with a dashed vertical zero line. Four rows correspond to Treat, TreatLinked, TreatClose, and Treat*Important. The interaction terms show larger negative estimates (around −0.05 to −0.18) than in Figure 2, indicating stronger reductions in racial resentment. Model estimates are color-coded and labeled in a legend at bottom left.
Table 7: Reduced Racial Essentialism “I was actually very surprised, it’s a much larger percentage than I realized. I guess I’ve been raised that white people are much more likely to be Irish.” “I was really surprised. I honestly had no idea and just thought, like me, Irish is basically white.” “I am surprised, as I think of typical Irish Americans to be very white.” “I was surprised - I had no idea. Usually when I think “Irish” I think of very fair skin, red hair, and blue eyes (like my mom)” “I was surprised! The term African American makes me think their lineage would be purely African, but I suppose no one really has ancestry tied to one place and one place only.” “I was surprised as I believed that Irish people were overwhelmingly White. It makes me more course to know about how such a high percentage of African Americans came to have Irish ancestry.” “That is surprising to me. I always picture people with more fair skin being Irish.” “I was surprised, but once I thought about it made sense. Eventually all of us will have a little bit of all ancestries in us.” Notes: Open-ended responses that illustrate a shift away from racial essentialism among treated respondents.
“Experimental data from largest online survey of Irish Americans reveal learning about African Americans with Irish ancestry reduces prejudice among white Irish Americans who identify with Irish American identity, and effects are mostly driven by Republicans…” www.jasmineenglish.net/uploads/1/4/...
Here it is, the most damning academic figure in the history of all figures: Russian IRA accounts deeply embedded in both sides of the 2016 Twitter BLM "discussion" (by @katestarbird.bsky.social & team, 2018).
THIS is what our information ecosystem supports. Twitter just made it 1% more visible.
I have a lot to say about the X location feature/scandal but in the meantime @cwarzel.bsky.social is here to remind you that it was not a surprise (see next post), the incentives are misaligned, and the corporations generally do not want to fix it.
www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
'"There is no good way to say this" but to say this: AI is the antithesis of education. It is the antithesis of the future. As such, it is a kind of epistemological death, and I recognize... we have long been surrounded by such efforts; we are grieving already. And yet, we go on.'
'But much to the detriment of learning... we have seen education redefined as something else -- as a product, not a process. As certification, not transformation. The liminality has been shattered; instead of ritual, society has demanded “outcomes” and “optimization.”'