Notices by J. Nathan Matias 🦣 (natematias@social.coop)

Grateful to @anildash for naming the fact that tech has entered the "don't ask don't tell" era of DEI.

Unfortunately in many parts of academia, we don't even have it that good. We *are* being asked, with all the burden that such an expectation entails.

https://www.anildash.com/2025/10/07/dadt-dei/

"Prior estimates overstate support for political violence because of random responding by disengaged respondents and because of a reliance on hypothetical questions about violence in general instead of questions on specific acts of political violence."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116870119

10 months ago, a company across the world put my neighbor's access to medical care at risk, giving us 2 weeks notice that software behind our 40 electric car chargers would be shut down.

This is the story of how my neighborhood broke free from this potential disaster.

https://natematias.com/portfolio/2025-08-22-unchaining-from-broken-software-tethers/

> In a 2015 lecture, Wreden declared that a “fearful state of mind” within the mainstream video-game industry had led to “an art form in which by far the most ubiquitous form of expression is that of firing a gun.” We have, he went on, “a culture where violence is understood and implied to be the central means of problem-solving.”

Catching up on Christopher Byrd's article about Davey Wreden and Wanderstop.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-game-designer-playing-through-his-own-psyche

What can you do when the government shuts down a scientific advisory group to prevent researchers and the public from working together on important issues? Start your own of course!

A guide from the @ucsusa on how to establish establish independent advisory committees to fill recent gaps in the public's conversation with scientists on key issues.

https://blog.ucs.org/melissa-finucane/federal-science-advisory-committees-are-being-defunded-and-dismantled-heres-a-toolkit-to-help-independent-scientists-step-up/

The Authors Guild has launched a certification program for asserting that a book has been human authored

https://authorsguild.org/human-authored/

Alarming story about UN event organizers going slide by slide through @abebab’s talk and forcing her to remove mention of companies that might be made uncomfortable by her research.

https://thebulletin.org/2025/07/ai-for-good-with-caveats-how-a-keynote-speaker-was-censored-during-an-international-artificial-intelligence-summit/

Last week, I rode my bike ~650 miles from Denver to Park City.

On a brisk morning at the top of the Great Divide, I finally found words to explain how we can respond to technology fears with science and community, grounded in wonder & love.

This post explains.

https://natematias.medium.com/seeing-the-power-and-the-glory-in-digital-technology-f23244512091

Our digital environments are as much in need of understanding, joy, wonder, & stewardship as our our planet, health, & outer space.

New post from a wonderful panel on participatory science about tech + society w/ Alan Smith, Todd Whitney, Brandi Geurkink, and @sarahgilbert at the Association for Participatory Science.

https://citizensandtech.org/2025/06/studying-stewarding-digital-environments-with-participatory-science/

Watching a PBS doc on the voting rights movement, I see more clearly the integration of alcohol & other addiction industries w/ corruption and violence.

- addictive products exploited men of their meager wages, impacting mental health, misogyny, & violence
- saloons were monopolistic social media of their era, performing many civic functions including polling
- many women sought the vote to regulate alcohol
- so alcohol businesses mobilized their addicted clients against women’s right to vote

You can watch the documentary here: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/vote/

Independently of whether social media is psychologically addictive, I wonder how comparable the political economy of the addiction industry of the 1800s would be to tech platforms and AI and crypto, which rely on making users dependent while also hosting/controlling the public sphere.

I guess organizations publishing high stakes documents are now going to have to hire new copy editors and fact checkers to verify everything they publish to manage the risk of AI generated errors?

(Right….. right?)

Do you know any citizen/community scientists or journalists covering environmental / public health issues along the Colorado River?

Next month, I'm going to ride my bike from Denver up into the Rockies, out to Glenwood Springs, and along the Colorado River to Moab, before turning north to Salt Lake City.

Along the way, I'm hoping to meet journalists & community scientists working to support community flourishing with data & evidence. I would love to say hi!

#bicycle #environment #science

"The original typewriters were designed for the Latin alphabet. Conceived with little regard for the non-Western world, the technology’s proliferation served Western hegemony."

"Languages with non-Latin alphabets were forced to contort and comply with the alien instrument. The Chinese script, unreachable with an alphabetic keyboard, was castigated as incompatible with modernity"

Amazing story about a unique typewriter thought lost & its place in cultural history.

https://madeinchinajournal.com/2025/05/02/lost-and-found-the-unexpected-journey-of-the-mingkwai-typewriter/

Writing about my last ten years in the science of tech policy, I am reminded how designers & advocates perpetually imagine ourselves at the start of something new.

It's a trap. I'm grateful for humanities training that draws me to history amidst deliberate amnesia.

@ntnsndr explains this amnesia here:

https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13668

Amazing job opportunity for a Chief Communications Officer at the The Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the most crucial organizations for this time, who support the public and scientists to work hand in hand to put science into action.

https://apply.workable.com/union-of-concerned-scientists/j/448D6A9C50/

Just voted to withold on the REI board candidates. Having someone with more experience with labor negotiations would make sense for the co-op, and I'm disappointed that they blocked that candidate from the board.

Grateful to these journalists who explained the situation in a detailed and balanced way.

https://www.cascadepbs.org/news/2025/03/rei-board-blocks-labor-backed-candidates-ballot

Props to the founder of this Syracuse pop-up restaurant whose marketing captured our current moment well

https://platinum-sailfish-lfg2.squarespace.com/wintercsa

Excited about this new book: "Indigenous Intellectual Property: An Interrupted Intergenerational Conversation"

https://birchbarkbooks.com/products/indigenous-intellectual-property

cc @luis_in_brief