Joe Germuska's avatar

Joe Germuska

@joe.germuska.com

456 followers 622 following 173 posts

Chief Nerd @ Northwestern University Knight Lab • Project lead @ Census Reporter • Board Member @ City Bureau • Information Design • Digital Journalism • Civic Technology

Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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Product people! City Bureau is hiring a Director of Product. Read it, apply, pass it on...

www.citybureau.org/hiring-direc...

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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It’s a time for UX experiments! I’m mostly long on the no-personality paths but I’d try this one out

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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I think that's more my angle than just chat... But really the AI reading tools I'm most interested in are more like librarian-scribes

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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My vague sense is that Kipnis is a cynic so
"will radically transform the entire way booklovers read books" is striking.

Has anyone tried Rebind?

www.wired.com/story/i-am-l...

Ah, wait-list.

Fine I'll do it 
www.rebind.ai/?ref=FKjOUr

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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yet another reason to love Skokie Library—they are currently hosting an exhibition of work by the members of the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild (including one by my spouse!) 

Of course I'm a bit biased, but it's a really cool show

skokielibrary.info/events/exhib...

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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"Whatever AI is capable of in music – even if it never gets more than pretty good – it is supremely well suited to making music in a culture that does not reward labor."

dadadrummer.substack.com/p/i-spoke-wi...

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Mike Masnick's avatar Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social
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Look, I'm not one to say much about publications taking some sort of controversy and turning it into merch (we've done it a bunch), but generally speaking, if the message of your merch is "we support fascist insurrection," you might just be the fucking problem.

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David M. Perry's avatar David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social
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I really believe it would be possible to build broad support for policies, removing federal judges, including SCOTUS judges, who receive this kind of largesse, from office. The public understands judges being bribed and understands it’s wrong.

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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from "Is it OK to love a dog?" by Eryk Selvaggio

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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"So much of this popular conversation around data-driven generative AI is focused on dismantling the value of relationships to a core, machinic set of criteria. The goal of this reduction seems hostile to the experience of love and empathy altogether."
cyberneticforests.substack.com/p/is-it-ok-t...

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dan sinker's avatar dan sinker @dansinker.bsky.social
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30 years ago this month the first issue of Punk Planet came out. It's incredible that we did one issue let alone 80 over the following 13 years. In honor of the 30 year mark, I'm writing 13 essays, one of each year of the magazine, starting with Year One. dansinker.com/posts/2024-0...

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Jacob Grier's avatar Jacob Grier @jacobgrier.bsky.social
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Imagine running for president and a former coworker publicly attests to you using the n-word, and by evening that's only the day's second-worst story for you. slate.com/culture/2024...

5 replies 138 reposts 511 likes

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Reposted by Joe Germuska

donna.'s avatar donna. @andshewasdonna.bsky.social
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I don’t think we’re actually going to get actual cicadas in my neighborhood, but I did my part.

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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Omg that is amazing

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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I like how this piece leans in to the Jersey Shore location of Alito's beach house

‘“How far do we go before we normalize a lot of abnormal behavior?” asked “Stan,” a longtime South Jersey resident. “I’d say there are no words, but there are words.”’

www.thedailybeast.com/justice-alit...

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Erin Kissane's avatar Erin Kissane @kissane.bsky.social
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I say this as a mostly not journalist who has received extremely hair-raising information via Twitter DMs over the years. Don’t do that! Exchange Signal info and gtfo

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Erin Kissane's avatar Erin Kissane @kissane.bsky.social
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I’m sure this makes me an ancient one but I don’t think you should send detailed tips to reporters using unencrypted DMs on Bluesky or anywhere else and I don’t think reporters should suggest that :|

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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"Two things can be true: first, that the online spaces where young people spend so much time require massive reform, and second, that social media is not rewiring our children’s brains or causing an epidemic of mental illness."

www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

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Reposted by Joe Germuska

Knight Lab's avatar Knight Lab @knightlab.northwestern.edu
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This project was a great collaboration. Knight Lab's Chief Nerd, @joe.germuska.com worked with Prof. Jerry Goldman to create the original oyez.org database of SCOTUS oral arguments, so when he brought this idea, we were excited to explore the possibilities…

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Knight Lab's avatar Knight Lab @knightlab.northwestern.edu
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Today is the 70th anniversary of the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, where the US Supreme Court found school segregation unconstitutional.

Learn more about it and listen to key moments recreated with AI
brown.oyez.org

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NANCY COMICS BY ERNIE BUSHMILLER 's avatar NANCY COMICS BY ERNIE BUSHMILLER @nancycomics.bsky.social
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FEEL PUNK TODAY?

5 replies 53 reposts 183 likes

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Rose Eveleth's avatar Rose Eveleth @roseveleth.com
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~*~PLEASE SHARE!~*~

I'm looking for stories of girls who were accused of being boys because they were "too good" at sports. Has this happened to you? Would you be willing to talk to us about it for a series? If so, please get in touch! Ways to connect here: www.bucketofeels.com/sports/

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Saeed Jones's avatar Saeed Jones @theferocity.bsky.social
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White people love to make their grandparents proud.

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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The peaceful resolution of the student occupation of Northwestern's Deering Meadow hasn't gotten much coverage. Here's a balanced rundown from an NU student journalist

dailynorthwestern.com/2024/05/02/c...

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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At Medill’s “Reporting in a dangerous world” symposium, learned about Reporters Without Borders’ lawsuit to block Russian propaganda from a French satellite, followed by using that freed satellite capacity to distribute work of censored journalists
rsf.org/en/rsf-launc...

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Soren Spicknall's avatar Soren Spicknall @sorenspicknall.bsky.social
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The Daily Northwestern has live coverage of the Gaza solidarity encampment established this morning on the university's Deering Meadow. Police have already threatened to break it up.

2 replies 9 reposts 19 likes

Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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Nell Irvin Painter seems super cool. I love that she went to art school after she retired from a career as an academic historian (and she’s still writing)

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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This paper also includes an AI poem prompted with the first four lines of Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise" I'm someone who is very receptive to algorithmic art, but it's still offensive. Almost feels like blackface.

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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"in this age of AI, although there are…diverse platforms to view more diverse content created, produced, and represented by more diverse talent—the effect is not necessarily a leveling of power and opening of access" from "Poetry Will Not Optimize; or, What Is Literature to AI?"

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Marisa Kabas's avatar Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social
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From USC to Columbia, silencing pro-Palestinian students isn't the answer. And it sure as hell isn't making Jewish people safer. My latest:

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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“The broader implication of the Belgian experiment is a recognition that there can be other modes of advice and consent in today’s troubled democracies beyond the passive citizenship of periodically voting in elections dominated by partisan strife.”

www.noemamag.com/belgium-lead...

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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Another good essay from Eryk Selvaggio:

"The gather-lots-of-general-data phase isn’t necessary to produce meaningful results from machine learning. We can use these tools to guide our analysis of the world, not the modeling of it."

cyberneticforests.substack.com/p/ai-is-a-cr...

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Joe Germuska's avatar Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com
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“We are very much stuck in: ‘we should go send some reporters out into the world, they should come back, write down what they saw, and then hopefully someone else points them at it.’ … that’s been a losing proposition for a decade. We should try something else.”—Nilay Patel on the Ezra Klein show

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