Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

@drsurekhadavies.bsky.social

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Author of the award-winning RENAISSANCE ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN.
Pre-order HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY from fall 2024.
Words: TLS; Nature, Science, Aeon. surekhadavies.substack.com. www.surekhadavies.org.
Repped: Roz Foster (FGLA)

Posts Replies Media

A *brilliant* and devastatingly sharp and funny essay by @marisakabas.bsky.social. Legacy media should be syndicating this piece. A certain candidate tilting at windmills would make a phenomenal a cartoon by @lizadonnelly.bsky.social, too!

NEW: I explain how a throwaway line about windmills in Project 2025 shows there's absolutely no way Trump wasn't directly involved in crafting the fascist plan. www.thehandbasket.co/p/trump-wind...

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

If you steal $1000, you can be sent to prison. When health insurance companies steal $50,000,000,000, they get tax breaks, subsidies and government contracts, while the people they steal from die or go into debt. But keep blaming immigrants and poor people for rising crime.

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Let's kick things off by introducing the members of the Linda Hall Library's 2024-25 fellowship cohort. This year, we will be supporting 22 scholars (12 virtual, 10 residential) based in the US, Europe & S. America. Read more about their projects: lindahall.org/research/lin... #histSTM [2/9] 🗃️📜

Linda Hall Library – Meet Our Fellowslindahall.org Read about current and former Linda Hall Library research fellows.

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Sometimes at the end of a short week and the middle of a holiday weekend, I like to reflect on the recent accomplishments of Linda Hall Library scholars. That's right, #histSTM, #STS & #histsci friends...it's time for another revolutionary edition of #FellowFriday! [1/9]

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

"Each of them tell us something different about Galileo’s intentions & tell us something different about the world #Galileo lived in." [email protected] Thanks to KSHB's Charlie Keegan, who visited LHL to look at all 3 of our copies of Sidereus Nuncius! www.kshb.com/news/local-n... 🗃️📜 #histSTM

’It’s almost like a time machine’: Library acquires 3rd version of Galileo’s 414-year-old bookwww.kshb.com The Linda B. Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri, is now the only place in the world to view all three original editions of Galileo's groundbreaking scientific publication from 1610.

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Author of the post blocked me even though I was just doing a teachable moment and was being very polite to them so here's the post so we can all continue to learn.

Head's up, this is a really common refrain for Stephen Miller. Remember, comparing Jews to lizard people/reptiles is an antisemitic trope. (The idea that Jews are secretly inhuman lizard people secretly infiltrating humanity to take control.) There are lots of other ways we can criticize his evil.

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

So as per Barnes & Noble, the 'Handbook on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence' release date has been moved to this week. For a sense of why this book is worth your time, here are pre-prints of the Introduction (papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....) & my chapter (pages.charlotte.edu/damien-p-wil...)

Handbook on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligencewww.e-elgar.com This engaging Handbook identifies and critically examines the moral opportunities and challenges typically attributed to artificial intelligence. It provides a comprehensive overview and examination o...

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Google Is No Longer Claiming to Be Carbon Neutral www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Google Is No Longer Claiming to Be Carbon Neutralwww.bloomberg.com The tech giant, which has seen its planet-warming emissions rise because of artificial intelligence, has stopped buying cheap offsets behind the neutrality claim. The company now aims to reach net-zer...

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

We asked some of our authors to respond to the Supreme Court's recent decision on presidential immunity—you can read what they have to say on the SUP blog #ReadUP #ReadSUP #SCOTUS

Presidential Immunity and the Supreme Courtstanfordpress.typepad.com Stanford University Press Authors weigh in on Trump v. United States

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

I don’t know writer/journalist Annabel Ross personally, but what she had to say about the Gaiman situation covers a fair bit of what I think so far… now I’ll go back to trying to find an emoji that conveys “goddammit I’m so fucking furious & sad & exhausted” open.substack.com/pub/politics...

Manufacturing consentopen.substack.com Untangling the Neil Gaiman sexual assault allegations, and the Tortoise Media investigation that is both flawed and important

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Project 2025 will double down on protections for fossil fuel industries while killing clean power initiatives, while this is going on, but the media is mostly focused elsewhere for some idiotic reason www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Temperatures 1.5C above pre-industrial era average for 12 months, data showswww.theguardian.com Copernicus Climate Change Service says results a ‘large and continuing shift’ in the climate

Naomi Oreskes in @sciam.bsky.social: "ExxonMobil spent years telling the public that climate change was highly uncertain even as the corporation’s own scientists were making accurate predictions about future CO2 levels and global warming they would cause."🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

The Gas Industry Is Gaslighting the Public about Climate Changewww.scientificamerican.com A fossil-fuel executive blames consumers for the climate crisis

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Damn, they got Everything You Wanted to Know About Starting a Union on these things? 📆Thursday, July 11, 2024, 8:30–10 p.m. ET (5:30–7 p.m. PT) (You can also register on your phone or computer.) us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

There's a huge range in how people experience their "inner voice." (But people assume everybody else's is like their own.) 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/not-...

Not Everyone Has an Inner Voice Streaming Through Their Headwww.scientificamerican.com The extent to which people experience “inner speech” varies greatly, and the differences matter for performing certain cognitive tasks

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Oh hey y’all guess what I have a new book coming out in March 2025 & you can pre-order it if you want! You can do so from anywhere, I recommend your local indie, but meanwhile here’s Macmillan’s link us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

it’s that last sentence tucked at the end that the right is truly terrified of

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Send us your proposals!

CFP for RSA 2025 BOSTON! Time Bound: Temporality in Late Medieval and Early Modern Books Proposals Due 7/10/2024 Come join me & Megan McNamee for a conversation about the materiality of premodern timekeeping! Details here: www.rsa.org/forms/FormRe...

Renaissance Society of Americawww.rsa.org Fordham University 441 E. Fordham Road Faber Hall 463 Bronx, NY 10458 • USA

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Just found out about a massive data leak at Twitter/X. I don't use it anymore but I keep my account alive so no one else can claim my username. I just changed my password and suggest others do too. Also use 2FA whenever you can. More: cyberpress.org/9-4gb-twitte...

9.4GB Twitter(X) Data Leaked - Over 200 Million Records Exposed Onlinecyberpress.org The Cyberpress Research Team made a significant discovery with the Massive 9.4 GB of X (Formerly the Twitter) Database.

AI in six words, for WIRED: "The emperor's new clothes, only crapper."

When people can't admit they've been bamboozled by the hype-merchant, their scant recourse is often found in the flimflam-y arms of vaporware

A great overview post on YOUNG QUEENS author @leahredmondchang.bsky.social's newsletter, now titled “The Only Woman in the Room.” #authors #books #earlymodern #skyhistorians open.substack.com/pub/leahredm...

The Only Woman in the Roomopen.substack.com "Close Reading" has a new name but the gist hasn't changed

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Also: Get off your arse and vote. My constituency was won for Labour by 15 votes. A high turnout from the French sorted this. You don't vote? Well, the fash do. If you're replying to this with why it's ideologically impure for a truly left wing person to vote, please just block yourself, I'm tired.

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

UK's is 6 weeks. And some of us think even that's probably a little too long. I do wonder who's making the $ out of these long campaigns bc someone sure is.

note how long it took the French from calling the election to holding not 1 but 2 votes? and organizing the shit out of the second one? LESS THAN ONE MONTH A national election does not have to be a painful 1.5-2 year process! the US election campaign should quite honestly not even have started yet!!

Greece, take note. Whoever green-lit and mandate a national 6-day working week is... wrong. No one thrives when they are so tired that their brain and body tick more slowly and make more mistakes.

"South Cambridgeshire district council’s controversial experiment with a shorter working week resulted in improvements in performance in 11 out of 24 areas, little or no change in 11 areas and worsening of performance in two areas, according to analysis of productivity".

Largest UK public sector trial of four-day week sees huge benefits, research findswww.theguardian.com Exclusive: South Cambridgeshire experiment led to fewer refuse collectors quitting and faster planning decisions

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Wow. @nytimes.com has closed their Threads account and left the platform after days of getting just shredded in the replies for their handling of Biden post debate. Now they're getting dog piled on Instagram for running from Threads.

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

The governors of a dozen Republican-led states — AL, AK, FL, GA, IA, MS, OK, SC, SD, TX, UT, WY — opted out of a new federal food assistance program, leaving about 9.5 million students without the aid this summer

Republican-led states are blocking summer food benefits for hungry familieswww.usatoday.com Money for food is especially tight for families in a dozen states where Republican lawmakers declined to accept federal food assistance.

Steven Shapin on Christy Spackman's The Taste of Water @ucpress.bsky.social. Re: North America and Europe: "There were now political institutions you could complain to if you thought the water tasted odd or if there were reasons to think it unsafe." 1/ 🧪 #histsci

‘How has the widespread assumption of water’s neutrality come about? Who gets to say what water does taste like, how it ought to taste, whether its sensory aspects do or do not testify to its quality? How do you know if the water is good?’ Steven Shapin: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Steven Shapin · Story of Eauwww.lrb.co.uk How has the widespread assumption of water’s neutrality come about? Who gets to say what water does taste like, how it...

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Had a great time talking with Christy Spackman about her book THE TASTE OF WATER. So many interesting points about how we’ve come to prefer water that tastes the same everywhere + how to gain appreciation for water that tastes like the places it comes from azwaterinnovation.asu.edu/asking-why-w...

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

We're science fiction writers. Of course we write stories about the consequences of technological innovations, and no one ever comprehends the story is about the consequences and not the technology

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

Organizers got enough signatures to put a measure protecting abortion on the ballot in Arkansas. In *Arkansas*. They had *no national support*. Ignore the pundits melting down over not being treated as Very Special Boys. Dobbs has fundamentally changed elections. Everything they know is wrong.

Arkansas abortion rights groups collect enough signatures to advance ballot measurewww.nbcnews.com A measure to enshrine abortion rights in the ruby red state’s constitution is now one step closer to making the November ballot — but major obstacles remain.

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Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)

If you prefer your #histsci (or #philsci!) in audio form, be sure to listen to @emilyherring.bsky.social (2018-19 LHL Fellow) discuss Henri #Bergson's theories of time & comedy w/Matthew Sweet on a recent episode of Free Thinking on BBC Radio 4. bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... [8/9] #philosophy #histSTM

Free Thinking - The illusion of time, the summer solstice & the philosophy of comedy - BBC Soundsbbc.co.uk Mark Miodownik, Emily Herring, Rob Newman and Fay Dowker consider Time with Matthew Sweet.