Virginia Eubanks
@virginiaeeubanks.bsky.social
Writer working for an abundant, peaceful, and equitable future.
NEW MEMOIR (8/11/26): A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care and Survival. Preorder: bit.ly/4hAFUJb https://virginia-eubanks.com/
Virginia Eubanks is an American political scientist, professor, and author studying technology and social justice. She is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University at Albany, SUNY. Previously Eubanks was a Fellow at New America researching digital privacy, economic inequality, and data-based discrimination. .. more
Political science
39%
Sociology
16%
My university media office really should have counted the letters on this newsletter headline...
What Is Neuroplasticity and Why Does It Matter?
Imagine a symphony of electricity and chemistry playing continuously inside your skull. Billions of neurons exchanging signals, firing in patterns,…
www.sciencenewstoday.org
(3/3): "There’s even evidence that a sense of purpose, strong social connections, and emotional resilience can protect the brain from age-related decline.” www.sciencenewstoday.org/what-is-neur... [I'm thinking about getting a BDNF tattoo.]
(2/3): "Physical exercise is also a potent stimulant of neuroplasticity. Aerobic activity increases blood flow to the brain, supports neurogenesis in the hippocampus, and boosts levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)—a protein crucial for maintaining plasticity. ..."
Neuralplasticity for the win, at least for an old gal like me (1/3): "Lifelong learning and novelty-seeking are among the strongest predictors of cognitive longevity. ..."
"Dendritic arborization." Yaaas.
Read this morning while exploring feedforward & predictive interneural connections: "The NMDA is a glutamate receptor cation channel that is also widely referred to as a 'coincidence detector'."
Down the rabbit hole for sure.
But "coincidence detectors"?! What wonderful worlds brains are.
Down the rabbit hole for sure.
But "coincidence detectors"?! What wonderful worlds brains are.
Reading on PTSD and neural plasticity this month. Looks like there is some interesting preliminary research. Anyone have recommendations for me?
"Data centers consume approx 200 billion gallons of water annually in the US alone, w/ cooling systems accounting for 80-90% of demand. ... The WRI classifies 17 U.S. states as experiencing high or extremely high water stress. These states host approximately 40% of U.S. data center capacity."
Thinking about universities' promotion of AI from a resource- and labor-extraction angle -- something I'm not hearing come up a lot in conversations about AI and education. But I'm part of the Anthropic class action, and data centers themselves are concerned about their water and energy use... e.g.:
My understanding of the book is that they are arguing explicitly that democracy is *best* understood as an information system.
AI has a democracy problem — here’s why
A thorough examination of artificial intelligence’s promise in politics rests on a thorny premise: democracy is an information system.
www.nature.com
Here's my latest, a review of Schneier and Sanders' new boo, Rewiring Democracy (with some big thoughts of my own), in Nature. AI has a democracy problem — here’s why www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor
Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor - Kindle edition by Eubanks, Virginia. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor.
a.co
The Kindle version of Automating Inequality as available at a deep discount currently! It's definitely worth $2.99. 🤣
a.co/d/bPaqACH
a.co/d/bPaqACH
The skills I learned in the woods and on the water were surprisingly transferable to surviving violence and traumatic care.
What unexpected survival skill do you possess? Comment below, and follow me here on Bluesky, and I’ll DM you an excerpt from the memoir!
What unexpected survival skill do you possess? Comment below, and follow me here on Bluesky, and I’ll DM you an excerpt from the memoir!
The happiest surprise of writing the book was how much I learned about staying alive in the wilderness: I studied kayak self-rescue, winter survival, map and compass navigation, bushwhacking, monastic discernment, lifeguarding, wilderness first aid.
COVER REVEAL! 🌊 A GUIDE TO OPEN WATER LIFESAVING by @virginiaeeubanks.bsky.social is a spirited, wise, often hilarious, profoundly moving story of one woman's efforts to survive caregiving, trauma, love, and the systems seemingly set up to fail us. Available on August 11, 2026. bit.ly/4hAFUJb
The lesson: Nobody survives the wilderness alone. In love with hazard orange and tranquil blue, the humor and danger all caught up together. Thanks @corraldesign.bsky.social (design) and Giacomo Girardi (art), and everyone at @fsgbooks.bsky.social, for promoting beautiful, true caregiver stories.
Reposted by Virginia Eubanks
COVER REVEAL! 🌊 A GUIDE TO OPEN WATER LIFESAVING by @virginiaeeubanks.bsky.social is a spirited, wise, often hilarious, profoundly moving story of one woman's efforts to survive caregiving, trauma, love, and the systems seemingly set up to fail us. Available on August 11, 2026. bit.ly/4hAFUJb
Hi Brian! Amazing to see you. Invite me back to Idaho!!
I’m excited to share that I have a reported memoir, *A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love and Survival,* arriving in the world on August 11, 2026.
Tomorrow, Oct 30, @fsgbooks.bsky.social will reveal the book’s extraordinary cover. Follow FSG (or me) to get the first glimpse.
Tomorrow, Oct 30, @fsgbooks.bsky.social will reveal the book’s extraordinary cover. Follow FSG (or me) to get the first glimpse.
@brianmannadk.bsky.social explains why this series? Why now? (Hint: It's not to encourage women to have a bunch more babies) www.instagram.com/reel/DQZfk-k...
Population Shift
Examining what happens when families have fewer kids
www.npr.org
Excited to be digging into this fascinating new series on worldwide population shifts.
www.npr.org/series/g-s1-...
Even, meticulous, ambitious reporting has me rethinking so many things that I thought I knew.
Kudos to @brianmannadk.bsky.social @sarahmccammon.bsky.social & everyone at @npr.org
www.npr.org/series/g-s1-...
Even, meticulous, ambitious reporting has me rethinking so many things that I thought I knew.
Kudos to @brianmannadk.bsky.social @sarahmccammon.bsky.social & everyone at @npr.org
‘Medicaid Cut Me Off’: A Rural Health Center Faces New Pressures
www.nytimes.com
"The Trump administration’s tax and domestic policy bill... is projected to cost the country’s 1,512 community health centers roughly $7.3 billion annually in increased uncompensated care costs as they take on the treatment of new, and newly uninsured, patients." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/h...
Opinion | The Rise of the Inflatable Chicken Resistance
www.nytimes.com
Shteyngart brilliant as always. "Frivolity and absurdity are kryptonite to authoritarians who project the stern-father archetype to their followers. Once the pants are lowered and the undies of the despot are glimpsed, there is no point of return." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/o...
A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving
A spirited, wise, often hilarious, profoundly moving story of one woman's efforts to survive caregiving, trauma, love, and the systems seemingly set up to fa...
us.macmillan.com
(8/8) Built from cataclysmic loss and tenacious love, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving challenges readers to reconsider the networks of care that sustain our lives, reminding us that no one survives the wilderness alone.
(us.macmillan.com/books/978037...)
(us.macmillan.com/books/978037...)
(7/8) ...her research, and interviews with everyone from neuroscientists to forest rangers. The result is a genuinely moving, hopeful, darkly funny story of two people caught in their own kind of wilderness, trying not just to survive but to truly care for each other.
(6/8) Inspired by these lessons, she signed up for a series of classes: kayak self-rescue, winter survival 101, map and compass, bushwhacking, wilderness first aid, lifeguarding. In a memoir as disarmingly funny as it is quietly wise, Eubanks draws lessons in kinship from these experiences...
(5/8) A reporter and an activist, Eubanks turned to reliable sources to figure out how to heal: scientists, therapists, trauma theorists, social movements. But it wasn’t until she happened on an old lifesaving manual that she found practical advice that actually helped.
(4/8) ...inadequate medical care, lost income, lost friends, endless paperwork, and a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Then, a second case. In her time tending to him, Eubanks had developed what is known as “collateral” PTSD, common among caregivers but rarely discussed.
(3/8) One night, Virginia Eubanks received the kind of news we all fear. Her beloved partner had been attacked, brutally beaten just steps from their house. In the weeks, then months and years that followed, they faced a cascade of setbacks: police disinterest, suspended health insurance...
(2/8) Only if you are a very able swimmer trained in open-water rescue should you approach drowning victims . . . Reach with a rope or branch, row out and offer the drowning person an oar. Do not get in the water.
But also:
No one survives the wilderness alone.
But also:
No one survives the wilderness alone.