Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
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aketchum22.bsky.social
Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
@aketchum22.bsky.social
PhD in History, professor of Feminist + Social Justice Studies; food, environmental, gender, +tech history, queer, founder of Disrupting Disruptions
https://www.alexketchum.ca/
https://linktr.ee/aketchum
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
for my PhD exams I spent months reading 300+ books in European intellectual history, modern European history, modern Jewish history, medieval Jewish history, and critical theory. There is a huge difference between the style of reading that accommodates this, and having a computer "summarize" books.
December 22, 2025 at 8:01 PM
yes- 100% this
Not for the first time reminded of the extent to which all university travel policies everywhere seem written solely for work in Europe and North America
December 19, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
The Transgender Media Portal (TMP): an award-winning, trans-made film database is in the final stretch of its fundraiser.
Lehman-Stamm Family Fund is matching donations and TMP seeks your help to raise final 25% to fight trans invisibility and sustain this resource.

Scan the QR code to donate!
December 18, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Sharing our Work:
Queer Food and Publishing Workshop
(From Zine to Press)

March 10 at 6 PM ET
Free, HYBRID Event
at SKOL gallery in Montréal

Learn about different types of queer publishing, make zines, and see an exhibition!
www.eventbrite.com/e/sharing-ou...

@arsenalpulp.bsky.social
December 18, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
This headline basically says it all except I'd argue it's not very quiet ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...
How the Trump Administration Is Quietly Resegregating the American Workforce
The Justice Department’s rollback of disparate impact is just one new policy that makes it harder for people of color to challenge illegal discrimination.
ballsandstrikes.org
December 18, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
The Vanity Fair photographer from the Susie Wiles story.

Holy. Shit.

www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/...
December 17, 2025 at 8:34 PM
And a February event on queer food and comics!
www.eventbrite.com/e/comic-arts...
December 15, 2025 at 9:34 PM
Join us on January 6th! with Sinister Wisdom

us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
December 15, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
reminder of cryptogyny, the hiding of women's contributions to science, technology, engineering, and medicine:
"although three men received the Nobel Prize for penicillin, women participated significantly in the team effort that brought the drug to medical usefulness."

www.jstor.org/stable/jj.55...
November 15, 2025 at 9:08 AM
You can now pre-order my new book: How to Organize Inclusive Events and Conferences! It comes out January 2026!!
microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/book...

@microcosm.bsky.social @mcgillarts.bsky.social
December 11, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
These ridiculous mega-projects like "datacenters in space" (doomed by thermodynamics) make a LOT more sense when you realize they're massive Ponzi schemes designed to transfer wealth from pension funds to VC's through "fee stacking."

It's the old Assets Under Management con. It should be illegal.
“.. Skeptics believe the technical risks are being underestimated and say space-based data centers won’t be competitive on cost, especially if power and other constraints ease on the ground.”

@wsj.com
www.wsj.com/tech/bezos-a...
December 11, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
“AI models not only point some users to false sources but also cause problems for researchers and librarians, who end up wasting their time looking for requested nonexistent records…”
AI Slop Is Spurring Record Requests for Imaginary Journals
The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that artificial intelligence models are making up research papers, journals and archives
www.scientificamerican.com
December 8, 2025 at 10:30 PM
December 3, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Thank you for this glowing review of Queers at the Table by Ivy Lerner Frank of the Culinary Historians of Canada!
www.culinaryhistorians.ca/wordpress/di...

@arsenalpulp.bsky.social @mcgillarts.bsky.social
Digestible Bits and Bites Book Reviews | Culinary Historians of Canada
www.culinaryhistorians.ca
December 2, 2025 at 10:09 AM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
be the bitch doing something yourself that you want to see in the world
there’s a scene in the new documentary where Elizabeth Taylor is talking about the stigma of AIDS and how she got involved in the movement and it’s fucking everything
December 1, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Thank you to everyone who came to our event about HIV/AIDS +food +LGBTQ+ communities today! This event is part of our series speaking about Queers at the Table ( @arsenalpulp.bsky.social ). Thanks @dogspunk.bsky.social
@mcgillarts.bsky.social
Events at: www.queerfoodconference.com/p/additional...
December 1, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
Beyond irony. It steals from all human creativity to function. It destroys our environment to operate. And using it robs us of our core skills. It's the perfect economic weapon.
We can't really say this enough...

> Anastasia Berg [at UCL Irvine] said that new research — and what she's hearing directly from colleagues across various industries — shows that employees who heavily rely on AI are losing core skills at a startling rate.

www.businessinsider.com/ai-tools-are...
AI tools are 'deskilling' workers, philosophy professor says
A philosophy professor warns that AI reliance is weakening workers' judgment, creativity, and problem-solving.
www.businessinsider.com
November 30, 2025 at 10:01 PM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
The affordances of genAI lean toward the logic of austerity.
November 28, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Excited to be presenting at the IEHCA bilingual food + comics conference (Récits graphiques des cultures alimentaires d’hier et d’aujourd’hui) in Tours, France on Dec 4

villa-rabelais.fr/sites/defaul...

Speaking about Queers at the Table!
@arsenalpulp.bsky.social
@mcgillarts.bsky.social
villa-rabelais.fr
November 27, 2025 at 11:42 AM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
LIBRARIES MAKE BOOKS ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE, she shouts, apparently inaudibly

WHY DO THESE "YOU'RE A CLASS TRAITOR" PEOPLE KEEP PRETENDING LIBRARIES DON'T EXIST?

ARE THEY CLASS TRAITORS WHO DON'T BELIEVE IN LIBRARIES?
Just saw someone claim that authors who want to be paid for their work are "class traitors" because we "only let the wealthy" read our books, and I think I need to go into the woods to scream into the night for a bit.

It's $5, not your first-born child! I need that $5 for health insurance!
November 26, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
November 25, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
prepping for the family fighting holiday by doubling down on my opinion that pissed this site off the most: if you want cool things to continue to happen, you have to seek out, support, and show up for the cool things
November 26, 2025 at 12:11 PM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
this is what ten years of obsession with "wokeness" in the media was trying to get to btw bsky.app/profile/mari...
groundbreaking.
November 25, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Reposted by Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her)
I saw someone compare AI to asbestos, in that people thought it was this amazing new material and put it in everything whether it needed it or not, but then realized too late that it was incredibly harmful. Do asbestos and AI both have a place? Yes. Do they need to be in everything out there? No.
October 19, 2025 at 7:14 PM