Rua M. Williams
@fractalecho.bsky.social
Common Cyborg | NB ND Mad Bean | Disability and Epistemology | Research Ethics and Dissensus
Pinned
Rua M. Williams
@fractalecho.bsky.social
· Oct 11
This book is titled “Disabling Intelligences” for many reasons. First, because so-called “AI” is built from historical commitments to the excision of disability from the classification of humanity.
link.springer.com/book/10.1007/9…
link.springer.com/book/10.1007/9…
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
Very accessible and very engaging. Thinking of "AI" as part of the longer program of eugenics is a very helpful frame for understanding it, what its function is, and how you can think about and react to it.
I loved it and highly recommend reading it if it sounds even remotely up your alley.
I loved it and highly recommend reading it if it sounds even remotely up your alley.
As you begin to build your 2026 reading lists (which is a thing I assume some people do), consider adding my really very short book on AI and Eugenics.
Disabling Intelligences:Legacies of Eugenics and How We are Wrong about AI has a lot in under 50k words.
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Disabling Intelligences:Legacies of Eugenics and How We are Wrong about AI has a lot in under 50k words.
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
January 19, 2026 at 6:11 PM
Very accessible and very engaging. Thinking of "AI" as part of the longer program of eugenics is a very helpful frame for understanding it, what its function is, and how you can think about and react to it.
I loved it and highly recommend reading it if it sounds even remotely up your alley.
I loved it and highly recommend reading it if it sounds even remotely up your alley.
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
I've just started reading it and am so enamored with it, I'm putting the first two chapters on my digital religion syllabus. May add more as I go through it. Very readable and I think teachable.
As you begin to build your 2026 reading lists (which is a thing I assume some people do), consider adding my really very short book on AI and Eugenics.
Disabling Intelligences:Legacies of Eugenics and How We are Wrong about AI has a lot in under 50k words.
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Disabling Intelligences:Legacies of Eugenics and How We are Wrong about AI has a lot in under 50k words.
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
January 16, 2026 at 10:12 PM
I've just started reading it and am so enamored with it, I'm putting the first two chapters on my digital religion syllabus. May add more as I go through it. Very readable and I think teachable.
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
I thought we already figured out gamified eating is just sparkling eating disorder when all those people got triggered by noom's nonsense.
January 15, 2026 at 11:48 PM
I thought we already figured out gamified eating is just sparkling eating disorder when all those people got triggered by noom's nonsense.
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
January 9, 2026 at 7:44 PM
One time I murdered a book club by selecting "Descartes Bones" as the book and everyone else was so bored the club died but I was enthralled and in retrospect it should not have taken me ten years after that to realize I wanted to be an academic.
January 9, 2026 at 7:07 PM
One time I murdered a book club by selecting "Descartes Bones" as the book and everyone else was so bored the club died but I was enthralled and in retrospect it should not have taken me ten years after that to realize I wanted to be an academic.
I've been ranting about this with Hypervisible and @lizjackson.bsky.social
Instead of that rant, here's a joke.
A blind person, a deaf person, an autistic person, and a person with facial difference walk into a bar.
Their state enforced disability dongles bring down the entire AWS system.
Instead of that rant, here's a joke.
A blind person, a deaf person, an autistic person, and a person with facial difference walk into a bar.
Their state enforced disability dongles bring down the entire AWS system.
The wristband “uses the Meta Ray-Ban glasses's computer vision abilities to stream video of your conversation to the accompanying app, which uses an algorithm to detect facial expressions and gestures.”
This haptic wristband pairs with Meta smart glasses to decode facial expressions
Hapware has created Alleye, a haptic wristband that, when paired with Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, can help people understand the facial expressions and other nonverbal cues.
www.engadget.com
January 8, 2026 at 7:46 PM
I've been ranting about this with Hypervisible and @lizjackson.bsky.social
Instead of that rant, here's a joke.
A blind person, a deaf person, an autistic person, and a person with facial difference walk into a bar.
Their state enforced disability dongles bring down the entire AWS system.
Instead of that rant, here's a joke.
A blind person, a deaf person, an autistic person, and a person with facial difference walk into a bar.
Their state enforced disability dongles bring down the entire AWS system.
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
"em dashes are AI" i didn't memorize alt+0151 and option+shift+hyphen to be accused of such treachery
January 6, 2026 at 9:28 PM
"em dashes are AI" i didn't memorize alt+0151 and option+shift+hyphen to be accused of such treachery
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
As everyone talks about Greenland, don't forget its actual global significance--a two mile thick sheet of ice that if melted would raise the sea level 23 feet (and long before that choke off the currents of the Atlantic)
open.substack.com/pub/billmcki...
open.substack.com/pub/billmcki...
Greenland has a 'vital strategic asset'
A sheet of ice two miles thick (and also some remarkable people)
open.substack.com
January 6, 2026 at 10:28 PM
As everyone talks about Greenland, don't forget its actual global significance--a two mile thick sheet of ice that if melted would raise the sea level 23 feet (and long before that choke off the currents of the Atlantic)
open.substack.com/pub/billmcki...
open.substack.com/pub/billmcki...
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
The pitch goes like this: “If you let us follow you around all day we will surface insights about your life that you would not be able to recognize for yourself.”
In short: no.
Longer version: Hell no.
Extended version: read luxury surveillance when it comes out 🤷🏿♂️
In short: no.
Longer version: Hell no.
Extended version: read luxury surveillance when it comes out 🤷🏿♂️
January 5, 2026 at 3:21 PM
The pitch goes like this: “If you let us follow you around all day we will surface insights about your life that you would not be able to recognize for yourself.”
In short: no.
Longer version: Hell no.
Extended version: read luxury surveillance when it comes out 🤷🏿♂️
In short: no.
Longer version: Hell no.
Extended version: read luxury surveillance when it comes out 🤷🏿♂️
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
The current wave of devices pitched by tech CO’s are all based on the attempt to convince you that near-constant surveillance is a benefit rather than their old story (lie) that a little bit of surveillance was the price you paid for services or that it helped them deliver you better products.
Building Bee at Amazon
Co-founder Maria de Lourdes Zollo shares the latest with Bee and the journey to become the personal AI companion that understands you everywhere.
www.aboutamazon.com
January 5, 2026 at 3:14 PM
The current wave of devices pitched by tech CO’s are all based on the attempt to convince you that near-constant surveillance is a benefit rather than their old story (lie) that a little bit of surveillance was the price you paid for services or that it helped them deliver you better products.
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
It’s less we assume sentience is speech (see: animals) but that GenAI convincingly generates the affect of personhood (there’s a fun Japanese word for this - sonzai kan).
Coupled with AI hype and a mechanical model of consciousness, we have a perfect storm.
Coupled with AI hype and a mechanical model of consciousness, we have a perfect storm.
Grok can't apologize. Grok can, when prompted, generate a word sequence that is statistically similar to the colloquial phrases we think of as "apologies," but Grok cannot actually apologize because Grok isn't sentient. But we all have a lot of trouble with this because we assume sentience IS speech
January 2, 2026 at 5:48 AM
It’s less we assume sentience is speech (see: animals) but that GenAI convincingly generates the affect of personhood (there’s a fun Japanese word for this - sonzai kan).
Coupled with AI hype and a mechanical model of consciousness, we have a perfect storm.
Coupled with AI hype and a mechanical model of consciousness, we have a perfect storm.
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
I aspire to be generous in my reading, interlocution, research, citations, and collaboration. Not because I expect reciprocity (tho don't get it twisted: that Would be nice), but because it makes this career life bearable and not a pit of vipers. That's all.
April 20, 2024 at 4:44 AM
I aspire to be generous in my reading, interlocution, research, citations, and collaboration. Not because I expect reciprocity (tho don't get it twisted: that Would be nice), but because it makes this career life bearable and not a pit of vipers. That's all.
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
Collaborative community organizing goes for academic research and citational praxis too
March 22, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Collaborative community organizing goes for academic research and citational praxis too
Hahahahhaha
Until AI can interact with my microaggressive coworkers for me it DEFINITELY cannot take away tasks I hate.
The desire for AI has been expressed as “taking away the tasks we hate.” But who designates contemptable tasks? And what does our contempt for this work say about how we regard the people who do it?
December 31, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Hahahahhaha
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
This is a fundamentally Crip perspective in my view. Ableist systems require and perform ranking, prioritisation and notification of sentient life. Ability, completeness, enclosure and distinction -- not to mention the fetishization of the impossibility which is 'independence'
December 31, 2025 at 9:30 AM
This is a fundamentally Crip perspective in my view. Ableist systems require and perform ranking, prioritisation and notification of sentient life. Ability, completeness, enclosure and distinction -- not to mention the fetishization of the impossibility which is 'independence'
I always get so excited to go to a design museum and then it's always just edgy furniture and I remember I am not a designer
December 30, 2025 at 9:52 PM
I always get so excited to go to a design museum and then it's always just edgy furniture and I remember I am not a designer
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
“Technology and History: ‘Kranzberg’s Laws’,” was published in Technology and Culture in *1986*— that's *forty fucking years ago* people— & it was delivered as his (Kranzberg's) presidential address to the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) the year before that, so we're rolling up on 41…
December 29, 2025 at 10:22 PM
“Technology and History: ‘Kranzberg’s Laws’,” was published in Technology and Culture in *1986*— that's *forty fucking years ago* people— & it was delivered as his (Kranzberg's) presidential address to the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) the year before that, so we're rolling up on 41…
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
The other thing about normalizing gAI use in higher ed is that we are teaching our students that they cannot trust their own creativity, their own thoughts and brains, their own skills without having it reshaped/shellacked/transmogrified by LLMs. We’re setting them up for failure and dependence.
December 28, 2025 at 12:46 PM
The other thing about normalizing gAI use in higher ed is that we are teaching our students that they cannot trust their own creativity, their own thoughts and brains, their own skills without having it reshaped/shellacked/transmogrified by LLMs. We’re setting them up for failure and dependence.
I also highly recommend Goethe's Faust for a 2026 read.
December 29, 2025 at 12:57 AM
I also highly recommend Goethe's Faust for a 2026 read.
As you begin to build your 2026 reading lists (which is a thing I assume some people do), consider adding my really very short book on AI and Eugenics.
Disabling Intelligences:Legacies of Eugenics and How We are Wrong about AI has a lot in under 50k words.
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Disabling Intelligences:Legacies of Eugenics and How We are Wrong about AI has a lot in under 50k words.
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
December 28, 2025 at 10:49 PM
As you begin to build your 2026 reading lists (which is a thing I assume some people do), consider adding my really very short book on AI and Eugenics.
Disabling Intelligences:Legacies of Eugenics and How We are Wrong about AI has a lot in under 50k words.
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Disabling Intelligences:Legacies of Eugenics and How We are Wrong about AI has a lot in under 50k words.
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
This is a Christmas present to me, specifically.
another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls
December 27, 2025 at 8:31 PM
This is a Christmas present to me, specifically.
Often I am told by my peers, both senior and junior, that they're afraid to speak out like I do about various things, probably most especially challenging specific research or teaching norms more than broader (and more pressing) political issues. And I'm always confused by it.
December 27, 2025 at 6:37 PM
Often I am told by my peers, both senior and junior, that they're afraid to speak out like I do about various things, probably most especially challenging specific research or teaching norms more than broader (and more pressing) political issues. And I'm always confused by it.
Reposted by Rua M. Williams
Agree
I worked in a school for children with profound disabilities and had to counter argue weekly with non disabled people who said “chat gpt is a disability aid, it helps students to write”. No, it does not, and in fact it steals work from other disabled creators- it isn’t safe or an aid.
I worked in a school for children with profound disabilities and had to counter argue weekly with non disabled people who said “chat gpt is a disability aid, it helps students to write”. No, it does not, and in fact it steals work from other disabled creators- it isn’t safe or an aid.
Stories about Meta's glasses "helping" blind people infuriate me. Ah yes. Because the greatest indignity is having to ask people for help. Never mind that relying on such technology 1. Absolves society from ever making any serious efforts to re-examine its values and practices
December 27, 2025 at 6:21 AM
Agree
I worked in a school for children with profound disabilities and had to counter argue weekly with non disabled people who said “chat gpt is a disability aid, it helps students to write”. No, it does not, and in fact it steals work from other disabled creators- it isn’t safe or an aid.
I worked in a school for children with profound disabilities and had to counter argue weekly with non disabled people who said “chat gpt is a disability aid, it helps students to write”. No, it does not, and in fact it steals work from other disabled creators- it isn’t safe or an aid.