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10 Nov, 5 tweets, 3 min read
"Data do not speak for themselves. Data must be narrated—put to work in particular contexts, sunk into narratives that give them shape and meaning, and mobilized as part of broader processes of interpretation and meaning-making." @dourish @Imagenaciones

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20… Datafication and data fiction: Narrating data and narrating
Two scalar moves in data science:
1. move datum➡️ data set, the claim that these data are sufficiently "alike" as to be able to be combined, compared, added, & divided
2. move large ➡️ small implicit in the drawing of conclusions or categories from data analysis 2/ We think of the relationship between data and narrative in t
The granularity of the data, both spatially and temporally, radically reconfigured the work that they had to do. The very fact of a digital trace produced the necessity of an account, leaving them with less time for their previous responsibilities to parolees and to the public 3/ their work. What is more, the granularity of the data, both
The responsibility that they felt that they could still discharge, and which occupied an ever-greater amount of time, was one towards *organizational processes*, or even to the data itself. 4/ produced the necessity of an account. Parole officers talked
"Data makes sense only to the extent that we have frames for making sense of it, and the difference between a productive data analysis and a random-number generator is a narrative account of the meaningfulness of their outputs." 5/

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20… We share these concerns with the limits of data but seek to

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More from @math_rachel

Rachel Thomas Profile picture
12 Nov
Surveillance is best understood not simply as watching & monitoring, but as a calculated practice for managing & manipulating human behaviour.

Surveillance as governance: to what ends is surveillance undertaken, what forms of power operate. 1/

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02… @pwh67 As Foucault’s examination o...To focus exclusively on sur...
Classifications are not neutral. The way in which categories are defined and who defines them tell a story of power. 2/ attention to the ways they ...
Increasingly, populations are segmented & differentially treated. Surveillance sorts people into categories, assigning worth or risk, in ways that have real effects on their life chances. 3/ However, the wide-scale nat...
Read 5 tweets
Rachel Thomas Profile picture
30 Oct
As a mother, I can't wait until my 6 year old can be vaccinated against covid. My #1 reason is that I hope to reduce her chances of getting long covid or suffering any long-term effects. I want to share some of my personal thoughts here. 1/
First, in the USA the FDA has approved the vaccine for 5-11 year olds. This vaccine has been incredibly well studied and is safe. 2/
theguardian.com/world/2021/oct…
It will take years before we fully understand the long-term consequences of covid, but the studies so far (primarily in adults) of damage to a variety of organs, including the brain, vascular system, and immune system are deeply disturbing. 3/
Read 16 tweets
Rachel Thomas Profile picture
26 Oct
- Millions of people are disabled with long covid (a horrific illness)
- This is going to be VERY expensive
- There are big financial incentives to downplay the severity & prevalence
- Concerted efforts similar to the climate denial playbook

fast.ai/2021/10/12/med… 1/
It is critical for physicians, scientists, & public health officials to realize they are not dealing with an orthodox scientific debate, but a well-funded sophisticated denialist campaign based on ideological & corporate interests -- @GYamey @gorskon

blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/09/13… 2/
Many of the lessons from climate denialism debates apply to covid as well 3/

Read 12 tweets
Rachel Thomas Profile picture
22 Oct
"It quickly became apparent that daily, close contact with the data was necessary to understand what states were reporting... At first, we just thought you could pull numbers off dashboards. As it turned out, we actually needed to do deep research.”

Valuable data work lesson 1/ The Data Landscape As March...
"Building automated tooling facilitated our manual data collection and was crucial to our ability to verify data. Ultimately, though, human scrutiny was needed to develop a deep understanding of the data." 2/

covidtracking.com/analysis-updat… What We Learned The COVID T...
"States frequently changed how, what, and where they reported data... Had we set up a fully automated data capture system in March 2020, it would have failed within days." 3/ Throughout the pandemic, CO...While the frustrations of s...
Read 5 tweets
Rachel Thomas Profile picture
19 Oct
"The framing of so-called US-China 'AI arms race' is increasingly used to justify expansion of large tech corporations’ AI capabilities, while acting as a defense against critical work calling for restraint, reflection, & regulation of AI tech & firms."

medium.com/@AINowInstitut…
It is critical to hold both Chinese and US actors accountable for the rights violations they perpetuate. Instead, debates around which state’s technologically-mediated harms are “worse” tend to erase efforts to resist technology-related rights violations within China. In this environment, it is critical to hold both Chinese and
"We often see arguments that portray any check on American tech companies as allowing or endorsing China to grow. In this framing, AI (and the Big Tech companies capable of producing it) is conflated with the national security interests of the US." In AI Now’s own work, we take clear positions on regulatio
Read 4 tweets
Rachel Thomas Profile picture
19 Oct
I just read that masks won't be required in Qld once we hit 80% of eligible vaccinated (64% total population).

I really wish we could tie our public health measures to keeping R < 1, instead of solely to vax rates.
UK has shown the disaster (currently >800 deaths per week) that can result from promising in advance that vaccination alone == return to normal

theguardian.com/world/2021/oct… When the Covid announcements were made, they’d say ‘Very
Also, let's not forget ventilation as a very powerful and under-utilized tool.

Setting incentives based on R<1 would be more motivating to use all our options to get there, not solely vaccines (which are great, but in many places not enough on their own)
Read 4 tweets

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