Josh

Prof of Anthropology & Social Informatics at Indiana University South Bend. PI of Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA).    #anthropology #archaeology #citizensci #civictech #culturalheritage #cyborganthropology #digiarch #digitalarchaeology #digitalhumanities #dh #digitalrights #FOSS #GIS #informatics #openScience #openData #openGov #STS

   Also #biketowork #canoeing #cooking #HoosierMast #running #SciFi  

All communications here are mine, do not reflect my organizations.

Digital Index of North American Archaeology: https://doi.org/10.6078/M7N877Q0
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=i6eLmE0AAAAJ
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-3023-2198
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joshua-Wells-2

Public Key

npub1dnzr035qeqwzxgweg9lcf4jsev4t92cenn2ctz6apxmyumwckmcssz690d

NIP-05 Address

josh_at_fediscience.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxe3phc6qvs8pry8v5zluy6egvk24j4vvee4v93dwsndjwdhvtdugprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntqy8hwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnddaksnkxu74

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

nostr.mom

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1dnzr035qeqwzxgweg9lcf4jsev4t92cenn2ctz6apxmyumwckmcssz690d

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Published at

2026-10-24T09:33:44Z

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0 Metadata

Event JSON

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Last Notes

2026-10-24 12:54:54 UTC

#caturday #halloween
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/495/985/069/205/021/original/75810d2b1fcf461b.jpeg

2026-10-06 19:22:37 UTC

RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/117395412349547126
Mainstream consciousness is growing! At this rate, by 2028 I hope all political leaders are fighting #enshittification
Jump to timestamp 20:20
With apologies to XKCD
#note1mrf…fkt9

2026-10-02 16:50:40 UTC

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I'm teaching about bots/sockpuppets and Internet disinformation strategies next week. Mind if I assign this link as an object lesson about the good work folks like you do?

2026-09-20 19:08:50 UTC

Does anybody have some good examples of outreach materials to teach regular folks about Mastodon at a public library?
A local library a couple of towns away invited me to moderate an evening discussion for their monthly community book club. It’s in a few weeks.
They’re reading *Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention* by Johann Hari.
It’s pretty good. A straightforward person-on-the-street explanation of surveillance capitalism and the abusive excesses of data-driven design. Nothing substantive in there that would surprise a Fediverse local, although there were for me a few new horrors of leaked corporate documents and interviews with Google/Meta/Etc insiders. The focus on attention takes primacy over the erosion of civil society but both subjects get some attention. The laissez-faire collusion of malignant nation-state actors with corporate interests (eg rampant Russian disinformation campaigns on every private platform) is weakly touched upon. Mastodon and Fediverse systems are not mentioned at all, which I feel is the most noteworthy absence.
Anyway, I thought a useful contribution I could bring to the discussion would be awareness of Mastodon and the Fediverse, and maybe even get some folks started.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Focus

2026-07-15 14:14:19 UTC

RE: https://fediscience.org/@josh/116924383788795803
In which I bring some books by @npub1fdr…lvhs to meet the foundational ideas of cyborg anthropologist Donna Haraway, and discuss what the heck is going on with artificial intelligence
#note1h60…htcj

2026-07-15 14:08:28 UTC

Wells and VanderVeen. 2026. "An Anthropological Understanding of Artificial Intelligence Transformations in Civic and Domestic Life, Labor, and Higher Education Through the Cybernetic Organism (Cyborg) Concept." Maguare 40(1). https://www.proquest.com/openview/639ef067e3f8c2598a88bcf491d198b1
"This essay uses cyborg anthropology to model interactions between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) and highlights potential strengths and weaknesses of AI regarding learning and innovation. Informed by Haraway’s emphases on inequalities, we recognize AI is neither a separate nor superior form of intelligence, but a tool that augments human agency. Current examples of AI implementation in the civic, domestic, labor, and educational domains expose the potential of AI for biases and oppression as a human construct that reflects and affects the sociocultural and ethical values of its creators and users. These examples inform practical and ethical considerations for the development and use of AI in the future, including structured human-AI collaboration, promotion of human-AI literacy, respect for human dignity and rights, and addressing inherent biases and inequalities."
#anthropology #sociology #evolution #artificialintelligence #cyborg #informatics #computerscience

2026-07-02 20:08:12 UTC

What are people's opinion on zirk.us? I recently saw some bad behavior going unmoderated there because it's apparently "abandoned". I follow a few accounts on zirk and have others who follow me from zirk. Any thoughts on whether I should warn anybody that I'm going to block their instance? Any way of getting the moderation info to the users there? Seems like a bad situation.
https://mastodon.iftas.org/@iftas/116716517232338595
#note1xxr…y0cc

2026-06-20 14:00:12 UTC

“‘The most important thing in school is that our children learn to read, write and do mathematics,’ Stoere said, according to Reuters. When you put it that way, it seems pretty reasonable!”
https://gizmodo.com/norway-says-ai-aint-for-education-2000774320

2026-05-31 13:50:20 UTC

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Anecdotally, I’ve denied a lot of follow requests from sockpuppet-looking accounts at one of the instances you flagged, almost to the extent of blocking the whole instance. Very good point about the Fediverse observatory I hadn’t thought about that.

2026-05-30 21:03:13 UTC

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Insidious in its subtlety. I suppose it would be nice for admins to be made aware so that they don’t have to pay to host malicious pre-slop on their domain. OTOH what’s stopping a bad actor from hosting their own instance and populating it with 50K accounts of pre-slop? Do the scraper bots preference instances which have dense network connections?

2026-05-29 16:55:17 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.iftas.org/@iftas/116657897201160159
It was only a matter of time. In a sense this is a direct expression of the strength and power of the Fediverse that malicious actors would seek to exploit it. It will be interesting to see how the community responds, I expect the aggregate will be more effective than silo/proprietary/enshittified systems with their lazy moderation
#note1278…f5v0

2026-05-13 16:35:10 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/116568221262086549
Okay we built the Torment Nexus but it's the fault of the people who warned us not to build the Torment Nexus.
#note1369…qsvx

2026-05-08 02:48:58 UTC

Canvas LMS is down globally due to a security breach. I received numerous emails from my uni IT today increasingly concerned ultimately warning everybody Don’t. Log. In. At. All. So the end of the semester is tomorrow at 23:59ET. Lots of finals haven’t been graded. Lots of final projects haven’t been submitted. Nobody has alternative modes for work and no backups exist. What is the most likely scenario here?
#academicchatter #canvas #canvaslms #highered

2026-05-01 15:45:24 UTC

Any other mastodonians at society for american #archaeology 2026? #SAA2026 #SAA2026SFO

2026-02-03 19:32:37 UTC

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I suspect they plan to make their profit on electronic subscriptions from academic libraries, the individual reader and especially the individual hardcopy reader be damned.

2026-01-22 18:08:45 UTC

TIL that there's an #openstreetmap feature that shows #fediverse instances.
Edit: Adding thanks to @npub1hg6…nwn8 for making the map
https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/fediverse-near-me_828094#3/46.86/-46.58
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/940/083/693/278/021/original/0c442d920283129b.png

2025-12-05 20:34:55 UTC

RE: https://newsie.social/@TheConversationUS/115668855094327280
No wonder starships need deflector shields.
#note199t…t5pn

2025-11-18 13:28:00 UTC

Today Mastodon fully transitions to a nonprofit organizational model. Simultaneously, Cloudflare goes down, breaking some monolithic social media platforms controlled by oligarchs. Fortunately, you can read about all of this in the Fediverse which just keeps working.

2025-05-14 16:34:07 UTC

I was today years old when I realized Sapiens magazine [@SAPIENS_org](https://mastodon.world/@SAPIENS_org ) is on the Fediverse. You should follow them for exciting #anthropology
https://mastodon.social/@SAPIENS_org@mastodon.world

2025-05-05 18:16:14 UTC

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Do curators or librarians have a cognate for “taphonomy “?
Also, dear lord.

2025-05-01 23:07:11 UTC

This is the way: “Mastodon has taken the strategic decision not to accept venture capital investments for growth, but rather restructure to a European non-profit organisation. This means that we’re reliant on your support to build a team to work full-time on new product features, maintain mastodon.social and mastodon.online, and represent Mastodon and the broader Fediverse to policy makers and to media organisations. The elements of our mission related to an open internet, privacy, and data ownership are more important than ever.”
#shutUpAndTakeMyMoney
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/05/evolving-the-team/

2025-04-05 14:20:01 UTC

The Guardian’s editorial about the American trade war feels like an essay by @npub1fdr…lvhs on the enshittification of the global economy
“Its message is brutally simple: you may sell your goods to Walmart shoppers, but only if you let US cloud services hoover up your data, US media flood your screens and US tech monopolies operate on their terms – not yours. TikTok is the test case for Trump’s platform nationalism: only US firms may mine data, reap profits and rule the digital empire.”
“Mr Trump demands tribute … control over digital infrastructure, forced access for hi-tech rentiers and suppression of rival technologies. The realpolitik is that you can sell to American consumers – but only if you buy into American rules, platforms and financial dependencies.”
“Mr Trump made clear, the revenues are earmarked not for public investment or industrial policy, but for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy. In this regime, tariffs redistribute upward: the poor pay more, so billionaires pay less.”
“If allies want to trade, they must also license Google Cloud services, buy Boeing jets and resist Chinese influence. Trade, technology and security are bundled into a single, rent-seeking foreign policy.”
“[Other global economies must reduce dependence on the US]– by deepening regional integration … investing in technological autonomy … In the long run, strategic cooperation – not bilateral concession – is the only durable answer to tariff imperialism.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/04/the-guardian-view-on-donald-trumps-tariff-ultimatum-tribute-for-access-to-americas-empire

2025-03-05 14:13:59 UTC

There will be a lot of necessary debate over Mozilla’s original mistake and this hopeful change. This is a good move, and as a long-term user of Firefox I find it very welcome.
Organizations are made of people and make mistakes.
Can you imagine Google or Apple so quickly changing their stances like this in response to user input? Or even at all?
Brave has many integrations with third party vendors. How quickly would they sever financial ties in a similar situation?
DuckDuckGo has a lot of gaps in their privacy models.
We need more open browsers developed by communities for the public good, not unlike Firefox.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/03/mozilla-rewrites-firefoxs-terms-of-use-after-user-backlash/
#firefox #browser

2025-01-16 03:42:40 UTC

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A tremendous read!

2024-12-05 19:22:03 UTC

This recent earthquake really exposes the awful reality of the Xitter login barrier if somebody wanted to see real time comms from the USGS about the quake. Before Musk these tweets were publicly visible in real time to all viewers with or without a login.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/113/601/816/936/592/845/original/0c9c0778d2b89846.png
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/113/601/827/206/553/966/original/97ea974a3886dc86.png

2024-12-04 15:35:25 UTC

This looks like a great public science and educational opportunity which is being shared in the bad silo. Broadcast it here to folks who can join and make a difference.
#climatechange #stem #scicomm #citizenscience
https://www.globe.gov/web/surface-temperature-field-campaign
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/113/595/258/600/949/761/original/620072dfbe59b538.jpeg

2024-12-03 12:35:30 UTC

Which science fiction world set in the period 2025-2029 will we get? Suggest other options in the comments.

2024-12-01 00:21:16 UTC

I’m deleting my Bluesky bridge tomorrow. My bridge is starting to be followed by spammy bots over there and because of Bluesky’s incomplete federation behaviors I have no control over that, no screening of follows, no blocks.
Brid.gy is a great service. It’s too bad that design excellence from the Fediverse can’t be matched with some basic moderation effort on Bluesky.
If the followers/following graphs of those bots are any indication of Bluesky’s “growth” they have a huge problem growing.

2024-11-30 21:08:27 UTC

“Are you being scammed?” sign on the side of Bitcoin ATM is peak cognitive dissonance
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/113/573/904/795/669/402/original/e669613102a3b6b0.jpeg
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/113/573/915/995/175/705/original/4fdc34090044f235.jpeg
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/113/573/917/031/767/387/original/7b0de0b5d25c9dbd.jpeg

2024-11-22 15:53:51 UTC

I see a lot of university types here, professors, researchers, librarians, graduate students, various offices …
Where are the undergraduates? Are any here?
I’d enjoy hearing from undergrads why you choose the Fediverse. Thinking about how I promote this place to my students. Replies and boosts welcome.
#HigherEducation #highered #campus #college #collegelife #university #universitylife #undergrad #undergraduate

2024-10-16 16:36:36 UTC

Federal Trade Commission announces new click-to-cancel rule for consumers to get rid of subscriptions
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/10/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-click-cancel-rule-making-it-easier-consumers-end-recurring

2024-10-01 00:55:43 UTC

Hey Fediverse, I'm trying to develop an exercise for students to learn about literary figures on the network by investigating the accounts of science fiction authors. Can you help me out with suggestions of authors who are active here?
I have Bear, Doctorow, Gaiman, Gibson, Scalzi, Sterling, Tchaicovsky
#scifi #highered

2024-09-26 16:02:38 UTC

Hey everybody the journal *Internet Archaeology* @npub1f3t…7mv4 is posting on the Fediverse at https://fediscience.org/@InternetArchaeology ... give them some follows a day early from #FollowFriday #Archaeology #Anthropology #Archaeometry #DigiArch #DigitalArchaeology