On subjective data, why datasets should expire, & data sabotage.

This paper looks at the case of transgender Britons who tried to correct the gender listed on their government-issued ID cards, but ran up against the British government's increasingly computerized methods for tracking, identifying, and defining citizens. These newly computerizing systems show some of the earliest examples of transphobic algorithmic bias: explicit attempts to program trans people out of the system can be seen in the programming of the early Ministry of Pensions computer system designed to apportion benefits to all tax paying British citizens. Transgender citizens pushed back against these developments, attempting to hack the bureaucratic avenues and categories available to them, laying the groundwork for a coalescing political movement. This paper argues that uncovering the deep prehistory of algorithmic bias and investigating instances of resistance within this history is essential to understanding current debates about algorithmic bias, and how computerized systems have long functioned to create and enforce norms and hierarchies.

On dark-skinned = villainy in TTRPGs.

Black superheroes are more prevalent on TV than ever before. In recognition of Black History Month, TV Guide is celebrating the black superheroes who broke ground, along with those making history today.

Rutgers researchers say gender bias and stereotypes corresponding to certain occupations are prevalent on digital and social media platforms.

The video was created to show off the University of Wisconsin. Instead, it set off a furor, and a reckoning over what it means to be a black student on campus.

A two-minute video made by students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison was meant to promote school spirit and bring the campus together during ...

OK for grad assignment in 500.

For a brief moment, the civil rights movement and the space race came together.

“We existed in a sea of sexism.”

A leading librarian who championed high tech, she dueled with preservationists like Nicholson Baker over how best to protect the written word for posterity.

Robert Caro is by now the most celebrated biographer alive, having won two Pulitzers for biography, two National Book Awards, three National Book Critics Circle awards, and a host of other prizes. …

The children’s television show entranced preschoolers—and helped teach impressionable black kids.

Opinion | Clarice Phelps may have been the first African-American woman to help discover a chemical element. For Wikipedia, that wasn't enough.

Computer programming once had much better gender balance than it does today. What went wrong?

With class done for the day, I was sitting off campus in the shade rereading my first two issues of

In March 2017, an Overwatch fan wrote to Jeff Kaplan about the lack of black female characters in the game. To her surprise, he wrote back a few months later, saying he hoped that one day diversity would be the norm and promising that there were multiple black characters in the works.