Per Axbom
LightNews LightNews
banner
axbom.com
Per Axbom
@axbom.com
1.6K followers 710 following 880 posts
Swedish communication theorist born in Liberia • Writing about the human impact of tech and teaching digital ethics

Mechanical heart valve ❤️ • He/him

My Next Heartbeat – Critical thinking in times of artificial urgency: https://heartbeat.email
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
axbom.com
Per Axbom @axbom.com · Aug 5
"We are asking permission because of GDPR."

No, you're asking permission because it's the decent, respectable thing to do.

Laws came into being because too many were busy being assholes.

If you say you're doing it because of GDPR you're saying you didn't really want to do the decent thing.
axbom.com
A poptastic parrot.
democratcats.bsky.social Democrat Cats @democratcats.bsky.social · 4d
Alexa, play music!
November 29, 2025 at 8:21 AM
Reposted by Per Axbom
iwriteok.bsky.social
OpenAI says they aren't liable for the suicide of a user their chat bot urged to kill himself because suicide is a violation of the TOS
gerritd.bsky.social Gerrit De Vynck @gerritd.bsky.social · 3d
Additionally, OpenAI argues its not liable because Raine, by using ChatGPT for self-harm, broke its terms of service
November 26, 2025 at 4:43 AM
axbom.com
I’ve found myself reacting and doing a double-take on some replies to messages that I get from both friends and colleagues. Are they using ”AI” to reply to me (or in group chats)?

1/3
November 28, 2025 at 6:49 AM
axbom.com
AI and human rights. Video, slides and transcript from my January 2022 talk.

axbom.com/aihr/

#HumanRights
AI and Human Rights
Content for Raoul Wallenberg Talk on AI and Human Rights. Full transcript, slidedeck and references.
axbom.com
November 28, 2025 at 6:04 AM
Reposted by Per Axbom
miamidsa.org
Good morning to Brazilian reporter Manuela Borges, who’s been waiting eleven years for this petty moment. ❤️ 🇧🇷
November 26, 2025 at 1:04 PM
Reposted by Per Axbom
abeba.bsky.social
we've written about this in the past

firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...
November 25, 2025 at 10:49 PM
Reposted by Per Axbom
lawyeroyer.com
The latest in pardon corruption: Joseph Schwartz, a convicted fraudster, paid two other convicted fraudsters nearly $1M to get him a pardon. And it worked 🤯 youtube.com/shorts/_1n_C...
Grifters helping grifters: the pardon of Joseph Schwartz
YouTube video by Lawyer Oyer
youtube.com
November 25, 2025 at 3:23 AM
Reposted by Per Axbom
rutgerbregman.com
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
November 25, 2025 at 9:26 AM
axbom.com
Om några timmar föreläser jag på Internetdagarna om Digital omtanke. Jag har lagt ut bilderna på bloggen för allmän beskådan 😁

axbom.se/ind25/

#ind25 #ind2025 #internetdagarna
Digital omtanke på Internetdagarna 2025
Bilder, referenser och länkar från Per Axbom.
axbom.se
November 25, 2025 at 5:17 AM
Reposted by Per Axbom
tante.cc
I love the abstraction of the "AI" bubble popping. But the very probable effects haunt me.

Desire to Pop
November 24, 2025 at 10:20 AM
Reposted by Per Axbom
janmaarten.com
Just going to drop this link for no particular reason, other than the Safety team here is staffed by utter clowns

www.indiegogo.com/en/projects/...
November 13, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Reposted by Per Axbom
olivia.science
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...
Although the twentieth century finds male practitioners firmly in control of formal Western medicine, women doctors and healers still have important inventions and innovations to their credit. For example, although three men received the Nobel Prize for penicillin, women participated significantly in the team effort that brought the drug to medical usefulness. Women had discovered the mold’s usefulness centuries or perhaps millennia earlier (Halsbury 1971, p. 19; Raper 1952, p. 1), and one nineteenth-century Wisconsin woman, Elizabeth Stone, an early antibi otic therapist, specialized in treating lumberjacks’ wounds with poultices of moldy bread in warm milk or water: she never lost an injury patient (Stellman 1977, p. 87). In the twentieth-century development of the drug, it was a woman bacteriologist, Dr. Elizabeth McCoy of the University of Wisconsin, who created the ultraviolet-mutant strain of Penicillium used for all further production, since it yielded nine hundred times as much penicillin as Fleming’s strain (Bickel 1972, p. 185; O’Neill 1979, p. 219).4 And as Howard Florey, leader of the British penicillin team, was quick to point out, it was Dr. Ethel Florey’s precise clinical trials that transformed penicillin from a crude some time miracle worker into a reliable drug. It was also a woman, Nobel laureate and X-ray crystallographer Dr. Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, who finally deter mined the precise structure of the elusive penicillin molecule (Bickel 1972, p. 216; Opfell 1978, pp. 211, 219). Women were also involved in developing the sulfa drugs that preceded penicillin. For instance, it was a married pair of chemists, Prof. and Mme. Tréfouėl, and their colleagues at the Pasteur Institute in Paris who split red azo dye to create sulfanilamide (Bickel 1972, p. 50). At least two women have invented new antibiotics for which they receive sole credit. Dr. Odette Shotwell of Denver, Colorado, came up with two new antibiotics—duramycin and azacolutin—during her fi…
November 15, 2025 at 9:08 AM
axbom.com
In one of my first talks about human rights and AI (2022) I used the widespread printing press reference to emphasise that in many cases it supported colonialism.

axbom.com/aihr/

This text really breaks down common printing press misrepresentation. Love it!
November 15, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Per Axbom
sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
What, exactly, does this string of words mean? Why does everyone who stands to profit from selling "AI" love to repeat it? And what's the value of slogans that masquerade as history?

sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...
"The Printing Press Democratized Knowledge": When Slogans Masquerade as History — Sonja Drimmer
The phrase is said so frequently it seems, like the mechanism it celebrates, to mechanically replicate itself.  It's become a favorite catchphrase among tech boosters of any sort (see my post on...
sonjadrimmer.com
September 10, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by Per Axbom
abdihassan.bsky.social
Varenda remissinstans avstyrker förslaget med stöd i barnkonventionen och barnens bästa. Institutet för mänskliga rättigheter skriver att det innebär ett brott mot Sveriges internationella åtaganden.

Vad gör vi när det ändå passeras?

Vad är nästa steg? Varför fortsätter vi på samma sätt?
November 15, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Reposted by Per Axbom
edent.tel
Would you like a South Up, Aotearoa Centred world map?
Of course you would!
www.redbubble.com/people/teren...

The perfect Christmas gift for all your mapping friends.

#OrganizationOfCartographersForSocialEquality
A large map hanging on the wall. It is an inverted equal earth projection.
November 15, 2025 at 12:19 PM
axbom.com
In case you were, like me, wondering why Sarah Kendzior suddenly disappeared from Bluesky.
Sarah Kendzior on Substack: "I was suspended from BlueSky for defending the honor of Johnny Cash. I wish I were joking. In early October, I referenced the “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die” lyric of “Folsom Prison Blues” in response to a terrible Wall Street Journal article saying that Johnny Cash was uncool. I quote-tweeted the article and everyone understood the reference. There was no outcry. I stand by my assessment that Johnny Cash is cool. I do not like being the subject of so much attention, especially when I cannot see the discussion. But the BlueSky admins are now claiming that I wrote a post saying, out of nowhere, “I want to shoot the author of this article just to watch him die”. They are not posting a screenshot of the actual tweet, which shows that I am quote-tweeting an article about Johnny Cash, and that my post is obviously not a threat but a play on “Folsom Prison Blues.” BlueSky is lying and saying I posted this line on November 10. I did not. I posted it in early October, when the WSJ article came out. You can see that they are lying about the date from this page showing my last BlueSky tweets: I was not given any explanation for my suspension the first two times I inquired. Later I was told it was for the “Folsom Prison Blues” reference, and I asked for clarification but did not receive it. I thought it might be a prank until a reporter reached out this morning and confirmed it. BlueSky’s behavior is bizarre and unwarranted. I have lost access to friends and all my posts and photos. I am incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support here on Substack and also on BlueSky — though I cannot see it, because I am suspended. To quote another Johnny Cash song: "I ain’t never done nothin' to nobody/ I ain’t never got nothin’ from nobody, no time/ And until I get somethin' from somebody, sometime, I don't intend to do nothin' for nobody, no time." As for BlueSky…" Image: photo of Johnny Cash flipping the bird.
November 13, 2025 at 3:19 PM
axbom.com
ALL my websites were down for just over an hour this morning. Sorry about that if you were looking for info on any of them.

I run about 12 websites off my Cloudron server and my redundancy could be better. Something to invest in in the new year.

Seems I'm having Nginx issues...
November 10, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Reposted by Per Axbom
kevmarmol.bsky.social
The amount of time I end up showing @axbom.com inclusive panda model to people that come up with these ideas is just tiring

axbom.com/panda/
Introducing the Inclusive Panda
As part of my work on practical methods for integrating ethics thinking into your design process I am producing a set of templates and worksheets. My intent is to encourage ethical, sustainable and in...
axbom.com
October 19, 2025 at 10:36 PM
axbom.com
Fint porträtt av Dan Waern. amatöridrottare med flera världsrekord, skogsbonde i Bollebygd, som sålde sin bragdmedalj för att kunna åka på semester med sin fru till Spanien. Avstängd på livstid för att ha pratat ärligt om att han fick betalt för sitt idrotts-deltagande.
”Mondo” häpnar över Waerns öde: Hade dött
Han var superstjärna i Sverige på 50-talet – men blev avstängd på livstid. ”Brottet” var att Dan Waern hade tjänat pengar på sin löpning. ”Det är ofattbart”, säger nutidens främsta friidrottare Armand...
www.svd.se
November 8, 2025 at 8:38 AM
axbom.com
Just wanted to give a shoutout to @rogueamoeba.com

They've consistently supplied me with high-quality purposeful software for more than a decade. And always fun to use.

I'm thoroughly impressed, and thankful.

rogueamoeba.com
Rogue Amoeba - Quality Audio Software for MacOS
Fantastic audio products for consumers and professionals alike
rogueamoeba.com
November 6, 2025 at 5:28 PM
axbom.com
Klokt från Katrine Kielos om hur människor och maskiner är bra på olika saker.

www.svd.se/a/jQ87JL/sta...
Konstigt att städare tjänar 78 000? | Katrine Kielos
KRÖNIKA. Är städare en framtidsbransch? När allt fler jobb tas över av AI eller robotar, kan fejandet vara en av få saker som det verkligen går att få betalt för.
www.svd.se
November 2, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Reposted by Per Axbom
andrewqmr.bsky.social
I've been getting back into the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series after many years, and the most relatable part is how everyday objects like doors and elevators have been imbued with artificial intelligence and it just makes them obnoxious and frustrating to use and everyone hates it.
November 1, 2025 at 8:55 PM
Reposted by Per Axbom
surfbruden.bsky.social
Läs hela

”Barn får inte rösta, de har knappt några rättigheter, men de ska bära hela ansvaret för ett samhälle som faller isär.”

www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/a/Eyd...
När 13-åringar slängs i fängelse har vi gett upp
www.aftonbladet.se
November 2, 2025 at 7:08 AM
Reposted by Per Axbom
dabeard.bsky.social
Ahead of the 1st shutdown of US food aid to hungry Americans in 60 years, some of the 200,000 Little Free Library locations are converting into food pantries. Thanks @littlefreelibrary.bsky.social
October 30, 2025 at 8:31 PM