💥 New piece in Big Data & Society. Towards a new paradigm of “datafied development”: Epistemic, infrastructural, economic, and geopolitical domains. By Mohammad Amir Anwar, Nanna Thylstrup, Julian Posada and I journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Ob ihr es «bürgerlicher Autoritarismus» oder «radikalisierter Konservatismus» oder «faschistische Politik» nennt, ist mir eigentlich egal, die Frage ist doch, was man dagegen tun kann www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

This Anthropic/White House spat is funny. Anthropic spent months declaring that its model is so powerful at finding bugs it threatens the world's digital infrastructure. The WH says OK it's banned then Now Anthropic and its allies have to say actually you know it isn't "uniquely good" at that stuff

✨ New in Big Data & Society ✨ “Agents of erasure: Following the deletion of public sector data through its value chain” by @frederikschade.bsky.social. 🔓: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #personaldata #deletion #valuechain #publicadministration

New from 404 Media: we've seen internal documents that show Microsoft is explicitly planning to "make people addicted" to its new AI assistant 'Scout' which the company just announced. It is a clear goal according to the documents, with addiction being the first phase www.404media.co/microsoft-wa...

If you 👍 the Pope's recent Encyclical, you'll 😍 our new paper, shifting the conversation about "ethics" to one about political economy. Catch it here in pre-print before its release next month! #academicsky

Rich Sutton warned that computational scale ultimately outperforms human expertise. Does his "bitter lesson" hold true when reproducing our own custom methods with LLMs? We find: the bitter lesson is sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter, and sometimes inapplicable. deep-culture.org/the-occasion...

Gute beschreibung des verhältnis von AfD und Restgesellschaft

🚨 New piece “Governing by dismantling: tech oligarchy and the stifling of public data infrastructure“ Together with Bokar N’Diaye, @ktmac.bsky.social, @nannathylstrup.bsky.social, and @dmuravyov.bsky.social, we trace how tech oligarchs access, merge, and dismantle public data infrastructures. 👇

The backlash to revelations of sexual torture of Palestinian prisoners aims to raise the cost of speaking out | Yuli Novak

The world’s "safest" AI provider now runs on the world’s dirtiest data centre: Musk’s Colossus. Powered by 35 methane generators, most unauthorised. A massive slap in the face to locals - led by @keshaunpearson.bsky.social & co - and to all those who thought Claude was the responsible choice 🙄🤢

Mich stört's eigentlich nicht, wenn die Faschisierungsthese als «linksradikal» bezeichnet wird, aber doch, wenn man glaubt, sie dadurch schon entkräftet zu haben. Linksradikale haben aus guten Gründen ein geschärftes Sensorium für Faschisierungsprozesse, gehören sie doch zu ihren ersten Opfern 1/

Publication alert! New article out in Big Data & Society on digital phantoms and synthetic data in medical physics. We explore the making of digital reference objects for human bodies and how they are used in construction of ground truths, as known, & even perfect truths. doi.org/10.1177/2053...

«Dass er zur Erstellung der Bilder auch noch Elon Musks energiefressenden und grundwassersaugenden Bildgenerator ‹Grok› nutzt, stört ihn nicht. Das aber offenbart … ein mangelndes Bewusstsein für die ideologische Ausrichtung solcher KI-generierter Bilder mit ihrem Hang zur Retro-Nostalgie …» 🎁

What’s the difference between latent space, vector space, feature space, and embedding space? @louravn.bsky.social spelled it out for you in this short blog post deep-culture.org/whats-the-di...

Out in July! "School of the South: The Colonial Roots of French Theory". More details & pre-orders here: www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b... @politybooks.bsky.social

🚨 CfP: SI on "Boundaries, boundary concepts, and datafication" in Digital Culture & Society 🚨 ℹ️ Together with Yana Boeva (@dropsmops.bsky.social) and Sarah R. Davies, we invite proposals to our SI. See here for more details: www.sowi.uni-stuttgart.de/abteilungen/... #boundaryconcepts #STS

Our “Temporalities of AI” symposium starts tomorrow in Rome, and will be free to stream over Zoom on Friday, Monday, and Tuesday. Here’s more info & the schedule! www.biblhertz.it/events/45218...

As OpenAI makes the same sort of restricted release for 5.5, I think it’s important to remember that what David is saying here about evading distillation could be the really significant shift — even if it’s also true that these systems find a lot of vulnerabilities in code.

«Beide Spitzenkandidaten, Cem Özdemir von den Grünen und Manuel Hagel von der CDU, wollen Palantir-artige Datenanalysen. Nur will Özdemir aufgrund ethischer Bedenken nicht die Original-Software aus den USA nutzen, sondern lieber mit Partnern aus Europa eine Alternative entwickeln.»

Just Published: 'The Infrastructural Unconscious: Do Computers Dream of Carbo-Silico Pipelines?' in "Reckoning with Everything: The Becoming-Environmental of Computing" edited by Bernhard Siegert and Benedikt Merkle, and published by @mesonpress.bsky.social .

Agreed. substack.com/@rileysociol...

✨ We’re excited to share the first articles from AI & ARCHIVES — a special issue of the new journal Cambridge Forum on AI: Culture and Society (Cambridge University Press). www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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✨Welcoming Fabian Offer for the next #CriticalAI Seminar (online) on his upcoming book "Vector Media" on January 13, 2026 5:30-7 PM (Amsterdam)✨ The talk presents a new history and theory of the vector space in contemporary #AI systems 🗓️ Register here: www.create.humanities.uva.nl/events/2-cri...

CfP ✨Consider submitting to this fantastic panel on Deep Learning and Culture at the STS NL Conference ✨ Organised by @louravn.bsky.social @annaschjoett.bsky.social Dasha Simons, Paula Helm and Tobias Blanke (@d-eepculture.bsky.social)

❗ We are urgently looking for a new Lecturer in Cultural Data & AI at the University of Amsterdam: werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies... The deadline for applying is very soon: Jan 4th. You’ll work with @tpoell.bsky.social, @riederb.bsky.social, @dluitse.bsky.social, @louravn.bsky.social, me, & more

I have a new paper out in @jhokjournal.bsky.social - "Loss: A notion of error in machine learning." It attempts to draw some wider historical comparisons than are perhaps usual. I would love to know what you think. journalhistoryknowledge.org/article/view...

🚨 Call for presentations: “Deep Learning and Culture” panel 🔍 We're organizing a panel on “Deep Learning and Culture” at the STS NL Conference (Uni of Twente, 17-19 April 2026). 📮 Please submit your abstract here: www.utwente.nl/en/bms/sts-n.... Deadline: 07 Jan. 2026. See you there :)

We are excited to report that we have started developing our first *Little Tools of Difference*. While deep learning has been driven by a culture of uniformity, we asked: What if we used these same state-of-the-art architectures to do the opposite? More prototypes are coming soon, so stay tuned!

What happens when synthetic data are used in development contexts? My new article examines this question, arguing that critical research on synthetic data should consider data justice issues. Accordingly, the paper outlines avenues for #syntheticdatajustice. 🔗: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Want to know more about #syntheticdata #assetization, #blockchain and #cloudinfrastructures in #finance? In this paper for @financeandspace.bsky.social , I talk about those topics, plus how synthetic data might be reworking financial #subjectivities! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🚨 CfP: Boundaries & boundary concepts in/as datafication 🚨 🔍 Together with the amazing @dropsmops.bsky.social and Sarah Davies, I'm organizing a workshop on boundaries & boundary concepts in datafication. Please see our flyer below for more details. 📅 19-20 Feb. 2026, University of Amsterdam.

Keywords are not neutral. With Tobias Blanke, we investigate the power of keywords as interpretive tools in our work "Keywords in Digital Humanities: A critical assessment of computational techniques for mapping security and freedom in historical debates". You can read the article now on DHQ!

Super fun to contribute to this brief interview with Terminally Online, a student-led organization on New Media at the University of Amsterdam. We spoke about my wonderful team‘s research (@d-eepculture.bsky.social), who inspires me, and some of my own work. 🔗: www.linkedin.com/pulse/interv...

I am very excited and honoured to be the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant, starting January 2026 🔆 @erc.europa.eu. The five-year project will explore the broader social, political, and ethical implications of training algorithmic models on synthetic data. www.york.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

this is the industry governments want to hand over education and other societal infrastructure www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

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“My body is breaking down. My mother is collapsing from exhaustion. My cousin cheats death every day for a morsel of aid. Gaza's children are dying in front of our eyes, and we are powerless to help them.” www.972mag.com/hunger-gaza-...

Weil gerade wieder davon die Rede ist, dass «Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion» ja gar keine «echte» Diversität schaffe: So schaut der faschistische Kampf gegen DEI in den USA aus. Es beginnt mit Zensur und endet in der Verfolgung von Marginalisierten bsky.app/profile/bild...

Das Fahrlässige an Kaubes Text ist, wie er der eigenen Frage ausweicht: «Hat Thiel einen Masterplan?», fragt er zu Beginn – um mit der These zu schliessen, die «politischen Thesen und theologischen Spekulationen» Thiels seien «nur private Marotten». Doch diese «Marotten» haben politische Effekte 1/

🎉 A lovely wedding present from Big Data & Society! I bring together an ethnographic study of AI practitioners with Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity, exploring how ambiguity shapes AI practice and ethics journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Very excited to share this. It was an absolute joy to work with @louravn.bsky.social @velocitygravity.bsky.social and my good buddy @matthewarcher.bsky.social

🌟 New commentary “Unraveling the Regimes of Synthetic Data Metrics“ in Digital Society: link.springer.com/article/10.1... 📚 In it, @velocitygravity.bsky.social , @matthewarcher.bsky.social, @danishanley.bsky.social, and I argue that synth data metrics are linked to the politics of synth data. 🧵…

Das ist das neue Normal. 20 Prozent Rechtsextreme im Saal, und die Person of Colour mit dem Palästina-Pulli aus dem Parlament verbannen.

headed to #RESAW25 this week ✈️ Super excited abt the program and all the cool research ! catch me in a double feature on Thurs, 7C: Data Loss panel (on GITHUB ARCTIC VAULT) also w @louravn.bsky.social @nannathylstrup.bsky.social and @esmeec.bsky.social and 8C on ROBOTS.TXT with @emae.bsky.social 🤖

they gave a nobel prize to an economist who said vineyards and apple orchards in norway will offset the impacts of this.

🎆 Are you interested in the role of mythmaking and metaphors in contemporary and historical research and deployment of AI? Join us on 6th June, 1-2.30pm, for exciting talks by Dr Audrey Borowski and @velocitygravity.bsky.social, followed by a Q&A 🖊️ sign up: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/digital-me...

Interoperability capitalism you say? 👀

Platforms, silos, interoperability - what's the deal with these database buzzwords? Check out this🔥new paper by @matthewarcher.bsky.social @louravn.bsky.social and @nannathylstrup.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....