Some good news (if you like me)

Excited to share that we are now inviting proposals for our upcoming Critical AI Studies? conference at @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social on Oct. 9&10, 2026. Please see the full CfP here: huml.ucsb.edu/conference. Submissions are due July 31, 2026. For questions DM me or @owenleonard.bsky.social.

This neat site assembles all kinds of ancient OSs (more like window managers) which reminded me of the hyper-obscure one that I learned Desktop computing on, called GeoWorks Ensemble. It pretends to be Windows but if you poke anything it crumbles back into DOS. Glorious. www.typewritten.org/Media/

Getting looped into convos about this book in its finishing stages expanded the scope of theory around neural networks in LLMs & Media — it opened up so many productive ways of thinking for me. Essential reading for anyone who’s been looking for a fresh theorization of critical AI.

Bound to be one of the most important critical and theoretical books on the meaning of neural networks (and not just for vision). Congratulations to Leonardo Impett and Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org! Freshly published from meson press and University of Minnesota Press. @uminnpress.bsky.social

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WORKERS DAY

Vector Media is out today!

Perhaps one day we can even get computers to output numbers rather than long-winded prose!!! github.com/JuliusBrusse...

Excuse me there is an OS in my PDF... github.com/ading2210/li...

It's Easter so I thought it would be appropriate to be back from the dead to announce that this is coming out at the end of this month: www.upress.umn.edu/978151792167...

CHAT TOKEN VECTOR Questioning Models of Language and Neo-Structuralism in AI 11-13 June 2025, Venice Confirmed speakers: Lydia Liu, Hannes Bajohr, Gianni Gastaldi, Leonardo Impett, Fabian Offert a.o. Call for Papers: deadline April 1 unive.it/chat-token-vector

Today at Berkeley if you're around! events.berkeley.edu/German/event...

BlueSky's main fault is that many people on it seem to be constantly talking about politics but in a way that is often totally anti-political

Nothing to see here, just Nature advocating LLM peer review. “Feed your dictated notes into an offline large language model (LLM) to clarify and organize your feedback. A simple prompt such as “Write a critical reviewer letter based on the following notes. Maintain a professional tone throughout”

On Day 1 a keynote panel at the NCM on infrastructures of noise with Dang Nguyen (RMIT) @digitaldang.bsky.social, Ranjodh Dhaliwal (University of Basel) @ranjodhdhaliwal.com, Kate Mannell (Deakin) @katemannell.bsky.social and Fabian Offert (UC Santa Barbara) @zentralwerkstatt.org 2/

The AusSTS 2025 cfp is closing soon - please get your ‘Signals and Noises’ in by Friday 14 March! It’s shaping up to be an amazing few days in Narrm across the National Communication Museum and Deakin Downtown, and we'll be welcoming some amazing keynote speakers and contributors, including... 1/

Nobody knows this but if you press one of these for more than 30 seconds a genie will appear and fail to interpret a topic model for you!

In spite of it all the research group I'm leading at Cornell is hiring a postdoc! We're looking for someone w a lit/cultural studies + DH background, esp those who employ data-driven or computational methods. 2-yr position, 1/1 teaching load. Apps due 3/21 academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/29746

Happy to to announce that @mellonfoundation has awarded our Center for Humanities Communication (CHC) a $150,000 grant (via @aacu.org, which supports CHC in the role of our fiscal sponsor). Our news release: center-humanities-communication.org/chc-blog/new...

UC Santa Barbara’s new Center for the Humanities & Machine Learning (huml.ucsb.edu) launched today with a talk by Hannes Bajohr (huml.ucsb.edu/events). L to R in photo: Fabian Offert (‪@zentralwerkstatt.org), Hannes Bajohr (@hannesbajohr.de), Rita Raley, Owen Leonard (@owenleonard.bsky.social).

Today, Mosher Alumni House @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social, 3pm – stop by if you can!

Ah yes, rents rise, an entirely natural phenomenon, completely independent of human agency. www.latimes.com/california/s...

If you're in the SBA area, join @ritaraley.bsky.social and myself this Friday, 3-5 for the opening of our newly established Center for the Humanities and Machine Learning, feat. a keynote by @hannesbajohr.de! huml.ucsb.edu

The LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund is now taking applications. This fund aims to support artists and arts workers who were impacted by the devastating Los Angeles fires. Check eligibility requirements and apply now through February 18 at 5 pm PST at cciarts.org.

Reposting this shit like there's no tomorrow to signal that you disapprove in front of an audience which exclusively also disapproves really screams I have no actual stakes in this.

Way too niche German post but I'm in Bielefeld for a thing and it's snowing and the vibe is so unbelievably this youtu.be/OQERynOwliI?...

Absolutely brilliant bobatealee.itch.io/doom-the-gal...

10 days left for submission!

Part of a 🔥 special issue on (UN)STABLE DIFFUSIONS eds. Fenwick McKelvey, @jredden.bsky.social, Jonothan Roberge, and @lukestark.bsky.social w articles by @sunhahong.bsky.social @melhogan.bsky.social @abpowell.bsky.social @katemiltner.bsky.social & more Check it out👇 publicera.kb.se/jdsr/issue/v...

Major academic conferences not burying conference dates and submission deadlines three menu levels deep challenge 2025

As part of a fabulous special issue of @jdsr.bsky.social, the full version of @thaophan.bsky.social's and my paper "A sign that spells: Machinic concepts and the racial politics of generative AI" is finally out. Check it out below: publicera.kb.se/jdsr/issue/v.... In the paper 1/3

Since the 2024 Nobel Prize was given to AlphaFold we have added some major updates to our paper on protein folding. Check out the new version below where we trace the language paradigm in biology and argue that transformers carve out unique epistemological territory. arxiv.org/abs/2405.09788

I'll make anything that needs its own little gadget pan but this time it was definitely worth it.

Oh Stanford, never change

I read this this morning and am now icing down the finger I use to make highlights. An absolutely essential intervention from @zentralwerkstatt.org and @ranjodhdhaliwal.com.

Should brain-only people from the past have rights? Ethical concerns raised about making them label images 24/7 to feed GPT-15. More at nine. www.theguardian.com/science/2024...

[email protected] and I co-wrote this piece on why you are (probably) doing AI criticism wrong as a humanist and why we, in Critical AI Studies, need to do better methodologically than 'So I asked ChatGPT a question and now I have thoughts...' Now available on arXiv at doi.org/10.48550/arX...

What is the method of critical AI studies, if there is one? @ranjodhdhaliwal.com and I have some thoughts on this that you can now read here: arxiv.org/abs/2411.18833.

Me relating to my students

I made a starter pack for grad students in DH, to build visibility for a rising group of scholars. If you want to be added (or know someone who should be), just comment! go.bsky.app/8Bju8SY

People aren't reading their Kittler again www.npr.org/2024/11/28/n...

How the majority take on this is "lol peasants stupid" and not "people are able to intuitively grasp the ways in which capitalism harms them concretely without being able to attribute them correctly to the completely irrational mechanism that cause them" is beyond me.

Another publication long in the making finally out there! IMGS.AI was the first search engine for cultural heritage that used CLIP back when we released it in 2021, and it'll get a big update this year. You can read about our motivation for building it below, or check it out directly at imgs.ai.

It's been a while but finally this fantastic book is out in the world, and it's open access: unlearn.gestaltung.ai. If you like, check out my slightly provocative contribution "Five Theses on the End of AI Art" here: unlearn.gestaltung.ai/article/pj83...

For the new people it's pronounced like "brewski"

That should do it

If simple A/B testing with random participants recruited from the Internet is "all we need" to operationalize entire domains, AI will soon have solved Physics because Stacy from Ohio who is just trying to make ends meet will find the AI's field equations more physic-y. www.nature.com/articles/s41...