I curated some readings for class on "data tensions" and the list felt worth sharing. Come on a tour of datasets, books, the web, and AI with me... We'll start with this piece on the Google Books project: the hopes, dreams, disasters, and aftermath of building a public library on the internet. 1/n

For people wanting a distraction from the end of the world who are into critical making/literary DH/info viz/Dickinson, I'm giving a talk on 7 Oct (12pm EST/5pm GMT) at @scholarslab.bsky.social on plotspaces, a thing I invented to think about spatial imaginaries cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/15242444

Anouk Lang's talk on literary+critical making scholarship will also explore how making-as-research opens questions about bodies, labor, & accessibility; intellectual process vs product. Virtual event, open to all! cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/15242444

Wow, what a resource for AI literacy! Thank you @miriamposner.com! (and HT @suzannerblack.bsky.social)

Hey, the dataset is out now. A million books: huggingface.co/datasets/ins... H/t @naitian.org for the link

Can confirm @anasalter.bsky.social's game is hilarious ("Decolonize the mainframe"). Plus the retro styling of the graphics is *chef's kiss*. We were treated to a demo of distant coding too in which, in about 3 and a half minutes, they built the basics of an escape room text adventure game #ACH2025

This zine, I mean DSC book, has everything: illuminated medieval manuscripts, "some pretty cool art books about surveillance, censorship, and oppression" including this banger from Anne Covell annecovell.com/artist-books..., kid-kits as print culture ... [contd]

Pssst! Just in time for @readywriting.bsky.social zine-making session on Friday at #ACH2025, we'll have a new #DataSittersClub for you all... including an interview with @b0rk.jvns.ca & @omarieclaire.bsky.social of Wizard Zines! 😍

Open Access now available for "Digital Futures of Graduate Study in the Humanities" ed. @gabrielh.bsky.social , Anouk Lang, & Simon Appleford proud to have a chapter in this fine volume! dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/digital...

Something I don't understand is: why can't LLMs write novel-length fiction yet? They've got the context length for it. And new models seem capable of the multi-hop reasoning required for plot. So why hasn't anyone demoed a model that can write long interesting stories? I do have a theory ... +

Deleted old post that had the wrong time! If you're local please join us for the roundtable March 18th at 12:00. We will have copies of the collection to give out to graduate students. cal.lib.virginia.edu/calendar/eve...

Happy we have a Data-Sitters Club essay in this @jepub.bsky.social special issue rethinking academic community, care, & collectivity, edited by @katinalynn.bsky.social. Also 🔥: @hkpmcgregor.bsky.social & co-authors on big gay shit disturbing & breaking project management & collaboration conventions

Hannah McGregor’s ‘No One Is In Trouble: Queer Feminist Collaborations in the Amplify Podcast Network, The SpokenWeb Podcast, and Witch, Please Productions” is a conversation with key collaborators on creating radical, expansive, care-centred collaborative scholarship doi.org/10.3998/jep.... [17/n]

Join us Friday 1/31 at 12pm EST for a roundtable on collective & embodied scholarly communication! Contributors to the JEP special issue On Gathering will talk about process, unexpected outcomes, & challenges. Hosted by @jepub.bsky.social & @ach.bsky.social RSVP: members.ach.org/civicrm/even...

New article co-authored by Machery shows that non-expert readers cannot distinguish AI-written poetry from poetry by human authors and rate AI-generated poems more favorably. "Non-expert poetry readers ... mistakenly interpret their own preference for a poem as evidence that it is human-written."

The Cultural Geo-Analytics Lab at @kingsdh is supporting applications for the LISS DTP PhD funding! 🎓🌍📊 If you're passionate about interdisciplinary, data-driven research in culture and geography, this is for you 🗓️ Jan deadline #LISS #phd liss-dtp.ac.uk/applying-to-...

Want more #DataSittersClub? Tomorrow we've got something Super Special for you... and a brand new sub-series for the DH curious!

I've started a feed of electronic literature, digital narrative, and interactive fiction scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts. If you'd like to be on the feed, let me know here: https://forms.gle/KfD2Waf6WeKSNocq8.

New #DataSittersClub book on corpora! by @quinnanya.bsky.social and Shelley Staples ("Corpus construction is like making an argument", sing it). Also, pizza and research questions, the Taco Bell Quarterly, and hopped-up wordcounters datasittersclub.github.io/site/dsc19.h...

Bi-weekly blogging continues today with one of my favorite little Python libraries for finding "close-enough" text.