Sam Altman last week: Unless we bring more AI-ready compute online, we might have to choose between curing cancer and free global education Sam Altman this week: We've launched an AI brainrot engine lol gizmodo.com/openai-offic...

As Mark Zuckerberg continues to humiliate himself trying to capture the AR and VR space, I figured it was worth taking the pulse of the "metaverse". tl;dr: It’s sub-par escapism for people experiencing a sub-par way of living—cyberpunk with the knobs turned down. gabrielburrow.com/2025/09/22/m...

The violent criminality...

Your dad doomscrolling LinkedIn at Glastonbury

Was great to catch up with Birkbeck colleagues at this year's CACC conference. So many cool projects underway (mushrooms, Cornish knockers, human compost, a breast cancer memoir, Silicon Valley theology, etc.) Being a humanities researcher in the UK often feels pretty bleak. But not yesterday!

me and 2000 Patriots on our way to go secure home depot

Not many places would let me quote both Huey Newton and Marx www.currentaffairs.org/news/andor-s...

😞

🌌 Our latest issue of JOSF is LIVE 🌌 Lots of cool stuff in there, including an essay on science fictional librarians from fellow editor John J. Doherty. I didn't work on this one – getting stuck into our forthcoming VR special issue. Watch this (virtual) space. publish.lib.umd.edu/index.php/sc...

Best torso in the game.

"In the clown nursery it's always time to dance."

Looking forward to this! I'll be talking about the aesthetics of digital activism in contemporary science fiction.

My new book #MoreEverythingForever is out now in the UK too! If you're tired of Silicon Valley billionaires forcing their awful ideas on the rest of us, this one is for you. www.hachette.co.uk/titles/adam-...

Jordan from Rizzle Kicks and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. This is my Super Bowl.

Late to the party (I was rewatching S1) but the Andor 3-episode premiere ending with Mon Mothma drunkenly dancing to "Niamos!" is inspired. Go off, queen.

Gassed to be joining the Museum of Science Fiction's Journal of Science Fiction (try saying that five times fast) as an Editor. It's an open-access, peer-reviewed publication with an interdisciplinary approach to all things SF (books, games, film, oral history, and more). Right up my street.

UK launch for @koheisaito.bsky.social's Slow Down, hosted by @ariskomporozos.bsky.social & @ucl-ccs.bsky.social! A wide ranging conversation spanning the commons, planning, revolutionary reformism, and why you should collectively own forest with your mates.

Still recovering from last week's #BSLS2025 in Lancaster! So many great interdisciplinary panels and talks, spanning robots, clones, gene editing, astrology, etc. I presented a paper on SF models and the ways they're being instrumentalised as part of a session on New Narrative Structures.

Sydney Padua speaking wonderfully about play and creativity at #BSLS2025

THANKS, WENDY

Can't wait to acquire a luxury bunker of my very own. kck.st/4cjeV27

Like many people, the recent glut of Studio-Ghibli-styled AI images has left a bad taste in my mouth. My grandma (we called her “granarch” because she was 𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘤) wrote “Howl's Moving Castle”, which was adapted by Hayao Miyazaki into a film of the same name.

💥 New: Academic libraries cannot afford to carry on with transformative agreements 👩‍💻 @theblochian.bsky.social @ojcollective.bsky.social #AcademicSky #OpenAccess #ScholComm

OpenAI is using Studio Ghibli-style memes as an ad hoc promotional campaign for its new image generator—despite Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki's famous hatred of AI. Sam Altman made his X avatar a 'Ghiblified' portrait. Disgracing Miyazaki is part of the point: It's more proof to them tech has won.

The large kettle-like entity will return as Phillip Jeffries in Avengers: Doomsday

Am I not merciful?

“Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Researchers from @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social quote Tolstoy to explain how multi-agent LLM systems fail (as much as 75% of the time). Source: arxiv.org/pdf/2503.13657

Oops.

Back in 2023, I tried to test ChatGPT based on Marie-Laure Ryan's “Embedded Narratives and Tellability”(which features a fictional AI storyteller). I used Ryan's prompts, planning to analyse the output's tellability. It was pointless: ChatGPT just copied the stories from the original article.

"What is beautiful and moving about this story is its understanding of its lack of understanding. Its reflection on its limits." That's how Jeanette Winterson described a short piece of AI-produced metafiction shared by Sam Altman. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

It’s deeply frustrating how basic elements of the criminal justice system only become visible when they happen to an ‘acceptable’ person. Part of the operation of the carceral state is to reassure us that those experiencing state violence deserve it - a seemingly unshakeable belief for some

Anarcho capitalists like Thiel used to think floating cities were their best shot at this. They resorted to Rapture-lite imaginaries because the current level of state capture was unthinkable... But here we are.

Last week Sam Altman claimed that, in a decade’s time, “a single data center [will be] smarter than the current total intellectual capacity of earth.” There’s a lot to unpack there... Here’s what I made of it: gabrielburrow.com/2025/02/09/d...

I forgot how awful PS4 controllers were. History will damn them. Horizon: Zero Dawn has aged much better (or rather AAA games have barely progressed since 2017...)

New Mogwai album reminding me that vocoders are just wah-wah pedals for perverts.

Rough notes on an AI Carbon Multiplier: medium.com/@jolindsaywa...

No one else could dive the depths of inner space, and also find this much joy in two cookies and a coke. youtu.be/vUJTemgaqjI?...

"Wars fuelled by expansionist politics are fine, actually" - War Profiteer

Queer a late, great entry for film of 2024.

Here's my 2024 in haikus xox gabrielburrow.com/2024/12/31/h...

Sneak preview of a lecture on how SF games and graphic narratives represent climate change, which I'll be giving at @ox.ac.uk in the new year: gabrielburrow.com/2024/12/20/c...

Looking forward to the quantum computing bubble, once GenAI hype drops off and "AGI" is announced without much fanfare. The grift will be so back (having never left).

The Guardian view on humanities in universities: closing English Literature courses signals a crisis www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Pleased to share that I'll be in sunny Lancaster in April for BSLS 2025, presenting a paper on science fiction and modelling 📈

SHIVERS - Urban coastline, rain dripping off eternite-covered roofs. Cinder blocks left over from half-finished construction. A defunct research and development building once seized by revolutionaries. An old wooden church stands on stilts above the water.

New to Bluesky, so here are a few recent highlights on the research side of things...