To me one of the most important aspects of humanities research is tracking and historicising the emergence and development, an indeed the metastasis, of ideas. LLMs at present collapse the historicity of ideas into a nebulous, plagiarised word salad.

If handing someone their arse, was a video clip

Fuchsia December 15th, 2023

Such an absolute delight to be in Bristol today for @markbould.bsky.social's inaugural professorship lecture, once more reminded of the radical, community-focused, heartfelt and heart-full scholarship that infuses so much of the SF community and of which Mark is a blazing and dear symbol.

It was Reality TV week for our first-year students and I had the pleasure of screening a group viewing of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' infamous Amsterdam trip - cinemas need to start screening iconic reality TV episodes they'd make a fortune!

Although I'm horrified to see a massive landscape picture of my head here, this is a really important piece about the maturation of scholar-led, non-profit publishing. As I write, chaos is coming but there are enormous opportunities to quit the big 5 www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-v...

It is so heartening to see @openlibhums.org (and its publishing model that prioritises research integrity over profit!) growing at such a challenging time for the humanities. We all need to start thinking more carefully about where we publish our work... www.openlibhums.org/news/865/?fb...

teachers! excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone. take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE against-a-i.com

I don't think we can put the toothpaste back in the tube at this point. But I think we can maybe get to a point where we recognize that AI, like toothpaste, is best used in scant amounts for specific, relatively infrequent tasks, rather than slathered indiscriminately all over everything.

It seemed time to update my post from March 2024 titled "There Is No Ethical Use of AI". Lots of links to essays, research articles, podcasts on the glory of AI's destruction of the environment, destruction of culture, destruction of our brains... matthewcheney.net/blog/there-i...

“latest in a longline of computerized fads that plunk kids in front of screens+deny them crucial socialization skills, suppressing their ability to think critically” Https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/us/politics/ai-alpha-school-austin-texas.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The time has come to reinvent academic publishing. Over the last years conglomerates have bought up once respectable publishers and turned them into rent extraction machines, generating obscene profits from tax-payer funded research and unremunerated academic labor./ mediastudies.hypotheses.org/6850

I'm an "A.i." abolitionist. No consumer-facing LLMs or generative "A.i." in anything. Sure, machine learning in science and a few other limited applications is fine. But consumer-facing LLMs and generative "A.i." that are based on theft, push disinfo, and can be manipulated by billionaires? No.

“conspiracy is degraded cognitive mapping”

I gotta say I find a lot of AI discourse around higher ed very confusing. "if ChatGPT can write your essays is college even worth it?" did people think math teachers were assigning problem sets because *they* couldn't figure out the answers?

"Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI's role in learning."

Absolutely heartbroken to learn that Professor Simon James has passed away after a short illness. Simon was a stalwart union rep in the English Department, and a personal friend to many of us in the branch. We'll miss his humour, his passion, and his dedication to making things better for people.

Each of the articles in this special issue theorizes the [] between trans and crip in distinct yet interconnected ways, expanding on the dynamic tension between difference and alignment. I’ll be introducing them throughout June. @dukepress.bsky.social

🚨Five Labour MPs visited Israel on a trip sponsored by Labour Friends of Israel last week. They met with Israeli president Isaac Herzog who said the "entire nation" of Gaza was collectively responsible for 7 October.

Submit an abstract! Tell your friends!

Joshua Clover (1962-2025)

YESSS COME ON!!! www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

What my various inboxes are full of. 👇🏻 Screw the so-called Labour Party; screw the so-called EHRC; and screw the so-called Supreme Court: you've not made even one woman safer but you're causing great cruelty to tens of thousands of people leading blameless lives.

What the Supreme Court said, less than a fortnight ago. It was legally incoherent then and it's practically incoherent now. (supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc...).

Donate if you can! Stand up for trans rights 🏳️‍⚧️ Help the @goodlawproject.bsky.social fight the Supreme Court’s harmful decision: goodlawproject.org/s/c41bb8

Thanks to support from the trans community and its allies we are now advertising for a full time equalities solicitor. Trans people know they are at the thin end of fascism. If you're a lawyer, here's how you help them fight back. goodlawproject.org/vacancy/seni...

This article is so good Definitely read it, especially if you aren't British and want to understand what is going on www.thegist.ie/the-gist-tra...

Dutch universities will go on strike! Against the 1.3 billion cuts! March 10: Leiden University March 11: Utrecht University March 13: University Nijmegen March 17: University of Amsterdam March 20: Maastricht University March 27: VU Amsterdam April 10: Tilburg University @woinactie.bsky.social

This Friday, we will celebrate 30 years of ASCA, the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, which challenged the rigid disciplinary boundaries within and outside of the faculty of humanities @uvahumanities.bsky.social to promote responsible interdisciplinarity. asca.uva.nl/shared/subsi...

I keep trying to write something eloquent and just being tired. History matters. Philosophy matters. Languages and literature matter. Indigenous studies matter. Arts and humanities and social sciences matter. All of them. Signed, a physicist

Pinning here for those who might be interested! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....