Lots of other great stuff at the conference, from a keynote on stupid Mars discourse (Mars sucks) to a deep dive into Alan Turing's work in the humanities and the women that shaped early discussions of machine minds.
I presented on the Emerging Technologies panel with two pals who research fembots and artificial mothers.
We discussed exploitation, AI girfriends, and the role science fiction has in shaping the way technology is conceptualised and created.
The metaverse is dead... Or at least Meta's original vision for the metaverse is. It's down $80 million and phasing out support for Horizon Worlds.
At BSLS 2026 I looked at how recent metaverse narratives are moving away from cyberpunk, while retaining a critical (and often satirical) edge.
Back in 2018, David Graeber reflected on fascists attacking @bookmarksbookshop.bsky.social: "Why do they attack a bookshop? Because they don't have any ideas"
Same thing when DOGE bro admits "There were no books". They torched research funding because all they have is crypto-bullshit and memes.
Issue Cover
Our latest issue of the Journal of Science Fiction is out now!
I've got a short thing in there critiquing the relationship between sf and silicon valley. Plus, there's a bunch of neat stuff around cyberspace, neoliberalism, and (unavoidably) AI.
publish.lib.umd.edu/index.php/sc...
This is pure Kendall in Succession Season 1. Endlessly throwing money at a deal in a desperate attempt to impress daddy... variety.com/2026/biz/new...
Given the release of a certain library of heavily-redacted files, there couldn't be a better time for this banger from @maxhaiven.bsky.social and @plutopress.bsky.social to arrive.
Frube in the shower
Is there anything sweeter
or more indulgent?
🍓
Some strange self-portraits.
The cast and crew.
Brenda Emmanus doing a piece to camera.
Warren getting weird.
Yesterday me and some pals shot our first short film on an old Panasonic M10 VHS camera.
It's a horror twist on the BBC culture series Arena - an interview with a fictional photographer who, we learn, has taken his work too far.
"Warren Mann: The Dark Room" will be out some time next year.
Teotihuacan
Salt flats outside Tehuacan
Road trip from Oaxaca to CDMX
The event page is now live for (free) registration, with a great roster of speakers across literature, visual media, games, and development finance! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/utopia-dys...
The only thing that can stop a bad guy with smart glasses is a good guy with anti-smart-glasses glasses
Will be hosted at UCL (for boring logistical reasons the exact room isn't confirmed yet, but likely somewhere in 20 Bedford Way). Funding isn't available I'm afraid.
What political formations might follow the capitalist state? Anarcho-capitalists imagine the dismantling of the nation state in favour of deregulated territories and zones. Techno-feudal overlords seek to dissolve the state into a network of platforms that they own and control. Imaginaries on the left include visions of abundance and democratic planning, hyperlocalised disaster communism and various modes of degrowth primitivism. These utopian/dystopian visions exist in tension with one another. Dreams of green industrial strategy and coordinated climate adaptation rub up against nightmarish petrofutures. Fears of a future police state co-exist with horror at the idea of police, prison and border abolition. Militarisation is presented as the only guarantee of peace while pacifism is denounced as utopian. We invite proposals spanning literature, film, games, political theory, sociology, science and technology studies, critical finance studies, and more: How is the future of the state, governance and sovereignty being imagined? - What mediums are being used to construct and communicate these imaginaries? - How are utopian and dystopian framings used politically – as critique, legitimation and strategy? - How do these competing visions of future states interact with one another?
Credit: Sparth
In December I'll be co-hosting a workshop entitled "Utopia, Dystopia and the Post-Capitalist State" with the wonderful people at @ucl-ccs.bsky.social.
This is an open CFP, and we're keen to bring together researchers across multiple disciplines. For more information, drop me a message!
The GenAI ecosystem in two charts. The first covers its (circular) funding - what could possibly go wrong? 👀
The second addresses everything else: the footprint of physical infrastructure, resource use, human labour, etc.
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
www.cartography-of-generative-ai.net
If your models could solve real-world problems with sufficient compute - and it's a scarce resource - why would you squander it on people generating and sharing silly videos?
A) Because they're not actually very good at solving real-world problems
B) You're morally bankrupt
C) Both
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...
Cyberspace but it's just really big Mr Beast videos
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...
S-tier Meg episode
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!
Ok, it's not shit with randoms once you get to the later night lords...
Bloy's riot squad andor
me and 2000 Patriots on our way to go secure home depot
The annoying part is this will become Elon's go-to excuse for SpaceX failing to achieve its various unrealistic goals (Mars etc.)
Elon tweet
Simpsons meme
😞
You're spot on about its coherent and seductive qualities though. A tough - but necessary - read.
