event graphic: "Resisting Big Tech Empires: The fight for the future Saturday 25th, London Cory Doctorow, multi-award-winning novelist and campaigner Anita Gurumurthy, IT for Change, India Sofia Scasserra, Our World is Not for Sale, Argentina James Meadway, Macrodose podcast Khem Rogaly, Common Wealth Cecilia Rikap, digital sovereignty researcher, UCL Dan McQuillan, author of Resisting AI Nick Srnicek, author of Silicon Empires and Platform Capitalism Rosa Curling, Foxglove Nafeez Ahmed, author of Alt Reich Sophia Goodfriend, journalist on AI and war Rebel Tech Alliance"

Looking forward to debating the contradictions of AI at 'Resisting Big Tech Empires' (Sat 25th). What's happening when $$$ is poured into extractive but failing tech? How is AI a diagnostic for the nihilistic turn in geopolitics? What can we do about it? www.globaljustice.org.uk/event/resist...

The tech bros behind AI are the new automobile barons. They're gonna spend a lot of money propagandising to manipulate our future.

the car analogy is actually perfect here though. we did build the entire country around cars and it did kill walkable cities and it took 60 years to even start fixing it. so yeah maybe the "just use it responsibly" crowd should sit with that for a second

one of the things I treasure most about writing is it is one of the vanishingly few remaining pursuits that involves sitting quietly with your own thoughts—something the entire tech industry has mobilized to ensure we never do again

CAIL = prerequisite knowledge for a critical perspective, such as to tell apart nonsense hype from true theoretical computer scientific claims. For example, the idea that human-like systems are a sensible or possible goal is the result of circular reasoning and anthropomorphism. olivia.science/ai

🧵

"In the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?”

Kazuo Ishiguro, Nobel Prize Lecture

I love this, and this is the core of my resistance to AI-generated "writing." There is no person.

When we accepted the premise that humanities and arts degrees are just a vessel for teaching generic transferable skills, we lost a battle that means we now can’t fight against AI. Because if students don’t actually have to learn anything why shouldn’t they use the plagiarism machine. Who cares.

Steven Shapin · Heart, Head, Life, Fate: Talk to the hand The hand is an organ through which we know about the world, and in its expressive mode it helps others know something...

‘Some late Victorian anatomists and physiologists believed that all the brain’s thoughts influenced the hand, and early 20th-century phenomenologists liked to say that “the hand is the visible part of the brain.”’

Steven Shapin on a new account of the hand.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

We're not just in a subscription economy, we're in a subscription democracy. Some are getting a higher tier of benefits while the rest are locked into the basic plan we were signed up for at birth where the cost only ever rises and they keep removing benefits or turning them into premium add-ons.

Digital humanities grad students & faculty always want to offload the data cleaning drudgery on some undergrad research assistant, until they eventually come to realize that's the part of the process where the stack of qualitative assumptions comes from.

Arrrgh

Assistant Professor in 18th Century Literature at Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin Discover an exciting academic career path as a Assistant Professor in 18th Century Literature at jobs.ac.uk. Don't miss out on this job opportunity - apply today!

Come and join us!!

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQS657/a...

Pick-a-Periodical with Katherine D. Harris – RSVP Join us March 6 for our "Pick a Periodical" event with Kathy Harris, who will introduce us to the racial anxieties within the Forget Me Not.

Enjoyed today's #RSVPDigiEvent? Can't wait for more #19thC periodicals' chat? Our March event is just around the corner next Friday, March 6! @triproftri.bsky.social will talk to us about the "Racial Anxieties of Polite Culture in the Forget Me Not for 1825 + 1833." Register now!

Finally, a government that takes the #enshittification of digital space seriously. Funny and dark and to the point

CFP: Bookselling and Literature Bookselling and LiteratureA Special Issue of English Studies Guest Editor: Matthew Chambers (matthew.chambers@uj.edu.pl) One of the best-known literary friendships was formed in a bookshop, and one…

Deadline Day! If you have a good idea, please share it with me! @drchrislouttit.bsky.social bookshoplit.com/cfp-booksell...

those who come after us will face an even more unequal struggle."

"History shows that wars can be lost before they are even declared if defenders surrender strategic terrain without a struggle. For universities, that terrain is the ultimate high ground: human intelligence itself. If we do not fight for it now,

A photo of Brajdica port cranes and house chimnies against the sea and sky.

Between bouts of rain.

Vinegar Valentines: how cruel Victorians sent insulting cards to their unwanted suitors The vile Victorians were funnier than they looked, using brutal Valentine’s Day cards to mock people they didn’t fancy much.

The vile Victorians were funnier than they looked, using brutal Valentine’s Day cards to mock people they didn’t fancy much.

Since I heard Penn State launched a course called "One Book Slowly" this year (Eric Hayot is teaching Madame Bovary) I can't stop thinking about it

I "know" without having to articulate it to myself that injecting LLMs into the experience of learning to write is bad for learning how to write. It changes writing into something else. Whether this other thing has value or not I can't say and don't think we'll know for a while. I also know that...

Publishing and Book Culture Welcome to Cambridge Core

I just signed to edit a new strand for Cambridge Elements Publishing and Book Culture called "Periodicals and Print Matter." More details to follow but I look forward to your ideas on anything connected to periodicals, catalogues, zines, and ephemera.

www.cambridge.org/core/publica...

Add showing images and prices for womens blouses and capes. a lot of prominent sleeves.

Clothing ad, 1896.

These are are very cool, and that looks like a very impractical amount of sleeve going on!

🗃️ #c19th #fashionhistory

LOC

www.loc.gov/resource/sn8...

I used to teach an autobiography of an AI engineer in my robots in literature class where he supposed that all medieval monks could imagine as progress would be a bigger pen and parchment, but we know that the monks were conceiving of worlds insane enough to melt your eyeballs out of your head

A stylised photograph of a long black silk dress with a gold embellished dragon that runs from neck to toe

An alternative view of the black silk dress designed by Travis Banton showing the sinuous gold dragon embellished vertically down its length

Front view of the long black silk dress that also has the front of the gold embellished dragon running vertically along its length

A black and white photograph of the actress Anna May Wong wearing the black dress with gold dragon

Born on this day in 1905, Anna-May Wong was a trailblazing Chinese American actress in the early years of Hollywood when cultural diversity was not very common. She wore this 1934 gown by Travis Banton in the film Limehouse Blues @metmuseum.org #FashionHistory 🗃️🪡

14th century painting of St. Margaret of Antioch attacking a devil woman in a virid dress hitting a demon with a hammer

Just making sure that 2025 is definitely over

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

Sounds like they need humanities majors…..

O tempora, o mores

A view from Brseč. So quiet, you can hear the bees fly by and the ferry putter along slowly in the distance.