Anna Weichselbraun
@annaw.bsky.social
anthropologist of language, technology, knowledge, and governance @univienna
it feels strange to say after working on it for so many years but my book manuscript "Nuclear Bureaucracy: The Epistemic Politics of Verification at the IAEA" is going into production with @cornellupress.bsky.social and will appear in 2027. also in 2027, the IAEA celebrates its 70th anniversary.
Wir sind in mitten einer historischen Energiekrise in der Energiekonzerne Rekordgewinne einfahren. Aber anstatt Profitmargen zu begrenzen & Preise zu bremsen subventioniert die Regierung mit jedem Cent Steuersenkung der nicht weiter gegeben wird die Profite noch.
see you in a minute!
Anna Weichselbraun@annaw.bsky.social · 4mo agoThis Friday, come celebrate the online launch of our special issue on Language Machines in @journaloflinganth.bsky.social with @soclinganth.bsky.social We are looking forward to a lively conversation with @bethmsemel.bsky.social, prosecco in hand :)
This Friday, come celebrate the online launch of our special issue on Language Machines in @journaloflinganth.bsky.social with @soclinganth.bsky.social We are looking forward to a lively conversation with @bethmsemel.bsky.social, prosecco in hand :)
beth semel@bethmsemel.bsky.social · 4mo agoif you know me, you know i've been gassing up this special issue ever since it came out. i'm delighted to do so yet again at the online launch this Friday at noon EST. thanks @annaw.bsky.social, @mcastelle.bsky.social & Siri for the invitation and for the issue itself! tinyurl.com/languagemach...
This Friday, come celebrate the online launch of our special issue on Language Machines in @journaloflinganth.bsky.social with @soclinganth.bsky.social We are looking forward to a lively conversation with @bethmsemel.bsky.social, prosecco in hand :)
beth semel@bethmsemel.bsky.social · 4mo agoif you know me, you know i've been gassing up this special issue ever since it came out. i'm delighted to do so yet again at the online launch this Friday at noon EST. thanks @annaw.bsky.social, @mcastelle.bsky.social & Siri for the invitation and for the issue itself! tinyurl.com/languagemach...
„Die schlimmsten Krisen sollten nicht die besten Zeiten für Unternehmen in überlebenswichtigen Sektoren sein." Mein Spiegel Interview über den kommenden Preisschock trotz wackligem Frieden und was jetzt zu tun ist. 🧵
Language machines: Toward a linguistic anthropology of large language models by Siri Lamoureaux, Michael Castelle, Anna Weichselbraun doi.org/10.1111/jola...
Fossil fuel stocks are exploding in response to the war on Iran. Who stands to benefit? The richest of the rich. Who stands to lose? All of us who have to pay higher prices for energy and a new round of sellers' inflation.
the link to our special issue on Language Machines is online! find our introduction (why we need linguistic anthropology to understand LLMs) & the first batch of articles here: anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1... if you have something to contribute, please contact us!
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology | AAA Journal | Wiley Online Library
Click on the title to browse this issue
anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Google not only supplies the fake citations via Gemini, their awful products in the form of knowledge infrastructure are so shoddily kept that they can't be fucked to remove fake venues.
Andrew Heiss@andrew.heiss.phd · 8mo agoGrading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things
Here's the introduction to the special issue: doi.org/10.1111/jola... in which we argue: We need linguistic anthropology to understand Large Language Models! Clickclickclick if you like reading feisty-programmatic-staking-of-intellectual-ground types of words...
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology | AAA Journal | Wiley Online Library
Large language models (LLMs) challenge long-standing assumptions in linguistics and linguistic anthropology by generating human-like language without relying on rule-based structures. This introducti...
doi.org
Anna Weichselbraun@annaw.bsky.social · 8mo agoPart of a Special Issue in JLA on "Language Machines: Toward a Linguistic Anthropology of LLMs" I co-edited together with Siri Lamoureaux and @mcastelle.bsky.social
new paper so fresh it doesn't have an issue # yet! Noya Kohavi and I looked at a crowdsourced AI testing suite and analyzed how contributors’ ideas about language, intelligence & cognition play a surprisingly big role in shaping how LLMs are tested, and what we think AI is. doi.org/10.1111/jola...
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology | AAA Journal | Wiley Online Library
Benchmarking large language models (LLMs) is a key practice for evaluating their capabilities and risks. This paper considers the development of “BIG Bench,” a crowdsourced benchmark designed to test...
doi.org
Kolleg*innen in der AAU Klagenfurt/Celovec erklären sich ebenfalls mit dem Antifa-Camp und dem #Peršmanhof Ko-Museum solidarisch (inklusive früherem Rektor und jetziger Rektorin der Universität: www.aau.at/blog/stellun...
Stellungnahme zum Polizeieinsatz am Peršmanhof am 27. Juli 2025 – Universität Klagenfurt
Stellungnahme zum Polizeieinsatz am Peršmanhof am 27. Juli 2025 Angehörige der Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt Vom 24. bis zum 29. Juli 2025 fand das zweite Antifaschistische Jugendcamp am Peršman...
aau.at
In Österreich ist eine Gedenkstätte von der Polizei regelrecht überfallen worden. Die Geschichte der Endphasenverbrechen ist leider sehr reich an Ereignissen. Eines davon ist der Peršmanhof, wo eine SS-Polizeieinheit im April 1945 ein Massaker anrichtet, auch an Kindern. Heute ist der Peršmanhof…
If this is accurate, WeTransfer is unusable for professional creative work. Would violate most work-for-hire contracts to share copyrighted material with a third party like this.
Rami Ismail (رامي)@ramiismail.com · last yr.Bye forever, WeTransfer.
The wild thing here is that the bill text that aims to prevent AI regulation defines "AI" incredibly broadly: Essentially, any system that uses computing to provide information or aid decision-making. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Trump’s tax bill seeks to prevent AI regulations. Experts fear a heavy toll on the planet
Unrestricted AI use could add 1bn tons of planet-heating emissions in the US over the next decade, researchers say
theguardian.com
Today's Supreme Court decision does not opine on the constitutionality of Trump's assault on birthright citizenship. It is limited to the question of universal injunctions. But its ruling on that front is MASSIVE—a huge blow to plaintiffs and judges trying to block Trump's most lawless policies.
Our digital repositories team spends a great deal of their time now simply protecting our commoned public digital resources from bots. This insatiable, aimless, destructive desire to excrete novel slop is impeding our access to — and even damaging — our cultural heritage + vetted public knowledge.
Samuel Moore@samuelmoore.org · last yr.'“I don't think that people appreciate how few people are working to keep these collections online, even at huge institutions,” Weinberg told me. “It's usually an incredibly small team, one person, half a person, half a person, plus, like their web person who is sympathetic to what's going on.'
"There are a growing # of AI bots crawling repositories[; they're] sufficiently aggressive [to] cause service disruptions + outages... As a result, some repositories have started to block machine access to their collections, which is also inadvertently blocking other desired network services..."
Open repositories are being profoundly impacted by AI bots and other crawlers: Results of a COAR Survey
April 30, 2025 There are a growing number of AI bots crawling repositories. These bots are sufficiently aggressive that they can cause service disruptions and outages in repositories. As a result, …
coar-repositories.org
Shannon Mattern@shannonmattern.bsky.social · last yr."We are 👀 a significant ⬆️ in request volume, w/ most of this traffic... driven by scraping bots collecting training data for LLMs. [This] happened largely w/o sufficient attribution, which is key to drive new users to participate[, +] is causing a significant load on the underlying infrastructure"
New from 404 Media: ICE is using a new facial recognition app to identify people, leaked emails show. Point camera at person, reveal their identity. It uses the CBP system that records peoples' faces as they enter or exit the U.S. Now, turned inwards to be used by ICE www.404media.co/ice-is-using...
ICE Is Using a New Facial Recognition App to Identify People, Leaked Emails Show
The new tool, called Mobile Fortify, uses the CBP system which ordinarily takes photos of people when they enter or exit the U.S., according to internal ICE emails viewed by 404 Media. Now ICE is usin...
404media.co
according to conservatives on the court, the constitution does not protect your right to your own body but does enable the government to ship you off to a foreign gulag without any hope of return
Mark Joseph Stern@mjsdc.bsky.social · last yr.NEW: The Supreme Court's conservatives halt a preliminary injunction that had restricted the Trump administration's ability to rapidly deport migrants to "third countries" where they have never lived and where allegedly face torture. All three liberals dissent. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...
![DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, ET AL. v.
D.V.D., ET AL.
ON APPLICATION FOR STAY
[June 23, 2025]
The application for stay presented to JUSTICE JACKSON
and by her referred to the Court is granted. The April 18,
2025, preliminary injunction of the United States District
Court for the District of Massachusetts, case No. 25–cv–
10676, is stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the
United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such writ is
timely sought. Should certiorari be denied, this stay shall
terminate automatically. In the event certiorari is granted,
the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of the Court.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and
JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting.
In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution. In this case, the Government took the opposite approach. It wrongfully deported one plaintiff to Guatemala,
even though an Immigration Judge found he was likely to
face torture there. Then, in clear violation of a court order,
it deported six more to South Sudan, a nation the State Department considers too unsafe for all but its most critical
personnel. An attentive District Court’s timely intervention only narrowly prevented a third set of unlawful removals to Libya.
Rather than allowing our lower court colleagues to manage this high-stakes litigation with the care and attention](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6h7b2i6ttw3l4t7pvbvxdith/bafkreietxy2onxpw2fhgui4rl6cuor52zfdsq5dirhspuslk7tqxfq4rty)
i’d second that
Andrew Couts@couts.bsky.social · last yr.NEW: The head of IAEA said in an emergency meeting today that the conflict in Iran “risks collapsing the global nuclear non-proliferation regime,” and that if diplomacy is not pursued, “violence and destruction could reach unimaginable levels.” @mollytaft.com reports www.wired.com/story/intern...
read this as the nuclear nonproliferation regime is being destroyed by Israel 😬🙄😵💫
Signs and Society@signsandsociety.bsky.social · last yr.🔎 Zooming into our most recent issue! Read Dr. Anna Weichselbraun's @annaw.bsky.social article on "nuclear nonproliferation," where she explains what happens to nuclear verification when efforts to make nuclear materials more transparent fail. LINK: doi.org/10.1017/sas....
Dies ist ein echter tweet einer echten Bundesbehörde.
Staatliche Förderungen sichern das Überleben von Volksgruppen und den Erhalt ihrer Sprache, Kultur und Rechte. Die Kürzungen der Regierung bedrohen ihre Existenz. Fordere jetzt die Rücknahme dieser Sparmaßnahmen: mein.aufstehn.at/petitions/st...
Jetzt unterzeichnen: Stoppt die Kürzung der Volksgruppenförderung! Ohranimo finančno podporo narodnim skupnostim!
Staatliche Förderungen sichern das Überleben von Volksgruppen sowie den Erhalt ihrer Sprache, Kultur und Rechte. Die Regierung muss die Sparmaßnahmen jetzt zurücknehmen!
mein.aufstehn.at
the epa says it's giving up on regulating emissions from power plants just days after noaa released the highest-ever recorded seasonal co2 concentrations at mauna loa. what a time to be alive!!!!!!!!!
The EPA Wants to Roll Back Emissions Controls on Power Plants
Days after NOAA released figures showing the highest seasonal concentration of CO2 in recorded history, the EPA moved to roll back emission standards for power plants. "The EPA is trying to get out of...
wired.com
I spoke to two former govt workers who helped create IRS's Direct File software, which is set to be killed by DOGE/Trump/Intuit but thankfully just got open sourced. Both of them seem optimistic about what people are going to be able to do with the codebase: www.404media.co/directfile-o...
The IRS Tax Filing Software TurboTax Is Trying to Kill Just Got Open Sourced
Direct File has been open sourced, and its creators have left government to continue working on the "future of tax filing."
404media.co
