That's a wrap on #COMPTEXT2026! Huge thanks to lead organiser @chrisguarnold.bsky.social and IDAI/@unibirmingham.bsky.social team, plus all tutors, chairs, discussants & sponsors. Conference dinner at a world-renowned cricket stadium—what a treat. Safe travels home; see you at COMPTEXT 2027!

Trump is so unlucky. Every time he’s trying to win a close election or is bombing in the polls because of his failed policies someone lets off a gun in his vicinity.

Software development in 2026 increasingly feels like giving up control. Move beyond "role-play and pray" with vibe-coding best practices.

Here's a totally harmless hammer to break ChatGPT.

📢Publication alert 📢 LLMs are an awesome technology, but they come with trade-offs! Paul Balluff, @justinho.bsky.social, @seanhp.bsky.social, Alexis Palmer, @lrossi.bsky.social, Irina Shklovski, Chung-hong Chan and I commented on these trade-offs in #commsky research. Out now and open access!

Newer, Larger, Better? A Critique of the Unreflective LLM Adoption in Communication Research

The growing adoption of large language models (LLMs) in political communication research has prompted excitement but also concern. In this opinion piece, we offer an informed and critical overview ...

tandfonline.com

To be critical of the government is the most American thing ever. Dario Amodei, PhD, the CEO of Anthropic has a spine for refusing to let our Mad King use Claude for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. I just bought a Claude Pro subscription. Fight on scholar. 🎓⚔️

In the latest #aBitOfCCS episode, we dig into research showing that LLMs often deliver only marginal gains at major environmental cost. 🌱🌍 Sean-Kelly Palicki breaks down when simpler methods beat large models—and why a CO₂-adjusted F1 score matters.🌱 Listen here ⤵️ aboutccs.net/abitofccs/

Free Audiobooks!! Good AI ❤️https://marhamilresearch4.blob.core.windows.net/gutenberg-public/Website/index.html

Academic life hack: check which papers AI hallucinated most often and write them 🚀🚀🚀

Ulrike Franke@rikefranke.bsky.social · 10mo ago

And here we go. I never wrote this article, and yet it is cited here. www.liberalbriefs.com/geopolitics/... And of course, it sounds so plausible, I seriously checked whether I had forgotten it, or the footnote was slightly wrong. #AIisnotresearch

Speaking of Europe, I've been deGoogling on the grounds of data privacy, personal freedom, and surveillance capitalism. Yeah, it's kind of annoying but it's also pretty great. Here's what started my journey and how you can get started www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Lx...

I'm DONE with Google

YouTube video by PewDiePie

youtube.com

📢 New Preprint: "Don’t Look Up: Evaluating the Tradeoff between Performance and Sustainability of LLMs for Text Analysis." Providing guidance for social scientists, we challenge the "bigger is better" narrative, instead encouraging social and environmental responsibility. osf.io/preprints/so...

Germany drops opposition to nuclear power in rapprochement with France Discussion

In case you missed it - last week they had the F1 drivers race giant lego cars for one lap and mayhem ensued. Some of the best racing drivers on the planet giggling like schoolboys as they race (and wreck) the cars 🤣 youtu.be/pdxiNBwxYxU?...

F1 LEGO Race In Full | 2025 Miami Grand Prix

YouTube video by FORMULA 1

youtu.be

Gossip on the internet, hang out, and let some political party decide what you’re going to do. And the next thing you know, you go, ‘Where did my health care go? Why are we fighting a war over here?’ Because you didn't pay attention. Maybe you should pay attention. www.wired.com/story/cyberp...

A Founding Father of Cyberpunk Isn't Surprised By Its Comeback

Mike Pondsmith, who wrote the tabletop RPG that inspired 'Cyberpunk 2077,' explains why the genre feels vital in 2020.

wired.com

Looks like the original artisanal pencil sharpener was David Rees, here's his short film from twelve years ago vimeo.com/60718161

HOW TO SHARPEN PENCILS

Official Selection: 2013 Austin Film Festival 2013 SF Docfest 2013 Sidewalk Film Festival (Winner: Best Documentary Short) 2013 Indie Memphis Film Festival (Winner:…

vimeo.com

May the 4th be with you! Watch Andor Season 2 ;)

More dumb…

Miranda Yaver@mirandayaver.bsky.social · last yr.

Perfect. Fucking perfect.

This article is a great reminder to “appreciate” that we’re living in a cyberpunk future. www.noahpinion.blog/p/welcome-to...

Welcome to The Future

This time it arrived right on schedule.

noahpinion.blog

Great read about the emergence of a topic that’s becoming increasingly part of popular culture: An AI enabled “afterlife”.

Rudy Rucker@rudytheelder.bsky.social · last yr.

Two great new software immoratlity shows. Black Mirror S7e4 "Plaything," and Boon Joon Ho "Mickey 17." I invented software immortality around 1980, starting with my novel SOFTWARE. I want more credit! I went over the details in a blog post last year. www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2024/01...

All praise to @seanhp.bsky.social @isaacbravo.bsky.social for producing and presenting this fantastic paper! Check out the results and the R adaptation of CodeCarbon on linktr.ee/comptext25

Miklós Sebők@miklossebok.bsky.social · last yr.

I have always suspected that large language models need energy. But courtesy of long-needed research by @clint0475.bsky.social @patrickparschan.bsky.social and colleagues we now have more solid evidence of the impact of using them for research purposes #COMPTEXT2025

See you at COMPTEXT 2025 in Vienna! I'll be presenting "Don’t Look Up: Evaluating the Tradeoff between Accuracy and Sustainability of LLMs for Text Analysis"

Things are changing fast. ICA, the largest academic conference for communication researchers, has begun omitting paper titles from acceptance letters to smooth out issues during the travel visa application process. #AcademicFreedon #BandAidSolution

Tobias Dienlin@tobiasdienlin.com · last yr.

The fact that this communication is now necessary ... for conferences happening in the *US* ... shocking.

Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, who said in a social media post: “Mr. President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The Road to Peace must be built on the Truth.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/f...

Trump calls Zelenskyy a dictator amid fears of irreconcilable rift

Remark follows Ukrainian leader’s claim US president living in a Russian ‘disinformation bubble’

theguardian.com

I've been writing BLOOD IN THE MACHINE for months, but I was on the fence about going all-in. Recent events have made the call easier. Elon Musk, the Silicon Valley oligarchs and their AI are taking over. I want to do all I can to push back. I hope you'll join me, and I'm asking for your support.

The tech oligarchs and their AI are taking over. Let's fight back.

Alright, I’m really doing this thing. Support Blood in the Machine and fearless independent tech journalism.

bloodinthemachine.com

Brazil’s former President Bolsonaro charged over alleged coup that included a plan to poison Lula However, the prosecutor-general perpetuates the narrative that the armed forces had been a 'victim' of the plot, despite the obvious institutional involvement apnews.com/article/bols... #CivMilSky

Brazil’s former President Bolsonaro charged over alleged coup that included a plan to poison Lula

Brazil’s top prosecutor Paulo Gonet has formally charged former President Jair Bolsonaro with attempting a coup to stay in office after his 2022 election defeat.

apnews.com

Let's see how the intrepid Elon inspired team at DOGE - the folks who are currently examining your tax records - are doing! Today they put up their their idea of "open data" which they call a "Wall of Receipts". And look here - two cancelled DEIA contracts for $9,999,999. Wow, they saved $20M! 1/

From a tech perspective, the Groq platform is awesome for trying open models like Deepseek-R1, Mistral and Whisper. It's cheap, easy to access and it's stupid fast. Available via API and chat "playground" from US servers. groq.com/pricing/

Groq is Fast AI Inference

Groq offers high-performance AI models & API access for developers. Get faster inference at lower cost than competitors. Explore use cases today!

groq.com

South Korea blocks downloads of DeepSeek from local app stores

South Korea blocks downloads of DeepSeek from local app stores

South Korean officials on Saturday temporarily restricted Chinese AI Lab DeepSeek’s app from being downloaded from app stores in the country pending an assessment of how the Chinese company handles user data. The Personal Information Protection Commission…

tcrn.ch

The bge-m3 word embeddings work well for vector-based multilingual information retrieval. The easiest ways to implement this would be to use a vector database like Weaviate or Milvus. You can also use this to power a multilingual LLM RAG application using Ollama. huggingface.co/BAAI/bge-m3

BAAI/bge-m3 · Hugging Face

We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.

huggingface.co

“However, while television is still bound to regulations that require a modicum of truthful content, social media is a battleground of facts, lies, and deception, where governments, journalists, law enforcement, and activists are on an uneven playing field.”

BostonJoan 🏳️‍🌈 🦫@bostonjoan.bsky.social · 3y ago

New from me! First piece in almost a year! time.com/6323387/misi...