Timeo the Nolan bros et dona ferentes

My handful of attempts to engage tech execs on the wider public’s views of Big Tech/AI have received the kind of responses one would expect if, in a business meeting, I had started talking about lizard people. It’s not that they don’t want to hear about them; they don’t believe such persons exist.

Amanda Mull@amandamull.bsky.social · 2w ago

Tech execs do not have, like, a theory of mind for people who aren’t tech execs. If they did, they wouldn’t be so frequently baffled by how repulsive normal people think their whole deal is right now

It is interesting that now that the white researcher is being disciplined one is not meant to look into the shoddiness of his work or the unorthodoxy of the hiring process

There’s a letter circulating in support of Cofnas’s ‘academic freedom’ based on this claim that contradicts the published justification for his suspension below. Such conjecture is typical of conspiracy theories.

Huw C. Davies@huwcdavies.bsky.social · 2w ago

Absolutely zero evidence for this. Pure conjecture.

It was such a pleasure to work on this special issue. Do check out all the great humanities and social science contributions to immunology!

Hopkins Press@hopkinspress.bsky.social · 3w ago

NEW ISSUE OUT NOW Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 69.2, Spring 2026 Special Issue on Immunology Guest Editors: Maebh Long and Martin Willis tiny.one/mpksvwhh CONTRIBUTORS Lainie Friedman Ross Whitney Arnold Keir Waddington Elsa Richardson Matthew Hayward Mathieu Bokestael and more

> One of the purposes of BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY is to expose eugenic principles and practices within professional philosophy[:] “few philosophy departments (in the Global North at least) remain untouched by the eugenic vision of neoliberalism.” 1/n

How Much Dark Money Is in Professional Philosophy?

One of the purposes of BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY is to expose eugenic principles and practices within professional philosophy. As Shelley Tremain has argued persistently since founding this blog, the…

biopoliticalphilosophy.com

I can make some guesses why. Having worked there, UGent has had issues with far right activity and Flanders as a whole increasingly swings that way. Another scandal while I was there: nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schild_...

Also: the ‘convenience’ is not for us but for employers, as we are slowly trained to think that it is normal and virtuous to have no time or energy left for seeing friends, being in groups, going to theatres and clubs, picnicking in parks, and browsing in bookstores and shops. It’s life *stolen*.

gamera obscura@ohrobin.bsky.social · 2w ago

Much of what we call “convenience” is just the elimination of contact. Why ask when you can Google, why go somewhere to meet people when you can swipe, why call when you can click? The friction we’re engineering out of life is also where an enormous amount of life happens. What are we without it?

Much of what we call “convenience” is just the elimination of contact. Why ask when you can Google, why go somewhere to meet people when you can swipe, why call when you can click? The friction we’re engineering out of life is also where an enormous amount of life happens. What are we without it?

Coach Finstock@coachfinstock.bsky.social · 2w ago

If you want to be even more basic, tech that used to connect us is now trying to stop us from talking to other people. Taking gambling out of the sportsbook, taking dating out of the bars/clubs/gyms/wherever people meet, replacing friends with chatbots. It's solely transactional now.

Last Thursday, the far-right student organization KVHV organized a public lecture by Nathan Cofnas. The lecture was an absolute train wreck. It will take a while to analyze everything, but here are some first impressions. /1

When people were told "syphilis and tuberculosis are more prevalent among Black people", they didn't hear "immunity rates are lower in populations where the diseases are more novel" (what Woodson regards as the correct explanation), they heard confirmation of stereotypes already in circulation 5/

Plenty to reflect about re: the Arday affair, but I'm going to repeat this one thing. The playbook the right used here is effective even though it's not especially sophisticated, as it relies on the audience to do the dirty work. I've been calling it "Trojan horse propaganda", let's go with that. 1/

Nathan Cofnas clearly is a racist with a racist political agenda. This is a crucial aspect of the Arday tragedy and is mostly ignored or minimized in the media accounts. Extraordinary that Cofnas is a postdoc at Ghent University. 🇧🇪

Gregory Kohn@kohngregory.bsky.social · 3w ago

In the wake of Arday's death, Nathan Cofnas (who led the X mob against him) states his motivation. Beyond whistleblowing, he states that after a 'revolution' removes professors like Arday, it will open opportunities for him to become 'head of the department of eugenics and race science at Harvard'.

Het schrappen van fondsen door Musk voor USAID, zal ervoor dat tegen 2030 14 miljoen mensen zullen sterven. De rijkste man de wereld is een monster.

The Author, Séamas O'Reilly@seamas.bsky.social · 3w ago

Not to be some wild-eyed innocent, but I think it should be slightly bigger news that The Lancet have crunched the numbers and found that Musk's USAID cuts will kill 14 million people. And that's just by 2030. That's 9,600 people a day, every day, until the next world cup rolls around.

This is apparently the ‘state of the art’ prompt of one of SV’s biggest insiders (“do not hallucinate” haha) - a man who presumably has as much technical support as it’s possible to have. It seems largely about tone policing for sycophancy. Meh.

Tof dat UGent zo bijdraagt aan het debat over *ostentatief afleest* rassenleer en de nakende revolutie.

Gregory Kohn@kohngregory.bsky.social · 3w ago

In the wake of Arday's death, Nathan Cofnas (who led the X mob against him) states his motivation. Beyond whistleblowing, he states that after a 'revolution' removes professors like Arday, it will open opportunities for him to become 'head of the department of eugenics and race science at Harvard'.

"By not taking into consideration that Gazan students lack the same capacity as other international students to access documentation, the visa process is not treating them equitably," she, Dr Ní Raghallaigh, said. www.rte.ie/news/primeti...

Academics criticise visa refusals for Gaza scholarship students

At least 31 of 59 Palestinian students who applied for study visas after securing fully or partially funded scholarships by Irish third-level institutions have been refused

rte.ie

if @jordanscarroll.bsky.social's research was a tweet

Link to the talk (from Feb 2026): www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Lc...

Resisting Dehumanization in the Age of "AI": The View from the Humanities, Emily M. Bender

YouTube video by Simpson Center

youtube.com

predictably excellent from hollingshead, every word "Against the forces of antiintellectual fascists+AI tech lords, self-flagellating academics+immediacy fetishists alike, we need to champion the difficulties+pleasures of humanities scholarship with our whole chests." defector.com/humanists-ha...

Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong | Defector

For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, ...

defector.com

First review of Tales of Health: Illness, Disability, and Citizenship in the Romantic National Tale is in. Very grateful to Lucy Davies who describes the "rigorous and engrossing studies of the novels" as "set[ting] up further possibilities." www.bsls.ac.uk/2026/08/rezn...

"Vance ... ties his introduction to Girard explicitly to Thiel, but he fails to disclose the extent of their relationship. No other mention will be made of the tech titan—

Los Angeles Review of Books@lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 3w ago

"The title of Thiel’s paper is never mentioned in 'Communion' but a professor would be within her rights to mark it as uncited source material." Elizabeth Harper on JD Vance's new book, "Communion": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/jd-vance-communion-straussian-peter-thiel-plagiarism-maga/

So happy to be a part of this special issue on immunology edited by @maebhlong.bsky.social and @profwillis.bsky.social! If you've ever wondered what my dissertation was about or why I am so interested in immunity in literature, this is your introduction to my research!

Hopkins Press@hopkinspress.bsky.social · 3w ago

NEW ISSUE OUT NOW Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 69.2, Spring 2026 Special Issue on Immunology Guest Editors: Maebh Long and Martin Willis tiny.one/mpksvwhh CONTRIBUTORS Lainie Friedman Ross Whitney Arnold Keir Waddington Elsa Richardson Matthew Hayward Mathieu Bokestael and more

The ads alone are worth the price of The Onion’s print edition

With a sideways nod to Stewart Brand

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 4w ago

Comparing them to the Gilded Age is too generous says @quinnslobodian.com as at least those robber barons did serious philanthropy

exactly 💯 on LLMs: they simulate the output we call language, not the cognitive capacity we call language!

Dr Katie Twomey@k2mey.eurosky.social · 4w ago

Arguing that LLMs are anything more than a load of numbers going into a complicated mathematical function and spitting some more numbers out. Yes they simulate. But they simulate *language*. They do not simulate the cognitive processes underlying communication.

Please sign my.uplift.ie/petitions/vi...

Visa for Gaza students

I'm calling on Jim O'Callaghan to approve visas for students from Gaza who have been granted scholarships to Irish universities. Will you add your name to the petition now?

my.uplift.ie

Two people tried to enter a screening of The Odyssey without buying tickets after hiding inside a miniature model of the Trojan Horse. 😂😂😂

My biggest hot take is that all the big bucks man directors - Nolan, Tarantino, Anderson - are one trick ponies and make really boring and predictable films #fightme

We're hiring! We're looking for passionate, skilled people to help us preserve and share Scotland's cultural heritage. #Jobs #LibraryJobs #HeritageCareers #ScottishCulture #EdinburghJobs