I’m officially coining the term menu poetry (#menupoetry) to refer to how menus (which already have a high poetic function) and food ordering create powerful poetic moments. I will now read this out loud to a Chipotle employee. And huge credit to my son Blake, for triggering this insight.

I love the term "folk forensics"—and indeed, many cloying tells of AI use—like lists of threes, words deemed statistically likely to be LLM output, and em dashes—are mere superficialities. Not only that, they distract us from the underlying logic of textual production in the 21st century.

Matthew Kirschenbaum@mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 4d ago

Raise your hand if you look forward to a cultural future that consists of policing every artist, performer, entertainer, or author whom you love and admire for the slightest whiff of “AI,” defined by vibes and whatever set of folk forensics is currently in circulation.

Raise your hand if you look forward to a cultural future that consists of policing every artist, performer, entertainer, or author whom you love and admire for the slightest whiff of “AI,” defined by vibes and whatever set of folk forensics is currently in circulation.

New game idea: AI-whack-a-mole.

jessamyn@librarian.bsky.social · 5d ago

I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful

I was joking to mom that at the rate I’m going I’ll have to start an OnlyFans to afford college next year. She shrugged like it was nothing because this man was of wonderful vigor and calmness and beauty of person.

Sensible piece, that puts some of the AI data center moral panic into perspective. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/o...

Opinion | The Flawed Environmental Case Against Data Centers (Gift Article)

Our animosity toward data centers is really more about our anxieties about A.I.

nytimes.com

As *tech*, AI isn't exceptional. It's not exceptionally wicked. It's not exceptionally good. Take away the accompanying, galactic-scale stock-swindle, and we'd call AI's apps "plug-ins" and we'd use them and abuse them in the same way that we've used every other technology: www.normaltech.ai 1/

This month only, the triple bean Cheetos Mexican pizza locos returns to Taco Hell! Rush to a Taco Hell near you!

Here are the recordings and slideshows for my two interconnected talks at the #ELO26 conference. "Slipping into the Future" is a critical/creative prelude to the keynote, "Beyond Impossible Writing: Electronic Literature in the Age of AI." #AI #elit #DH leonardoflores.net/posts/blog/p...

Presentation and Keynote at the ELO 2026 Conference

Leader, Scholar, Educator, Creator.

leonardoflores.net

It won’t stop at math. Machines getting better at thinking through abstract problems than we are is going to be an emotional crisis for lots of people. I wish we were engaging that directly instead of having ridiculous shadow-debates about GPUs’ inherent thirst for water.

Zach Weinersmith@zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 2w ago

Very worried about this sort of thing hitting more broadly:

Here are the recordings and slideshows for my two interconnected talks at the #ELO26 conference. "Slipping into the Future" is a critical/creative prelude to the keynote, "Beyond Impossible Writing: Electronic Literature in the Age of AI." #AI #elit #DH leonardoflores.net/posts/blog/p...

Presentation and Keynote at the ELO 2026 Conference

Leader, Scholar, Educator, Creator.

leonardoflores.net

Here are the slideshows and (soon) links to recordings for my panel presentation and keynote at the Electronic Literature Organization Conference. Relevant tags: #elit #AI #DH #ELO26 leonardoflores.net/posts/blog/p...

Presentation and Keynote at the ELO 2026 Conference

Leader, Scholar, Educator, Creator.

leonardoflores.net

Delighted to share that Binding Media has won the 2026 N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature! So honored to received this particular award because Hayles' work taught me to think about the weird literary works I've always been interested in. @stanfordpress.bsky.social

Here are the slideshows and (soon) links to recordings for my panel presentation and keynote at the Electronic Literature Organization Conference. Relevant tags: #elit #AI #DH #ELO26 leonardoflores.net/posts/blog/p...

Presentation and Keynote at the ELO 2026 Conference

Leader, Scholar, Educator, Creator.

leonardoflores.net

As we say in Puerto Rico, “Reír, por no llorar.” (We laugh, to not cry.)

Peter@notalawyer.bsky.social · 3w ago

i’ve been really stressed about the air quality but i just heard the news say that breathing this air all day would be the equivalent of smoking seven cigarettes and a deep calm washed over me

For no particular reason I keep telling people to check out notime.now

No Time to Discourse

A speculative atlas that explores climate disaster across North America through interactive mapping and procedurally-generated flash fiction.

notime.now

This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in social media this week. Sick burn!

Polymarket@polymarket.extwitter.link · 3w ago

BREAKING: U.K. reveals Bluesky will be included in the under-16 social media ban, affecting dozens of teens.

Has someone written an actual pre-history of AI slop, that is, a pre-history of low-effort, high-volume content? Because the actual pre-history would include things like spam, shovelware, tourist tchotchkes, box scores, horoscopes, Family Circus, etc. & etc.

In retrospect, it's sad that I read all those revenge dramas and stories about Puritan moral intensity in the 20c, before I had any idea what incandescent all-consuming moral revulsion even felt like.

This month only we're unveiling the new extra chorizo Mexican pizza combo! Get yours today!

Its funny how everyone's idea of heaven is a complete untouched paradise, crystal clear waters, lush green forests, enough food for everyone, classless, moneyless, stateless, a Utopia of peace, unity and happiness. But here on earth it's considered a leftist ideology.

Broke: AOC should run for Senate instead of president Woke: AOC should run for president Bespoke: AOC should run for president, serve two terms, and *then* spend the rest of her career in the Senate

You have discovered a planet. It is towards the edge of the Milky Way. The violet sunrise watches on its friendly rocks. What a good world.

Finally updated the further readings list from my Spring courses (quel déluge!), our thanks to all the brilliant people in here whose works we read and enjoyed! Tharsen Spring 2026 Syllabi & AI Readings List Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning

when people say "the problem is that these things don't 'think' at all in the way we know actual human beings think" I often want to respond, "yes, and that's a 'problem' because?"

rev. howard arson@theophite.bsky.social · 3w ago

i think Go is, ironically, exactly the type of thing which we already pretty much have above-human "intelligence:" things where there is a clear benefit to plowing a quadrillion floating point operations into optimizing a solution to it but clearly it is not worth a human being doing that

Shifting people’s attention to personal responsibility— lowering your carbon footprint and recycling— has been an effective distraction from the real polluters and energy hogs: industry. People are so focused on monitoring &policing each other (for minimal gains) that they don’t engage industry.

Karen K. Ho@karenho.bsky.social · 3w ago

It feels ridiculous to be told my entire life the importance of reducing my energy usage and switching to stuff like LED bulbs and then read reports of energy prices spiking in many US communities due to data centers.

In Puerto Rico someone had the same insight and created a whole line of boozy juicy drink pouches for adults: Gasolina! And because our drinking age is 18, you’re ready for it just as you outgrow juice pouches. 😂

HAYES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!@dirtcupart.bsky.social · 4w ago

it's kind of crazy that capri sun is something that goes away in your life eventually. like when you're a kid it feels like, that's something ur gonna be drinking forever. that's a normal beverage. but then you reach an age where it turns out it's not

These so-called AI ticks are superficial and fleeting, and focusing on them (1) diminishes the mystery of truly powerful writing; (2) forgets that language is already a vast "tissue of quotations" (thanks, Barthes!); (3) obscures the real issue: that the Romantic idea of The Singular Author is bunk.

AI, then, isn't just the fantasy of a world without people - it's the fantasy of a world without people...except for slaves. 14/

I’m not in favor of AI opportunism— in which people create AI mills to flood publishers with submissions in order to get published. However, if a work is deemed good enough to publish, why should AI being used in the process matter? This is a danger of banning AI. Accept work on its own merits.

Bona Books 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🤘🏼@bonabooks.bsky.social · 4w ago

Maybe you thought, like us, that if you read AI fiction you’d just *know*. We thought they’d feel obvious, but AI stories are already passing editorial scrutiny with magazines and presses around the world. That’s the most alarming lesson in this.