Dr Edwin Coomasaru
@ecoomasaru.bsky.social
Historian of modern and contemporary British, Irish, and Sri Lankan art. Research on gender, sexuality, race, empire, and ecology.
How Does AI Change Your Brain? ‘It’s Like TikTok and Fentanyl Had a Baby’ www.menshealth.com/health/a7322...
How Does AI Change Your Brain? ‘It’s Like TikTok and Fentanyl Had a Baby’
AI brain fry is a thing. Here’s how to get your mind and energy back.
menshealth.com
This is what book burning looks like in the AI age.
The Guardian@theguardian.com · 13h agoWhy is Anthropic destroying books? | Kathryn James
It's only @susanstryker.bsky.social coming to Bristol!! www.headfirstbristol.co.uk/whats-on/boo...
Changing Gender launch with Susan Stryker at Bookhaus
From the award-winning scholar and filmmaker, an essential, enlightening exploration of gender and the self Gender is one of the most contested topics of our age, as ideologies are weaponised by the ...
headfirstbristol.co.uk
"All of the speculation and hype around A.I. is hiding the fact...It is the backbone of a superstructure that merges regressive politics with unchecked economic power in the guise of technological innovation." -- Tressie McMillan Cottom www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/o...
Opinion | A Reading List for Our Age of A.I. (Gift Article)
A.I. is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy.
nytimes.com
Cancelled Futures: Class, Race & Place in Post-Industrial Britain 16th September at UCL I'll be talking race, class & place with @alexkelbert.bsky.social & @lukedenoronha.bsky.social Hosted by @uclsociology.bsky.social & @sprc-ucl.bsky.social Tickets: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cancelled-...
How does acknowledging the queerness of nature inspire us to compose the world otherwise & how can we make a place for ourselves in the story? Join @frankyfrancescannon.com - editor of Queer Flora, Fauna, and Funga - at Book Fringe on 20th August to explore these questions and more!
this feels like the intellectual equivalent of the Enclosures
Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 4d ago'rare books experts are increasingly worried that these artefacts may be under threat of destruction by generative AI companies seeking to feed their ravenous technology with new texts.' First they came for your monograph, then for rare books. Where next: wholesale destruction of archives?
'rare books experts are increasingly worried that these artefacts may be under threat of destruction by generative AI companies seeking to feed their ravenous technology with new texts.' First they came for your monograph, then for rare books. Where next: wholesale destruction of archives?
‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI
Secondhand booksellers believe they may have been caught up in the AI supply chain that sees old books scanned then destroyed
theguardian.com
I've confirmed that the UK's new Sovereign AI Fund does no due diligence on whether AI companies use copyrighted work without permission before investing in them. It took me 3 Freedom of Information requests to find this out: 🧵 1/10
It’s UK publication day! Today my book on the colonial roots of French theory is officially out with @politybooks.bsky.social. Thanks for the wonderful blurbs from @stuartelden.bsky.social, @juliango.bsky.social, Adam Rosenthal, and Joachim Whaley. (US publication date: October 6th)
Onur Erdur@onurerdur.bsky.social · 5mo agoOut in July! "School of the South: The Colonial Roots of French Theory". More details & pre-orders here: www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b... @politybooks.bsky.social
Utility outbids data centre developer to purchase coal plant to meet AI-driven electricity surge as the world burns.
Coal back in favour as US plant bidding war highlights rising demand to power AI
Top utility fought ‘aggressively’ to outbid data centre developer for control of West Virginia facility
ft.com
My next book "The Indian Revolutionary Movement in Europe, 1905–1918: Exile, Internationalism, and Resistance to Empire" is coming out with Liverpool UP in two weeks. I am in talks with an Indian publisher to release a South Asian version as well. www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....
The Indian Revolutionary Movement in Europe, 1905–1918 | Home
Exile, Internationalism, and Resistance to Empire
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk
'By attending to how medieval people are thinking about sex, gender, and desire in ways that are different from our own today, that can be a radical act'. The creators of a new @metmuseum.org exhibition discuss the curatorial challenges that they navigated. 🎤
Queering the Medieval Past
What can we learn by turning a queer lens onto the study of medieval art? Three art historians discuss Spectrum of Desire, an exhibition at New York's Cloisters.
historyworkshop.org.uk
‘Anthropic described the project as “our effort to disruptively scan all the world’s books” in an internal memo, which noted “we do not want it to be known that we are pursuing this project”.’
Eli Valley@elivalley.bsky.social · last wk.Dystopia www.news.com.au/technology/o...
A glut of AI-written fiction is drowning out human authors, new research shows. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/b...
Home Office used ‘AI hallucinated’ information to refuse asylum claim, judge suggests
Home Office used ‘AI hallucinated’ information to refuse asylum claim, judge suggests
Upper tribunal unable to find document cited in case and claims it is ‘analogous to relying on bogus evidence’ * UK politics live – latest updates A senior judge has accused the Home Office of relying on “AI hallucinated” information to refuse an asylum claim. The case relates to a Moroccan woman and her child who fled her country after experiencing forced underage marriage and extreme violence, including rape. The woman claimed asylum on the basis of fears that she would be killed by her husband: a powerful, previously convicted criminal. Continue reading...
theguardian.com
Publisher in this piece says “If an author has used AI to help support their research for a nonfiction book, that’s fine. But… that means that we now need together to apply another layer of human research to make sure that the facts are actually true.” So it’s not fine really, is it?
The new premium product: books written by people
Some publishers think AI could not only help authors but replace them
ft.com
AI companies are buying, scanning, and destroying older books to improve their models' training data & avoid problems of "model collapse" (wherein LLMs choke on their own slop). One of their suppliers is Better World Books, which partners with public libraries. www.404media.co/ai-companies...
AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop
ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”
404media.co
Each institution will take its turn in hosting an annual public lecture by a leading Irish Studies scholar, which will be available online as well as in person. The first lecture will be given by Malcolm Sen (UMass Amherst) on 30 September 2026. www.qub.ac.uk/schools/Iris...
Seamus Deane Memorial Lecture - Malcolm Sen, ‘Irish Anthropocene'
qub.ac.uk
Please share! A rare PhD studentship @kingshistory.bsky.social *fully* funded by @slaveryinwar.bsky.social to work with myself and Maeve Ryan, supported by a broader community of experts in Caribbean history, transatlantic slavery, and the history of war. www.kcl.ac.uk/study/fundin... 🗃️
AHRC Studentship: Slavery and the Seven Years’ War within and across the Caribbean Archipelago | King's College London
The Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War (CRSW) is pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded AHRC doctoral studentship, to be jointly supervised across History and War Studies
kcl.ac.uk
I've written about Charles Darwin's surprisingly queer science of sex in the latest issue of History Today! 🏳️🌈🦚🗃️🦋 www.historytoday.com/archive/feat... #Darwin #science #nature #histsci #sts #histsex #queer #queerhistory #PrideInSTEM @yalebooks.bsky.social
Charles Darwin’s Sexual Revolution
The potential implications of Charles Darwin’s theory of sexual selection did not sit well with Victorian gender mores – or with Darwin himself.
historytoday.com
History Today@historytoday.com · 2w agoThe new issue of History Today is in UK stores now. Featuring: #Caesar and #Cicero, Franklin D. Roosevelt, #CharlesDarwin on gender, Brazil’s free press, and more. Find out what else is inside and order it directly from our store at buff.ly/XsQsdk3
Good morning and welcome to your FT Weekend highlights via giftlink. First this week theologian and philosopher Carmody Grey explains why she declined to help Anthropic with Claude's moral schooling as.ft.com/r/15d7fd75-a...
Why this philosopher turned down Anthropic
The AI industry is courting the humanities — but it is asking the wrong questions
as.ft.com
🚨 New publication alert 🚨 In which I join an all-star group of scholars to discuss the problems with what we call "critical optimism" about AI in education and offer instead three forms of AI refusal: curricular, bureaucratic, and administrative. The article is paywalled, so DM me for a copy.
Refusing Educational Technology: Artificial Intelligence, Inequity, and the Problem of Critical Optimism - Niral Shah, David Stroupe, Aman Yadav, Tess Bernhard, Charles Logan, Elizabeth B. Dyer, Peng ...
Artificial intelligence (AI)—like many technologies before—comes with hope and worry about its implications for education. In this essay, using generative AI as...
journals.sagepub.com
I wrote about what's happening to the web now that everything is A.I. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/t...
How Google’s A.I. Search Is Imperiling the Open Web (Gift Article)
As Google incorporates more artificial intelligence into search, people are spending more time on Google. Some website operators are crying foul.
nytimes.com
"AI is, above all else, a weapon of class war from above. Whether it’s the state that wields it or corporations does little to change that fact." A nice corrective in Jacobin by @hagenblix.bsky.social and Ingeborg Glimmer jacobin.com/2026/07/ai-n...
The Socialist Case Against Nationalizing AI
AI is not a neutral technology whose benefits need to be redistributed. It is a weapon of class war from above, designed to cheapen labor and concentrate power. Nationalizing it does nothing to change...
jacobin.com
"cognitive surrender" but make it the state
Zoë Crowther@zoecrowther.bsky.social · 2w agoThe AI minister thinks the UK should focus on being the world's best AI adopter, not the world's best AI model builder He said Britain can move "further and faster" than the US in applying AI across healthcare, public services and the wider economy (3/6)
"Cognitive surrender" is a fascinating concept to think about the impact of AI as it exists under reactionary tech Preventing people from thinking for themselves and imagining different worlds is a godsend for authoritarians thenextweb.com/news/wharton...
Wharton researchers coined 'cognitive surrender' to describe what happens when people let AI think for them
A Wharton study found people accepted wrong AI answers 80% of the time, as apps like Moot now let five AI personas vote on your life decisions.
thenextweb.com
