Qui Parle is inviting submissions for a special issue on renovations of humanism and new directions in the thematic of the subject. Please consider submitting, and share widely! I am coediting the issue, and would be happy to answer any questions.

I love Providence, Rhode Island very much and hate a fucking gun.

My heart is with my beautiful alma mater right now. We should treasure universities. www.theguardian.com/us-news/live...

Police search for suspects after shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island – latest updates

Suspect or suspects at large as Ivy League university tells students to take shelter during second day of final exams

theguardian.com

My paper, “Species-Being, Metabolism, and Natural Limits” is now out in Qui Parle

Species-Being, Metabolism, and Natural Limits, Qui Parle (2025)

This essay explores two key concepts in the work of Karl Marx and argues for their essential interconnection: species-being and natural limits. The first section provides a general account of the idea...

academia.edu

an honor to be interviewed by Robin Manley for @jhideas.bsky.social - come for the spicy takes on critical AI and media history, stay for the stuff on Saussure and dialectics

Journal of the History of Ideas@jhideas.bsky.social · last yr.

Leif Weatherby (@leifw.bsky.social‬) discusses his new book, Language Machines, with Robin Manley (@robinmanley.bsky.social‬). The interview covers similarities between structuralism and Large Language Models, Saussure's relationship to Marxism, and theories versus histories of the present.

I had the pleasure of interviewing @leifw.bsky.social about his exciting new book, Language Machines! If you’ve ever wondered whether the unconscious is structured like a large language model, you’ll get a lot from Leif’s reflections here — and from the book, out soon from @uminnpress.bsky.social

Journal of the History of Ideas@jhideas.bsky.social · last yr.

Leif Weatherby (@leifw.bsky.social‬) discusses his new book, Language Machines, with Robin Manley (@robinmanley.bsky.social‬). The interview covers similarities between structuralism and Large Language Models, Saussure's relationship to Marxism, and theories versus histories of the present.

trying to explain to normies that the state has been captured by a technofascist apocalyptic AI death cult

Djinn & Tonic 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇲🇽 🇬🇱@djinnandtonic.bsky.social · last yr.

verging dangerously close to "humans need to go extinct in order to birth the machine god"

putting this out once more: my attempt to demonstrate that Foucault seriously misrepresents Nietzsche's philosophy of history in his account of the genealogical method. perhaps of interest to Foucault scholars, as well as those in lit/media/science studies thinking about historicism & its limits!

the vice president of research at google citing Jane Bennett to argue that AI systems are alive... who could have possibly seen this coming

have you ever thought: I don't know Foucault, maybe knowledge isn't only for cutting? or: I'm not sure it's true that Nietzsche has two different concepts of origin in the preface to the Genealogy of Morals? you might be interested in my new article, open access from @theoryculturesociety.org!

New as Online First in Theory, Culture & Society: Robin Manley, 'The Disunity in Genealogy: Foucault’s Anti-Nietzschean Reading of History'. (Open Access) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

Look, folks, this is it. The entire ballgame. Either we're a Republic of laws & the Constitution, or we have a dictator. This is fascism, & the impeachment vote should be happening today. Every single university president in the country should be out, in front of microphones, condemning this.

Justin Baragona@justinbaragona.bsky.social · last yr.

Trump takes credit for Mahmoud Khalil's arrest by ICE:

re the previous repost: if they can disappear permanent residents they can disappear citizens

"Aligned to" is a way of saying that they have no proof that he provided anything that could be legally construed as material support to Hamas, or showed allegiance to Hamas in any way, but he said some things they decided are vaguely in alignment with Hamas and they're imprisoning him for it.

Chris Geidner@chrisgeidner.bsky.social · last yr.

DHS cites Trump’s executive orders and then makes the absolutely meaningless statement that “Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” as a justification for the arrest.

My review of the excellent Code: From Information Theory to French Theory by @bernarddionysius.bsky.social is out now in the new and very exciting @histsocialscience.bsky.social! Available open access here~~ muse.jhu.edu/article/952248

i have come to feel that both of them (and 'pundit genre' they are a part of) are eating off of a fundamental revulsion not so much at the technology but the habits of mind of the people pushing them.

rev. howard arson@theophite.bsky.social · 2y ago

as an LLM skeptic, it is pretty annoying that two of the biggest LLM skeptics in the media (Ed Zitron and Brian Merchant) neither know anything about LLMs nor are particularly interested in them

This is a really specific engagement with @annakornbluh.bsky.social 's work from Jensen. I don't always agree with it, but I found it provocative and enjoyable to read. It's the kind of criticism that makes us all better interlocutors. I hope Anna will respond? nonsite.org/the-theory-o...

The Theory of Immediacy or the Immediacy of Theory?

At a crucial juncture in her reconstruction of Marx’s account, Kornbluh claims that “labor makes things useful, while exchange and its hypostasis in the concept of value and the medium of money is …

nonsite.org

look i know this is not the point but a 90% error rate is sort of impressive? surely it takes some skill to get the numbers that low. plus, just invert your decisions and suddenly you've got a half-decent system

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2y ago

“The algorithm in question, known as nH Predict, allegedly had a 90 percent error rate — and according to the families of the two deceased men who filed the suit, UHC knew it.”

👨‍🍳🤌💋

staring in awe at endnotes from an Eminent Scholar in which the URLs that are provided in place of proper bibliographic reference have been shortened with ellipses

imo it should be illegal for men in their 20s to quote the freakonomics podcast at me

already prefigured here is late Marcuse’s concept of “New Science” (a communist Scienza Nuova: universal participation in the fusion of natural science & art, conscious membership in the living history of matter) is that it’s an incredible anticipation of degrowth, &, imo, requires nothing less!

robin manley@robinmanley.bsky.social · 2y ago

Marcuse would like a word with the neo-Luddites

Marcuse would like a word with the neo-Luddites

This is good — but a key thing to reckon with in this discussion is the way that the neural network model implemented by LLMs has also been used to transform our scientific and even philosophical accounts of human thought in the first place

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2y ago

An excellent piece from @melaniemitchell.bsky.social on our struggle to find appropriate metaphors to think about what Large Language Models *are*. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

lots of incorrect marx takes flying around over on twitter this morning