Tis all fucked.

Schera Wyss 💀 SLUG HUMAN@scherawyss.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This might be one of the most insane scandals in game history When Pokemon Go players scan PokeStops, theyve been unknowingly building a detailed visual model of the world which is being sold to a military contractor to build a no-GPS positioning for the new generation of unmanned killing machines

Nostalgia Content xkcd.com/3256/

Hi #ica26. We have an open 4.5 yr Postdoc position @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social Berlin in PolComm/Comp Social Scienes on opinion dynamics in climate topics. Hit me up if you want a to talk about it in CT or send to colleagues who might be interested. www.weizenbaum-institut.de/news/detail/...

Record-keeping laws are but suggestions now. "Donald Trump’s newly launched presidential library says it cannot find a single direct message sent by the president from his Twitter account despite the prolific poster firing off thousands of tweets during his first administration."

Trump’s presidential library can’t find a single Twitter DM by the president

Court records show Twitter identified at least 32 Twitter DMs sent or received by the president before January 6

the-independent.com

Facebook AI nostalgia-slop seems to be doing a number on the elderly. Really interesting read

‘I feel like I’m losing her’: the families torn apart by older relatives going far right

It starts with a ‘back in my day’ nostalgic meme – then suddenly your elders are sharing AI-generated ‘boomerslop’ and repeating conspiracy theories …

theguardian.com

Meddling in elections? Or safeguarding democracy? The EU is pretty clear on what “European bureaucrats” do. And do not do. #elections #hungary

🚨New publication alert🚨 With @dfarrellbanks.bsky.social The nostalgic (de)legitimation of sportswashing: Social media and legacy media reactions to the Saudi Arabian state takeover of Newcastle United. Nordic Journal of Media Studies. Available OA here: reference-global.com/article/10.2...

The nostalgic (de)legitimation of sportswashing: Social...

On 7 October 2021, a consortium led by the Saudi Public Investment Fund completed a takeover of Newcastle United Football Club. The takeover was...

reference-global.com

Great to see this article published after a really fun and interesting collaboration with @dfarrellbanks.bsky.social !

@dfarrellbanks.bsky.social · 6mo ago

What better way to break my social media habit (of not posting) than by sharing this new, open access publication. @socmerrill.bsky.social and I dive into supporter response to the takeover of Newcastle United by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. reference-global.com/article/10.2...

The. Rise. Of. Cognitive. Surrender. Study finds that people who use GenAI chatbots rely on them 80% of the time, and develop almost no capacity to recognize when a chatbot is feeding them faulty information. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

This is interesting, not least because it shows the ridiculous sensitivity of over-valued tech stocks giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Memory chip stocks shed $100bn as AI-driven shortage trade unwinds

New research suggests AI data centres will need much less memory than investors had bargained for

giftarticle.ft.com

“For Orbán in Hungary, it took about four years, …for Erdoğan in Turkey and Modi in India, it took about 10 years to accomplish the suppression of democratic institutions that Trump has achieved in only one year” Based on new @vdeminstitute.bsky.social data www.theguardian.com/world/commen...

‘Trump is aiming for dictatorship’. That’s the verdict of the world’s most credible democracy watchdog | Martin Gelin

Sweden’s V-Dem Institute warns that the US is no longer a liberal democracy. And autocracy is creeping across Europe too, says writer Martin Gelin

theguardian.com

“AI can never be AI without humans. It is not artificial intelligence. It’s African intelligence,” says Michael Geoffrey Asia, a former data labeler in Kenya who is now secretary general of the Data Labelers Association. "We train ChatGPT and it’s killing us slowly.” www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...

'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back

Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. The Data Labelers Association is fighting back.

404media.co

I have eight browser tabs about Anthropic and Dario Amodei open right now. Madness status: incoming.

This is the kind of use of Automated FRT and Ai I had in mind when writing this: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Remembering like a state: Surveillance databases, digital activist traces and the repressive potential of mediated prospective memory - Samuel Merrill, 2024

Departing from personal memories of protests in London and Berlin, in this article I make space within the memory-activism nexus to consider how contemporary ac...

journals.sagepub.com

Kashmir Hill@kashhill.bsky.social · 8mo ago

ICE has weapons of war... www.nytimes.com/video/us/100... ...and surveillance: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/t... ... including face recognition app Clearview AI. In 2024, DHS was only using Clearview for child exploitation investigations. Now use includes investigating "attacks on law enforcement."

🚨 New publication alert! 🚨 I’m proud of this interdisciplinary, co-authored piece on how memory studies might handle the AI hype. www.cambridge.org/core/journal... It has just been added, open access, to Memory, Mind and Media’s special collection on AI and Memory.

The sociological imagination is not just about observing society; it’s about understanding how people challenge systems of power and create change. In the magazine’s June issue, @carinrunciman.bsky.social‬ and fellow scholars reflect on what it means to think sociologically. buff.ly/R9DWhvA

So we did a thing… 🧵 You’ve heard about the erasing of LGBTQ history on National Park Service websites. Egregious changes made to the Stonewall National Monument site (erasing all instances of trans and queer) & the disappearance of resources like the monumental “LGBTQ America” theme study.

One of the smartest sociologists of this generation. @tressiemcphd.bsky.social delivers knowledge.

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

This piece from @tressiemcphd.bsky.social starts with a bang and just gets better and better. Gift link.

“So yes, we've experienced a coup, not the old fashioned kind, no tanks or mobs, but an undemocratic and hostile takeover of government. It is cruel, it is petty. It can be brutal. It is at once chaotic and surgical…The question is, will the rule of law hold?”

Looking forward to participating in this tomorrow!

Memory Studies Association@memstudiesassoc.bsky.social · 2y ago

📢 Upcoming #dMSA Event: Is AI the Future of Collective Memory? This roundtable will explore AI’s role in collective memory, moving beyond ethics to examine real-world case studies. 📅 Date: Feb 25th at 14.30 🔗 Register here: bit.ly/4gsIwXe #MemoryStudies #AI #DigitalHeritage #CollectiveMemory

NIUS and others on the far right are trying to roll back the expansion of German memory culture of Nazi victim groups over the past thirty years as it has expanded beyond the Holocaust of European Jews to include recognition of Roma, disabled, homosexual, trans and Afro-German victims.

Hanning Voigts@hanvoi.bsky.social · 2y ago

Der Kampf gegen den vermeintlichen „links-woken deep state“ treibt immer absurdere Blüten: Das rechte Portal „Nius“ greift heute die Frankfurter @bsannefrank.bsky.social frontal an, weil diese vor dem Rechtsruck im Wahlkampf warnt.

Someone has adapted East German singer Ernst Busch's song Ami - go Home! for the present day conflict between the Trump administration and Canada.

Camilo Pérez-Bustillo@cperezbustillo.bsky.social · 2y ago

Canada pushes back www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEz6...

Generative #AI is already having an impact on how we perceive #archaeology🏺. In her @us.theconversation.com essay @clmorgan.bsky.social urges for critical yet constructive engagement with digital technologies in our investigation of the past. theconversation.com/how-ai-image...

How AI imagery could be used to develop fake archaeology

Even before the use of AI, it was widely accepted within archaeology that visualisations of the past are highly fraught and should be treated with caution.

theconversation.com

Whoever could have imagined the AI headline generator would make shit up amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/01/...

Apple is pulling its AI-generated notifications for news after generating fake headlines | CNN Business

Apple is temporarily pulling its newly introduced artificial intelligence feature that summarizes news notifications after it repeatedly sent users error-filled headlines, sparking backlash from a new...

amp.cnn.com

Throwing tomato soup on a painting seems like an under-reaction, to be honest

Since Die Hard is a Christmas film, a brief thread on my own head canon of how the Gruber brothers disparate bios are tied up in postwar German history.

My 2024 in review on LinkedIn: eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A... Have a great break everyone! See you in 2025

Samuel Merrill on LinkedIn: Den artificiella bibliotekarien: En etnografisk studie om hur ChatGPT kan…

A lot happened in 2024 even with a couple of months out on parental leave. Just before I turn on my out-of-office and go on leave until the start of 2025 I…

eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com

Fun to have contributed to this with a chapter called ‘Splintering’ the Memory-Activism Nexus: State and Market Forces in the Vortex of Civic Memory. Thanks to the eds Astrid Erll, Susanne Knittel & Jenny Wüstenberg & to Ann Rigney whose work inspired the book. www.degruyter.com/document/doi...

Dynamics, Mediation, Mobilization

Dynamics, Mediation, Mobilization provides an accessible overview of cultural memory studies, a field substantially shaped by Ann Rigney. In more than sixty short chapters, leading and emerging schola...

degruyter.com

Basically think of the o3 results as validating Douglas Adams as the science fiction author most right about AI. When given longer to think, the AI can generate answers to very hard questions, but the cost is very high, it is hard to verify, & you have to make sure you ask the right question first.