Sonja Drimmer
@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
W. Ford Schumann Distinguished Visiting Professor in Democratic Studies, Williams College, 2026–2027. Assoc. Professor ArtHist, UMass Amherst. Impressive Politics: Print before the Press in Late Medieval England (UPenn, frthcmng). https://sonjadrimmer.com/
Quoting s'thing @cnygren.bsky.social & I are publishing soon: "the literacy argument is being made in advance of its necessity...it presumes a state in which those who are “AI illiterate” are disempowered, precisely in order to make an argument in favor of compulsory indoctrination in its use."
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 38m ago“If it's this embedded in the world, then it needs to be embedded in the learning and in the coursework…”
If you’d like a wonderful antidote to those proclaiming that automated facts-mashing is historical practice I urge you to read this 2025 essay from @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social buttondown.com/surekhadavie...
Basement adventures showed me why ChatGPT can only ever be garbage.
In The British Library. Photo by Surekha Davies. Hallo readers, First, a news flash: Join me for a virtual book launch for HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY...
buttondown.com
I published this in 2024 but I hear folks are craving reading lists, so here’s another.
Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 2y agoIf you work on anything related to visual culture & want a primer on major issues emerging from the implementation of AI in this realm, here's a syllabus I wrote, structured around 7 terms: bias, extraction, augmentation, operation, so-called, categorization, power. www.artnews.com/list/art-in-...
If there is one way to make one's self the Main Character of academic Bsky for the day, it is definitely to proclaim loudly that mashing facts in the AI fact blender is a "gamer changer" for historical research.
Scholarly organizations that put out substantive, member-focused newsletters are such a great thing. My admiration for the ICMA and Alice Sullivan, who is the current editor.
Everyone, I just met a young girl named Lilly. She was bored so I gave her paper and my pencil and in return she drew a portrait of me, which, I think we can all agree, is uncanny in its verisimilitude.
Suddenly: Kang is banned from all of western Massachusetts.
Dan O’Sullivan@osullyville.bsky.social · yesterdayNope, nice try. Not doing this to myself. You'll have to kill my ass
“Well let me throw that question back to you. Do YOU think you should do a systematic review?”
The success of the AI industry amounts to the degradation of people’s lives, but the thirst among our representatives for this industry to succeed in that mission is intense. There is no shared prosperity here.
Elizabeth Warren@warren.senate.gov · 2d agoDo you use Instagram or Gmail? You could be helping to train AI. Big Tech has turned what all of us helped create into a trillion-dollar industry. It’s time to tax AI so you can share in its success.
It requires expertise to be able to say, “I do not know the answer to that question, and that is becauae thus far scholarly consensus is that we do not have the knowledge needed at this time to answer that question.” Sometimes “I don’t know” is a far more rigorous answer than people might think.
This nonsense about the printing press and universities is simply a different form of the "the Church enforced thought control in the Middle Ages" canard and says quite a bit more about what the speaker thinks about modern institutional surveillance and control than about history.
Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 3d agoI’ve seen in two culture /higher ed magazines recently the claim that the printing press engendered a crisis of authority at universities bc anyone could publish what they wanted and people could learn things without universities. This is not true.
I’ve seen in two culture /higher ed magazines recently the claim that the printing press engendered a crisis of authority at universities bc anyone could publish what they wanted and people could learn things without universities. This is not true.
Oh you want premodern robot gender and disability pop culture discourse? I think we are going to need @ertruitt.bsky.social on this when it comes out! youtu.be/UVAki9SGrlg?...
WICKER | Official UK Trailer
YouTube video by Black Bear UK
youtu.be
It’s almost as it never works to tell people to use “critically” or “with caution” a given technology known to fail for particular uses. One might suggest making the company itself responsible for refusing to give directions in certain conditions.
The New York Times@nytimes.com · 4d agoThree teenage boys printed directions for a hike on a trail in British Columbia, Canada that Google Maps estimated to be over five hours. In reality, their hike weeks ago lasted at least 12 hours and required the intervention of rescue crews, according to the Lions Bay Search and Rescue team.
August is when color EXPLODES. Everything on this plate except the soy thing is from our local farm or backyard. And it was great.
My favorite research success story, the moral of which is: always be nosey. I am writing on a subject on which everyone cites a prize-winning MA thesis that seems to be *un-gettable.* I contacted the archivist at the university where the thesis was written, and they got nothing. 1/6
With so much going on (war, the economy) it’s easy to ignore and underplay this administration’s agenda for education and cultural institutions. That’s a big mistake. It’s unrelenting and it matters.
Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · last wk.“AI has become a blunt instrument in the enterprise to impose precisely this form of sanctioned ignorance about America’s past...Taken together, [Trump’s & Musk’s] plans amount to a one-two punch, history in the hands of the corporate state.” My latest on AI & history: www.salon.com/2026/07/28/t...
I have been waiting all summer for Erik to bring us his annual TOMATO SANDWICHES thread. This is nothing short of pure joy. Read and delight in it.
Erik Inglis@allthebeset.bsky.social · 2y ago(In honor of August, bringing this 🧵 over from twitter) August makes me think of the best summer restaurant I ever ate at. It didn’t have a name, just a tidy hand-painted sign: “Tomato Sandwiches—all you can eat.” #tomatosandwiches
In Rome in 2024, I wondered what contemporary art under far right government appointees would look like and I found out: midjourney slop created through Dante’s inferno prompts. www.maxxi.art/en/events/ar...
Artificial Hell. L'Inferno di Dante visto dall'Intelligenza Artificiale | MAXXI
La cantica dell’Inferno narrata integralmente attraverso un percorso visivo e multimediale.
maxxi.art
Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 5d ago<<cough>> H/t to @ebwood.bsky.social for the NYT story here
<<cough>> H/t to @ebwood.bsky.social for the NYT story here
Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · last wk.“AI has become a blunt instrument in the enterprise to impose precisely this form of sanctioned ignorance about America’s past...Taken together, [Trump’s & Musk’s] plans amount to a one-two punch, history in the hands of the corporate state.” My latest on AI & history: www.salon.com/2026/07/28/t...
First, this is fantastic. Second, it gives the lie to the idea that people need to “learn” how to use AI given that it’s become compulsory. What lurks behind the notion that people need tutorials in it is that AI “education” is just a how-to in avoiding its hazards. The real education is this ⬇️
jessamyn@librarian.bsky.social · 5d agoI 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
We messed up! During a segment earlier this week about the risks of artificial intelligence, we shared a quote purportedly by author Naomi Klein that was itself AI-generated. She joined us on today's program to discuss the viral spread of the words falsely attributed to her.
I have a joke about Hermes but you’d have to be pretty quick to get it.
Mar Hicks@histoftech.bsky.social · 5d agoI have a joke about Medusa but it’s really just a reflection of the audience
My drunk roommate refuses to eat supermarket-bought frozen treats now that my husband makes him homemade ones.
Rather than engage with the Tankus Zitron throwdown I read a bunch of this report yesterday. Strikes me as a solid assessment. publicenterprise.org/report/bubbl...
Bubble or Nothing
Policymakers concerned about the deployment of clean energy and compute-focused infrastructure over the long term need a framework for managing the uncertainty in the AI sector's investment landscape—...
publicenterprise.org
Get in Losers, we're producing Lazarillo de Tormes.
Matt Gabriele@profgabriele.com · 5d agook let's do a discourse: what historical text absolutely needs the big budget film treatment, AND will create the need for a review by a scholar in a prestige publication? for medieval Europe, either: -- Song of Roland -- Book of Margery Kempe
"Democratizing art" are we now? “Now this isn’t just an artwork that exists several centuries ago that’s stiff and unapproachable, but it’s talking to me in an accent and I can ask it questions...Related to that idea is more broadly this idea of democratizing art.” www.artnews.com/art-news/new...
Harvard Art Museums Tested Out Using Generative AI to Animate 18th-Century Painting as Part of Marketing Campaign
The Harvard Art Museums recently tested out using generative AI to animate a 1750 painting by François Boucher as part of a marketing campaign.
artnews.com
One nice thing I've done over the last two years is get print subscriptions to a bunch of excellent culture and politics periodicals. I tend to think that that is where the absolute best writing is happening these days.
If what I’ve been reading lately is indicative, “chain of custody” is going to be the anti-AI phrase of resistance for the next year or so. I think it’s good, or haven’t been convinced of why it’s bad. Lends legal credibility to a range of related forms of objection as to why AI cannot be trusted.
