Ulysses Pascal
@ulyssespascal.bsky.social
Digital Humanities Postdoc at UCLA’s Large Language Lab.
Hugging Face just published a highly detailed technical account of OpenAI's accidental cyberattack on their systems - it's wild how sophisticated this was: huggingface.co/blog/agent-i... Wrote up some of my own notes here: simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/28/...
Anatomy of a Frontier Lab Agent Intrusion: A Technical Timeline of the July 2026 Incident
We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.
huggingface.co
The counter to fear-based marketing isn’t 'this is just marketing, there is nothing to fear'
"Science as Culture" (@sciasculture.bsky.social) has a new special issue on #TechOligarchy - you can find my introduction here and the rest of the papers under "Latest" articles || #assetization #techbro #bigtech www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Tech oligarchy
Published in Science as Culture (Ahead of Print, 2026)
tandfonline.com
Just out! My introduction to a new special issue in @sciasculture.bsky.social on "Tech Oligarchy" - go check it out and the papers in the special issue (under "Latest" articles) #techoligarchy #assetization #techbro #bigtech www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Tech oligarchy
Published in Science as Culture (Ahead of Print, 2026)
tandfonline.com
I think AI having mostly (not entirely) very bad critics is a real problem because it means we’ll get political action focused on things that probably don’t matter that much in deferring it’s very real harms.
His goal is not to exclude certain people from voting, it is to question the legitimacy of voting itself in order to deny the results of the election.
Miranda Yaver@mirandayaver.bsky.social · 6mo agoI am 39 years old and basically never have to show ID to buy alcohol. And if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t need to show my passport. The SAVE Act isn’t just asking for ID, it’s demanding proof of citizenship that is costly to obtain. It is a poll tax by another name, and should be treated as such
Is tech oligarchy a proper term to describe the conditions of current-day political economies? In our latest forum contribution, @ulyssespascal.bsky.social, Cheng Fang, and David Bassens see merit in deploying the concept, but also consider its empirical limits. 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/0950...
Decentering tech oligarchy
Published in Science as Culture (Ahead of Print, 2026)
tandfonline.com
I created a remote zotero MCP server that lets you talk to your library from anywhere through claude
Our new article on AI and “Uncritical Fabulation” just got published in digital memory dialogues digitalmemorydialogues.com/editions/dia...
Can someone explain why ice agents are playing riot police? They aren’t even pretending to do their job anymore
"A US regulator ruled on Thursday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company had acted illegally by using dozens of methane gas turbines to power massive data centers in Tennessee" Not only is Xai designing software that causes massive harm in form of generated abuse, it's hurting communities
Elon Musk’s xAI datacenter generating extra electricity illegally, regulator rules
Win for Memphis activists who say ‘Colossus’ facilities add extra pollution to already overburdened communities
theguardian.com
I'm co-chairing the Society for Social Studies of Science @4sweb.bsky.social Conference in Toronto, Oct 2026. #STS #scipol #innovation Theme: "TechnoPower • Technoscientific Futures". Open panel submissions portal is open! ls! Deadline: 2nd February 2026 www.4sonline.org/about_the_co...
About the Conference
4sonline.org
I thought Bari Weiss was supposed to be a prominent critic of "cancel culture”
The real ai bubble is the billions of lines of technical debt tech firms accrued since the advent of vibe coding
In 2008, Google created an ad-powered wiki encyclopedia called Knol, seen as a "Wikipedia killer" amid its highly-publicized launch. And the Wikimedia Foundation gave an unbothered response that I quite like: "the more good free content, the better for the world." Anyway Knol instantly flopped
G**kipedia v0.1 is an automated rewriting of history and it is just v0.1. With AI, oligarchs and authoritarians can create massive corpora that reframe any event or fact inline with their own political ideologies. One day this will be done in real time.
"If you’re pasting in contracts, asking legal questions, or asking [the chatbot] for strategy, you're not getting legal advice…You’re generating discoverable evidence. No attorney-client privilege. No confidentiality. No ethical duty. No one to protect you."
If You've Asked ChatGPT a Legal Question, You May Have Accidentally Doomed Yourself in Court
Sam Altman has admitted that ChatGPT conversations can be used against you in court if they are subpoenaed.
futurism.com
The groypers running the White House's social media accounts have posted yet another piece of fascist Trump AI slopaganda which I won't reproduce here in full. However, the Gladiator-esque backdrop of US soldiers in desert camouflage holding back the pseudo-Roman crowd is quite fascinating 1/
Much funding in the justice & human rights sectors pivoted to "AI for good" and working with tech companies, weakening the work on important critical education and preventing harm. AI companies promised many fantasies they will NOT deliver. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...
Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1. Purpose.
whitehouse.gov
I knew the US had a cruel obsession with torturing muslims but the level of inhumane disregard for life in Gaza is horrendous even for US standards
When does it stop being oligarchy and it is just authoritarianism though?
Heather Rule@hlrule.bsky.social · last yr."Billionaire media oligarchs... many of them have clearly decided that multi-million dollar bribes and abandoning any form of journalistic integrity are a small price to pay for gutting regulatory oversight and lower taxes."
