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Dave Palfrey

@01factory.bsky.social
850 followers 4K following 1.5K posts

Ex-historian of social and political thought (Cambridge, Birkbeck). Ex-Amazon (Alexa, AGI). LRB reader. 2025-26 side-mission: fighting global bias on Wikidata & Wikipedia. "Only that which has no history can be defined"

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Reposted by Dave Palfrey
queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
whenever I read an imaginary herman melville book in my sleep I like to follow it up by reading a real herman melville book in my awake without any delay, in order that my ideas about literature should remain as grounded in fact as may be possible. you can call this a superstition if you want
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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
As many have written about, robots and AI have been allegories for slave labor in SF starting with R.U.R. Since then, the liberal impulse in SF has been to recognize the humanity and sentience of AI. It strikes me that this discourse is uniquely unfit for describing how so-called "AI" exists today.
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
there is that in me which is rogue o imagine my dismay
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Yes, this seems true to me.
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LSE Library @lselibrary.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
You can read digitised issues of She (1970-1973), Mukti (1983-1987), and more in the South Asian Heritage collection on LSE Digital Library: digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/... @lsesouthasia.bsky.social #TheWomen'sLibraryat100
digital.library.lse.ac.uk
Collections - LSE Digital Library
Explore our digital collections through curated selections of material according to themes, type or source of material.
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I'd missed that Warren Brodey died last year. Pleasingly, though, Morozov's 2018 thesis on Brodey (supervised by Peter Galison) is now out of embargo.
dash.harvard.edu
“‘A Bath of Continuous Sensations’: Warren Brodey’s Quest for Human Augmentation and Intelligent Environments, 1955-1975”
This dissertation traces the professional and intellectual development of Warren Brodey (b. 1924). Trained as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Brodey was one of the pioneers of family therapy but eve...
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I'd always thought it hyperbole when people said of media content that it 'made them want to puke'. I hadn't then encountered BBC Radio 4's When It Hits the Fan. Predatory, fawning, systematic misdirection of human intelligence into complacent celebration of arbitrary privilege. Pure fucking evil.
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ilinca iurascu @ilinca.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Friends, send us your proposals, abstracts, thoughts, in English or French - and please help us spread the word about this journal issue on distraction we're putting together. The CFP is attached: intermedialites.com/en/call-for-...
intermedialites.com
CALL FOR PAPERS – NO. 51 “DISTRACTING / DISTRAIRE” – intermédialités
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The OpenAI hack of the Austrialian government is better described as misaligned company activity than misaligned model activity. There's been thinking about these artificial agents and how to constrain them for centuries: Hobbes on the state, law which treats companies as legal persons.
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
How to cite women on Wikipedia: a patriarchal catechism 1. Cite not women 2. When citing women, mention not their name 3. When mentioning their name, mention it not in main text but only in endnotes 4. When mentioning their name, link it not (Racist, &tc. variants of this catechism also available)
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
yay, the theologians are getting into Critical AI Studies! Call for papers for conference on 'Intelligences: Human, Artificial, Planetary – and perhaps Divine' Submission deadline: 5 October 2026
staugustinescollege.ac.uk
Call for papers: AI conference – St Augustine's College of Theology
Call for papers for AI conference hosted by St Augustine's College of Theology, 28 January 2027. Submission deadline 5 October 2026.
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Quinn Slobodian @quinnslobodian.com · 22/09/2026
so refreshing to hear a conversation about tech where the keywords are class, strategy, unionization, and leverage instead of roko's basilisk, x-risk, and apocalypse.
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Thomas J. Kitson @thatiliazdguy.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
As many yawne, when they see others yawne; and make water, when they see others doe so: so many are moued to take businesses in hand not by any certaine aduised iudgement, but they imitate what they see in others. #PalladisTamia #FrancisMeres
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
And now abideth covid, brexit, austerity, these three; but the greatest of these is austerity.
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
This is lovely. Thank you, whoever put in the work to make this happen.
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Now looking forward to this book launch for two reasons. First, it's a fabulous book. Second, I just received a reminder email which suggests there might be more elaborate ceremony than I had expected: "Please be there on time as we will have to sing you in."
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Jon Dean @jondeanstuff.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
When will the Prime Minister visit the site and show he stands shoulder to shoulder with the volunteers? I know his spokesman made a statement, but he needs to be there, showing his support and that he backs decent heroes against the far right?
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Digital Humanities @ King's College London @kingsdh.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
📚 Book Launch: 'Vector Media' by Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org & Leonardo Impett 🗓️ 22 Sept, 16.30 📍 KCL, Macadam Building MAC 106 Panel w/ @joannazylinska.bsky.social, @dchavezheras.bsky.social, @mrsbunz.bsky.social Hosted by Creative AI Lab 📝 Register: www.tickettailor.com/events/digit...
tickettailor.com
Select tickets – Creative AI presents: 'Vector Media' Book Launch 📚🌐 – Macadam, Surrey St - King's College London
Creative AI presents: 'Vector Media' Book Launch 📚🌐 – Macadam, Surrey St - King's College London, Tue 22 Sep 2026 - We would like to invite you to attend our book launch celebrating Vector Media with ...
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
What on earth happened to Ideologiekritik? I'm struck that - even among leftist cultural commentators - there is so little recourse to the language of ideology. Is it just that 'we tried talking like that, and the world didn't change in ways we hoped?'
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Acute and funny and wise. RIP Bonnie Greer.
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Dana R. Fisher (aka the Apocalyptic Optimist) @fisherdanar.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
A new report out from @unep.org documents our collective failure to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees and makes an urgent call for action to return from overshoot before it's too late. "Overshoot is not an argument for resignation, but rather for urgency to action." www.unep.org/resources/li...
unep.org
Limiting Overshoot - Navigating exceedance of 1.5°C and pathways towards return
Limiting global warming to 1.5°C remains a cornerstone of the Paris Agreement, yet under current policies and alternative near-term trajectories, exceedance of 1.5°C is now widely assessed as unavoida...
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Helen Choi on 'knowledge commoning', arguing that academics should defend Wikipedia against gen AI enclosure of the knowledge commons. "The classic commons problem arises from overuse: too many actors drawing on a finite resource pool. [But w]hat diminishes Wikipedia is disuse rather than overuse."
link.springer.com
Towards a practice of knowledge commoning: academics’ ethical duties to defend Wikipedia in the age of generative AI - AI and Ethics
Wikipedia is the most widely used reference work in history and one of the most valuable training resources available to the generative AI (genAI) industry; and yet that same industry is systematicall...
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Caroline Lucas @carolinelucas.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
So pleased to see @zackpolanski.bsky.social demanding the Government’s suppressed then redacted report on ecosystem collapse be published in full. People can’t prepare for what they don’t know - concealing this report is unforgivable #WildSummit
theguardian.com
Polanski calls for report on ecosystem collapse to be published in full
Green leader says ministers must stop ‘hiding the truth’ about threat to UK security from climate and nature crisis
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
A thought on databases vs narratives. Narratives are designed to be consumed in a particular sequence. This aligns circumstances of production & consumption: the writer is 'first reader' (Lyotard). Such alignment is an edge case for DBs, where write/read queries often group elements very differently
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CRASSH @crasshlive.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Join us on 17 September at 6pm to explore the stories and thoughts that underpin our current art exhibition 'Attention is the Rarest and Purest Form of Generosity' Led by Beverley Carruthers with Clio Lloyd-Jacob, Idit Elia Nathan, Sara Paynter, Sarah Wood & Rachel Wooller ℹ️ bit.ly/4wWFAuV
Attention is the Rarest and Purest Form of Generosity: An artists’ talk.
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AlanFricker @alanfricker.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Can any library folk suggest suitable organisations to take on this collection? RIBA perhaps? 📚
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Wiki Workers United @wikiworkersunited.org · 18/08/2026
“Everywhere and specially at Wikimedia, it makes absolute sense to give workers the right to organize to defend their interests and further the relationship with their employers in the benefit of all.” – WMF worker, name withheld http.cat/451 www.unionneeded.com #unionneeded #wikiworkersunited
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
BBC World Service is still the most important thing the BBC does: its audience dwarfs that of other content, & its attention is far less parochial. But oy, funding cuts have hit hard. So much repeated content. Worse, the lapses into sub-Radio 2 presenter patter, cliché without critical reflexivity.
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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Not to be some wild-eyed innocent, but I think it should be slightly bigger news that The Lancet have crunched the numbers and found that Musk's USAID cuts will kill 14 million people. And that's just by 2030. That's 9,600 people a day, every day, until the next world cup rolls around.
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Programming Historian @proghist.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Just published! 🖇️ A new lesson by @whanley.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy: doi.org/10.46430/phen0133 Thanks to @petrosapostol.bsky.social and @anniechengg.bsky.social for their reviews, and to @caiomellodh.bsky.social for editing.
doi.org
Wikidata for Historical Research
This lesson introduces Wikidata and its underlying data structure. It shows how to navigate and query Wikidata using the Query Builder and SPARQL, and how its data model can be used to explore h...
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 06/08/2026
The far right agenda is not a grievance that can ever be settled. That is why we are where we are now, a place where there is a live conversation about who is a 'white Briton' as per below. I am not clear what it will take for people to understand the seriousness of the situation because ...
Restore Britain's Rupert Lowe declines to say whether King is a 'white Briton'

Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe has declined to say, when asked, whether he thinks the King is a “white Briton”.

It comes after Lowe said “white Britons will become a minority by 2063” in a video in which he offered to work with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

The BBC’s Nick Robinson asked Lowe about the issue on the Today programme on Thursday, noting that the forecast he referred to defines a white Briton as someone whose parents were both born in the UK.

Robinson told the Restore Britain leader that “because Prince Philip was born in Greece, King Charles is not, under your definition, treated as a white Briton”.
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Sascha Stronach🏳️‍⚧️, The Sunforge out now @understatesmen.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
This needs to be a bigger story. Google Docs is no longer safe for copyrighted material. Any writer on contract needs to stop using it *immediately*.
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
The radical Protestant (& Islamist) critique of priests as malign representational intermediators: inserting themselves with distracting imagery/ritual between believers & God/truth/self-understanding Has anyone developed this line of critique against the tech bros? #Vectorclasm #TechBrosOurPriests
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Anthony Painter @anthonypainter.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Today's environmental politics is tomorrow's cost of living. Why is this so hard? www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
‘It’s too fast, too big’: speed of climate crisis is devastating crops, say farmers
Drought and extreme heat are killing plants, driving up prices while also making some farms economically unviable
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
We already have superintelligences that have taken over the planet: we call them organizations. Example from: www.noahpinion.blog/p/what-will-...
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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
It’s astonishing how liberalism in Britain just laid down and died, probably around the time the spooks went to the Guardian office and smashed those hard drives. If this had happened in the 2000s, half of the press and parliament would’ve been up in arms. Now, hoping it all just goes away, at best
Prosecutors are pushing for five Palestine Action activists who vandalised a Barclays branch in Burnley to be sentenced under contentious terrorism laws, in the latest case of the UK's expanding crackdown on protesters.
The Crown Prosecution Service has filed a submission arguing for tougher punishment, citing government guidelines that allow an individual judge to determine the length of the sentence based on whether the crime is deemed to have a "terrorist connection".
This is despite no formal terrorism charges being brought against the defendants, who were found guilty last month of carrying out criminal damage at a Barclays branch in August 2024 and are due to be sentenced this September.
The group caused about 212,000 worth of damage by spraying red paint and smashing windows while a "distressed" security guard remained inside the bank, according to documents seen by the FT.
Four of the activists who attacked the bank were in their late twenties and early thirties while the fifth, who served as a getaway driver, is aged 70.
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Thierry Noisette @tnoisette.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Où est Charlie? Photo hier en apothéose de la #wikimania2026 à Paris (bonne chance pour me trouver - moi par contre j'ai identifié plusieurs personnes ;-)) avec Baby Globe, mascotte des 25 ans de Wikipédia et star de la semaine commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wi... #wikimania
Wikimania Day 4 group photo with the Giant Wikipedia Puzzle
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
The research track is kicking off at #Wikimania 2026 with a keynote by @elenasimperl.bsky.social :)
wikimedia.eventyay.com
Keynote: AI and the knowledge commons: Balancing automation and human agency for resilience and trust Wikimania 2026
Initiatives such as Wikipedia, Zooniverse, Reddit, and OpenStreetMap have become foundational digital infrastructure that enable large-scale, collaborative knowledge production. For decades, their vol...
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
At #Wikimania 2026 listening to fascinating discussion between Pavan Santhosh Ramya Chandrasekhar @dorialexander.bsky.social and Puthiya Purayil Sneha : tokenizer tax & model transparency, challenges for CC licences, documentation vs. extraction for global majority languages, need for reciprocity
wikimedia.eventyay.com
Building Open Datasets for Global Majority Languages Wikimania 2026
The proposed discussion aims to gather a set of best practices related to language documentation and creation of datasets for the development of AI models. Data collection for building AI technologies...
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
“How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in pursuit of books!“
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Wikimedia UK @wikimediauk.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Did you know 72 names are inscribed on the Eiffel Tower and not one belongs to a woman? The Eiffel Women campaign, led by our own Ceryl and Dr Lucy R. Hinnie is making sure the 72 women proposed for the tower shine on Wikipedia. It wraps up at Wikimania this month... join the final push!
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Sylvia @sylvia-suffragette.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Burnham “I can’t make changes that are not in the manifesto” Labour 2024 manifesto ‘We will not issue new licenses… because they will not take a penny off bills, cannot make us energy secure and will only accelerate the worsening climate crisis’
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Andy Scollick @andyscollick.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
"The consequences of climate collapse are increasingly visible and intrusive ... The space for populist, pro-climate politics will only get bigger – and if Andy Burnham doesn’t occupy it, Zack Polanski certainly will."
novaramedia.com
If Andy Burnham Ignores the Climate, He’ll Do So at His Peril | Ash Sarkar
The space for populist green politics is only getting bigger – and if the PM-in-waiting doesn’t occupy it, Zack Polanski certainly will, writes Ash Sarkar.
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Alex Turner @turntrout.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
I resigned from Google DeepMind bc it broke its founding promise by selling AI to the military without restrictions against killer robots or mass spying. For months, I worked to stop this but watched powerful ethicists and institutions choose silence. Here's what happened. 🧵
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Jeremy Noel-Tod @jntod.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Amazing detail I just learned from a discussion of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ student diaries: he once gave up looking at the sky for Lent
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
So the UN has launched an AI for Good Global Commission. But it consists of state & industry reps, without any civil society or academic voices. What a depressing missed opportunity. @sonialivingstone.bsky.social, quoted here, is among signatories to an open letter complaining the exclusion.
ecnl.org
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 13/07/2026
With all the July model runs now in, it is very likely that 2026 will see the largest El Niño event since records began in the late 1800s – and potentially by a truly mind-blowing margin. The median estimate is now 3.6C, roughly 0.8C hotter than the prior record (2.75C). www.theclimatebrink....
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
The paranoid-skeetoid position
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Dave Palfrey @01factory.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Yum.
How To See Like A Machine by Trevor Paglen, Vector Media by Leonardo Impett and Fabian Offert, and half a lemon
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