Sign in

Atilla Hallsby

@atillahallsby.bsky.social
798 followers 961 following 167 posts

“Sovereign, Settler, Leaker, Lie” (The Ohio State University Press, 2026). tinyurl.com/yfh4pvfd “Reading Rhetorical Theory” (University of Minnesota Libraries, 2022) open.lib.umn.edu/rhetoricaltheory www.atillahallsby.com

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
MPR News @mprnews.org · 24/09/2026
The projected cuts are roughly 12 to 15 percent of its allocated operating revenue, as the University said it faces shifting enrollment trends, unpredictable state and federal funding and rising costs.
mprnews.org
University of Minnesota plans $225 million in budget cuts over two years
The University of Minnesota plans to cut $225 million from its budget over two years as it responds to shifting enrollment, uncertain government funding and rising costs.
0159
Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Some dire updates from Minnesota: www.startribune.com/u-of-m-budge...
startribune.com
University of Minnesota to cut $225 million from budget across all campuses
It comes after the U approved a budget in June raising students’ tuition by 3.8%, the sixth consecutive year of increases for the U.
000
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Keezy Young🌼 @keezyyoung.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
on that note, if we could stop suggesting it "hallucinates" that would also be great, at it is the same
6524148
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Karen K. Ho @karenho.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
This gallery of ICE crop/seed art at this year's Minnesota State Fair is incredible, especially the one based on Pablo Picasso's Guernica by Jennifer Nelson, which features the last words of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Morse code: www.cropart.com/Resist.pdf
A seed art entry in the 2026 Minnesota State Fair based on Pablo Picasso's Guernica. It features a loon, the words "Ice Out" and two representations of Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s. Notably, the mouths of Good and Pretty include their last words in Morse code:
‘I’m not mad at you,’ and ‘Are you okay?’” The artist is Jennifer Nelson.
222207689
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Donnie Johnson Sackey @donniejsackey.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
A couple hours ago, I woke up to messages about CCCC being dissolved and absorbed into NCTE's College Section. I don't know what this means for the 2027 conference, but I do know it'll be different, if it's held at all.
56531
Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Big news day for Atillas everywhere
000
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Jeffrey Vagle @jvagle.me · 12/06/2026
From the conclusion of @bentarnoff.com & @quinnslobodian.com's Muskism, which imagines a possible future under Musk hegemony:
“On the way home, the air is hazy with vapor and filled with a low-level hum from the cooling towers of the Neural Districts—massive data center complexes ringing the city. A Tesla sign on a fence reads “Data is Sovereignty.” Asking her parents why the trees are dead and the streambeds dry, they respond “critical infrastructure.” At home, the lights are dim because “nonessential use” is rationed to supply the data centers at peak hours.
She talks to her parents about Mars. Starship is now launching twenty times a day and the rockets have become fully reusable, but the launch window only comes every two years. Promotional videos and gleeful simulations populated by animated companion AIs circulate constantly on X. One more push, one more sacrifice, they all sing, and humanity will ascend.”
01110
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
anil oza @aniloza.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
wow — the preprint host, arxiv, is banning authors for a year if they submit papers with hallucinated citations 🤖
Twitter thread from Thomas Dietterich, reading "Attention 
@arxiv
 authors: Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated. 1/
3:03 PM · May 14, 2026
·
66.7K
 Views
Relevant
View quotes

Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
If generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content, and that output is included in scientific works, it is the responsibility of the author(s). 2/
Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
We have recently clarified our penalties for this. If a submission contains incontrovertible evidence that the authors did not check the results of LLM generation, this means we can't trust anything in the paper. 3/
Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
The penalty is a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue. 4/
Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
Examples of incontrovertible evidence: hallucinated references, meta-comments from the LLM ("here is a 200 word summary; would you like me to make any changes?"; "the data in this table is illustrative, fill it in with the real numbers from your experiments") end/"
9458111914
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
The Canvas hack is truly terrifying and could have all kinds of knock-on effects. Student messages to professors can be particularly sensitive. @linkletter.org helps contextualize this: www.404media.co/the-biggest-...
404media.co
'The Biggest Student Data Privacy Disaster in History': Canvas Hack Shows the Danger of Centralized EdTech
Messages could include "medical circumstances, accessibility accommodations, disputes, sexual assault allegations," and more.
418888
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
prosocial hack against grading and scabbing? antisocial hack to harvest the data the surveillance corp already utilizes the LMS for? dialectical times
3517
Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Right in time for finals week, too
130
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Since today is officially National AI Literacy Day, I think it might be helpful to share work that challenges “literacy” as the best framework for teaching about and against AI and other technologies. 🧵
49039
Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
“[S]ecrecy seems to define modern American politics. In “Sovereign, Settler, Leaker, Lie,” Assistant Professor Atilla Hallsby argues that these moments don’t simply reveal hidden truths but also follow familiar patterns that help sustain existing systems of power.” cla.umn.edu/comm-studies...
cla.umn.edu
Sovereign, Settler, Leaker, Lie: Atilla Hallsby on Secrets, Conspiracy, and Power in U.S. Politics
In "Sovereign, Settler, Leaker, Lie", Atilla Hallsby examines how secrecy shapes U.S. politics, showing how scandals, leaks, and conspiracy narratives reinforce existing systems of power.
030
Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
I realize this is a half Measure, but, remove your materials from the LMS.
035
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Meet “ASU Atomic,” a subscription platform that claims to offer customized learning modules for fee-paying users. None of the ASU faculty whose course materials were harvested for the module I generated were aware that their image, lectures, lessons, or other teaching materials are being used.
25537253
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 19/04/2026
“‘Even though people often say there’s no such thing as privacy in public, the truth is a lot more complicated,’ said [Woodrow] Hartzog, who works in privacy and technology law.”
usatoday.com
'Dystopian'? Smart glasses may be watching (and recording) you
Advocacy groups issued a letter saying wearable tech like Meta's smart glasses represents a “dystopian privacy invasion.”
39326
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Palantir is its own agnotology machine. Do not engage with their discourse, which throws spaghetti at the wall of media: every strand introduces a new kind of doubt. You try to consume & debate it but in the end all you are is tangled in spaghetti and covered with marinara.
933765
Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
A thousand times over, this. The demand that classes be accessible (reasonable) AND that the painstaking labor of making-accessible ought to come in addition to existing demands upon time, productivity, and service, without support or subsidy (unconscionable). Exhaust and accuse; demean and surveil.
2134
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Tim Maughan @timmaughan.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
no please NYT, tell me more of this ancient discovery your digital archeologists have unearthed (source: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/b...)
Satoshi was also very likely a member of the Cypherpunks, a group of anarchists formed in the early 1990s who wanted to use cryptography, the art of securing communications through code, to free individuals om government surveillance and censorship. The Cypherpunks interacted mostly through something called an internet mailing list. Ancestors of today's message boards, mailing lists were large group emails in old typewriter font that subscribers received in their inbox. To communicate, respondents replied-all.
53630107
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
People need to pay close attention to this OLC opinion on the Presidential Records Act. As @joshgerstein.bsky.social points out, nothing less than our own history is at stake. www.politico.com/news/2026/04...
politico.com
Trump admin’s challenge of Watergate-era records law alarms historians
Scholars warn that DOJ’s declaration that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional could impact other administrations.
782004898
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Strong recommendation to teaching faculty to just say no to this stuff, even if you are AI curious/enthusiastic. This is meant to reduce faculty autonomy and capture human labor with automation. You're selling out your future self and the profession as a whole. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...
insidehighered.com
Canvas Unrolls AI Teaching Agent
The new AI agent aims to save faculty time on “low-value tasks,” but stops short of fully automating grading. But some experts worry that the rise of agentic AI could lead to a dead classroom, where c...
14711329
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Sean O’Kane @okane.fyi · 20/03/2026
Google has utter contempt for its users, there's really no other way to read this. Reducing headlines down to caveman-like phrases as if Search users are too braindead to spend more than a milisecond evaluating the blue links. www.theverge.com/tech/896490/...
theverge.com
Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines
Let us know if you see more.
22111
Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
IMO linked article implicitly justifies defunding the public humanities (or any disciplinary hub resisting AI and/or employment outcome framings of higher ed) for “learn to code” styled degrees with the “promise” of employment… look how that turned out? College as a six-sigma seminar, yuck.
000
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
I have a new essay out on the right-wing artist Jon McNaughton. Come for an explanation of how the right-wing perverts Walter Benjamin's understanding of art; check out how race-as-viral-modernity explains a lot; don't miss the potshots at new materialism! www.tandfonline.com/eprint/NGAN2...
tandfonline.com
The painter of right: Jon McNaughton and the conservative challenge to visual culture
In the last decade, conservative artist Jon McNaughton has gained notoriety. This essay reads McNaughton to make better sense of conservatism's relationship with liberal democratic visual culture. ...
3348
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 04/03/2026
he outlines this massive surveillance society under the pretense that ethical, responsible people will be in charge, undermined by his effort to cement a permanent zealot kakistocracy in a country too corrupt to have working regulators or corporate accountability of any kind
30530207
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Again, I know it’s disingenuous but at least some of the time it needs to be said that this is bullshit. So I’m saying it. This is bullshit. From the rooter to the rooter.
2436931
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
we reached the “no WMDs” phase in two days.
reuters.com
Pentagon tells Congress no sign that Iran was going to attack US first, sources say
Trump administration officials acknowledged in closed-door briefings with congressional staff on Sunday that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack U.S. forces first, two people f...
10074932194
Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
As @juliaazari.bsky.social writes, the parallels are imperfect but we can hear faint echoes of 2003 in 2026. “That may be the most important lesson from those years: that we’ve allowed ourselves to become a world power whose politics can’t process the complexity of the world we aspire to lead.”
010
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Julia Azari @juliaazari.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Wrote a thing about the lessons of the 2003 Iraq invasion for the current situation. tl;dr, the world is a serious place and we're an increasingly unserious country goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/lessons-fr...
goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com
Lessons from the Iraq invasion for Trump's Iran war
The parallels aren't perfect, but they tell us something about our domestic politics around war
05820
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Tal Lavin @swordsjew.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
I just finished Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and was sort of like "this is a bit overrated" until the ending destroyed me like a tragic gay nuclear bomb and i was Shaken
6399526
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Linda Holmes @lindaholmes.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Milkshake puck
604951711
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 25/02/2026
As Kash Patel actively covers up the murders of Minnesotans, the Minnesota Wild GM invites him into the USA locker room. Awful look.
The Athletic reports that Team USA GM Bill Guerin was who invited FBI Director Kash Patel into the locker room for the celebration
31855121714
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
The floor plan for the planned ICE concentration camp in Social Circle, Georgia:
20241862309
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
One small quibble I have with the newsletter is the statement "It’s entirely possible to imagine an 'AI' that was outside of corporate control." I would just say, at that point we wouldn't call it 'AI'. 'AI' itself a marketing term, and a colonizing one at that.
614719
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
ProPublica @propublica.org · 15/02/2026
12-year-old Ender wrote that when she felt sick at Dilley, the doctor would only say to drink more water. “The worst thing is that it seems like the water is what makes people sick here,” she wrote in her letter. By @micarosenberg.bsky.social
propublica.org
The Kids Trump Sent to ICE’s Dilley Detention Center
ProPublica went inside the immigrant detention center for families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of...
381304650
Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
000
Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
An accurate and incisive account of anti-ICE censorship at UMN-TC www.startribune.com/politics-uni...
startribune.com
Opinion | At the University of Minnesota, neutrality has become censorship
"In theory, neutrality policies protect free debate by allowing the community to disagree on controversial matters. But in practice, these policies are easily weaponized to achieve the opposite — cens...
000
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Ideas on Fire @ideasonfirephd.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
Congratulations are in order for Ideas on Fire author Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social, whose new book Sovereign, Settler, Leaker, Lie: Forms of the Secret in US Political Rhetoric is out now from @ohiostatepress.bsky.social. 🎊 ohiostatepress.org/books/titles... #IoFAuthors
Cover of Sovereign, Settler, Leaker, Lie, with an empty white office with black telephones on the floor
042
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
a society losing the plot in real time
1433850674
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 09/02/2026
“No matter how Ring and other surveillance tech companies may downplay it, there’s no world in which finding lost dogs is the final end-use for this technology.”
ms.now
Opinion | Ring is using lost dogs to make the surveillance state adorable
The same technology the Amazon-owned company uses to find lost dogs could easily be turned against their owners.
311422505
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Bisexual of the Blade (Alt-text or DIE) @shengokai.blacksky.app · 09/02/2026
Next time somebody tries to get me to justify the existence of the humanities, I’ll just point out how for the past two Super Bowls we’ve all jumped online and engaged in collective semiotics and hermeneutics of the half-time show as text.
3947021104
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
I will go to my grave saying Palin was the prototype.
1781656
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
It feels like it's been impossible to get people outside of higher ed to understand that eliminating staff/programs/majors is primarily an ideological project, whatever claims are made about finances. What's happened at the Post is what's been happening in higher ed for ages.
7774205
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Kathleen Clark @kathleenclark.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
‘One officer told me that I "had no chance of returning to Minnesota" and that "the best thing for (me] is self-deportation." … She offered me $2600 to self-deport. I refused. I wanted to talk to my attorney. They didn't tell me the judge had already ordered my release and return to Minnesota.’
…
25. This Cibola jail was horrible. It was cramped. I was chained up again.
The officers mocked
me and called me their enemy. They laughed at me. I was kept at the jail for what felt like around three hours. I wasn't given an explanation for why I was there.
26. Security
guards then put me on a bus. I think it was around January 27.
No one said
anything about where I was going. I was handcuffed. It felt like the middle of the night. It was freezing cold in the bus because the driver had the AC on. We had no jackets. The bus eventually took me back to El Paso in the carly morning of Tuesday, January 27th.
27. I was put in a cold cell where I had to sleep on the bare cement floor. Around 10 in the morning my cellmate asked to speak to an ICE officer. Three officers came into the cell so I had a chance to speak to them too. One officer told me that I "had no chance of returning to Minnesota" and that "the best thing for (me] is self-deportation." She told me that if I fought my case, I would spend two to three more months here in El Paso. She offered me $2600 to self-deport. I refused. I wanted to talk to my attorney. They didn't tell me the judge had already ordered my release and return to Minnesota. If I hadn't managed to talk to my attorney who told me a while back that I was ordered released. I might have given up at this point and signed the self-deportation forms because the conditions were so unbearable.
…
30. When I was taken back to the detention center from the airport, after missing the flight, I overheard an ICE officer saying in English, "the judge in Minnesota wants this one back." I was put in a cold jail cell again until early next morning (January 28). But again no one had told me directly that a judge had ordered my release
…
32. When I arrived in Minneapolis, I was handed off to ICE
… I had to sign lots of papers saying that I wasn't going to be a part of any "groups." I didn't know what they meant by "groups." They never told me why I was detained
6867773632
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
There has been no de-escalation.
419861
Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
How the Supreme Court made itself more secretive
nytimes.com
Video: How the Supreme Court Made Itself More Secretive
Our investigative reporter Jodi Kantor uncovered that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked staff members at the Supreme Court to sign nondisclosure agreements shortly after the November 2024 electi...
000
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
I don't mean to seem alarmed, but it appears Google's book search function is, just...gone. In a sane country it would be a huge deal, front page news, that a privately owned utility that millions researches, from journalists to scholars, rely on every day to advance knowledge can just disappear.
28527193
Reposted by Atilla Hallsby
Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
The first customer for relational databases was the CIA. The surveillance program they tasked a Silicon Valley start-up with building was given the code name Oracle. That founder of that company, given the capital he needed to scale by serving U.S. intelligence operations, decided he liked the name.
412755
Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
“It’s suspiciously like the COINTELPRO days of the Hoover administration back in the sixties,” Breinholt said. “You’re declaring a sort of informal law enforcement war on this shadowy group.” Trump DOJ Files 9/11-Era Charges Against Leftists Across the Country talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-d...
talkingpointsmemo.com
Trump DOJ Files 9/11-Era Charges Against Leftists Across the Country
Across the country, federal prosecutors are upgrading what would have been routine...
000
Atilla Hallsby @atillahallsby.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Its release day for “Sovereign, Settler, Leaker, Lie”! Surreal to have the copies in hand. Check it out here: ohiostatepress.org/books/titles... Open access details forthcoming!
A stack of 15 paperback copies of “Sovereign, Settler, Leaker, Lie.” One upright hardcover copy stands next to the stack to display the cover, which displays the title and author’s name in bright red sand serif font. The cover image is of an empty, black and white office space with telephones scattered on the floor at regular intervals.Table of Contents for Sovereign, Settler, Leaker, Lie

Preface: This Page Left Intentionally Blank
Introduction: The Secret’s Forms
Chapter 1: The Secret Episteme: A Genealogy of Political Crisis
Chapter 2: The Secret in and of Discourse: Hidden Depths and Open Surfaces
Chapter 3: The Scandal: George W. Bush and the Exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson
Chapter 4: The Dog Whistle: Weaponizing Saul Alinsky in the Obama Years
Chapter 5: The Leak: Sexual Caricature and the National Security State
Chapter 6: The Detective: Settler Subjects and Neocolonial Warfare
Chapter 7: Twisted Endings: The Secret in and of the Deep State
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
240