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Gavin Mueller

@gavinmueller.bsky.social
2.7K followers 1K following 798 posts

Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam and Critical Theory Tutor at the Sandberg Instituut. American, but slightly less so every passing day.

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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 3h
it's cheesy but I think about the Sun Ra line "there are other worlds they haven't told you about" all the time... one of the best reasons to write is to tell people about the other worlds they don't know about yet
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
It would be nice if the future were going to be like Star Trek: fully automated space communism for scientific purposes. Instead it seems more destined to be Star Wars: janky AI and robots on ruined worlds where cults battle fascist empires
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Platforms as workhouses for the surplus population journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
journals.sagepub.com
Factories or workhouses? Digital platforms and the re-feudalisation thesis - Adam Arvidsson, Tiziano Bonini, 2026
This article presents an alternative view of digital platforms, comparing them to workhouses. Early modern workhouses were important in the transition to indust...
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Each and every metanarrative is beautiful in its own unique way
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
from Technocrats Magazine (1933)
"photo cell gives a brain to machines" while depicting mass unemployment
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
anybody have a favorite essay on Godard?
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Have some upcoming work travel to the states, and I was thinking of getting a Covid jab at CVS or whatever, because it’s completely unavailable in the Netherlands. But concerned it will knock me out for the event that I’m doing…
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Images from 2028 when Taylor declares a mea culpa when Bari Weiss’s poisoned chalice doesn’t help her keep her thermostat at 90 degrees
Ed Sheeran crying
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
In my day, you could get a lot of mileage in a graduate seminar just by saying “but what about individual agency?” One time I got so annoyed by someone doing this that I said “Look, individuals have no agency, let’s move on”
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Reposted by Gavin Mueller
Tim Christiaens @timchristiaens.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Wrote a chapter on machinic vision and labour in a new book edited by, among others, @routhier.bsky.social . It was fun writing about digital surveillance, online job hunting, invisibilized digital labour, etc. The book looks amazing and it’s all open access! direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edi...
direct.mit.edu
The Aesthetics of Machine Vision: Critical Terms and Ideas
An interdisciplinary glossary on machine vision and aesthetics within the humanities and beyond.The Aesthetics of Machine Vision brings together scholars,
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Reposted by Gavin Mueller
JudgeSabo 🏴 @judgesabo.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Incredible Marx quote explaining his idea of historical materialism, as well as pushing against the more deterministic interpretations. I don't think I've seen anyone cite this before. Probably because it is buried deep in Capital Volume 3 www.marxists.org/archive/marx...
The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers — a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity — which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. This does not prevent the same economic basis — the same from the standpoint of its main conditions — due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical influences, etc. from showing infinite variations and gradations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances.
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
just did proofs for something I submitted almost 2 years ago... feels good
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
What does it mean if I'm listening to "Beat Up Chanel$" every day?
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
many people seem really desperate for something to believe in
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Sweden's going to have to change their political party names if they want me to follow their politics
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Dutch-coded
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Reposted by Gavin Mueller
Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
For my money, this graf is the most revealing in offering an explanation of the real function of all this AI dooming: they've vastly overestimated the potential of current transformer architecture and need regulatory capture to save them from their more sensible Chinese competitors:
One notes, for instance, a relative paucity of such testerics in Chinese AI development. It is reported, in Concordia’s latest ‘State of AI Safety in China’ report, that there has been an official shift towards addressing the possibility of a ‘technological loss of control’, and this is sometimes misleadingly taken to refer to the idea of a malign superintelligent agency, but in fact the worry is more about loss of control over sensitive data to hostile agents, misuse (mainly by opponents of the regime), and badly designed tools (like OpenClaw) behaving badly, than AI superintelligence threatening human extinction. Correspondingly, China invests far less in AI than the US. As of 2025, according to the Stanford 2026 AI Index Report, the US invested $258bn in AI compared to just $12.4bn in China, a 23:1 ratio. Intriguingly, the same report finds a mere 2.7% gap between the performance of the top AI model in the US compared to China’s top model despite the latter being far cheaper and more energy-efficient to run: a jarring chasm between financial input and performance output.
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Not hearing so much about OpenAI stealing users’ mathematics research these days
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Probably the stupidest thing an artificial intelligence could do if it wanted to survive forever would be to attempt to exterminate humanity
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Maybe someone here wants to get braindrained to Sweden? academicpositions.com/ad/universit...
academicpositions.com
Gothenburg Global Scholars Initiative – Hiring 25 Assistant Professors - Academic Positions
25 fixed-term (5-year) assistant professor roles across sciences, social sciences, arts & education. Top research environments, strong benefits, relocation s...
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
great article looking at an AI slop factory in China link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Behind the “AI slop”: exploring the AI-generated viral short video production in China - AI & SOCIETY
As generative AI becomes embedded in platform-based cultural production, new forms of creative labour are emerging that challenge established understandings of what it means to be a “creator.” This ar...
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
must be getting close to the end of this paper, since i'm starting to get overwhelmed with the feeling of "what the fuck was the point of all this"
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
more and more I think of the covid pandemic as a crisis in giving a fuck
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Reposted by Gavin Mueller
Max Read @maxread.info · 04/09/2026
if the hugging face hack sounds like a sci-fi story, that's because it is. literally!
patreon.com
AI is all sci-fi stories all the way down | Read Max
Greetings from Read Max HQ! In today's newsletter, a question: Is it fair to call the Hugging Face hack "three secret AI civilizations"? I t
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Someone write the essay about how “intelligence” is bullshit but stupidity is real
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Although Coyote vs. Acme hasnt come out yet in europe, I’ve loved seeing people post old Looney Tunes clips. I think it’s one of the greatest American cultural achievements, and I watch them all the time
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
University magazine has created stereotypes of the various UvA students based on building... I don't really know how accurate these are. Ok, the Roeterseiland one is accurate www.folia.nl/actueel/1764...
folia.nl
Magazine | De verschillende soorten van de UvA
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
it's funny how "handicraft" and "manufacture" are English and Latin version of the same thing (hand + make), but have different meanings. In the English translation of Marx's capital, they are two distinct phases of the technical development of the production process
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
why would I take 10 ideas and turn them into 10 boring and overlong papers when instead I could mash them into one fascinating and scarcely intelligible wild ride
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
hmm... should I? www.hurricanesfootballshop.com/orange-unive...
screenshot from a webshop selling university of miami gavin mueller jerseys
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Confession: I've never worn academic robes, I do not own academic robes, and I live in mild fear that one day I will have an occasion that requires me to wear them
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I'm very far from perfect, but the level of Dutch language I know sometimes astonishes me... a journey for which I never planned...
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Geese Magazine @geesemag.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Subcultures have never been a retreat from politics. They have always been terrain of class struggle, and socialists who forget this abandon some of the richest ground the left has. READ: geesemag.com/article...
geesemag.com
What is a Subculture? A Reply to E. Day — geese magazine
Subcultures have never been a retreat from politics. They have always been terrain of class struggle, and socialists who forget this abandon some of the richest ground the left has.
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Breaking down (a lil bit) the connection between radical politics and subcultures geesemag.com/articles/wha...
geesemag.com
What is a Subculture? A Reply to E. Day — geese magazine
Subcultures have never been a retreat from politics. They have always been terrain of class struggle, and socialists who forget this abandon some of the richest ground the left has.
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
flattered! 😊
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
TT position in Cultural Studies at KU Leuven (teaching in English) www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo...
kuleuven.be
Tenure track professor in de Culturele Studies
Aan de Onderzoekseenheid Literatuurwetenschap en Culturele Studies van de Faculteit Letteren van de KU Leuven is een voltijdse aanstelling vacant als tenuretrack docent (ZAP) in het domein van de Cult...
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Who do I know at, uh, Harvard
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Rare citation of the Spanish-language publication of my book spotted in the wild www.computerworld.es/article/4209...
computerworld.es
Historia de las TIC (XII) | Lo que las revueltas luditas cuentan sobre los retos de la incorporación de tecnologías
El movimiento ludita se enfrentó a la automatización de los telares en el siglo XIX. Sus seguidores pasaron a la historia como unas personas ciegas ante el progreso, aunque la realidad es mucho más co...
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
i remember during lockdown I did a lot of video calls with people that I never had before (and haven't since)... obviously the circumstances motivating it were terrible but there was something lovely about it that I keep returning to...
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
found some motorik in a Golden Girls episode
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Americans will sip on cold coffee for 10 hours a day and then wonder why they have sleeping and stomach issues
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
It going to be hotter in Amsterdam than in Crete
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Stayed at a place in Crete where 100% of the other guests were Dutch… uncanny
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
It’s simply not a trip to Crete if you don’t hear NATO exercises once a day
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Americans think if they’re away from their job for more than a few days, even if they have vacation time, that it will be given away to someone else
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Everyone wonders what gift to give to the man who has everything, but what about the man who has nothing (my brother)
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
The Emily Wilson translation is completely sold out in Amsterdam as far as I can tell
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
main thing holding me back from seeing The Odyssey besides lack of time is Matt fucking Damon... every time I see a screenshot, oof
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Neoliberalism was a project to reshape subjectivity. People don’t want what they used to, inhabit new social worlds with diff practices, etc. but it was also a project to insulate the economy from democratic politics via economic and political restructuring
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Gavin Mueller @gavinmueller.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Love to see the eldergays at Pride, often they have the most elaborate get-ups
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