iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal @ranjodhdhaliwal.com · 29/09/2026

Starting 'The State of Digital Studies' here in Basel today with @berrydm.bsky.social talking about the Vector Paradigm. Register via contralab.online/state-of-dig...

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Christian Wolf @chriswolfvision.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

2020: cold emails with applications mentioning unrelated areas like Biology. Candidate didn't even check my/our webpage. 2026: cold emails which relate the candidate's CV with our work and latest papers. 100% LLM written, generic LLM language. Same effect, same probability of getting a reply.

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Mark J. Nelson @mm-jj-nn.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Rice University's history department hiring an Assistant/Associate Professor in the History of Artificial Intelligence!

apply.interfolio.com

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

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Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I get this instinct, but in the world of AI, philosophy has been privileged for a long time. These aren’t questions with final answers, and we’ve had rigorous conversations about them for thousands of years. I find going to other parts of the humanities and social sciences more practical.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is sure to be another landmark event in the development of Critical AI Studies.

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Tyler Shoemaker @t-shoemaker.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Next month marks the 60th anniversary of the JHU conference where Derrida delivered “Sign, Structure, and Play.” We’re taking the opportunity to revisit (and reopen?) the structuralism question with regard to AI. If you’re in the Triangle, come by!

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This event was fantastic. Greatly enjoyed chatting with Nick, David Brooks, and the audience!

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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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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Going into my present project with this kind of energy.

Book covers: How to Read a Page, How to Read a Book, How to Read a Model

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Granite Staters: I'm speaking on a panel tomorrow evening at Lithermans Limited in Concord, NH at 6pm on AI impacts. Joined by Nicholas Smith, a UNH philosopher. Come for the Beer & Pizza and chat. www.concordmonitor.com/2026/09/10/s...

concordmonitor.com

Science Cafe returns Sept. 15 to discuss AI impacts - Concord Monitor

Science Cafe returns Sept. 15 at Litherman’s Brewery to discuss AI impacts with experts Nicholas Smith and James Dobson. Join the talk.

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Paula Krebs @paulakrebs.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Undergrad English majors, language majors, theater, folklore, creative writing majors: for conversation with writers of romance novels, advice on job seeking, opportunities to apply for grants up to $5000, and lots more, join the MLA's new undergrad member program! www.mla.org/Membership/A...

mla.org

Undergraduate Affiliate Membership

Whether you’re a Spanish literature major, a creative writer, a health humanities student, or an undergraduate with a deep commitment to the Oxford comma, the MLA invites you to join our new community...

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Greatly enjoyed this essay on a foggy morning spent moving back and forth between nature and the couch. It’s a sharp review, autobiographical fragment, and much more.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Congratulations to Roopsi, Dartmouth’s new Provost Leadership Fellow for AI Strategy! Looking forward to what comes next.

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David Gunkel @davidgunkel.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

This is why reading Derrida is so interesting and complicated. His writings--in both content and form--deliberately disrupt the common expectation that what has been written can be read as the expression of what the author of the text actually thinks. This is precisely what his texts deconstruct.

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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

New German Critique has the Digital Theory Lab's Semiotic Machines special issue forthcoming, featuring a collection of essays by people at the cutting edge of AI and interpretation, politics, and culture ngc.arts.cornell.edu/forthcoming....

ngc.arts.cornell.edu

New German Critique: Forthcoming Issues

Widely considered the top journal in its field, New German Critique is an interdisciplinary journal that focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century German studies.

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Dartmouth Arts and Sciences @dartmouthartsci.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

#Dartmouth professors Sarah Preum and Tim Burdick co-author a study that finds AI-generated patient messages can help with routine tasks, but models also tended to overdiagnose, overtreat, and miss key follow-up questions.

nhpr.org

Dartmouth study finds AI can help doctors sound more empathetic, but overdiagnoses and overtreats

A study from Dartmouth found that AI can help physicians manage patient messaging, but it comes with some caveats.

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markcmarino.bsky.social @markcmarino.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Wow. Blown away by this glowing review of Inventing ELIZA in the Wall Street Journal! My favorite line is that we were "talmudically annotating the code." archive.ph/fCcIy @sarahciston.com, @mitpress.bsky.social @wsj.com #critcode #ArtificialIntelligence #computerhistory #SoftwareHistory

Screen shots of the review in the Wall Street Journal: 'Inventing ELIZA' Review: The Mother of all Chatbots

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

There has been little scholarly work on the media history of the GPU. This freshly published OA article is my attempt to show the lines of influence from learning machines in the 1950s through 1980s HPC and MPP systems to the TPUs and GPUs of the present. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

marketing image from Nvidia of the DGX Spark paired with a MacBook.

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Mark (reluctant scrivener) @markmadsen.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I mean, machine god fantasy is the driving force of much of the industry so the abstract seems to hold promise

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Earlier ms version had a reading of this bonkers ode to excess/the phallus but my readers were not having it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf8E...

youtube.com

Inside the World's Largest AI Supercluster xAI Colossus

YouTube video by ServeTheHome

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Melanie Walsh @mellymeldubs.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

This is a nice @seattletimes.com piece about our research paper, led by Imani Finkley! With some origin story lore about the @pudding.cool analysis that inspired it. Plus a goofy picture of me reading a Jimothy-coded kids' book about anthropomorphic raccoons. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

seattletimes.com

UW researchers say AI-generated kids' books can twist biases in strange ways

AI-generated content has become more common in children's books. What happens to gender diversity when AI writes about animal characters?

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Greg Britton @gmbritton.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Now available: John Thelin's magisterial History of American Higher Education, fully updated in its fourth edition. www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/... @hopkinspress.bsky.social @universityofky.bsky.social #HigherEd

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I'm interested in the discourse as folks are discovering watermarking and how this might change the naive ways that people talk about generation. Watermarking strategies have now been around for a few years.

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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

The single most important thing I have done in my writing classes since 2023 is teach students how LLMs work--and to create curriculum for this that was adopted across first-year writing at Harvard. Right now we cannot assume students understand this-and it matters. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/u...

When Cassady Tondorf, 17, learned how chatbots produced writing, she realized their utter lack of originality. “The entire internet is open to it,” she said. “It’s just regenerating the same things, over and over.”

If she wanted to be valuable on the job market, she felt, she would need to have ideas and skills that were uniquely her own.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I feel this when I see folks circulating lists of work produced by journalists instead of humanists: "The extent to which humanists themselves distrust and despise humanities scholarship is depressing, and it’s paved the way for increasingly hostile calls from both inside and outside the house."

defector.com

Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong | Defector

For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, ...

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Noa Garcia @noagarciad.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

AI for Peace 2nd edition is back at @neuripsconf.bsky.social, Paris, December. The call for in person presentations is open. Submit, come, and be part of a community that is building up. AI for Peace @ NeurIPS 2026, Paris - One-page, non-archival, talk or poster. - Deadline 14 September 2026

Banner with a description of AI for Peace workshop. "A one-day workshop on how AI research enters military use-and researchers' responsabilities when it does". Link to submit a presentation.

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Jason Weidemann @fiveoclockbot.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

It's the Steam-ification of academic texts. And I don't want to poke, I mean this as a naive question that I am sure there's a complicated answer to, but it was these same libraries that aggressively moved from buying and shelving print books to digital collections, no?

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I am absolutely gobsmacked. And trying not to pass out from hyperventilating. Thank you @barackobama.bsky.social — you just made my secret dream for DATA EMPIRE, spoken aloud to NO ONE, come true.

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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 24/07/2026

One more week to submit! See you in Santa Barbara in October!

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Patrick Kindig @pdkindig.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Oh, 1950s academia... (From Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman (1951).)

An excerpt from Hangsaman (which references an associate professor of English who has only ever published "a series of poems in an arty journal)

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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

"We found that at least 150 institutions of higher ed... are using Flock’s surveillance network.. many campus police departments have facilitated immigration related investigations, even when they are located in sanctuary states and are legally prohibited from doing so" by @torinmonahan.bsky.social

doi.org

Flock on campus: university police as appendages of a national policing apparatus

Dangerous new forms of networked surveillance are gaining traction with police departments across the United States. One popular example is Flock Safety’s Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR)...

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I had so much fun celebrating the launch of DATA EMPIRE with my friend @roopikarisam.bsky.social at the Norwich Bookstore. This is such a great book—elegantly and brilliantly organized and narrated—and is sure to change the way many of us think about data, power, and our inherited habits of mind. 🍾

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Tonight at Norwich Bookstore, my dear friend and colleague @jeddobson.bsky.social and I will be discussing DATA EMPIRE 🥰 www.norwichbookstore.com/events/56768...

norwichbookstore.com

Roopika Risam in conversation with Jed Dobson -- Data Empire | The Norwich Bookstore

local indie bookstore serving Norwich, VT and the Upper Valley since 1994

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Spammers now puffing up even the most minor contributors to repositories.

Spam email noting my super minor contributions to like the most important repository on the Internet.

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meson press @mesonpress.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

So glad to see the book "Vector Media", just co-published with @uminnpress.bsky.social, getting the attention it deserves! 👇Shout out to the authors @zentralwerkstatt.org Fabian Offert + Leo Impett for their excellent work!!!! ✊ + thx @mckenziewark.bsky.social + Lev Manovich for your interest.

Facebook post in which Lev Manovich says: 'This is the best theoretical book about generative AI video I have read so far' forwarded by McKenzie Wark writing 'this looks interesting'.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

What ever happened to the Art of Google Books? Here's an interesting artifact from a Cambridge UP volume titled "Research Genres." Perhaps it depicts a common feeling when conducting research....

distorted cover image for a book titled Research Genres. "Genres" bleeds into noise.

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James E. Dobson @jeddobson.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Kate Crawford @katecrawford.bsky.social has an excellent commentary on the 70th anniversary of the Dartmouth summer workshop and calls for an "ethical reckoning" in the field. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Dartmouth’s AI summer and what came next

The 70th anniversary of the first AI workshop invites reflection on the technology’s wider legacies

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fortext lab @fortextlab.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Call for Papers: Machine Learning and AI in Humanities Research and Teaching 📅 Abstract submissions are open until September 15, 2026. Full CfP: journal.fortext.org/site/cfp/ 🧵 More details below #DigitalHumanities #DH #MachineLearning #KI #OpenAccess (1/2)

journal.fortext.org

Making sure you're not a bot!

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Katie McDonough @kmcdono.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Applications for this 2-year postdoc at @cmu.edu are starting to be reviewed now, so don't delay! Please spread the news to your local #DH networks. One of the people you'll be working with is me :) I am excited to meet this new colleague and collaborate on computational humanities in Pittsburgh!

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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 23/06/2026

Excited to share that we are now inviting proposals for our upcoming Critical AI Studies? conference at @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social on Oct. 9&10, 2026. Please see the full CfP here: huml.ucsb.edu/conference. Submissions are due July 31, 2026. For questions DM me or @owenleonard.bsky.social.

Poster for the conference "Critical Artificial Intelligence Studies?" at the University of California, Santa Barbara, October 9&10, 2026. The subtitle says "An interdisciplinary conference on a field in formation."

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Sarah Wasserman @sarahlwasserman.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

Congrats to the class of 2026! Pomppomppomp 🎓 Feat. @roopikarisam.bsky.social and @jeddobson.bsky.social

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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

come for Chris Olah on stage with the pope, stay for the failure of dictionary learning and the collapse of two traditions of reification

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Guillaume Plique @yomguithereal.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

xan v0.58.0 is out \o/ More performance, less cruft, very wow! You can now draw synthwave sparklines or visualize network layouts in your terminal like it's 1970! Full changelog: github.com/medialab/xan... @medialab-scpo.bsky.social

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punctum 🌈 books: spontaneous acts of scholarly combustion @punctumbooks.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

NEW #OpenAccess book drop! Wargame simulations, AI, weaponised drones, territorial enclosure, and extractivist economics—WAR MACHINE presents a series of digitally simulated conflicts over the most ecologically vulnerable areas of the Earth. FREE to download: punctumbooks.com/titles/war-m...

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