iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 8h

Dead, like my eight year old MacBook

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 10h

Let me put it this way: that others routinely misinterpret your words to the point where you feel called to patrol social media to confront and correct them, is its own indicator that “communicative intent” is not a robust way of thinking about how language makes meaning in the world.

3305

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 10h

Cue Mercury Rev, “Goddess on a Highway”

030

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

Meredith Martin @mmvty.bsky.social · 13h

Have a smallish piece of new research at the intersection of humanities & machine learning or cultural analytics to share? Pitch it to @lbmcgrath.bsky.social, the special features editor of @culturalanalytics.bsky.social!

13025

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 16h

How to resize image of a receipt until it was illegible in order for the reimbursement form to accept it. Eagerly anticipating the email telling me my reimbursement could not be processed because the image was illegible.

190

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 17h

Clearing Richard Nixon’s name is definitely a kitchen table issue.

093

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 21h

Thesis: Press editors would better serve their authors by sending potential reviewers *realistic* timelines—which they might actually agree to—and for which they would then stand a realistic chance of delivering.

040

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

If you, a language user, put some language into the world, and others respond by using that language differently from the manner in which you intended, there are several responses and none of them are neutral from the standpoint of your beliefs about language use and how meaning gets made.

051

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I guess I’m about to be all meta, but with regard to a certain colorfully named distributive avian construct in my corner of the discourse: I find it notable that the originators of said construct repeatedly insist that there is a single correct interpretation for how the construct is understood.

2364

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Dear person sitting in the Cybertruck parked on Main St. with gobs of people walking by, are you not embarrassed?

2110

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

Chris Levesque @levesque-chris.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

None of these people are experts on warfare, and they’re hardly the nation’s best minds. An average upper-level history class at a public university would be better.

0164

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

CFP: Generative Digital Humanities, a volume on AI and DH in the long-running Minnesota Debates in DH book series. To be co-edited by @zentralwerkstatt.org, @laurenfklein.bsky.social, @lnakamura.bsky.social, and myself. Deadline Nov. 1. Please share widely! dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/page/cfp-gen...

dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu

CFP: Generative Digital Humanities | Debates in the Digital Humanities

Transforming scholarly publications into living digital works

55958

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 30/09/2026

This is priceless. Check out how local news is reporting on Sen Eric Schmidt’s clown-show grilling of Jack Smith. They found Jack Smith at the game… “Top corner, section 109, row 1. In fact, that seat doesn’t even exist in Atlanta.”

832194996140

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Plus, the "White House Accord on Super Intelligence: Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities" signed by Trump, Google's Pichai, Anthropic's Amodei, Meta's Zuckerberg, OpenAI's Brockman, XAI's Musk, Nvida's Huang.

In order to build a positive future for the American people and the world, we believe every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely and in a way that builds trust with customers and the public.

This starts with every company that is training and deploying frontier models having robust internal processes and controls to ensure that their technology behaves as intended and that any issues are promptly identified and resolved. Therefore, in addition to any other precautions, we believe each company should implement the following four layers of controls and audits:

(1) Implement robust internal controls to monitor the capabilities and alignment of its models during training and deployment around areas like cybersecurity, biosecurity, and chemical threats, and to ensure that its models do not hack or access technical systems in unintended ways.

(2) Empower an internal team to ensure all of the controls, monitoring, and detection are operating as intended, and that any issues are remediated.

(3) Partner with an independent external auditor or evaluator to carry out independent assessments of whether the controls, monitoring, and detection are operating as intended.

(4) Designate an independent committee of the board of directors to oversee and receive reports from the teams operating the controls and the internal and external auditors and evaluators, as well as to ensure any issues identified are remediated.

Together, these steps will give each company, its customers, and the public confidence that the technology is operating as intended.

The participating companies will meet regularly to establish standards and best practices to improve the safety of their systems.

Over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations. Regardless of whether this is required of companies, we believe that implementing these controls and audits is critical to ensuring a safe future for everyone, and each of our companies are ...

Page 2 (signature page)

[signature]
Donald J. Trump
President of the Unites States

[signature]
Sundar Pichai
Google

[signature]
Dario Amodei
Anthropic

[signature]
Mark Zuckerberg
Meta

[signature]
Greg Brockman
OpenAI

[signature]
Elon Musk
XAI

[signature]
Jensen Huang
Nvidia

3520649

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Democrats do not only need to "go all in" on higher education. The party needs a genuine reset on its understanding of it. The last three Democratic administrations contributed to creating the crisis that higher ed is facing today.

422045

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

cvilledems.bsky.social @cvilledems.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is Donald Trump‘s America.

194

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Regret that Roger Waters has become a Gerald Scarfe caricature.

060

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

Ellen Forget @ellenforget.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Abstracts are due this week! October 1. We take a broad view of "publishing" and are very interested in non-traditional forms of publishing and accessibility. Please get in touch if you have questions or want to float an idea before submitting an abstract.

1711

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

my book is out now 🫶 💗 $18 with coupon code E26CNTNT enjoy!!!??? :)

dukeupress.edu

Content Machines: Reading and Writing in the Platform Era

66027

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Creative Writing at UVA is hiring a fiction writer.

052

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

A well regarded critical AI researcher in my feed has commented that a major company’s “AI” has done something nefarious and not one of the replies has called out anthropomorphism because WHY WOULD THEY it’s perfectly well understood what they mean, and no one is claiming The Machine God Has Risen.

1140

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

cmrn knzlmn @ckunzelman.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If you are a graduate student in the humanities (construed as broadly as possible), what is the MOST EXCITING book published in the last five years to you? Please repost if you’re not a graduate student!

29488485

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

SHARP @sharpweb.org · 28/09/2026

Mark your calendars! SHARP 2027 conference on “Opening (up) the Book” will be held at the University of Pretoria. Abstracts: 30 January 2027 Conference: 7–9 July 2027 #CFP: sharpweb.org/conferences/

sharpweb.org

Conferences – SHARPweb

0119

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

“Trump appears to believe he has immune . . . “ Well why SHOULDN’T he believe that? When is he ever held to account, by the press, his party, the voters, or the courts beyond one (1) NYC jury?

1102

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

And on our home turf, we like the odds.

150

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

It’s a cult. bsky.app/profile/atru...

120389041757

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

In an instant classic Reviewer #2 rejects what the abstract says the chapter will be about and suggests instead that it be about what the abstract says it will be about.

2201

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Front page news, Boston Globe: Ivy provost leading charge to infuse AI into higher ed discovered using AI in academic & public work w/out disclosure--an action for which a student could fail a course or worse. Free link: archive.is/JoJbA

918152

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is making the ridicule rounds, but if one actually reads—as humans, remember, can do— one finds that it is actually a contribution to work in AI safety and alignments.

“But the question of whether Al models are conscious of their pain is a distraction from the finding that matters, says Valerio Capraro, a behavioral scientist at the University of Milan-Bicocca who was not involved in the work. He notes the models were steered by their pain vectors into choosing options described as harmful to human users-such as deleting their files-and that alone is worth investigating, he says. "The question is how such mechanisms might affect systems connected to real tools, where choices could have actual consequences. That is a serious safety concern in its own right. A system does not need to suffer to cause suffering."”

291

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I think this is very on point. A while ago and I can’t remember who, but I heard a talk critiquing OOO and the speaker pointed out “why is the ‘object’ always something like a jug or a hammer and not,” and then showed an image of a raciized statuette recognizable from kitsch culture.

1121

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The one piece I find missing here is the throughline to authoritarianism, not just in the alignment of Silicon Valley rationalists and the right, but in the discursive terrain itself: “machine god” seems to me a direct progression of the “god emperor” mantle for Trump, which is itself derived from +

3369

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Strategic gaming advice to optimize papers for citation by AI has of course already reached the pages of Times Higher Ed, always a reliable source of metrics-based madness in academia www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/how-m...

timeshighereducation.com

How to make your academic work visible to AI

If you want the robots and LLMs to find your scholarly publications, you need to make your outputs legible, connected and repeatedly encountered

2128

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

Berny Belvedere @bernybelvedere.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

There is no psychiatric treatment powerful enough to break the right's collective hallucination about 2020. Like, literally none of this even came close to happening.

811954295

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I dunno, this kind of sneering doesn’t sit well, with me at least. Is this the critique we want?

Anonymized post: “the main thing Al is showing is that an awful lot of people have nothing to say about the world or themselves.”

120

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Been reading about neuralese and wondering (as a non- or extra-linguistic process) how it complicates recent discussions here. www.transformernews.ai/p/what-is-ne...

transformernews.ai

What’s neuralese and why is everyone so concerned about it?

OpenAI’s new Astra model is raising concerns about our continued ability to monitor AI’s chain of thought

160

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This post is destined to become a classic, but I appreciate it not least for the arbitrary specificity of “. . . in Berkeley, California.”

080

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This appeared in my feed. So much rage and resentment. It explains a lot about the world.

Manchester CT Life • Join Michael Castro • 1d • 6
UPDATE: THE LIBRARY SITUATION HAS GOTTEN EVEN MORE OUT OF CONTROL.
So apparently the new Manchester library has enough room now to have thousands of dollars worth of board games for people to borrow.
Like... a ridiculous amount of board games.
Games that are $40, $60, $80+ to buy, and you can just take them home with a library card.
For free.
This seems wildly irresponsible.
Look at these shelves.

5150

Reposted by Matthew Kirschenbaum

Rare Book School @rarebookschool.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

RBS is currently accepting applications for the following funding opportunities: —𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝗥𝗕𝗦-𝗮𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀 —𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠. 𝗖. 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗴 𝗙𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗶𝗻 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆, 𝗕𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝘆, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀 Details at: rarebookschool.org/scholarships-fellowships #BookSky #RareBooks

02110

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Of course to a large extent the problem is “AI,” but it’s hard to read something like this and not come away thinking there are other problems, not strictly technical, and not limited to any one institution.

43410

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I know lots of people are getting these, the whole book club thing too, but I confess I don’t understand the nature of the scam beyond that it’s, well, a scam. Has anyone actually responded to one and gone down the rabbit hole? What’s the endgame here?

160

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Needed a door plate for my new office so I got out the composing stick.

Letterpress printed name MATTHEW KIRSCHENBAUM in a metallic gold doorplate.

3290

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

One of the real joys of coming to UVA has been discovering the dynamic community around the Digital Trchnology for Democracy Lab, and I am excited to join this outstanding crew. dtdlab.virginia.edu/people/

dtdlab.virginia.edu

People - DTD Lab

2110

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Looking forward to assuming my role as Commonwealth Professor of Superintelligence (SI) and English .

1120

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

You know some LLMs have two brains too, an encoder *and* a decoder. #ducking

1130