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Tobias Wilson-Bates

@phdhurtbrain.bsky.social
12K followers 4.3K following 19K posts

Time Machines. Temporality. Ecology. Robots. Education. Associate Professor of 19th century British Literature.

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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 4h
Honestly astounding how continuously pertinent Victor Frankenstein’s complete abdication of moral responsibility for his work has turned out
“At some point I’ll be able to retire and be like, ‘It’s not on me,’ I don’t have an obligation to keep going,” Mr. Olah said.

He wondered if he might feel guilty leaving this work behind. But if not, he said, “I think I’ll just go and, I don’t know, I’ll go retire to the countryside and garden, and do my math.”
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 7h
no fan of the bezos engine but have just seen that kindle edition of the book is basically free there if anybody uses kindles and is interested
Screenshot of Amazon page for action without Hope: Victorian literature after climate collapse, showing 91% off, price 299
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
One thing I’m struck by is how no teacher teaching a student alone. Students operate under impressions of how to navigate all of their past classes and the other classes they’re taking at the same time as yours. It always strikes me as urgent, then, that we teach our method alongside our content.
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Karl Galle @karlgalle.bsky.social · 13h
"We seek a historian specializing in the modern history of science, technology, & medicine ... and will consider applicants who specialize in any scientific practice in any part of the world since 1600." App review begins Nov 6, so after election results. 👀 faculty.utexas.edu/career/193102 #HistSTM
faculty.utexas.edu
Faculty Careers - The University of Texas at Austin
Unleash your intellectual power by joining a world-renowned faculty that is solving the world's most urgent problems. At UT Austin, we provide you the freedom to blaze trails, follow your curiosity, e...
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 11h
thebulletin.org/2026/09/how-...
thebulletin.org
How the bad science of AI doomerism is good for big business
There is no clear path showing that today’s AI systems will lead to superintelligence, much less a basis for calculating the probability of doom.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 18h
Literature, like every other art form, expresses many of its labor practices in its patterns and material. Writing that has to be produced at breakneck speed and be printed on cheap material is an expression of those writer’s vulnerability to exploitative tendencies in the literary marketplace.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 19h
The Tooth Fairy is an amazing invention bc it’s legitimately terrifying shedding tiny sharp bones out of your face and yet kids are so excited to do it
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David Hull 胡大衛 @hushuo.bsky.social · 18h
I was really disappointed to discover the gall bladder fairy was a myth. Had to throw out that pillow, too.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 18h
Literature, like every other art form, expresses many of its labor practices in its patterns and material. Writing that has to be produced at breakneck speed and be printed on cheap material is an expression of those writer’s vulnerability to exploitative tendencies in the literary marketplace.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 19h
The Tooth Fairy is an amazing invention bc it’s legitimately terrifying shedding tiny sharp bones out of your face and yet kids are so excited to do it
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Epic poetry? High and low literary genre?? Have we entered the era of online literary critique discourse?!!
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Epic poetry? High and low literary genre?? Have we entered the era of online literary critique discourse?!!
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
It's in moments like this when enormous amounts of puffery, misinformation, and speculation have flooded the public consciousness that you realize the half-life of these sorts of things is very, very long. We are still shifting through the detritus of similar past periods from hundreds of years ago.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
It's in moments like this when enormous amounts of puffery, misinformation, and speculation have flooded the public consciousness that you realize the half-life of these sorts of things is very, very long. We are still shifting through the detritus of similar past periods from hundreds of years ago.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
It’s interesting watching the lava lamp mutations of how “purity” works in various discourses.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Counterpoint: It would be great if people read some of the things that have been written about AI surveillance of workers! press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/hilke... www.cambridge.org/core/books/q... www.ucpress.edu/books/uberla... jacobin.com/2026/09/amaz...
press.princeton.edu
Data Driven
A behind-the-scenes look at how digital surveillance is affecting the trucking way of life
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
A corollary to this important point about AI & invisible labor is that, 100% of the time, the dudes most obsessed with onboarding LLMs into classrooms either suck deeply at teaching or are not teachers at all but instead lifelong administrators who think teaching is “generating feedback” & that’s it
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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
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
One of those little interactions in Shakespeare that sticks with you for the rest of your life
HIPPOLYTA.
This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.
THESEUS.
The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.
HIPPOLYTA.
It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.
THESEUS.
If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they may pass for excellent men. Here come two noble beasts in, a man and a lion.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 30/09/2026
Democrats defend "science," but what they really should be defending is "wissenschaft." No major social problems - from global warming to AI - can be solved without non-commercial research across multiple fields, including the social sciences and humanities. Really wish the party understood this.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
One of those little interactions in Shakespeare that sticks with you for the rest of your life
HIPPOLYTA.
This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.
THESEUS.
The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.
HIPPOLYTA.
It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.
THESEUS.
If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they may pass for excellent men. Here come two noble beasts in, a man and a lion.
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Kate McKean @katemckean.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
Books are a perfect technology that will never die.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
So many news items these days feel like watching bank robbers showing up to rob the bank only to find a previous generation of bank robbers who also tried to rob the bank, but, on finding the bank empty, decided to work at the bank so that they could eventually rob it.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
So many news items these days feel like watching bank robbers showing up to rob the bank only to find a previous generation of bank robbers who also tried to rob the bank, but, on finding the bank empty, decided to work at the bank so that they could eventually rob it.
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I try to help people understand this so we don't just automatically suggest lowering tuition as a silver bullet college affordability remedy when lots of public institutions already have low tuition
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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Teaching the Tempest this week!! So here I am reading from the play at Ft St Catherine in Bermuda, near the site of the shipwreck that inspired Shakespeare. (i e dad stuff, torturing my family).
Picture of me in a 17c fort reading from the tempest
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Not a thing we know or will ever know can come from anything other than this deep well of care and patience, of being together with difficulty.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
So you know previous waves of technological fabulism the tech companies threw a little loose change at social behavioral research and user interface experience. whats interesting about AI interesting is that they aren’t even pretending to care about how people use the technology.
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InDefenseOfToucans @indefenseoftoucans.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Having to build agents at work, the problem is they in theory could be best at tasks that are slightly too unstructured to be easily done with a python script, but you still have to be like 85% of the way there, and the trade off is less deterministic. I never can get my bosses to understand this
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Every bullet point is a crime against grammar.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
By week 8 of the semester every hour is a dead sprint. A form of life entirely alien to the form of myself that existed in mid June.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A pretty enormous part of expertise is knowing what work not to do.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Every bullet point is a crime against grammar.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A pretty enormous part of expertise is knowing what work not to do.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
When they get back in power, Democrats need to go all-in on higher education. We need a campaign of reinvestment in public universities across the country that makes the Morrill Land-Grant Act look like nothing by comparison *and* a GI Bill of Rights-style program of tuition grants.
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Jon Lennox @jonlennox.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Time for sexy Robinson Crusoe. Theme music: "Friday I'm In Love".
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Gfrancie (Benevolent Siren) @gfrancie.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
It is the only thing that will save us.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I also want to make clear that only interpreting horniness as profanity and nudity is one bad outcome of the dark/gritty era. There can be canonical horny texts available at every cinematic rating.
David Bowie in Labyrinth shaping the sexuality of an entire generation
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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Rabelais's moment has come
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
While acknowledging that some people do very effective versions of using the tool, my general feeling is that the way PowerPoint operates in educational settings is representative of many problems in education.
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Jacob @jacobaugust.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
static.klipy.com
Sword In The Stone Squirrel's Playful Chase
Alt: Wart (in squirrel form) being romantically pursued by a female squirrel in Disney's The Sword in the Stone (1963)
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Ennie @anyuse.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Did Nathaniel Hawthorne post this? -Herman Melville
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The children yearn for Enkidu
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Properly horny Moby-Dick would make THREE TIMES as much as sad boi Odyssey
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I'll stop banging on about this, but it's a fundamental aspect of poetry and the poetics of figurative language more broadly that achieving apex horniness is not something you can access with dour realism; it's something you aspire to and articulating the inadequacy of the real is half the fun!
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I also want to make clear that only interpreting horniness as profanity and nudity is one bad outcome of the dark/gritty era. There can be canonical horny texts available at every cinematic rating.
David Bowie in Labyrinth shaping the sexuality of an entire generation
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CATBOY HUSBAND @ SNEZNHAYA @sportsgeek42.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Make it HORNY. And make it GAY.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I think the tendency to take older intellectual property and making it dark and gritty has run its course. Time to start adapting older texts to be maximally horny.
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Nikolai Denmark @nikolaidenmark.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
LAWD HE COMING
Walt Disney’s Robin Hood
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Mon Mothra @flobbert.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
It’s time for a moby dick adaptation that makes the subtext text
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