Joschka Meier

A nice surprise for my birthday week: my first ‘proper’ academic publication, for UCL Press / Paper Trails. I hope you enjoy it!

ucldigitalpress.co.uk/BOOC/Article...

About printing and the history of print and a lot of ideas from my letterpress work overflowing in probably not terribly academic ways!

(I don’t think you have to be any sort of an academic or historian to make sense of this!)

AI is suffocating our systems part whatever

It’s the result of massive bot activity, downloading data at a scale which our infrastructure has found challenging. We have been finding this across all our metadata resources in recent months.

US watching a movie where a vigilante’s entire family is wiped out: “Oh yeah, time for fucking vengeance, this dude will never stop. Get them!”

US watching Iran pick a Supreme Leader who just had his entire family wiped out: “This guy is plainly going to be reasonable and fold.”

1. Are you currently using an AI tool for work-related tasks or projects? * Yes * No, but I would like to (PLEASE SKIP TO QUESTION 7)

My employer asks me to complete a survey on AI usage for which this is the first question (required):

If you write public-facing scholarship, you will eventually receive emails from strangers who think you’re both stupid and misguided.

Here is a simple reminder: you can delete them.

You owe trolls nothing.

Hey fellow scientists, I'm just letting you know that if you're promoting something with some junky AI image, I'm not gonna click. You've got a workshop, a conference, a new paper?

Just not gonna bother. You want a bespoke image? Hire an illustrator.

Pray for the satirists. There’s simply no way to out-absurd reality anymore

What do you want to bet this little tantrum on the WaPo's opinion page is because someone ahead of Professor Jakub Grygiel in the queue at some coffee shop had an elaborate coffee order and he hasn't been able to let it go ever since

My aunt had goats for a long time and my parents still do, so I'm quite familiar with these problems myself and I think that it's a humbling but positive, character building experience to be outwitted by an animal like that!

The picture shows a powerpoint slide. To the left a pastoral image of a medieval farm is visible, with a woman milking a cow in the foreground, a flock of sheep (and possibly one goat) being driven out of a stable, with a child at the head of herd. To the right: «When […] I opened the stable, and did not immediately get out of the way, the goats […] knocked me down, ran over me, and trod on my head, arms, and back […]. When I drove them over the bridge, then the foremost ran past me into the corn field; and when I drove these out, the others ran in.» Thomas Platter: Lebensgeschichte (Translation by Elizabeth Anne McCaul Finn, 1839): 6-7.

Below is my favourite example of someone describing their job as a kid

Though I'm always a bit skeptical regarding supposed gender divides & found Ogilvies 'A bitter living' really interesting. Wrote about how flimsy a lot of that stuff in Alpine history is: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Absolutely, for example in my area of research (Alps/rural society) it's clear that a) it was expected that children work but b) it wasn't *adult* work -> so children were typically responsible for herding small animals, but not large ones, older herders were held responsible for younger ones etc.

It’s only a big “conversation” when you act like it has to be?

With our kids, the one sort of tough part was telling them that some in the world still disapprove of gay people. But that those prejudiced people are wrong.

Otherwise no big deal.

Now, talking with them about Death - THAT was hard.

You know that feeling when you're struggling to stay awake? #kakapo chicks Tiwhiri-A3 and Tiwhiri-A4 in Tiwhiri's nest on Pukenui/Anchor Island. Both around two weeks old, and doing well. #kakapo2026 #conservation #parrots

Listening to interviews with a bunch of tech policy people and apparently the term AI now means basically anything a computer does without close supervision by a human. Because AI is just a marketing term that tech companies say means whatever they want.

Die Ausstellung "Versäumte Bilder" wird bei der Charité nun beworben mit "Bei der Entwicklung der Portraits hat Gesine Born systematisch gegen algorithmische Vorurteile „angepromptet“, die Frauen zumeist zu gefällig und zu jung generieren."
Dagegen ist jede Autowerbung seriös zu nennen.

Könnte auch erklären, wieso in den meisten Fällen das Konzept 'verpasster Momente' hinten & vorne nicht aufgeht, weil meist Frauen mit/in realen Erfolgsmomenten ausgewählt wurden.
'Unsichtbare' aufzuspüren hätte halt tatsächliche Forschungsarbeit erfordert (+Wissen zu Wissenschaft & Kreativität)

No, AI is not coming for your developer job, regardless of the nonsense the hype mongers are pushing. (I'm talking just about developer jobs—it obviously impacts other areas.) That's not to say the layoffs aren't real, but rather that the corporations are hiding normal corporate behavior behind
1/11

What if I told you autism doesn’t need a cure tho

My photo shows a museum display with colourful Minoan pottery cups arranged on three clear shelves, one above the other. These cups, known as Kamares Ware, are from Phaistos, Crete. They were made in palace workshops, c. 1800-1700 BC. The cups range in shape and size from conic and cylindrical cups (top and middle shelves) to hemispherical and carinated shaped cups (bottom shelf). They are decorated with multi-coloured geometric motifs; with spirals and swirls painted in red and white pigment on black.

Sipping my coffee ☕️ and thinking about these marvellous Minoan cups!

They look so modern it’s incredible to think they were made during the Bronze Age some 3,800 years ago!

Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete. 📷 by me

#Archaeology

Sánchez: “You may have heard that Spain is alone. They’re the same people who said that when we recognized the State of Palestine, and then others followed.

“We are not alone — we are the first. Those who will end up alone are the ones defending the indefensible.”

idk guys this kind of talk might alienate gettable fascist votes

Scheinbar reden wir wieder über unser aller Lieblingsprojekt. Ich kann das alles nicht mehr.

Aber die ganze harte Arbeit die da drin steckt!
Irgendjemand musste ja die perfekten Prompts für diese perfekten Bilder schreiben - das wahre Genie zeigt sich darin, wie da ja sogar gekonnt Rechtschreibfehler & Zeug wie 'Neil Gaiman' eingebaut wurde.

Ach jetzt seins doch nicht so technologiefeindlich!
Die Broschüre ist immerhin mit viel schwarzen Humor manchmal zum Lachen gut ⬇️
bsky.app/profile/joss...

I'd like to propose 'Astounding Alliterative Achievement Award'

Annual Historyposting Award Categories:

-Best history thread
-Best use of historical images
-Best history hashtag/feed
-Best history journal account
-Best heritage account (other than the MERL it’s just not fair otherwise)
-Best history conference account
-Best history puns
-Worst history puns 😏
🗃️

Hui, da hat jemand aber wirklich voll in die Dramakiste gegriffen!

"die nordische Tiefe und die nordische Helle" - aus was ist dieser schwurblige Schmarrn?