Sebastian Egholm Lund

New news: I've been awarded the Richard Stein Essay Prize for "The Climate of Utopia,” published in @victstudies.bsky.social! This is a great honor, which I could not have received without the generous help of editor @moniquemorgan.bsky.social and, honestly, the journal's highly skilled reviewers.

ChatGPT's Impact On Our Brains According to an MIT Study The study, from MIT Lab scholars, measured the brain activity of subjects writing SAT essays with and without ChatGPT.

'ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.”...ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study.'
time.com/7295195/ai-c...

A safety manual for academics visiting America - Research Professional News Petra Boynton looks at what advice UK universities should give US-bound researchers and students

"UK academics...need guidance on how to avoid bringing US-based colleagues unwanted attention, risk or danger. Even tagging people in social media comments, or careless comments in text messages or emails, could make them unsafe." www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-v...

The illustration is from French engineer Leopold Bourdin's "universal umbrella project" meant for the Universal Exposition in 1900.

This Friday I, megalomanically, am speaking to the world through the medium of Zoom.

If piqued, one can register here: docs.google.com/.../1FAIpQLS...

Hope to see some familiar faces!

Word of the day is ‘erumpent’ (17th century), which describes buds and blossom that are bursting forth with vigour. Can also be used of energetic humans.

14 of my publications -- basically everything I've ever thought or written-- went into AI training datasets without my consent or knowledge

Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris by David H. Pinkney

A classic history of the creation of modern Paris by Napoleon III and Haussmann.

David H. Pinkney's Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris is now available in a new edition.

Learn more: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

Detail from a map of the A23a iceberg's progress since being calved in 1986; after 30 years stuck on the seafloor it made rapid progress in 2022-2023 but rotated on a water column for 8 months and has now run aground off South Georgia. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20d1xp6046o

typical book project timeline

Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities Active travel can help tackle the climate crisis earlier than electric vehicles – even if you swap the car for a bike for just one trip a day.

No shit Watson!
"Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for cities."
theconversation.com/cycling-is-t...

Reading Hsuan Hsu’s wonderful AIR CONDITIONING (2024). Hsu poses an interesting rewrite of Descartes: ‘I THINK IN A STOVE-HEATED ROOM, THEREFORE I AM’ / ‘I THINK MY MIND IS INDISTINCT, THEREFORE I AM IN A CLIMATE-CONTROLLED ROOM.’