Matt Seybold
@mattseybold.bsky.social
8.2K followers 1.9K following 4.7K posts
American Vandal Pod | Prof of AmLit & Twain Studies + Director of Media Studies, Elmira College | Resident Scholar @MarkTwain.bsky.social | Political Economy of Mass Media TheAmericanVandal.substack.com MattSeybold.com buymeacoffee.com/americanvandalpod
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mattseybold.bsky.social
“The logical conclusion of a technofeudal oligarchy combining forces with an authoritarian political movement is compulsory enrollment in the security state’s platform architecture of surveillance, indoctrination, and behavioral modification.”
Against Technofeudal Education
Pillars For Protecting Our "Core Infrastructure" From OpenAI
theamericanvandal.substack.com
mattseybold.bsky.social
Ben lacks many things, but not professional pride.
mattseybold.bsky.social
Are we absolutely sure Ari Shapiro isn’t a bot?
junoryleejournalism.com
David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)
SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.
mattseybold.bsky.social
“Let me tell you all the disqualifying stuff that happened at the fundraiser I threw” is precisely the kind of self-own one has come to expect from Thiel.
gilduran.com
4. Gavin Newsom is dangerous because he could fuse Washington and San Francisco.

"You know, I actually held a fundraiser for him back in 2003 here in San Francisco. And I'm tempted to talk about that a lot, because it might hurt him."

more to come at the Nerd Reich (free!)

www.thenerdreich.com
The Nerd Reich | Silicon Valley Tech Extremism
Silicon Valley tech billionaire politics: authoritarianism, fascism, plutocracy, weirdness
www.thenerdreich.com
mattseybold.bsky.social
Who is the American author who would most appeal to fans of Virginia Woolf?
Reposted by Matt Seybold
annieabrams.bsky.social
if courses are taught by teachers, in high school classrooms, under all the usual regulations and restrictions, they are not “college”
mattseybold.bsky.social
Even before thinking about the content of what he’s saying, I hate the way this guy talks.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
annieabrams.bsky.social
TEACHERS AND PROFESSORS ARE COLLEAGUES AND SHOULD ACT ACCORDINGLY
Reposted by Matt Seybold
Reposted by Matt Seybold
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
repost this if an editor has ever saved you from yourself
blipstress.bsky.social
An actual hot take: Too many authors are afraid of editors watering down their voice or whatever and not afraid enough of editors letting you put any old slop on the page.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
bakaari.bsky.social
it’s delightful to be receiving this book when i’m wrestling with another essay about close reading because opening to virtually any page of this book and reading some or all of is a guaranteed win, clarifying and inspiring!
mattseybold.bsky.social
Strangely enough, this 2021 Connie Bruck profile of Ari Emanuel is one of the best single documents of our current polycrisis which I have yet read.
Ari Emanuel Takes on the World
Hollywood’s most tenacious agent tries to remake himself as a mogul.
www.newyorker.com
mattseybold.bsky.social
“Just go do the thing your think piece would tell other people to do, and don’t talk about it.”

Durable advice from
@sblackwood.bsky.social @sunsetandecho.bsky.social @kwazana.bsky.social @hesterblum.bsky.social
mattseybold.bsky.social
When the margin of the value produced by labor which capital claims as their right and privilege is "all of it," we are no longer in capitalism.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
profmikesell.bsky.social
I think @mattseybold.bsky.social and the American Vandal podcast have some useful perspectives on the connections between the attack on academic humanities and the intensified exploitation of academic and artistic labor by way of EdTech. Also, Nick Clegg can f right off over there forever.
keithwdickinson.bsky.social
Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.
theverge.com
Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry
mattseybold.bsky.social
I'm pretty ambivalent myself, although I think I'm ready to give him another go.
mattseybold.bsky.social
“the technofeudal text, a piece of writing which exists as digital information stored in a networked cloud architecture & therefore has a kind of magnetic, even parasitical relationship to its readers, where information about them is affixed to it, accruing value”
The Technofeudal Text
Literacy Is Our Commons, Technolords Wish To Enclose It
open.substack.com
mattseybold.bsky.social
Reading a paperback copy of “Crying of Lot 49” felt like being part of an underground resistance movement, reading a hard copy of “Shadow Ticket” actually is.
aluckmann.bsky.social
Enjoyed this piece on Pynchon by @devintoshea.bsky.social which phrases a point @mattseybold.bsky.social makes - “Print is a Rent Strike” - in another way

lithub.com/thomas-pynch...
I've been thinking a lot about how, now, thanks to our phones and screens, every waking hour of the day is subject to capital extraction through data, which is collected and bundled, and sold without you or I even knowing we labored. Reading a physical book breaks from that, and I sometimes feel physical relief in my head when I detach from the monitor; putting eyes on text that doesn't move, read a line, close the book, take a breath, stare out into the sky, open the book back up, notice something, then notice something about the room I'm in, or the park bench. Sometimes the relief of this feels like someone cracked open my skull and poured cool water on the hot machine; other times I'm too scattered and frightened about the future to do anything but sit beside the book while I scroll.
mattseybold.bsky.social
Spending a career watching centuries-old fields of study shrivel & die, cactus-like, being told there is no water by deans on lily pads in the middle of the lake.

Do not recommend.
Reposted by Matt Seybold
westbynoreaster.bsky.social
What was it about the business incentives about late 2000s securities ratings agencies that caused serious problems? 🤔 @mattseybold.bsky.social
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
mattseybold.bsky.social
Commercial AI is definitely a moral hazard.