Tobias Wilson-Bates
@phdhurtbrain.bsky.social
Time Machines. Temporality. Ecology. Robots. Education. Associate Professor of 19th century British Literature.
Pinned
Bluesky isn’t about popularity, it’s about gathering all 17 William Morris lovers together in a single online location!
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
I’ve fought this battle before and lost. I maintain that no one wants to satisfy an information need with a “knowledge base article” — three words that in combination mean about as much to most people as “&^%$#@^&(!”
Whereas, people know what a guide is & that guidance can satisfy their info need.
Whereas, people know what a guide is & that guidance can satisfy their info need.
My old university used to have 'Guides' to systems etc & how they work. My new university, showing the heavy hand of management consultants, now has 'Knowledge base articles'. I think I need to check whether information is the same as knowledge. That would be a philosophical question. #PhilSci
January 26, 2026 at 9:28 PM
I’ve fought this battle before and lost. I maintain that no one wants to satisfy an information need with a “knowledge base article” — three words that in combination mean about as much to most people as “&^%$#@^&(!”
Whereas, people know what a guide is & that guidance can satisfy their info need.
Whereas, people know what a guide is & that guidance can satisfy their info need.
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
It strikes me that one reason AI slop is so infuriating to engage with is because we recognize it as the sort of pro forma grey goo we feed into machine for mind-numbing busy work, but now the machines are feeding it into us.
January 27, 2026 at 1:54 AM
It strikes me that one reason AI slop is so infuriating to engage with is because we recognize it as the sort of pro forma grey goo we feed into machine for mind-numbing busy work, but now the machines are feeding it into us.
I-
January 27, 2026 at 3:44 PM
I-
Hard to describe something I could possibly hate more than “Machine that destroys books to consolidate corporate information dominance”
New: Unsealed court docs detail Big Tech’s yearslong, secret race to ingest the collective works of humanity, including Anthropic’s project to “destructively scan all the books in the world.”
Gift link: wapo.st/4rjXAMQ
Gift link: wapo.st/4rjXAMQ
How Silicon Valley built AI: Buying, scanning and destroying millions of books
Court filings reveal how AI companies raced to obtain more books to feed chatbots, including by buying, scanning and disposing of millions of titles.
wapo.st
January 27, 2026 at 3:41 PM
Hard to describe something I could possibly hate more than “Machine that destroys books to consolidate corporate information dominance”
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
Learning from Jacqueline Rose about Arendt’s idea of “impotent bigness” and the psychic motions by which fantasies of domination and violent control are driven by a sexualized fantasy-fear of radical humiliation based on the dim understanding of a fundamental powerlessness
This is embarrassingly on-the-nose textbook “psychology of fascism” stuff. Bitter, impotent tools getting to feel powerful by proxy watching brutality done on their behalf.
Tim Pool: “I’m not licking the boot. It’s my boot. I voted for it. I’m the one stomping…”
This mindset is genuinely pathetic.
It’s an alpha fantasy: watching state violence and imagining you’re exercising power rather than the one submitting to it.
/1
This mindset is genuinely pathetic.
It’s an alpha fantasy: watching state violence and imagining you’re exercising power rather than the one submitting to it.
/1
January 27, 2026 at 2:12 PM
Learning from Jacqueline Rose about Arendt’s idea of “impotent bigness” and the psychic motions by which fantasies of domination and violent control are driven by a sexualized fantasy-fear of radical humiliation based on the dim understanding of a fundamental powerlessness
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
Just to be clear: the new Wuthering Heights supposedly doesn’t have anyone playing Lockwood? Are we going to make movies of The Great Gatsby without Nick Carraway? The Ten Commandments without Moses? Are we just going to film a new Hamlet without Hamlet? Is this a game like Garfield without Garfield
January 27, 2026 at 4:54 AM
Just to be clear: the new Wuthering Heights supposedly doesn’t have anyone playing Lockwood? Are we going to make movies of The Great Gatsby without Nick Carraway? The Ten Commandments without Moses? Are we just going to film a new Hamlet without Hamlet? Is this a game like Garfield without Garfield
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
I don’t think students should only read horny books in college, but they should be assigned at least one (1) very horny book at some point when they’re in college.
January 27, 2026 at 3:02 AM
I don’t think students should only read horny books in college, but they should be assigned at least one (1) very horny book at some point when they’re in college.
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
I remember reading Matthew Lewis’s The Monk in grad school (it slaps, highly recommend) and thinking to myself, “ok, but there are SO many tits in this book.” Then I learned that Lewis was 20 years old when he published it. Clarifying information!
I don’t think students should only read horny books in college, but they should be assigned at least one (1) very horny book at some point when they’re in college.
January 27, 2026 at 5:15 AM
I remember reading Matthew Lewis’s The Monk in grad school (it slaps, highly recommend) and thinking to myself, “ok, but there are SO many tits in this book.” Then I learned that Lewis was 20 years old when he published it. Clarifying information!
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
I wouldn’t call them “horny” even though they are pornographic, but reading Marvell’s Advice to a Painter poems as an undergrad absolutely had me asking *so many questions* that I had to do a PhD to get answers. “Desperate pencil” still makes me laugh 🤭
January 27, 2026 at 3:15 AM
I wouldn’t call them “horny” even though they are pornographic, but reading Marvell’s Advice to a Painter poems as an undergrad absolutely had me asking *so many questions* that I had to do a PhD to get answers. “Desperate pencil” still makes me laugh 🤭
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
Me looking over my syllabi right now
January 27, 2026 at 3:46 AM
Me looking over my syllabi right now
I don’t think students should only read horny books in college, but they should be assigned at least one (1) very horny book at some point when they’re in college.
January 27, 2026 at 3:02 AM
I don’t think students should only read horny books in college, but they should be assigned at least one (1) very horny book at some point when they’re in college.
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
"The number of downloads...surged by 529% after Mr. Mamdani’s news conference"
"there had been 3,000 people on a waiting list to access a limited number of e-book copies"
"2,000 people applied for a library card over the weekend, roughly twice as many as had applied by this time last year"
A win!
"there had been 3,000 people on a waiting list to access a limited number of e-book copies"
"2,000 people applied for a library card over the weekend, roughly twice as many as had applied by this time last year"
A win!
gifting this article because it made me laugh, which is hard to do in this context. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/n...
After Mamdani Nods to ‘Heated Rivalry,’ Library E-Book Downloads Surge
www.nytimes.com
January 27, 2026 at 2:28 AM
"The number of downloads...surged by 529% after Mr. Mamdani’s news conference"
"there had been 3,000 people on a waiting list to access a limited number of e-book copies"
"2,000 people applied for a library card over the weekend, roughly twice as many as had applied by this time last year"
A win!
"there had been 3,000 people on a waiting list to access a limited number of e-book copies"
"2,000 people applied for a library card over the weekend, roughly twice as many as had applied by this time last year"
A win!
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
It strikes me that one reason AI slop is so infuriating to engage with is because we recognize it as the sort of pro forma grey goo we feed into machine for mind-numbing busy work, but now the machines are feeding it into us.
January 27, 2026 at 1:54 AM
It strikes me that one reason AI slop is so infuriating to engage with is because we recognize it as the sort of pro forma grey goo we feed into machine for mind-numbing busy work, but now the machines are feeding it into us.
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
Virginia Woolf on Wuthering Heights:
“The impulse which urged her [Emily Bronte] to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries. She looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book.”
“The impulse which urged her [Emily Bronte] to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries. She looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book.”
January 26, 2026 at 2:52 PM
Virginia Woolf on Wuthering Heights:
“The impulse which urged her [Emily Bronte] to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries. She looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book.”
“The impulse which urged her [Emily Bronte] to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries. She looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book.”
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
if bovino is out and conservatives are turning on noem then there is a real opportunity to demand that miller resign too.
January 27, 2026 at 1:07 AM
if bovino is out and conservatives are turning on noem then there is a real opportunity to demand that miller resign too.
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
Living in the modern world is like being a farmer, but instead of tending animals you’re just tending the battery status of various electronics.
January 26, 2026 at 10:01 PM
Living in the modern world is like being a farmer, but instead of tending animals you’re just tending the battery status of various electronics.
Living in the modern world is like being a farmer, but instead of tending animals you’re just tending the battery status of various electronics.
January 26, 2026 at 10:01 PM
Living in the modern world is like being a farmer, but instead of tending animals you’re just tending the battery status of various electronics.
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
I just read the word “Apocaloptimist” and unfortunately must now pluck my eyes from my head and go mad.
January 26, 2026 at 7:28 PM
I just read the word “Apocaloptimist” and unfortunately must now pluck my eyes from my head and go mad.
I just read the word “Apocaloptimist” and unfortunately must now pluck my eyes from my head and go mad.
January 26, 2026 at 7:28 PM
I just read the word “Apocaloptimist” and unfortunately must now pluck my eyes from my head and go mad.
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
The correct answer to this is "Yes, and everyone else too."
Should artists get a basic income like they do in Ireland?
Could the government pay salaries to musicians and artists - no strings attached like they do in Ireland?
www.bbc.com
January 26, 2026 at 2:49 PM
The correct answer to this is "Yes, and everyone else too."
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
I've heard people say the world feels small but that's romance baby. Nobody said this was an urban fantasy book.
when I talk about how this is truly the only show to have a romance novel structure, this is what I mean: every other romance adaptation turns the fundamentally, crucially narrow focus of a romance novel into a broader tv world. this show feels different because it does not.
I wrote about a show about love. Maybe you've heard of it.
Me, on HEATED RIVALRY, for @newrepublic.com newrepublic.com/article/2055...
Me, on HEATED RIVALRY, for @newrepublic.com newrepublic.com/article/2055...
January 26, 2026 at 4:42 PM
I've heard people say the world feels small but that's romance baby. Nobody said this was an urban fantasy book.
Reposted by Tobias Wilson-Bates
Based on what I’ve experienced on the road, they don’t teach this anymore.
January 26, 2026 at 6:48 PM
Based on what I’ve experienced on the road, they don’t teach this anymore.