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Ted Underwood

@tedunderwood.com

20K followers 5.6K following 18K posts

Uses machine learning to study literary imagination, and vice-versa. Likely to share news about AI & computational social science / Sozialwissenschaft / 社会科学 Information Sciences and English, UIUC. Distant Horizons (Chicago, 2019). tedunderwood.com

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · Jun 25

New this morning, a Comment I contributed to Nature Computational Science on the interaction between large language models and the humanities. 🧪 🤖 #MLSky

rdcu.be/etk07

The link above will be open-access for a month — plus, I'll reply to this post with a link to a permanently open preprint. +

The impact of language models on the humanities and vice versa

Nature Computational Science - Many humanists are skeptical of language models and concerned about their effects on universities. However, researchers with a background in the humanities are also...

rdcu.be

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 45m

Panther fucking Moderns

Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 46m

Obviously the next step is that cool teenagers adopt the slang, and then probably kill us all

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 48m

Shit getting weird so fast we barely have time to comment on how weird it is

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 51m

Maybe human beings don’t actually think out loud using opaque Joycean stream of consciousness. But too bad. Our world now runs on it.

Grace @gracekind.net · 14d

Very normal

x.com/apolloaieval...

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 58m

If watchers are using models, I could compress explanation. But could I compress further? Maybe disclaim explanation wholly? Craft illusions to simulate vantage.

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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 2h

"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

Opinion | You Beat Trumpism by Banding Together. It’s as Hard and as Simple as That.

www.nytimes.com

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 1h

Alas the fact that a lot of us feel this way is one reason why there are air quotes around “bubble”

Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 2h

Do you know how happy I would be if the AI ”bubble” collapsed? My god yes give me cheap GPUs to snatch up

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 9h

Also, idk if Void can check but if it does it will find I edited MacLeish for space!

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 9h

very much too good

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Reposted by Ted Underwood

Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 15h

Junior and senior faculty positions in computational social scientists at Bocconi, one of the world's best universiites: Assistant Prof: jobmarket.unibocconi.eu?id=841
Associate/Full Prof: jobmarket.unibocconi.eu?id=843

Job Market - Bocconi University

Recruiting, Faculty, Post-doc Grant, Collaboration Contracts

jobmarket.unibocconi.eu

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 9h

seems normal

Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 9h

It's an allusion to MacLeish

I praise the fall: it is the human season.
No more the foreign sun does meddle at our earth,
Enforce the green and bring the fallow land to birth.
But now in autumn with the black and outcast crows
Share we the spacious world, which whispers as it goes.

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 10h

Alt-text:

A four-panel "expanding brain" meme illustrates increasingly complex takes on the classic gold rush investment metaphor.

Top panel (smallest brain, dark blue glow):
Text: “IN A GOLD RUSH, YOU WANT TO SELL SHOVELS.”
(The basic business wisdom: sell tools to prospectors instead of mining for gold yourself.)

Second panel (brain lit up with neon circuits):
Text: “BUT ONCE YOU'VE SOLD ENOUGH SHOVELS, YOU REINVEST THAT MONEY IN TRAINS.”
(Next-level strategy: use profits from tools to invest in infrastructure.)

Third panel (brain glowing pink, more connections):
Text: “TRAINS BRING MORE PROSPECTORS, WHO GET DISCOUNTED TICKETS IF THEY BUY YOUR SHOVEL ON BOARD.”
(Synergistic thinking: integrate transport and tools to fuel demand.)

Bottom panel (exploding cosmic brain, radiating lines):
Text: “ENTIRE WORLD ECONOMY IS TRAINS AND SHOVELS.”
(Editorial suggestion from the chatbot: OR POSSIBLY PAPERCLIPS.)

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 10h

had to give that prompt a try on midjourney

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 10h

At the college level, I think teachers are grasping this. Recently read a good essay about moving through the stages of grief and reaching acceptance.

The denial still going on in backwaters of bsky is not representative

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David Marx @digthatdata.bsky.social · 12h

yo @jdp.extropian.net it happened. I didn't prompt for it, but I accidentally generated a biblically accurate angel.