maybe: leif weatherby

YouTube video by Rick Kleffel NS Leif Wettherby

i spoke with Rick Kleffel for his podcast The Narrative Species about Language Machines, if you need a weekend listen - this was wide-ranging and very fun
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpe6...

A weird part of our society now is that the most successful people are also giant losers

qualifying exception if you understand the semiotics of the diagram in ultra-technical Peircean terms

Preventing a client state from committing atrocities with weapons we manufactured and sold them would have been the bare minimum, eh? I don’t think the Dem party can survive

Why Should We Worry About Declining Birth Rates? Declining birth rates around the world may pose new challenges for humanity. A new book on the topic by Elon Musk–funded economists indulges in questionable philosophy and sci-fi speculation that fail...

In my review of Spears and Geruso's book "After the Spike" for Jacobin, I attempt to confront what I consider the core of their argument, which is why declining global population would be undesirable, and I find their arguments unpersuasive.

jacobin.com/2025/07/demo...

This Friday (7/25 10AM), ORG will read the Introduction to @leifw.bsky.social's new book Language Machines.
www.upress.umn.edu/978145297351...

Pseudo-scientific claims about the causality of cell phones are more responsible for widespread relativism than the HR-ification of the university and the two go hand in hand

writing about american maculinity don't get much better than this from @leifw.bsky.social

This op-ed is true. But I think we need to stop acting as if they did this because they somehow mistakenly believed that AI could do things that it can't do. Hype isn't the cause. All the other evidence suggests that they want to destroy the regulatory state, this is just part of that political move

What a kind thing to say, tysm!

Dietmar Dath gets why architecture is what matters @jeddobson.bsky.social

Nico has out-remaindered me in humanism in this generous and thorough review that keeps the attention on semiotics as the proper lens for AI @uminnpress.bsky.social

Opinion | How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Have Fun With A.I. Perhaps the biggest effect A.I. will have on our lives is purely in giving us a new way to entertain ourselves.

“What is really driving the hype and widespread use of large language models like ChatGPT is that they are fun. A.I. is a form of entertainment,” Leif Weatherby writes.

@uminnpress.bsky.social

07/15/2025 Write On! Radio | KFAI | Minneapolis & Saint Paul

i was on Minneapolis's KFAI Write On! Radio to talk about my book Language Machines
kfai.org/episode/07-1...

In which I suggest that contemporary AI is a culture machine that we might be taking too seriously

Opinion | How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Have Fun With A.I.

"I think we’re having the wrong debates about A.I. altogether." Author @leifw.bsky.social in @nytopinion.nytimes.com : www.nytimes.com/2025/07/16/o...

Opinion | How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Have Fun With A.I.

Leif Weatherby in the NYT today with a provocative op-ed titled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Have Fun With A.I."
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/16/o... @leifw.bsky.social

"Many of our systems," he writes, "are simply broken in the first place, and A.I. seems like a fix even when it isn’t." While not explicitly addressing higher education, there is much to be said about broken assessment strategies and peer reviewing systems.

Tysm!

Permanent Decline | The Point Magazine You can see the Achilles tear. Live, it was already clear, in a much-replayed clip that has since become canon for anyone paying attention to the National Football League.

This, from @leifw.bsky.social, about Aaron Rogers, midlife crisis, and the decline of American empire, might just be the best essay about football I've ever read. It's extraordinary. thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

What’s hovering in the background of the nominal AGI debate is the vectorization of intelligence as IQ, and the deployment of various systems as surrogates or tools for intelligent action - the claim makes sense only on that background, which is real, but itself super contentious

there is much ground to be made up

Read this, if you read anything, today

Grok’s Antisemitic Meltdown Was Entirely Predictable Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, started spewing antisemitic conspiracy theories this week. It’s not the first time something like this has happened — and a reminder that LLMs aren’t truth-telling machin...

if you've never read "Artificial Antisemitism" (Critical Inquiry 2022) by Matt Handelman, start with his account of the Grok/MechaHitler incident and work back to the philosophy of Tay
jacobin.com/2025/07/grok...

this is the kind of review you dream of, and i can't wait to have it out about cultural technologies, Kulturtechnik, and poetics

With Grok we are seeing the speedrun version of the "ideology machine" @leifw.bsky.social described back in 2023: jacobin.com/2023/04/chat...

Ty!

Weatherby’s just published Language Machines

I’m about half way through this brilliant and very clear account of what went wrong with the humanities and language in the past and how to move forward in the AI-informed present. Well-researched, provocative, and funny—perfect summer ready for theory heads! Congrats @leifw.bsky.social!