Robert Seyfert

This is an excellent explanation of why most advertising by companies such as Google and Meta is essentially a form of snake oil.

"Advertising as inference, not influence."

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BfNIRyPi5QA&pp=ygUIZm9ydG5pbmXSBwkJAwoBhyohjO8%3D

📢 Stellenausschreibung!

Postdoc-Stelle (100%, 4 Jahre)
Institut für Sozialwissenschaften
@kieluni

Bereich Soziologische Theorie
👉 Fokus ist Theoriebildung in Forschung + Lehre

Bewerbungsfrist 30.09.25

Rückfragen per E-Mail an mich.

@dgsoziologie […]

Die Ankündigung von Neuinvestitionen in Höhe von 631 Milliarden Euro durch die Wirtschaft scheint in erster Linie eine Lobbyveranstaltung der beteiligten Unternehmen gewesen zu sein. Diese Investitionen sind mehrheitlich seit Jahren geplant […]

"Schleswig-Holstein sagt Nein zu Palantir"

https://www.kn-online.de/schleswig-holstein/palantir-sh-auf-der-suche-nach-alternativer-software-fuer-die-polizei-FAPH5645NRDAXAILDYWDT4UA7U.html

Weil aktuell wieder einmal davon die Rede ist, dass man eine nationale oder kollektive Identität 'ablehnt': Gerade die Ablehnung bringt diese mit hervor … insbesondere dann, wenn die Ablehnung in deutschen Fernsehsendungen geäußert wird.

Das kann man hier nachlesen […]

A Prominent OpenAI Investor Appears to Be Suffering a ChatGPT-Related Mental Health Crisis, His Peers Say Earlier this week, a prominent venture capitalist named Geoff Lewis — the managing partner of the multi-billion dollar investment firm Bedrock, which has backed high-profile tech companies including OpenAI and Vercel — posted a disturbing video on X-formerly-Twitter that immediately caused concern among his peers. "This isn't a redemption arc," Lewis says in the video. "It's a transmission, for the record. Over the past eight years, I've walked through something I didn't create, but became the primary target of: a non-governmental system, not visible, but operational. Not official, but structurally real. It doesn't regulate, it doesn't attack, it doesn't ban. […]

Foucault would love this: the rather predictable results of AI-induced de-subjectification experiments, and how this is framed in the public discourse as psychosis and a 'mental health crisis'.

https://futurism.com/openai-investor-chatgpt-mental-health

Traveling in Southeast Asia made me realize: in Europe, people honk when others get in their way. Here, people honk before they get in the way of others.

The anthropomorphising of AI and ourselves.

"That is the real risk: not that machines become people, but that we forget—we were never what we think we are."

https://hedgehogreview.com/web-features/thr/posts/the-self-that-never-was

Rebirth of longform!

Not sure about the 'culture will heal' theory, but it's interesting how, amid the assumed shortening of attention spans and focus, everything seems to be getting longer: YouTube videos, album lengths, concert lengths, fiction, and so on […]

So sehe ich das auch: Der Faschismus-Begriff mag intuitiv irgendwie einleuchten, wissenschaftlich gesehen ist er aber unbrauchbar, weil er sich nicht bestimmen lässt und zudem völlig inflationär geworden ist […]

Conference takeaway: no matter if you’re from the US, Europe, Taiwan, China, etc.—every academic gets tangled in their own flavor of ridiculous travel-reimbursement rules.

Attending the 'Addressing Global Crises and Reimagining Solutions through Chinese Philosophy' conference at the University of Ljubljana.

I am looking forward to learning how classical Chinese thought is being applied to contemporary issues […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]

Das "Handbuch Theorien der Soziologie" hrsg. mit Heike Delitz und Julian Müller
gedruckt und in Farbe!

Excited to share an upcoming talk

📅 June 16, 2025 @cau

🗣️ Anne Flannery

"Ways of Seeing: Curation and Absence in Digital Archives"

Dr. Flannery is Head Archivist at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at University of Chicago

📍 Hybrid event
📎 Details in the link

Nach fünf Jahren intensiver Arbeit ist es endlich so weit: Das „Handbuch Theorien der Soziologie“ ist erschienen!

Mehr als 40 Autor*innen aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen der Soziologie haben gemeinsam an diesem umfassenden Werk gearbeitet.

Ein herzliches Dankeschön an alle Mitwirkenden für ihr […]

Alle, für die der Einsturz dieser Brücke symbolisch für den Zustand Deutschlands steht, können hier etwas über die technischen Hintergründe erfahren. Der Einsturz hat nichts mit der allgemeinen gesellschaftlichen Lage zu tun und steht auch nicht für diese […]

unexpected guest at the buffet

📘 Fast fertig: Druckfahnen lesen, für unser "Handbuch Theorien der Soziologie" mit Heike Delitz und Julian Müller.

Erscheint hoffentlich rechtzeitig zum Kongress der @dgsoziologie in Duisburg!

https://link.springer.com/book/9783658317157

Totally normal travel advice to the US from one of Germany's biggest newspapers: delete data and photos from smartphones, block accounts, encrypt laptop hard drives.

Disturbing times! […]

Excerpt of Didier Erribon's new book

"The Life, Old Age and Death of a Working-Class Woman".

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/mar/18/my-mother-the-racist

Just out: Special issue of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment based around conversations withJane Bennett and William E Connolly; a collection of works, all responding to the work of Bennett and Connolly […]

This is absurdly great, but I haven't read a single news article about it. A fully open source, offline-first alternative to Notion that's a collab between the French and German governments because they want to host docs securely and on their own terms. THIS is what Europe should be doing.

'AI' Google Search in 2025:

(ignoring the dubiousness of the auto-generated question)

🚨 For about a week, Sage Publishing has disabled license recognition due to system upgrades (see link).
During this time, content can be downloaded for free. A great chance to grab some resources!

Spread the word: 🔽
🔗 https://journals.sagepub.com/page/help/what-happens-during-upgrade

"Der Wallstein Verlag wird zum 1. Januar 2028 einen Großteil der Backlist der Hamburger Edition übernehmen und die verlegerischen Aktivitäten unter dem Imprint »Hamburger Edition« mit den gleichen Programmschwerpunkten in der Soziologie, der Politik- und der Geschichtswissenschaft fortsetzen." […]

Every company "loses money on every single prompt and output. Its products do not scale like traditional software, in that the more users it gets, the more expensive its services are to run because its models are so compute-intensive"

https://www.wheresyoured.at/wheres-the-money/

"Tryin' to make it real …. but compared to what?"

RIP Robert Flack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG_RvYTfDk8

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/henri-bergson-biography/

U-18 Bundestags(schein)wahl

Die Linke 20,8%
SPD 17,9%
CDU/CSU 15,7%
AfD 15,5%
Bündnis 90/Die Grünen 12,5%

https://wahlen.u18.org/wahlergebnisse/bundestagswahl