James O’Sullivan

Has there been a more spectacularly failed experiment in the history of the Irish State than @irishrail.bsky.social's attempt to introduce a “quieter coach”?

Hey @zotero.org, now that data papers are becoming more of a thing in the humanities, it would be great to see them as an item type! I know they fit 'journal article', but I feel like that overstates what they are? Or maybe mine is the type of thinking that data papers are trying to overcome.

Congratulations to wonderful colleague @claireconnolly.bsky.social on her new book, Irish Romanticism: A Literary History, launched this evening by @jfcryan.bsky.social, VP for Research & Innovation @ucc.ie, and Prof. Clair Wills, King Edward VII Prof. of English Literature at Cambridge.

I was the same with em dashes (though editors used to rein me in a lot), and for a while I avoided them completely. Recently I decided I’m just going to start using them again, and if my writing looks like AI slop, so be it.

The roof timbers in Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

The roof timbers in Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church Youghal which have been carbon dated to 1170. Likely built by shipwrights so essentially an upside down boat. www.patrickcomerford.com/2021/08/sain... #speirgorm

Large language models are making me a suspicious reader Large language models like ChatGPT have introduced into written culture a problem that resembles the problem of forgery in fine art.

"Large language models like ChatGPT have introduced into written culture a problem that resembles the problem of forgery in fine art—once you know that a convincing fake is possible, the status of every authentic work becomes precarious."

jamescosullivan.substack.com/p/llms-are-m...

#GenAI #LLMs

Oh you’ve to read the whole thing. It’s glaring.

Seeing a lot of AI slop in newspapers lately, like this piece in the @theguardian.com. Editors need to do better. I’m conscious of being over suspicious, but it’s so painfully obvious when you see it. (Gold medal still goes to the Irish editor who ran an anti-AI article clearly written by ChatGPT.)

I suspect the worst indexes are those done by the authors themselves (ironically).

Book indexes feel like legacy matter. I never use them. With so many publishers now offering PDF editions (with glorious ctrl-f) or selling individual chapters (ie. no index), are their days numbered? I typically read print editions; do people really use indexes when reading a 300-page monograph?

@eireidium.bsky.social

The title page of volume one of The Gospel of John embossed in moon type.

The same moon title page, but a screenshot of a 3D scan of the page that is blue with scanner guide markers placed randomly on the page.

The same 3D scan but now white with the extra details around the page deleted and cleaned up as a 3D model.

The same title page in moon, but now a 3D printed physical object printed with purple filament. There are printed supports on the front, right side, and base still attached.

From rare book (physical) to 3D scan (digital) to cleaned-up 3D model (digital) to 3D printed object (physical).

This was a really fun process to think through texture and materiality of a tactile book object. This was a test, and I learned a lot from the process. More to come later this year!

Silicon Valley’s dream of workers who don’t think There is a particular fantasy that recurs throughout the history of industrial capitalism, that the ideal worker is a person stripped of everything superfluous to the act of production.

There is a particular fantasy that recurs throughout the history of industrial capitalism, that the ideal worker is a person stripped of everything superfluous to the act of production...

jamescosullivan.substack.com/p/silicon-va...

#artificialintelligence #generativeAI #genAI #siliconvalley

EU accuses TikTok of creating 'addictive design' The European Commission has accused TikTok of creating an "addictive design" in its app which could harm the physical and mental wellbeing of minors and vulnerable adults.

Eh, who’s going to tell them?
www.rte.ie/news/2026/02...

The Last Days Of Social Media | NOEMA Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion.

“The last days of social media might be the first days of something more human: a web that remembers why we came online in the first place — not to be harvested but to be heard, not to go viral but to find our people, not to scroll but to connect.”

— @jamesosullivan.bsky.social

LLM disclosures are, in part, trigger warnings. Trigger warnings go at the top.

It's 2026 and the Microsoft Word desktop app still doesn't let me sync my Style Gallery. See you all in 2027!

How Algorithmic Systems Automate Inequality James O’Sullivan explains how automated decision-making can reinforce inequality, obscure accountability, and reshape power under the guise of efficiency.

How Algorithmic Systems Automate Inequality

www.techpolicy.press/how-algorith...

#genAI #AI #criticalAI @techpolicypress.bsky.social

"the danger is the flood of Automatenwissenschaft becomes a kind of scholarly dark matter that exists to pad CVs and satisfy bureaucratic metrics, but which no one actually reads or relies upon."

It was already growing in pre-automation days, with the replacement of qual w/ quant tenure review.

The reinvention of America’s shopping malls Changes in shopping habits have widened the split between those catering to well-off customers and those facing bankruptcy

www.ft.com/content/734a... The reinvention of America’s shopping malls

Fifty People Control the Culture The state of the culture 2026

open.substack.com/pub/tedgioia...

It's mad to me that the company making Visual Studio Code also makes Word and Teams.

I think about this famous passage from Orwell’s 1984 a lot these days: ‘The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.’

Newspaper headline

Book cover

Thanks to @martindoyle.bsky.social and Mary Miniham @irishtimes.com for taking my piece on heavy coats and ragged people for today’s paper - with a shoutout for new @universitypress.cambridge.org book on #IrishRomanticism #speirgorm

Noema’s Top 10 Reads Of 2025 | NOEMA Our best longform journalism and essays from 2025.

End the year with some great reading — take a look at our team's favorite pieces of 2025.

www.noemamag.com/noemas-top-1...

In case you were wondering what it’s like to boot a free to play mobile game in 2025

More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop’, study finds Low-quality AI-generated content is now saturating social media – and generating about $117m a year, data shows

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

HEA Publishes National Policy Framework on Generative AI in Teaching and Learning | Higher Education Authority →

HEA publishes national policy framework on Generative AI in Teaching and Learning

The framework was led by Dr @jamesosullivan.bsky.social, UCC School of English and Digital Humanities.

The Higher Education Authority has published its policy framework for generative AI in higher education teaching and learning.

hea.ie/2025/12/22/h...

Policy framework:
hub.teachingandlearning.ie/genai/policy...

Resource portal:
hub.teachingandlearning.ie/genai

Thanks to everyone involved.