Alexis Lothian

Be part of the movement that's offering the politics of hope.
There's never been a better time to join!

historically accurate☑️

I can think of few people whose insights our moment more desperately needs than @lnakamura.bsky.social !

Job alert!

@ischoolui.bsky.social is hiring in 4 areas this year

Early literacies: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Information behavior/HCI/UX: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Information, Culture & Society: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Open IS: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge "Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another."

The long-running ideological war on libraries, education, and government workers is not separate from AI boosterism. It is the same ideological war on human knowledge and expertise. In some cases AI is being used to directly supercharge this effort:

www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

MESA and the AAUP have released a critical report exposing the weaponization of civil rights law to suppress campus speech concerning Palestine.
Read full report here: mesana.org/advocacy/tas...

Brilliant forthcoming book from my brilliant former advisee! I’m so proud to have been part of the journey that led to this work.

Screenshots of the following text: Statement on Educational Technologies and AI Agents The following statement of endorsement was drafted by the MLA Task Force on AI in Research and Teaching. The Executive Council approved it as an MLA statement in October 2025. Software, specifically learning management systems (LMSs), is as important to teaching and learning as physical classrooms and facilities. The recent and hasty integration of generative AI features into those systems is already redefining student and instructor relationships, evaluative standards, and instructional outcomes—with no compelling evidence that any of it is for the better. At the same time, so-called agentic browsers are becoming widely available to the public. These offer AI “agents” that can navigate LMSs and complete assignments without any student involvement. All of this is unfolding at a time when contractual arrangements between institutions and commercial vendors often lack transparency, with worrisome implications for data collection and student privacy.

Screenshots of the following text: The Modern Language Association therefore unequivocally 1. Advocates for full faculty and instructional involvement, including faculty of languages, literatures, and the humanities, at all levels of decision-making in the selection, procurement, and responsible implementation of instructional technology systems and software, including those incorporating AI.

The instructional mission cannot be fulfilled in the absence of faculty expertise, and this expertise extends not only to the “content” of the curriculum but also to the infrastructures and environments—virtual and otherwise—in which learning happens.
  2. Calls upon law- and policymakers, LMS vendors, and companies offering agent-based AI browsers to cooperate in order to prevent misuse and to ensure that academic institutions have the ability and option to block agentic AI when needed.

Without dedicated outside cooperation from lawmakers and technology providers, academic institutions may not have the technical capacity to do so on their own. If we do not act, we risk seeing the development of a fully automated loop in which assignments are generated by AI with the support of a learning management system, AI-generated content is submitted by an agentic AI on behalf of the student, and AI-driven metrics evaluate the work on behalf of the instructor.

Very proud to have worked on this statement of the Modern Language Association with @annamillsoer.bsky.social and other colleagues on the MLA’s task force on AI in Research and Teaching. It is a direct call for faculty input into Ed Tech decision-making, especially AI: www.mla.org/Resources/Ad... 🧵

The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is hiring an Assistant/Associate Professor in Black Feminisms. Read more about the position and apply at https://go.umd.edu/WGSSBlackFeminisms🌈🎓 #AcademicSky #Blackademics #PhDSky

My department is hiring in Black Feminisms! wgss.umd.edu/news/now-hir...

Roddey Reid’s book, now revised and expanded, is the best text I have found that not only grasps the full meaning of Trump, but places him in the context of American business culture. Be afraid.

roddeyreid.squarespace.com/new-book-1

Deflating “Hype” Won’t Save Us The problem with AI isn’t hype. The problem is who and what it’s useful for.

We wrote a thing about AI, fascism, and why framing this as "hype" is too apolitical

www.liberalcurrents.com/deflating-hy...

AI Commons - One Project What if we could redefine AI? What if we could shift its development from a capitalist model to a more disruptive, inclusive, and decentralized one?

AI systems don't have to be controlled by fascist bootlickers. They don't have to be controlled by for-profit tech companies!

Check out our report on the possibility and necessity of an #AICommons: oneproject.org/ai-commons/

I missed this when it came out over the summer but it’s well worth the read. @biblioracle.bsky.social

The cover of my zine 'Iconic' about LiveJournal icons, a bunch of colorful 100x100 pixel images all set out in a grid "A zine about design, aesthetic and LiveJournal icons from the early 2000s"

Did you used to make LiveJournal icons? Do you still have some of the ones that you made? I'm looking to include more icons in the second print run of my LiveJournal Iconic zine and would love to see yours!

Share them here: form.jotform.com/252444103676...

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Celebrating the OTW’s 18th Anniversary

The #OTW is turning 18 this year! Look back with us on some milestones, and participate in our anniversary bingo at otw-news.org/yckwkcuj #18YearsOTW

Image that says: Have you considered NOT using AI? Funky font and flowers and a qr code that links to the open letter

Image that says: Have you considered NOT using AI? Funky font and flowers and a qr code that links to the open letter

Image that says: AI is evil. Funky font and flowers and a qr code that links to the open letter

Image that says: AI is evil. Funky font and flowers and a qr code that links to the open letter

Made these for fun — hope you get a chuckle at least & consider signing

Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia
openletter.earth/open-letter-...

💥🩷🌿‼️

Thread of the Day

I really think imagining what it would mean to develop technology for life, rather than for profit is a serious task of the political imaginary. The way things are now are so dire and dreadful, but there is also so much room beyond capitalist realism here

a snippet of a mini-comic, at top - straight line stretches from point A to B. Immediately below, same dot at A, then becomes a curving, meandering line that winds through the page and ends at a point with rays and a question mark emanating from it. Text reads: "Nothing can do this for you - that robs you of experience and conflates answers with learning. Rather, it's all the decisions you make along the way, the mistakes, struggles, and surprises! These pathways you create - this is learning.

Pages from a mini comic

Pages from a mini comic

Pages from a mini comic

My drawn statement on Ai as standalone from my now finished minicomic as syllabus for new liberal studies class! As promised this is shareable, printable - all from my site, feel free to make use of it, cite me & let me know how it’s received. Share away all here! spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...

AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event Three years in, one of AI’s enduring impacts is to make people feel like they’re losing it.

Hello. I wrote a nice long essay about AI and this very strange moment where we're constantly told we're living in the dawn of a strange new future but the only thing that's actually clear is that everyone feels pretty unmoored and uncertain. I hope you'll read it

This may also be why I dislike the use of "learnings" as a noun

Learning is not an object you acquire, it is a process that transforms you

From free article, look for "Red Lines": https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/on-palestine

sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/on-palestine

AGAINST AI

teachers!

excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone.

take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE
against-a-i.com

A large group of protestors against Trump in Edinburgh. Some are holding signs reading 'Nae Trump', 'Stop Trump, Welcome Immigrants' and 'No fascists, no rapists, no Trump'.

Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer speaks to anti-Trump protestors.

A sign held above a crowd reads 'Stop Trump, Migrants Welcome'.

A large group of protestors against Trump in Edinburgh. Two signs are visible, one reading 'Scotland hated Trump before it was fashionable', the other reading 'Stp Trump, stop the far right.'

Donald Trump is not welcome in Scotland.

A paperback volume, the journal Utopian Studies, with its orange cover and logo

Just received this at home, from the Society for Utopian Studies: Utopian Studies vol. 36 no. 1, Special Issue on Queer Utopias. Props @alothian.bsky.social, @tavia.bsky.social, Rebekah Sheldon. Tributes to José and to Frederic Jameson, as well. Looking forward to next issue where I have a review

China is cracking down on young women who write gay erotica At least 30 writers have been arrested across the country since February, a lawyer tells the BBC.

I have been interviewed by BBC News concerning the recent Haitang Incident: after last year’s detention of over 50 women danmei writers who produce explicit male-male romances and erotica in China, more women writers have been summoned this spring for www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...