Sarah Comyn

- AI training isn’t ‘learning’ and shouldn’t be treated as such

The House of Lords has been absolutely consistent on this, and they are totally right. Will the government listen?

/end

The House of Lords Digital & Communications Committee just published their report on AI, copyright & the creative industries, and their conclusions could not be clearer.

🧵 1/5

Quit ChatGPT: right now! Your subscription is bankrolling authoritarianism | Rutger Bregman As a historian, I’ve studied the major consumer boycotts of history. We can take down ChatGPT and send a powerful signal to Silicon Valley, says author and historian Rutger Bregman

"The most effective consumer boycotts in history share two qualities: they are narrow and they are easy," writes @rutgerbregman.com

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed.
Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

Justice Department withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump An NPR investigation finds the public database of Epstein files is missing dozens of pages related to sexual abuse accusations against President Trump.

An NPR investigation finds the public database of Epstein files is missing dozens of pages related to sexual abuse accusations against President Trump. n.pr/4qTItsU

Farage’s fundamentalists are coming for abortion The Reform party now contains a group of prominent christian conservatives who have learned from the US that the way to ban abortion is through the slow erosion of rights

The US shows that abortion rights can be curtailed without sudden shifts in public sentiment. A small organised political movement can restrict rights without ever winning a majority.

Enter Reform UK

@thenewworldmag.bsky.social
www.thenewworld.co.uk/zoe-grunewal...

More than 600 people have died trying to cross Mediterranean in 2026, UN says Deadliest start to a year in more than a decade, according to the International Organization for Migration

It’s only February www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

one of many reasons that the organized critique and refusal movement is overwhelmingly led by women (yes including women computer scientists, cognitive scientists, and engineers)

And now I have a helpful 20% discount code for anyone interested too: 26AFLY1

I cannot overstress how fucking constantly we were working

Balliol College & the English Faculty are seeking to appoint an outstanding candidate as Tutorial Fellow & Professor or Associate Professor of English with expertise in any aspect(s) of literature in #English of the long nineteenth century (approx 1780–1914)

#Academicjob #19C

Find out more >>

A “QuitGPT” campaign is urging people to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions Backlash against ICE is fueling a broader movement against AI companies’ ties to President Trump.

Happy to be included in this article with MIT Technology Review about the QuitGPT campaign.

www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/10/1...

Political Economy Providing a ‘short take’ on the long history of political economy, this book examines both the stories about and those within economics.  It traces the history of political economy from its beginnings...

My short take on the long view of Political Economy has happily just been released as a paperback🥳 It begins with the South Sea bubble & ends with the digital economy & Irish bogs, with many interesting pitstops along the way. It's true to its title & only 80 pages🙂
www.routledge.com/Political-Ec...

I enjoyed reflecting on our recent scholar-activist interventions for the Journal of Environmental Media with comrades @emeliedt.bsky.social, Zannah Matson, and Jordan Kinder. Check it out 👇🏻

And check out the rest of this special issue on the theme of 'Care-ful Convening' with writing by @sarahcomyn.bsky.social & @mediacology.bsky.social among others! intellectdiscover.com/content/jour...

"Every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse" - wow, the wording in this isn't pulling its punches

Irish Romanticism | Cambridge University Press & Assessment

Please do join me if you can for these events #IrishRomanticism @universitypress.cambridge.org

UCC 19 February 5.30pm Hub Atrium
Cambridge 2 March 5.30pm Emmanuel College
Boston College 11 March 5pm Connolly House
NYU 12 March 6pm Glucksman House
Royal Irish Academy 25 March 6pm Academy House

I was funded by the minerals project to visit Museum Africa to consult its fascinating postcard collections on SA’s extractive histories. The postcards discussed in this article offer a glimpse into how this highly commercial medium shaped global perceptions of mining capitalism and abstract labor.

You can read @gigitang.bsky.social excellent article in full here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...

And find out more about Gigi's broader case study for the Imperial Minerals project here: imperialminerals.ie/team/ge-tang/

It's not good enough to blame users for the horrifying images being produced by Grok AI.

This tool is doing exactly what it is designed to do.

We need a criminal investigation into X and Grok - because there have been clear breaches of the law.

The laws are in place – the govt must enforce them.

ive seen more articles this week about how the phrase “abolish ice” could hurt dems in the midterms than ive seen articles about how paramilitary death squads terrorizing cities will hurt republicans in the midterms

Members of Congress: stop posting online and APPEAR, PHYSICALLY on the steps of the Capitol to decry this unconstitutional violation of domestic & international law. SHOW THE PEOPLE the level of danger we are facing as a country.
@housedemocrats.bsky.social
@senatedemocrats.bsky.social

Thanks, Danielle! Looks like a fascinating issue!

'Refusing is actually the more hopeful, expansive vision of the future'. 'Just say no!'

Amazing, powerful statements.

You can also listen to Assoc. Prof Tom Nurmi's brilliant keynote which opened the symposium. In his paper, Tom engages closely with previous Minerals roundtables and provides a philosophical exploration of minerals in our contemporary era through Emerson's poetry
imperialminerals.ie/podcasts/qua...

Read @gigitang.bsky.social reflection on the brilliant Critical Minerals symposium she & Katie Donnelly organised for the Minerals project. The symposium was generously supported by UCD College of Arts & Humanities seed funding & @ucdhumanities.bsky.social imperialminerals.ie/2025/12/19/c...

💪🏽💪🏽

Later this morning if anybody’s free + interested. One thesis: sustained acts of creative attention are deeply countersystemic. Spaces for such activity are tiny + under attack, which means that thinking is itself political & spaces for doing it must be defended together &slowly, tactically expanded