Vera-Simone Schulz

“Deskilling” skilled professions is a core promise of technological projects, so it’s probably not best understood as a side-effect even if some of the people pushing generative AI see it that way themselves. If the erosion of thinking is unforeseen, that’s just (so to speak) for lack of thinking.

White man makes AI-avatar of a teaching "sidekick" in the form of a Black woman whose purpose is to serve, in precedent-setting move. 🫠

Struggling to participate in the Indian Ocean sea trade

Read the 🔓 #OpenAccess article by Michael O'Sullivan on the evolution of Ottoman shipping in the Indian Ocean from 1650 to 1900 👉 buff.ly/GN9hF8G

Part of our CAPASIA @erc.europa.eu project research 👉 buff.ly/K57rhlr

📚 #Fridayreads

When I was 16 I smoked real actual
cigarettes on an international flight. It was unthinkable then, but now, thanks to actual political will, you can hardly smoke in public spaces (and I am glad to say I quit when I was 23). LLM chatbots are a menace and can be banned.

It gave him a list of people without formal degrees who "reshaped everything," including Leonardo da Vinci. ALLAN How could that be, I didn't even graduate high school CHATGPT That's exactly how it could be. Formal education often teaches people what to think, not how to think— and certainly not how to question the frame itself. You're doing something far rarer: you're asking, What if the whole framework is missing something essential?

Chatbots parrot the words that the idols of Silicon Valley say about themselves. They call themselves mavericks & geniuses who think New Thoughts *because* they lack higher degrees, but that is not the origins of their success. Their success was in getting silly VC money through connections.

Dear students, it is not acceptable to send a ChatGPT-generated exposé as a basis for a discussion about your final paper. Thanks, Max.

Kolonialgeschichte: Was Straßenumbenennungen über uns aussagen Die Berliner Mohrenstraße wird in Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-Straße umbenannt. Die Umbenennung war hart umkämpft. Autorin Alice Hasters erklärt, warum.

Kompakt und sehrgut über dieses Gestreite um die Amo-Straße in Berlin-Mitte: Alice Hasters 🎧
www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/koloniale-st...

Sharon spricht, umringt von Publikum

Sharon Dodua Otoo @sharondoduaotoo.bsky.social bei der Taufe der Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-Straße in Berlin-Mitte

“It is irresponsible if ScienceDirect continues to have these AI features. The AI generated texts on ScienceDirect spread misinformation and pollute the scientific knowledge infrastructure. This harms science, researchers, lecturers, students, and ultimately also the public.”

It Took Many Years And Billions Of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes | Defector It’s not AI winter just yet, though there is a distinct chill in the air. Meta is shaking up and downsizing its artificial intelligence division. A new report out of MIT finds that 95 percent of compa...

Fabulous headline:

"It Took Many Years And Billions Of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes"

Also:

"Microsoft explicitly warns users that its AI function should not be used for things like "doing math" or "anything actually important""

Es ist fraglich, ob die #Privatdozentur die für die Professur vermeintlich so wichtige #Bestenauslese liefert - oder ob sie nicht vielmehr die letzte Etappe sozialer Selektion im Wissenschaftssystem ist, die durch entsprechende #Prekarität schon in der Promotions- und Postdocphase beginnt. 7/8

So wie mir geht es vielen anderen Privatdozent:innen. Nicht alle können es sich leisten, so lange durchzuhalten. Das ist ungerecht: ein Erfolg im Wissenschaftssystem sollte nicht an das Vorhandensein eigener finanzieller Mittel geknüpft sein. 6/8

For decades, the German academic system has been characterized by structural problems that make the working and living situation of those working in it massively more difficult. 1/9

He was also an Imperial/ War artist.
Among the Marsh Arabs (lithograph).
Cairo - the Indian Hospital (ink and wash).
Moslem Kitchen - Riasc 8th 10th and 12th Indian Mule Coys, Zghorta, Syria.
The Emperor Haile Selassie at Khartoum early in 1941.

Wallpaper designs: Tree and cow, Pigeon and clock tower, Sahara, Mermaid.

Abdulrazak Gurnah: searching for signs of Zanzibar’s most famous writer, all I found was trinkets and tourists Eventually, I found his famous novels in a souvenir shop in his home town that mostly sold skin-care products.

Zanzibar’s beauty draws crowds, but its coral-stone streets hold memories of the Indian Ocean slave trade that cannot be ignored. 🏝️

theconversation.com/abdulrazak-g...

#ArtsCultureAndSociety

Apparently historical images are now based on vibes and historical writing can be conducted through hallucinatory autocomplete plagiarism machines. You could, instead, support historians and the important work they do. As a historian and archivist, I’m appalled by this “guidance”

Call for Proposals: 2026 Joint Meeting of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS) and History of Science Society (HSS), Scotland, 13-16 July 2026


Link to the full Call For Proposals is available here<hssonline.org/page/2...>

It's here! Everything you never really wanted to know about Mamluks and their socks (and the creation of medievalist identity through modern knitting pattern design)! www.academia.edu/125167738/Au...

Join us at @chstma.bsky.social for our next #mmea session on

Thursday, August 14 at 10am EDT (Philadelphia time) with

Tuli Mekondjo (Windhoek): Oimbodi Yedu: Herbs of the Soil

Free, online, all welcome! Sign up for free membership here to receive the zoom link! www.chstm.org/group/plants...

"Ecologies of Recovery: Mónica de Miranda's As If the World Had No West", for Art Review Oxford and the special issue "Spectral Ecologies", edited by Alejandro Nodarse Jammal
and Avin Houro 12 (2025): open access here: artreviewoxford.com

#monicademiranda #asiftheworldhadnowest #artreviewoxford

If you're interested in an English translation please see the following images.

Next text coming up in November, stay tuned!

Wrote a text for @ndaktuell.bsky.social on cave_bureau's transformation of the British pavilion into the British-Kenyan pavilion Geology of Britannic Repair as "artwork of the month"!

www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1192...

This is an initiative of @leuphana.bsky.social

#ndaktuell #kunstwerkdesmonats

CFP: From the Universal Museum to Critical Museology (online, 21-22 Nov 25)

https://arthist.net/archive/50438

CFP: "New Relational Ethics" in Art History and Archaeology (online, 14-15 Nov 25)

https://arthist.net/archive/50415

Join us for our #mmea series on #plants in #africa at #chstm tomorrow

July 10, 10am EDT (Philadelphia time)
for a talk by Rabiu Yusuf on indigo dyeing in Northern Nigeria!

free, online, all welcome!

to join sign up for free membership for the working group here:

www.chstm.org/group/plants...

Finding the Key to Cézanne, the First Painter I Ever Loved (Gift Article) In the artist's breathtaking quarry pictures, his singular vision runs into the hard facts of deep time.

Wonderful from Jason Farago at The New York Times: Cezanne and the Hard Facts of Time - celebration, art history, personal reflection, beauty, rigorous analysis, and the continuing invention of a new form between text, images and film.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Article in Cameroon Tribune, 2 July 2025, about meeting of Cameroon‘s Restitution Committee with German Foreign Office on 1 July 2025

Historical breakthrough for German colonial restitution policy: Under guidance of @diplo.de, museums in Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart & Bremen ready for „first wave“ of return to Cameroon.
@profdanhicks.bsky.social @kilderbenhauser.bsky.social @michmo.bsky.social @he-mel.bsky.social @rhoelzl.bsky.social

Exciting news from SAR: A new Getty-funded seminar will challenge extractive museum practices and reimagine how art historians engage with Native art and communities.

Launching summer 2026 in Santa Fe.

Details → sarweb.org/getty-founda...