Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

@ninamarkl.bsky.social

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sociolinguistics, AI ethics, cycling, cats 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ ✨undisciplined research fellow at University of Essex & perennial killjoy ✨she/they ✨ nina is fine but otherwise it’s dr not ms/miss/mrs ✨

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‘data centre on a historic Black cemetery’ would be considered a bit too on the nose in a satire or dystopia

I live in the “Data Center capital of the world” and tech companies are trying to develop on historic Black cemeteries. This increased demand for computing power is a climate justice as well as a racial Justice issue.

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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

The UK election was really close, a true nailbiter, it was probably a smart move for Starmer to sell out trans people to get those extra votes

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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

The joke that gets lost is Ford Prefect named himself after the make/model of a car because he perceived that cars are the dominant life form on Earth.

The central joke in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a race of dipshits building a planet-sized computer to answer the question of "life, the universe, and everything" and then a million years later it says the answer is 42, and somehow that has taken on a William Gibson level of prescience

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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

It has been so fucking long since the UK has produced any political positivity that isn't a monarch dying that tonight has been absolutely delightful not just the Tories getting world-historically shellacked but labour getting humiliated by greens and socialists and Corbyn just delightful

does anyone studying social media know wtf is going on with these instagram captions on big meme/cute content accounts?? it’s always like a video of cats or whatever and the caption is text about a product (often cars) that looks like it was generated by ChatGPT. is this a marketing strategy? eg:

again, transphobia is a fringe position, actually. most people are supportive of trans people. adopting transphobic policies will not win votes, only destroy lives.

Kelly-Jay Keen aka Posie Parker received 196 votes in the electorate she stood for, meanwhile, this woman won the seat with over 24,000 votes

reading berlant’s ‘cruel optimism’ for the first time on the morning of a labour right landslide ‘a relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing’

british people’s commitment to the bit remains unmatched globally

There is a 7 foot tall guy behind Rishi Sunak who likely ran for office just to be able to hold a printed out L behind him during his concession speech.

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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

The best thing about British democracy is when the actual head of government has to stand in a leisure centre at 5 am beside a guy with a bin on his head to find out if he still has a job.

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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

There is so much wrong with British politics, but not this.

jacob rees-mogg has to lose while standing next to a guy wearing a baked beans-themed balaclava

linguists, what’s the best or most compelling biography of Jakobson you’ve read?

ngl i‘ve never been happier not to be eligible to vote in a UK general election

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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

It can’t be repeated enough: transphobia is a warning sign for fascism. The rights of trans people are a canary in the mine, and when they’re assaulted it means we are all under assault.

formerly 'left-wing' UK philosopher and transphobe Nina Power has been exposed in her own text messages as a literal Nazi (occult variety) x.com/Luke_Turner/...

x.comx.com

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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

Solidarity with colleagues at Goldsmiths, where SMT are destroying Sociology, a leading department in the UK. It's unacceptable. goldsmithsucu.org/donations/gu...

Support Goldsmiths UCU’s local dispute support fund – Goldsmiths University and College Uniongoldsmithsucu.org

why leave the house at a reasonable time before your train (say 15 mins) when you could instead faff about and then sprint on your ancient commuter bike to get there with 20 seconds to spare great adrenaline rush on a monday morning

one of the genuinely surprising effects of working with “AI” is that it really clarified my understanding of what it means to be human and why that matters. as per last RT, so many ‘AI’ things just utterly *miss the point* of why we do anything - read, write, love, watch sports, make music

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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

The thing with these guys is they view communications media (speech, fiction, film, TV series, drama, you name it) as data transmission and nothing more. The Great Gatsby is a list of events and characters and if you can cut that down to 500 words, you're maximizing something.

I can’t think of a clever caption for this. It just breaks my fucking heart.

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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

I can't believe we, as a species, invented bread and cheese - two things that require multiple, complicated steps as well as microbe husbandry - and this is the best political system we've got

very cool event!!

If you care about the way AI is steamrolling environmental concerns you might be interested in this (free, online) conference happening in July—program just posted, and link to register: uva.theopenscholar.com/rethinking-t...

Rethinking the Inevitability of AIuva.theopenscholar.com

i don’t think this is was ever up for the debate — the thing that remains concerning is how many and which universities any future government would end up preserving

'Eighty-one per cent of Labour supporters and 77 per cent of Conservatives said it was “important” or “very important” that the next government take action to support any university at risk of closure because of financial issues, “including providing emergency funding”.'

Voters back using public money to bail out UK universities – pollwww.timeshighereducation.com Nearly three-quarters of people want next government to take action to support a higher education institution at risk of closure

this hits a nerve.

hi, i wrote a post - "destroy AI". ali-alkhatib.com/blog/fuck-up...

Destroy AIali-alkhatib.com I’ve been struggling to articulate this idea, and maybe the problem is that it’s actually kind of simple once you put it out there, and there’s really no good reason to unpack a whole case for it once...

also STUPID. maybe that’s what gets me, we’re risking future habitability of the planet and refuting completely bonkers fears about like robot overlords while the planet is literally on fire 🔥

my next paper on ‘ai’ might come with a footnote of ‘i tried to be measured but MY GOD this is all so INFURIATING’

shoutout to my neighbour who must have read this post 😎 can confirm that my day has improved

Having a bad day? Put on "Freedom! 90". Trust me on this.

i love how efficient online personalisation is my partner just opened overleaf on his work computer (on his campus!) and there’s a cheery message telling him that it looks like he is at *my* workplace (a different university)

developing a theory that most of what’s wrong with tech and politics in the UK and the US is just a shockingly small group of deeply weird guys

‘the seagulls don’t work for us’ reminds me of ‘caution, pickpockets operate in this station’ which always makes me imagine the pickpockets as being employees of the station with a little badge and everything

they're good gulls, m8

hey pals, does anyone have a reading recommendation on working conditions in electronics manufacturing?

opened a venturebeat article for research and now i want to launch myself into the sun

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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

I want automatic camera enforcement of advanced stop lines (aka "bike boxes")! In the UK, that's three penalty points on the driver's license and a £100 fine.