Ayşe Çelikkol
@celikkol.bsky.social
Nineteenth-century British literature; literature and economic history; currently thinking about capitalist farming and abstraction in relation to literary form. I live in Ankara and travel to the Aegean.
on Banville's Venetian Vespers: if you are an amazing novelist, so much so that the entire novel is exactly what it would be if its third-rate-novelist narrator indeed did write it, is that an achievement?
October 24, 2025 at 12:47 PM
on Banville's Venetian Vespers: if you are an amazing novelist, so much so that the entire novel is exactly what it would be if its third-rate-novelist narrator indeed did write it, is that an achievement?
I just dont understand this Ozempic thing. Find me a pill where I can enjoy my baklava and not gain weight. Where's the magic if I am losing the weight by not eating the baklava?
October 12, 2025 at 4:24 PM
I just dont understand this Ozempic thing. Find me a pill where I can enjoy my baklava and not gain weight. Where's the magic if I am losing the weight by not eating the baklava?
A stroll among the leaves.
October 12, 2025 at 5:01 AM
A stroll among the leaves.
Excited to be presenting at this.
#NAVSA2025 is running special digital panels on Fri, Nov 7 and Sat Nov 8! Registration is FREE but required: tinyurl.com/hy2zhe2y
NAVSA 2025: Aftermaths // Digital Pre-Session Registration
Attendance at the NAVSA 2025 digital pre-sessions is free but you must register in order to receive zoom links for both dates (Friday, November 7th and Saturday, November 8th). Please register if you ...
tinyurl.com
October 3, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Excited to be presenting at this.
Reposted by Ayşe Çelikkol
Yesterday I heard a radio presenter say that Sarkozy's sentence was the most severe sanction ever imposed on a French head of state ...
September 26, 2025 at 7:45 AM
Yesterday I heard a radio presenter say that Sarkozy's sentence was the most severe sanction ever imposed on a French head of state ...
Flesh, by D. Szalay--now that is some novel. And the Guardian review by Keiran Goddard captures so well why it is amazing.
September 22, 2025 at 12:11 PM
Flesh, by D. Szalay--now that is some novel. And the Guardian review by Keiran Goddard captures so well why it is amazing.
battle doomscrolling by posting 5 small pleasures in life:
family dinner out on the balcony
watching a film on tv with the dog next to me
listening to an audiobook while walking the dog
coming across a text / passage that suggests my argument's right on.
sleeping with the window open
family dinner out on the balcony
watching a film on tv with the dog next to me
listening to an audiobook while walking the dog
coming across a text / passage that suggests my argument's right on.
sleeping with the window open
battle doomscrolling by posting 5 small pleasures in life:
first sip of coffee
picking up a conker, cool and soapy in your hand
geese honking overhead
leaves changing colour: green, yellow, red
debating when to put the heating on
(I really like autumn, ok)
first sip of coffee
picking up a conker, cool and soapy in your hand
geese honking overhead
leaves changing colour: green, yellow, red
debating when to put the heating on
(I really like autumn, ok)
battle doomscrolling by posting 5 small pleasures in life:
Reading books
Writing about books
Homemade cookies
Dog walks
Woolly jumpers
Reading books
Writing about books
Homemade cookies
Dog walks
Woolly jumpers
September 16, 2025 at 9:07 AM
battle doomscrolling by posting 5 small pleasures in life:
family dinner out on the balcony
watching a film on tv with the dog next to me
listening to an audiobook while walking the dog
coming across a text / passage that suggests my argument's right on.
sleeping with the window open
family dinner out on the balcony
watching a film on tv with the dog next to me
listening to an audiobook while walking the dog
coming across a text / passage that suggests my argument's right on.
sleeping with the window open
I find it a fundamental flaw in the WH adaptation that Heathcliff is so good looking. We shouldn't be able to explain Catherine's infatuation on looks alone.
September 10, 2025 at 4:57 PM
I find it a fundamental flaw in the WH adaptation that Heathcliff is so good looking. We shouldn't be able to explain Catherine's infatuation on looks alone.
a radical idea for a tv series: a show where the chacters are not super wealthy.
August 17, 2025 at 1:08 PM
a radical idea for a tv series: a show where the chacters are not super wealthy.
Poor writing or anti-choice brainwashing: "Could scientists eventually replicate an actual embryo that has a heartbeat and experiences pain, or one that could grow into a fully developed human model?"
Could stem cells be used to create life without sperm or egg? Not yet, but here’s why scientists are concerned | CNN
Lab grown models of embryos, made from clusters of stem cells, are getting increasingly complex. Ethicists, regulators and legal specialists are scrambling to keep up with the pace of research.
www.cnn.com
August 1, 2025 at 8:53 AM
Poor writing or anti-choice brainwashing: "Could scientists eventually replicate an actual embryo that has a heartbeat and experiences pain, or one that could grow into a fully developed human model?"
CNN rhetoric: "Gaza’s starvation crisis continues to deepen . . " Gaza's starvation crisis! Are there classes for writing like this? Quite a craft.
July 26, 2025 at 7:48 PM
CNN rhetoric: "Gaza’s starvation crisis continues to deepen . . " Gaza's starvation crisis! Are there classes for writing like this? Quite a craft.
Reposted by Ayşe Çelikkol
AI folks have now discovered “thinking”
July 29, 2024 at 9:43 PM
AI folks have now discovered “thinking”
2025. CEOs' exorbitant salaries are the tip of the iceberg in economic inequality and people know it and resent it. Society could deal with the situation by organizing politically or voting for people who'll tax the rich. Instead, we publicly shame them for infidelity.
July 19, 2025 at 5:30 AM
2025. CEOs' exorbitant salaries are the tip of the iceberg in economic inequality and people know it and resent it. Society could deal with the situation by organizing politically or voting for people who'll tax the rich. Instead, we publicly shame them for infidelity.
A bit behind the curve here, aren't we, dear NYT and E Adams? Go ahead pull an Erdogan, get this guy's diploma cancelled.
Everyone should be making noise about this huge media scandal in the New York Times. While Trump makes money off of frivolous lawsuits against CBS, ABC, etc, the Times is getting away with an anti-Mamdani hit job fed to them by a far right ‘race science’ guy, who they kept anonymous!
New York Times Grants Race Science Enthusiast Anonymity in Mamdani Hit Piece
July 4, 2025 at 7:30 PM
A bit behind the curve here, aren't we, dear NYT and E Adams? Go ahead pull an Erdogan, get this guy's diploma cancelled.
Reposted by Ayşe Çelikkol
Zohran Mamdani’s plan to tax the rich is a 2% tax on income over $1 million.
If you make $1.1 million, you’d pay an extra $2,000.
Watching working class conservatives and politicians completely meltdown about this is wild.
If you make $1.1 million, you’d pay an extra $2,000.
Watching working class conservatives and politicians completely meltdown about this is wild.
June 27, 2025 at 12:21 AM
Zohran Mamdani’s plan to tax the rich is a 2% tax on income over $1 million.
If you make $1.1 million, you’d pay an extra $2,000.
Watching working class conservatives and politicians completely meltdown about this is wild.
If you make $1.1 million, you’d pay an extra $2,000.
Watching working class conservatives and politicians completely meltdown about this is wild.
Reposted by Ayşe Çelikkol
“I just want to read books as a job” 🥹📚
Does anyone ever grow up and do the job they wanted to do as a kid
June 9, 2025 at 11:47 AM
“I just want to read books as a job” 🥹📚
WaPo ranked the five best ai summarizers, which, they say, give you the superpower of speed reading. They did the testing by asking the ai tools to summarize books in a few different genres. One of the genres: the novel.
June 7, 2025 at 4:23 PM
WaPo ranked the five best ai summarizers, which, they say, give you the superpower of speed reading. They did the testing by asking the ai tools to summarize books in a few different genres. One of the genres: the novel.
Reposted by Ayşe Çelikkol
I wrote a very short book about book clubs, a kind of memoir/essay, and it’s coming out in October!
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Reading Together
A lively and thoughtful exploration of how book clubs change the way we read. In this engaging and vivacious memoir, college professor Katarzyna Bartoszyńska thinks back on various book clubs she has ...
press.uchicago.edu
May 30, 2025 at 8:53 PM
I wrote a very short book about book clubs, a kind of memoir/essay, and it’s coming out in October!
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
The Earth's core is leaking. I saw it in Nature. I think you should know.
May 22, 2025 at 12:07 PM
The Earth's core is leaking. I saw it in Nature. I think you should know.
I wonder why I am not a Booker judge. You may think I am not qualified, which is not incorrect. But I *am* more qualified than Sarah Jessica Parker. Every year I look forward to the shortlist, but am I really going to care what she selects?
May 21, 2025 at 9:59 AM
I wonder why I am not a Booker judge. You may think I am not qualified, which is not incorrect. But I *am* more qualified than Sarah Jessica Parker. Every year I look forward to the shortlist, but am I really going to care what she selects?
I think calling a convergence a "social norm" is a stretch, but what I am really surprised by here: how on earth do you "reward" an LLM? How can an LLM be rewardable?
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
AI language models develop social norms like groups of people
When LLMs are grouped together, they exhibit similar characteristics to human societies.
www.nature.com
May 16, 2025 at 2:22 PM
I think calling a convergence a "social norm" is a stretch, but what I am really surprised by here: how on earth do you "reward" an LLM? How can an LLM be rewardable?
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
On the NYer AI essay. (1) AI may or may not be capable of writing a monograph, but it can't write the one I will write. This difference matters. (2) We need to cultivate the cognitive abilities that result in monographs, etc, or we'll get brain atrophy / dementia and (3)
April 28, 2025 at 3:58 PM
On the NYer AI essay. (1) AI may or may not be capable of writing a monograph, but it can't write the one I will write. This difference matters. (2) We need to cultivate the cognitive abilities that result in monographs, etc, or we'll get brain atrophy / dementia and (3)
Rereading the Dialectic of Enlightenment, can't say I like it any more. It doesn't so much seem dialectical as finding the same apocalypse in various forms that are only seemingly contradictory. Even more so than the content, I dislike the shamanic tone.
April 25, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Rereading the Dialectic of Enlightenment, can't say I like it any more. It doesn't so much seem dialectical as finding the same apocalypse in various forms that are only seemingly contradictory. Even more so than the content, I dislike the shamanic tone.
Reposted by Ayşe Çelikkol
Obviously things have got dramatically worse in the US recently, and I don't want to diminish that, but I've been at *so many* conferences in the UK on topics like empire, humanitarianism and development where multiple speakers from the Global South have been denied visas or held at the border
I just attended a conference in the US. We had one speaker detained and two others turned away at the border.
There are great conferences and science in the US, but with the way things are right now, it’s too risky to attend.
April 14, 2025 at 10:10 AM
Obviously things have got dramatically worse in the US recently, and I don't want to diminish that, but I've been at *so many* conferences in the UK on topics like empire, humanitarianism and development where multiple speakers from the Global South have been denied visas or held at the border