Sarah Brouillette
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sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette
@sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
2.7K followers 220 following 350 posts

literature prof, book historian, cultural sociologist, anti-work communist gadfly

https://carleton.ca/english/people/brouillette-sarah/

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Art 35%
Philosophy 17%
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sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 2h
❤️‍🔥

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 2h
this is very funny and true
Contrepreneurs: The Mikkelsen Twins
YouTube video by Folding Ideas
youtu.be

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3h
and I mean, as @mattseybold.bsky.social put it, "every session of Claude Code is like running a dishwasher" -- if academics aren't fighting the widespread adoption of these things then what are we even doing, and that includes IMO acknowledging the underlying compulsions

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3h
easy prey for these pyramid schemes).

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3h
I think recognizing some of what makes people fall into these traps--and they are traps, because Ms. Hart will tell them this is an easy way to make money and that's just not true--is totally compatible with wanting to guillotine the people developing the AI to begin with (and making us

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3h
Totally--could not agree more. It sucks for many reasons, not least because it makes it even harder for people who care about writing in the genre to make any money doing it.

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3h
they are adding "AI generated romance novels" to their other 5 to 10 tiny income streams

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3h
we should compare Ms. Hart to the Mikkelsen Twins -- they are hucksters, but people buy what they are selling out of desperation and because they already do every other kind of digital gig work organized by Fiverr, AMT, et cetera
The New Fabio Is Claude
www.nytimes.com

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3h
this has been going on in non-fiction and low content books for a long time -- it was only a matter of time; Ms. Hart is selling access to her technique and developing proprietary tech, just taking advantage of how many people out there are desperate for some kind of income

Reposted by Sarah Brouillette

cominsitu.bsky.social
Cominsitu @cominsitu.bsky.social · 4h
make it stop

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/b...

Reposted by Alison Phipps, Sarah Brouillette

lrb.co.uk
London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1d
‘The International Energy Agency reckons that if the current global expansion of data centres continues, the CO2 emissions for which they are responsible, currently around 200 million tonnes per year, will be about 60 per cent higher by 2030.’

Donald MacKenzie on AI.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Donald MacKenzie · AI’s Scale
AI’s scale doesn’t matter just to specialists. The rest of us are being taken on a ride along the logarithmic curve...
www.lrb.co.uk

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Sarah Brouillette

dmgreene.bsky.social
Dan Greene @dmgreene.bsky.social · 2d
There's something very important in this from @alondra.bsky.social about how a government of bosses understands its relationship to AI: as a means to avoid preexisting, even nominal, deference to popular deliberation or expert consultation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The Trump administration is engaged in norm destruction -breaking expectations about transparent governance and public oversight while installing new assumptions about how technological development should be directed. What it has advanced is not the absence of Al regulation but its rearrangement, often by caprice: intensive state intervention operating through industrial policy, trade restric-tions, immigration controls, equity stakes in private firms (selected by the state), the redirection of research funding, and the strategic preemption of state authority. Many of these actions face legal challenge, and some may not survive judicial review. But the pattern itself-the systematic preference for executive discretion over deliberative process-reveals an approach to governance that will shape Al policy regardless of how individual cases are de-cided. This is not deregulation. Not in the least. It is hyper-regulation by other means.

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 2d
screaming, crying, ordering ten copies 💖❤️‍🔥

Reposted by Sarah Brouillette

anniemcc.bsky.social
Annie McClanahan @anniemcc.bsky.social · 2d
My book is now available for pre-order!
Beneath The Wage: Tips, Tasks, and Gigs in the Age of Service Work - Zone Books
Zone Books
www.zonebooks.org

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3d
Duke UP in fall 2026 (exact date not set)

Reposted by Sarah Brouillette

mikkelkfrantzen.bsky.social
Mikkel Krause Frantzen @mikkelkfrantzen.bsky.social · 3d
really really good piece by @mattseybold.bsky.social : theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/you-have-t...
"You have to use it. You have to trust it.": Forced Adoption of AI is The Subtext of Davos
Authoritarianism is the AI Bailout; But If AI Doesn't Need a Bailout, Does it Need Authoritarianism?
theamericanvandal.substack.com

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3d
Content Machines: Reading and Writing in the Platform Era. Is the title.

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3d
There are tons of AI generated books on Amazon and Audible of course. They are mainly non-fiction though, or low content books. I have a chapter about this in my forthcoming book :) :) 🙃

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3d
Hard to keep up with the pace of development, but to my knowledge existing research on real creative writers using AI suggests they use for help with certain bits rather than to write a novel from nothing. I find their working practices more interesting than the aesthetic judgement.

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3d
this is a good piece about writers turning to AI not to generate whole stories but for speed up, because they are stressed out by online content expectations (h/t @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social who I believe recommended): www.theverge.com/c/23194235/a...

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3d
I'm struck by the way the diagnostic terminology-- superficial competence, asymmetrical effort,
mass producibility--is new language for deskilling and automation

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3d
What existing work does is point out (1) the implications of deskilling and automation for creative labor and (2) how useful it has been to fascist aesthetics, especially anchored in current US statecraft

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3d
I'm definitely not in favour of ignoring it. I think there is already a lot of important analysis of AI slop that takes it seriously as something we have to study. And none of this is bothered about it being "low" culture, as this brief piece suggests. +

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3d
those with no money or work can enjoy the consoling pleasure of instantly generating videos of people doing zany shit ... or use AI yourself to produce Substack material faster to satisfy subscribers ... what's not to like

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 3d
for those following AI & labour news, I was just reading about the Washington Post and: "The layoffs come as Will Lewis, the Post’s publisher and CEO, continues to push a new strategy centered on subscriptions, events, and heavier use of AI."

Reposted by Jean Burgess, Sarah Brouillette

mattseybold.bsky.social
Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 4d
Slopologia?
Why Slop Matters | ACM AI Letters
AI-generated “slop” is often seen as digital pollution. We argue that this dismissal of the topic risks missing important aspects of AI Slop which deserve rigorous study. AI Slop serves a social funct...
dl.acm.org

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 4d
it's In Bed with the Right and the episode was called AI Slop and the New Fascist Aesthetics. Maybe this link will work: player.fm/series/in-be...
player.fm

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 4d
We are having a wee lunchtime launch for this Monday Feb 9th at 12noon EST. h/t @julienlf.bsky.social You can register to attend online here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

sarahbrouillette.bsky.social
Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 4d
I recently listened to two great podcast episodes about the marriage between AI slop and fascist aesthetics, in case you are interested in that topic:

(1) podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
(h/t @bildoperationen.bsky.social who is interviewed and is so, so wise)

(2) www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-p...

Reposted by Felicity Callard, Sarah Brouillette

andyhines.bsky.social
andy hines @andyhines.bsky.social · 4d
I'm in the new look @publicbooks.bsky.social talking with @anniemcc.bsky.social, Vineeta Singh, Dan Nemser, and Rana Jaleel about higher education, how we have studied and organized around it, and what possibility lies therein.
Defending the Possibility of the University: A Roundtable on “University Keywords” - Public Books
“What would it look like for faculty unions and graduate student unions to collaborate or work together with K-12 teachers’ unions to push back against anti-DEI legislation or book bans?”
www.publicbooks.org