Ciarán Wright Drinnon
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ciarandrinnon.com
Ciarán Wright Drinnon
@ciarandrinnon.com
95 followers 260 following 8 posts
They/he. Tennessee, USA. Editor-in-Chief @newpolartimes.com. Writer, designer, historian, grad student, quiz bowl enthusiast. Still getting the hang of the whole "being a serious academic" thing, and probably always will be.
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Reposted by Ciarán Wright Drinnon
newpolartimes.com
Round 2 submissions are open now! Submit your art proposals or apply to illustrate the NPT here - you have until 6/30! www.newpolartimes.com/contribute/s...
The New Polar Times - Submit a Proposal
Submit a Proposal
www.newpolartimes.com
May 15, 2025 at 4:04 AM
Reposted by Ciarán Wright Drinnon
twirlynoodle.com
P.S. With all respect to my beloved woodpigeons, swifts > doves as symbolic representation of the Paraclete. Doves are dumb and randy all the time, whereas swifts are screaming maniacs that never slow down, and that, my friends, is the Holy Spirit in action.
May 7, 2025 at 11:29 PM
Reposted by Ciarán Wright Drinnon
newpolartimes.com
Hurry! This is your last chance to submit a proposal for the New Polar Times! Submissions close at 11:59 PM EST on March 31st. www.newpolartimes.com/contribute/s...
March 30, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Reposted by Ciarán Wright Drinnon
miriamposner.com
This made me cheer. It gets directly at a problem I’ve often noticed: people don’t fundamentally understand what a historian *does*.
Ethical: There is a particular paradox that makes Al essentially useless as a tool for studying history. The entire point of what we do as historians is to look for untold stories...elements of the history of mankind that are novel and unexpected. There is a fundamental epistemological disjuncture between what PhD-holding historians do and what ChatGPT and its ilk do: the former meticulously, purposefully, and rigorously comb through a mountain of human-curated documents looking - Continued to Next Page for revealing details that diverge from the baseline, offer indications of cultural shift, or elements humanity embedded in seemingly mundane activities; the latter processes terabytes of machine-harvested data in order to predict what will be the most likely next token in a string, and when these tokens are words they may or may not result in a grammatically coherent sentence.
March 22, 2025 at 5:59 PM
ciarandrinnon.com
Can't wait!
tchotchke.bsky.social Allegra Rosenberg @tchotchke.bsky.social · Mar 19
Nashville area folks, I'm giving a talk on SATURDAY at the Vanderbilt Museum of Art! Come out to hear all about my experience with @terrorcamp.bsky.social & the joys of community research — and we'll be workshopping methods of incorporating fandom approaches into heritage outreach 🤩
March 19, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Reposted by Ciarán Wright Drinnon
paulclammer.bsky.social
They should rename the world's largest iceberg 'Shackleton' because it clearly knew that South Georgia is the perfect place to die after four decades of fruitless wandering in Antarctica. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
A23a: World's biggest iceberg runs aground off remote island
The iceberg appears to be stuck and may start breaking up near the island of South Georgia.
www.bbc.co.uk
March 4, 2025 at 5:27 PM
Reposted by Ciarán Wright Drinnon
waymarks.bsky.social
CFP Edited Collection: "Imagining Explorers: From National Narratives to Public History, Explorers and Exploration in the Public Realm" via H-HistGeog: networks.h-net.org/group/announ... 🗃️
CFP Edited Collection: Imagining Explorers: From National Narratives to Public History, Explorers and Exploration in the Public Realm | H-Net
Imagining Explorers: From National Narratives to Public History, Explorers and Exploration in the Public Realm (edited collection)
networks.h-net.org
February 26, 2025 at 1:45 AM
ciarandrinnon.com
Can't wait to attend remotely!
scar-antarctic.bsky.social Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) @scar-antarctic.bsky.social · Feb 10
Interested in polar archives?

A workshop on establishing a Polar Archive Network is set for 17–18 March 2025 at the @scottpolar.bsky.social (Cambridge, UK & online) to shape a Polar Archive Network & draft a SCAR action group proposal.

Register by 28 Feb: scar.org/scar-news/ar...
February 26, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Reposted by Ciarán Wright Drinnon
jksteinberger.bsky.social
As promised, here are the slides I shared with students to convince them to NOT use chatGPT and other artificial stupidity.

TL;DR? AI is evil, unsustainable and stupid, and I'd much rather they use their own brains, make their own mistakes, and actually learn something. 🪄
NO CHATGPT Or other artificial stupidity: motivation First, clarity on distinguishing AIs: Non-generative: grammar aid, translation, dictionary, text-to-audio (e.g. Natural Reader): no problem As long as you use the appropriate tools (least intensive in data and server energy use). Why? Because you provide the content. Your brain is doing the most important work Generative: ChatGPT & Co. You only supply the prompt, the AI supplies the content. Why is this delegation of work problematic? 3 domains: ethical, environmental, intellectual engagement. (Caveat: generative is probably ok for computer programming, where it can be useful and save time. Not relevant to this class.) 1) AI and ethics Mass theft of all and everything «learning» on books, articles, blogs, social media, images, music, cultural production, without permission of authors/creators, and leading to their mass joblessness. Profits are not reditributed to originators. Permanent destruction of the mental health of underpaid precarious tech workers in the Global South (Kenya, Philippines …): «correction» to avoid production of violent and pedophile contents etc, tech workers are obliged to watch and correct super violent contents for days on end, leading to extreme psychological suffering and trauma, from which recovery is doubtful. No or little compensation (certainly not at the level of the suffering inflicted). In short, an industry built on theft of real human creation and sacrifice of real human health, profiting a few megafortunes. 2) AI and (un)sustainability Massive consumption of electricity, water, server capacity for generative AI. Outcome: keep fossil fuel companies in business, using up new renewable capacity, without any satisfaction of basic human needs. Massive misappropriation of the finance necessary for climate and ecological action (renewable generation, efficiency and retrofit for buildings, public transit, infrastructures for cycling etc) towards AI industry. Overall: undermine climate action, reinforce fossil industry, waste resources necessary for human development. 3) AI and intellectual engagement First, what learning is (or should be) about: The goal should not (only) be the reproduction of «correct» knowledge, But mainly personal engagement and experience of thinking about topics of interest. Personal engagement = using one’s own brain. The most important activity for learning and intellectual engagement is the experience of making one’s own mistakes, by trial and error, corrections based on new ideas, starting over again. Learning to recognise nuances, knowledge gaps, better explanations This kind of learning is possible only through using your own brain, not AI. Also, Ais are not «intelligent». At all. They simply reproduce pre-existing patterns. They «bullshit», invent false references, false facts, false data, simply because those sound plausible. VERY DANGEROUS. If you learn how to NOT use AI, and how to research facts and data on your own, this will serve you and your communities for the rest of your life.
February 23, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Reposted by Ciarán Wright Drinnon
ghostingdani.bsky.social
If you're a reading teacher and you're teaching "three cueing" or "MSV" reading techniques, please read this and share it with everyone you know: www.apmreports.org/episode/2019...
How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers
For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't kno...
www.apmreports.org
February 23, 2025 at 5:26 AM
Reposted by Ciarán Wright Drinnon
contingent-mag.bsky.social
"Uninhibited access to archives is — and should be — an essential characteristic of a democracy."
The Brink of Erasure
The impending demolition of the National Archives Annexe is a crisis, not just for the study of history, but for Indian democracy.
contingentmagazine.org
February 19, 2025 at 1:57 AM
Reposted by Ciarán Wright Drinnon
whysharksmatter.bsky.social
If we’re renaming bodies of water based on petty grievances, I propose that this be renamed the Kendrick Lamar passage.
Google maps screenshot of the Drake passage between South America and Antarctica
February 12, 2025 at 10:06 AM
ciarandrinnon.com
*record scratch* Yep, that's me. You may be wondering how I got into this crazy situation. Well,
newpolartimes.com The New Polar Times @newpolartimes.com · Feb 10
Meet the folks behind the NPT! Introducing @ciarandrinnon.bsky.social, our editor-in-chief. Learn more and get to know the rest of our crew at www.newpolartimes.com/who-we-are.
Ciarán Wright Drinnon. he/him. Editor-in-Chief. Bio: Ciarán is a writer, historian, and graphic designer from Tennessee, USA. He is currently researching and writing about the Polaris Expedition and the death of Charles Francis Hall. He has also studied the historiography of Scott and Amundsen's race to the South Pole. When not obsessing over polar and maritime history or yelling at Adobe Illustrator, you can usually find him analyzing modernist poetry, drinking copious amounts of iced coffee, or drawing various Appalachian flora and fauna. Fun Fact: Ciarán played quiz bowl in high school and college. He still volunteers at the occasional tournament! Favorite Explorers / Expeditions: Scott and Shackleton’s Antarctic expeditions, as well as Polaris, Karluk, Jeannette, and the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition. The image contains a photo of Ciarán, as well as a sledging flag, the motto on which is "One day I am going to grow wings."
February 10, 2025 at 12:50 PM
ciarandrinnon.com
Hey, guys - the website & call for proposals for the NPT are up now! If you're interested in submitting your writing or art, be sure to have a look!
February 6, 2025 at 2:33 PM