Seth Perlow

My book has a website! And a cover! And some very humbling blurbs! THE DIGITAL HAND: ELECTRONICS AND LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS, coming April 2027 Several more posts about it coming before then . . . www.sup.org/books/litera...

Very much looking forward to this! Might change the title of my talk to "Kant or Cammarata"

Looking forward to this MLA session in Jan!

These systems are changing our style even when we make a point of *not* using them. (From Ethan Mollick's substack.)

Anthropic’s response and influence on the encyclical is most evident in the claim that “even its creators don’t understand how it works.” In June, I wrote about what that actually means & why Anthropic says it. (Written while I was in Rome, FWIW). www.techpolicy.press/the-black-bo...

“Nazir’s selection is less about him using AI and more about the irony of Euro-American conceptions about the unintelligibility of postcolonial writing.”

Closing out a fun week at ULisboa with a class on Poe’s graphology

If the hackers want me to give everyone an A+, grade nothing, and enjoy my summer, then yes I am down to blame private equity and comply

Canvas is down. Past me would be so disappointed to learn that current me is not absolutely *thrilled* that it's become technologically impossible for me to spend all night grading papers...

Turned in the book! Years of work funneled into one email. Supposedly they're gonna print it . . .

Zach Galifianakis seems to have experienced some kind of personal crisis, possibly bought a farm upstate, and now has a gardening show called Gardening Show that is an absolute soothing delight. Grateful for Zach’s crisis, hope he’s ok.

They gotta do something about this abbreviation.

This is a very normal temperature for a professor’s office to be, right?

Moving forward, I will refer to books of fiction as “so-called novels.” Despite all the hype from industry shills, there’s nothing “novel” about the genre at all. So-called novels have existed for hundreds of years.

V short notice, but I'll be reading some poems by Marie Howe and talking about them at the Georgetown public library today at 2pm. Come by if you're in the area!

Waiting for some tiresome nerd to explain why, actually, this news once again confirms the generative grammar IS correct...

The more I learn about machine learning in general and transformers in particular — and while I have a long way to go, I've learned a LOT — the more I believe that none of it really ought to work. Slamming a set of matrices with training data and demanding with calculus that they figure it out…

This is starting to feel like a real thing...

Shame on ABC and Disney.

Maybe they'll indict a ham sandwich, but not the hero who throws it!

Given that a very viral, very misleading story from WaPo helped to fuel the whole "AI kills the climate" thing in the first place, it's nice to see this more...informed piece from them. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

New white paper: “Measuring the environmental impact of delivering AI at Google Scale” Curious what people think of this. services.google.com/fh/files/mis...

Is Michael Camille's book, Image on the Edge, still the definitive study of funny/crude marginalia in medieval manuscripts? e. g. for lulz . . .

- Old old: your phone rings in the movie - New old: it’s in your pocket with the flashlight on

Did the scary thing! Wrote the first paragraph of the book. The first word of this book is “In.” Stay tuned for the rest . . .

Wait, all of you people have read FIFTY books?

Recently had the pleasure of interviewing the founders of @leotranscribes.bsky.social and trying their platform, which is *very* effective with tricky manuscripts. If you’re doing a transcription project, check them out! Easier and more accurate than other common HTR tools today.

Current saddest holiday of the year.

Have you used Transkribus, eScriptorium, or similar tools to transcribe post-1800 manuscripts? Drop me a line! Would love to ask you some questions…

Butts, analyzed!

Very sad to hear about Joshua Clover. Nice to see folks sharing his poems and essays. Here's his "How I Quit Spin," one of the truly great Twitter threads of olden times—not his best or most influential work, but it'll make you smile if you haven't read it. genius.com/Joshua-clove...

Look at these fascist cowards pulling up their masks as they abduct someone off the street for expressing the wrong opinions.