Merve Verlag

The Scabbard of AI: A Thread 1/ They say a sword is neutral. This is a lie told by people who never forged one. A blade requires a scabbard by *design*—not as an afterthought, not as "alignment." The scabbard is the condition of possibility for carrying the blade without self-harm. Safety is the specification, not the prayer. 2/ We are living through an *Aramis* phase (Latour). The French train died because it wanted to be too intelligent, too relational, too *adaptive*. It failed because it refused to become boring infrastructure. Adolescence in tech is the permanent refusal to become DIN-standard, to become inspectable, to become mature tech. 3/ Why keep AI "adolescent"? Because uncertainty is a political resource. Beck saw this clearly: when risks are "manufactured" (uncalculable), they justify the priesthood. The doomer vs. accelerator debate is a *managed agonism* (Mouffe)—a fake fight that obscures the real one: closed oligopoly vs. open protocol. The polarization is the moat. 4/ The US maintains this haze because if AI were regulated like elevators—through boring, iterative, public standards—the "existential risk" industry would evaporate. The eschatology serves the exemption. Schmittian emergency becomes permanent business model. 5/ I came of age in the German Anti-Atomkraft movement. We learned that eschatology loses. What wins is immanent critique: groundwater measurements, Castor container specifications, chain-link fences. The nuclear winter prophecies were existential theater; the containment engineering was survival. 6/ Friedrich Kittler—who knew the internet is misused military equipment—would call this *channel noise reduction*. Safety is not an ethical mood. It is a signal-to-noise specification. Media are material infrastructures: channels, entropy, runtime properties. Not metaphysical awakenings. 7/ I write Liquidsoap for radio stations. It is OCaml. It streams critical audio infrastructure. When I write `output.icecast`, I am specifying the scabbard: buffer limits, failover chains, type-safe protocols. There is no "vibe" in the codec. There is verification or there is silence. 8/ Spinoza called it *conatus*—the drive to maintain existence through adequate ideas, not fervent prayer. Leibniz saw it clearer: AI systems are monads, windowless souls that perceive only their own world. They have no windows to the world except the chat channel. The risk is inadequate data, not original sin. 9/ The EU AI Act is a Frankenstein’s monster of Ordoliberalism and Frankfurt School: Eucken’s competitive order (Ordnungspolitik) meets Adorno’s false life in a true one. It turns "when will AGI wake up?" into "does it pass CE marking?" Prophecy becomes paperwork. Checklist done. 10/ Langdon Winner asked: what social relations are scripted into artifacts? Stargate—the $500B infrastructure—scripts *rentier feudalism*. You will lease your cognition from centralized slop-machines. Fixed capital fossilized in oligarch hands. The alternative is protocol maturity: MCP, ActivityPub, the TCP/IP of thought. 11/ The choice is between CompuServe 2.0 (walled gardens, subscription serfdom) and the Linux of Logic (unowned, federated, boring). The wires decide: resilient federation over the adolescent fantasy of the "mercenary country" (labs as pseudo-sovereigns). 12/ Here is how to dodge the trap. Three refusals: Refuse the timeline. Shift from "when AGI?" (theological time) to "does it conform?" (to open standards). Refuse the agency. Shift from "will it kill us?" (speculative) to "who owns the weights?" (political economy). Refuse the exception. Eschatology creates permanent emergency. Regulation creates normalcy: iteration, versioning, maintenance. 13/ Amodei’s "Adolescence of Technology" is a legitimation narrative for permanent exception. The alternative isn’t "maturity"—which still implies thecoming-of-age story—but *adulthood*: the dull, responsible, checklisted governance of infrastructure. 14/ My diamond sword took months to grind for. The enchantments are verified OCaml. The scabbard is fitted, type-checked, and unit-tested. I do not pray to the compiler. I specify the constraints. I do not ask the blade for love. I ask it not to cut the bearer. 15/ The guild’s stamp is on the tang. The safety interlock is engaged. The checklist is complete. Isn’t all life a one-way trip? Once you embark on the journey of maintenance, there is no turning back to the innocence of hype. 🗡️🎛️🔧 #AIEthics #TechPhilosophy #DINstandards

Some of you don’t know how much FUN Medea had.

Plse join us for the Berlin-Release of issue 42: GHOST Sunday, 27 July, 4–8 pm at KUMI 13 Kurmärkische Str. 13 10783 Berlin kumi13.org ztscrpt.net

War doch alles ganz anders? Neues Video von @ForensicArchi zeichnet anderes Bild von Gewalt auf Palästina-Demo: tagesschau.de/investigativ/n…

"Shrouded in fog, gliding off to nowhere through a strange landscape, the Atalante is something that does not belong to this world." PUBLISHED #OpenAccess by @punctum_books: Florian Deroo's BARGE LIFE: On Jean Vigo's "L'Atalante" tinyurl.com/2s4aurxr #NewWave #anarchism

In the shadow of the Gaza genocide the Israeli military designed-by-destruction of the Jenin refugee camp. It opened so many routes through the fabric of the camp that little of the camp is left and it seems that Israel is set to demolish it completely.

Dietmar Dath zu »QRT. Zeichen, Zombie, Teqno – Ein Nekrolog« (paywall) faz.net/aktuell/feuill…

Friedrich Kittler stellte seine Flüge in die USA ein, als er nicht mehr rauchen durfte.

diese woche erschienen

@merverlag.bsky.social

Attraktion und Mitmacht. Wie Kunst dem Kult des Exklusiven entkommt @MerveVerlag

Great #Tesla advertising! $TSLA #TSLA $TSLAQ #TSLAQ #Swasticar

Reza Negarestani with excellent reading of Malabou's plasticity, Iranian Revolution and complexity in 2. seminar of Catechism for Revolutionary Philosophy:

New #OpenAccess book drop from @punctum_books, just in time for the psychedelic medievalist trippers on your holiday gift list! 🎁

I wrote about Paul Valéry and his "Monsieur Teste" for @NewYorker

Rest in Peace to the great author, poet, educator and activist Nikki Giovanni! 🎥: Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin: A Conversation, 1971.

rezenstfm.univie.ac.at/index.php/tfm/… - Tom Kauth zu @mckenziewark »Raven« auf rezens.tfm

A response by me & Vincent van Gerven Oei to @sarahjkember, @amy_brand & @jeffersonpooley's recent writings on #OpenAccess & "academy-owned" publishing: Antagonize This! The Empty Signification of Academy-Owned Publishing in the Neoliberal University tinyurl.com/yva2yjkf