Matti Pohjonen

May/June: round trip to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Africa. Maybe I will bump into some of you then?

Should I be worried to see Pohjonen cited together with Baudrillard? 🤣 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

@SanNuvola whats your github?

@SanNuvola let me check

im so late on so many things I promised to so many people that I'm thinking of just making a public tracker where they can check how late I am

@SanNuvola wonderful idea - normalise lateness 😂

I made it btw

AI-generated propaganda fuels #Ethiopia–Eritrea tensions Global voices reports that Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are increasingly being used to amplify nationalist sentiment and political messaging amid growing tensions between Ethiopia and #Eritrea, according to analyses of social media activity following the inauguration of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (#GERD) on 9 September 2025. Alongside celebratory posts about the dam, AI-generated videos and images circulated online promoting the idea that Ethiopia should reclaim access to Eritrea’s #Assab port. One viral video, shared on TikTok and X and endorsed by former State Minister Birhanu M. Lenjiso, featured a fictional concert at the GERD with a voiceover declaring, “From the Nile to Assab, one people, one heart.” Experts warn these AI-generated materials amount to “synthetic propaganda” aimed at normalizing expansionist rhetoric. Despite official claims that sea access will be pursued diplomatically, recent statements by Ethiopian leaders have raised fears of military escalation. Analysts say the phenomenon mirrors a global trend of using AI to manipulate public opinion, with the Horn of Africa emerging as a new arena for digitally driven geopolitical tensions. globalvoices.org/2025/10/09/esc…

@angadc I think it's is like internet, there is just too much of everything, including middle-of-the-road crap but probably more fringe as well. Not sure if the homogeneity thesis would stand empirical testing or how it could be even assessed rigorously. Perhaps that's not the point.

@objetpetitm perhaps ... what are your thoughts on the homogeneity in the humanities. is that an external perspective (right wing edgelord style) or do you see it happening?

Loads of conversation about sociologist vs electricians on my timeline today (i.e. we need more electricians than sociologists vs a sociology professor saying people won't be able to pass sociology course). Thought I would weigh in as an anthropologist with a growing concern for the state of both sociology and anthropology: I can make an electrician pass a sociology exam (and take him up to MA level dissertation level in a year w/o LLMs). I don't think the reverse is true. This is because electrical interventions are not homogenous, even though they deal with fairly predictable materials. By contrast, humanities interventions are becoming more homogenous, even though they deal with unpredictable materials (culture, society, subjects, agents, and so on).

interrupting vacation for this public service announcement. theguardian.com/technology/202…

time to attend a talk about going beyond talk?

@SanNuvola good to hear.

@objetpetitm luckily not my uni!

two funny stories that support my claim that the university must be thoroughly de-adminified: - sent in a photo of a paper hotel receipt, was told that I needed to send the actual paper receipt via mail, until hotel sent in a digital receipt, which was then ok

In #Eritrea you need to buy a CD to watch TikTok videos on your DVD. In 2025

Exciting events & happenings in April, May and June – read our March Newsletter on our website! helsinki.fi/en/helsinki-in…

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon!🇫🇮 #DHH2025 is an exciting chance to collaborate, innovate & push your own boundaries🤗 Sponsorship & funding for participants is available 👀 🔜 Deadline: April 12 ➡️ Apply: dariah.eu/2025/02/21/hel…

In our #BrownBagSeminar this week Friederike Lüpke will talk about neural machine translation and language description & language documentation. Join us on Wednesday 2.4. at 12.15 to listen & discuss! Read more here: #2.4.2025-friederike-l%C3%BCpke" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">helsinki.fi/en/helsinki-in…

Don’t forget – #BrownBagSeminar with Aleksi Knuutila tomorrow!

Register now (DL 21.5.) – 2.–4.6.2025 Method and Convergence — International Conference on Methodology of Philosophy, University of Helsinki. helsinki.fi/en/conferences…

"AI geographies of famine." 900' images of famine using country prompts with Stable Diffusion. All 197 countries. Clustered by CLIP & T-SNE. Europe is a painting. Africa is a child.

traveling the world again 😅