Ethan Plaut

@ethanplaut

Research: Disconnection, tech refusal & beautiful, broken media. Sometime coder & dusty journo. Now Aotearoa NZ, always Chicago, formerly Stanford, SF, Phnom Penh, Fukui. Silence when I can. Music when I can't. Tangata Tiriti, Jew, he/him. ethanplaut.com

975 Siguiendo1773 Seguidores604 Publicaciones

Bluesky

¿Es tu perfil?Reclámalo y ethanplaut.dirty.social es tuyo.Reclamar perfil

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· 11h

spring vibes i n the southern hemisphere this week #Tāmaki

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· 6d

borrowed a legit button-making machine and loosed the kids on a pile of weird academic journals and print copies of @theonion.com and other sundry ephemera — the one on the left is made from the tattered inner sleeve of an old 45 💜

2 buttons on a backpack, one reading “abc records” the other reading “the internet down!”

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· 18d

this venn diagram question on my comms intro course worksheet is doing a lot

Venn diagram of communication and technology including examples, moving left to right, of laughter, TV, and jackhammer — with this discussion question:

It seems obvious what the term "communication technology" means, but on closer inspection, both "communication" and "technology" are pretty slippery concepts! So this diagram might at first appear straightforward:
...but other terms are difficult to place! Is an alphabet a
"technology?" Are LLMs "communication?" Please think of a couple more tricky cases like this and explain why they might fit different places within the diagram

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Jul 30

cinema

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Jul 21

truly wild thing for a mayor of a major city to email a journalist www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361... cc @columjournreview.bsky.social @poynterinstitute.bsky.social @niemanreports.org

Email screenshot reading:

From: Wayne Brown
<
>
Subject: Re: Ponsonby News - link to July's issue
Date: 3 July 2026 at 5:48:50 pm
GMT+12
To: Martin Leach
<
>
If you are just going to publish Mike Lee bagging me then your paper will die
Wayne
Sent from my iPhone

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Jul 19

still sublime 16 years on

Screenshot of email:

Loan Desk
Cecil H. Green Library
Stanford, CA 94305-6063
E-Mail:
-@stanford.edu
Phone:
DATE: 7/9/2010
TO:
Ethan
Recently you requested a search on the item listed below. We have searched for the item and, unfortunately, have been unable to find it. We will continue to search for the item over the next few months and we'll contact you if we find it. I suggest you to contact ILL (5-1278). They can try to get this item from an outside source.
Call Number: BH39.V55913 2009
Title: The aesthetics of disappearance
Author/Editor: Virilio, Paul.

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· May 30

intended to get the most basic alarm clock but this joystick adjusts +/- so I really had no choice

Small, green digital clock shaped like a retro game console (next to a fork for scale)

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· May 1

blank bike-fall meme template, i.e., three-panel comic of (1) a guy on a bike holding a stick (2) jamming that stick in the front wheel, and (3) laying on the ground next to his crashed bike

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Apr 10

so preoccupied with whether or not they could

Bags of Cheerios branded granola in honey nut and chocolate flavours

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Mar 31

using r/AITA to study LLM sycophancy is hilarious doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Illustrated cover image of March 2026 issue of Science featuring a glowing 'thumbs up' hand reaching out of a computer to embrace a sullen-looking user and life them out of their office chair. Headline reads: "Toxic Praise: Harms of AI chatbots' sycophancy, flatter, and overly agreeable advice"

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Mar 27

embracing my downward spiral into exclusively posting feijoa stan content

Multiple halved feijoa in front of a white bowl of yogurt with almond butter

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Mar 6

wonderful new book by @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social JUST arrived in Aotearoa NZ by post!!

hammock selfie w/ paperback copy of Thomas Deckeyser’s book Techno-Negative

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Mar 6

major autumn vibes down here in Tāmaki Makaurau

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Feb 26

stay pretty, shapes

Screenshot of a chessboard with checkmate using bishops, a knight and a pawn

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Feb 25

60x speed timelapse from the International Space Station doing an "orbital cartwheel" from Atlantic to Pacific ᴄʀᴇᴅɪᴛ: ᴢᴇɴᴀ ᴄᴀʀᴅᴍᴀɴ, ɴᴀsᴀ 🧪

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Feb 8

blunder leading to cute mate in 4 from a blitz game

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Feb 7

First Monday's 30-year publication run saw some changes 💾 🫡

screenshot of text highlighting the phrase "...this first issue would appear at the Fifth International World Wide Web Conference in Paris, on the first Monday in May 1996 (6 May). At the Web Conference, diskettes with the first issue were distributed..."

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Jan 23

By absolute dumb luck we caught this Aurora Australis a couple nights ago — the largest solar storm since 2003! — from Motupōhue, at the very southernmost tip of Aotearoa NZ’s South Island. I’m not a good photographer but I’m loving the power poles in the foreground of this pic? 🧪

Photo of green and purple streaked night sky with power poles in the foreground

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Jan 22

legit iconoclasm at Dead Souls Bookshop #Ōtepoti 💜

Door to book shop with many “no camera” signs

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Jan 16

Raekwon fans at daiso HQ?

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Jan 3

pushing all my buttons

Picture of deep-dish pizza with caption “chicago-style pizza implies the existence of AP style pizza”

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Dec 13

Sappho in Sydney is a mess-up-your-weight-limit-on-the-flight-home PROPER used bookstore 📚 #Glebe

Bookstore shelf labeled “chess pamphlets”

Used books on a shelf featuring a “30 Rock and PHILOSOPHY” paperback with Tina Fey on the cover

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Dec 10

“AI and flag football” is such a perfect distillation of the consultant-brained shell game of a student recruitment arms race to the bottom

Screenshot of a paragraph of black text on white background:

“Boeckenstedt is unconvinced that Al and flag football programs will help Albright, either, given how many small colleges are adding the same types of programs. "One of the reasons innovation is so hard in higher education is that if you try something pretty dramatic and it's successful, next year everybody can copy it," he says. "And if you try something really dramatic and you fall flat on your face, you bear the whole cost of that experiment."”

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Dec 9

front page detail from The Australian’s culture section last week:

Zoomed in detail from a newspaper front page featuring an image of a protestor holding a white sign with black letters “ART CAN'T HANG ITSELF”

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Nov 20

cop isht

screenshot of AI editor suggesting a reduction in exclamation points after the word "exciting"

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Nov 18

gotta bring bring Bumpsy and Bumptious back [browsing OED to procrastinate boxing up my academic life for the latest restructuring]

$bumpkin, another form of BUMkINI (in a ship). Bumpology. Humorous. ff. BUMP after words in -ology. The (alleged) science of bumps; ' phrenology So Bumpo sopher [after pirilosopher, one who is learned in bumps, 7834 GEN. 1 THOMPSON Exerc. (1842) III. 414 The argu- ment is a specimen of the same defective bumpology. Englishman's Mag I Feb. general principles of x886 Pall Mall G. 23 Aug. 4/2 Phrenology, scientific. able bumposopher that ever discoursed † Bumpsy, a. Obs. exc. dial. Also bumsie. [?f. BuMp sb. or vbl] Tipsy, intoxicated. IIX TARLETON Fests (1844) 8, i being a carousing, drunk so long to the watermen that one of them was bumpsie. I630 J. TAYLOR (Water P.) Epigr. Whs. 11. 264/2 Strait staggers by a Porter or a Carman, As bumsie as a fox'd flapdragon German. Bumptious (bompfas), a. [A humorous for-mation, suggested perh. by BuMP sh. or v., and words in -tious, like fractrous. (Not in Craig 1847, nor in any earlier Dict.)] Offensively self-conceited; self-assertive. (colloq. and undignified.) 1803 MAD. D'ARBLAY Diary & Lett.VI. 324 No my dearest Padre, bumptious! no I deny the charge in toto. I821 CLARE Vill. Minstr. I. 36 The bumptious serjeant struts before his men.. And look as big as if King George himsen. 1847-78 HaLLIwELL, Bumptious, proud, arrogant. Var.dial. 1857 C. MAxwELL Lett. in Life x. (1882) 295 Buckle's History of Civilisation—a bumptious book, strong positivism, emancipation from exploded notions, and that style of thing. Hence Bumptiously adv., Bumptiousness.$

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Nov 15

happy 14th anniv. to all who celebrate the greatest academic listserv email of all time

Screenshot of email reading:

Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011
Subject: [cultstud-i] Whales

Hi,
Just wondering if someone had written something interesting on the question of why we love the whales so much.
Thanks

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Nov 14

manifesting

screenshot of lil mac landing a left on mike tyson in NES Punch Out

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Oct 27

h/t nosidesrecords.bandcamp.com

Circular one-panel “family circus” comic of a child in a car with an older woman, caption altered to say: "Turn it up, Grandma--that's Sun Ra!"

Ethan Plaut@ethanplaut· Oct 21

boy scout badges for AI & cybersecurity 👀 edition.cnn.com/2025/10/14/t...