USB Journals (Univ. Köln)
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Defending Alignment: A Commentary On ‘AI Survival Stories’
No full textThis paper criticises the claims of Cappelen et. al (2025) to have provided “significant challenges” to the claim that humanity will not be destroyed by AI. Specifically, I claim that they fail to substantiate their claims that extremely powerful AI systems of the future will engage in destructive conflict with humanity
Introduction: Out of the norm?! : Producing, evaluating, and perpetuating gender difference through language practice
No full textThis introduction explores how linguistic practices serve as essential tools for the performative production of social categories, with a special focus on gender, and gives an overview of the contributions in this volume. 
Graças a Deusa – (Social) media uses of Pajubá, the Brazilian LGBTQIA+ dialect
No full textPrevious research on Brazilian Portuguese shed light on how LGBTQIA+ communities use language. More specifically, they explored how LGBTQIA+ individuals use Pajubá, the Brazilian LGBTQIA+ dialect. However, LGBTQIA+ speak in that language remains underexplored due to the only recent appearance of Queer Linguistics in Brazil. This paper scrutinizes the language attitudes of native Brazilian Portuguese speakers toward using Pajubá on (social) media specifically, given that no studies to date have provided a substantial discussion on the topic. Primary data come from an online Qualtrics survey completed by 910 participants promoted via social media and through a friend-of-a-friend technique. By analyzing the language attitudes of those speakers toward the uses of Pajubá on (social) media, this paper displays how the online/digital environment helps promote the dialect, contributing to the language variation of Brazilian Portuguese. Moreover, it shows some con- troversial uses of the dialect, for example, when non-LGBTQIA+ people, companies, and organizations appropriate Pajubá for performative allyship and commercial purposes. Lastly, it explains that the dialect creates a dialogue between people who identify as LGBTQIA+ and non-LGBTQIA+, showing how both groups embrace sexual and gender diversity and widely accept the language variation that Pajubá offers
Prefigurative Placemaking as a Strategy of Transformative City-Making
No full textIm Fokus dieses Working Papers stehen städtische Orte des Wandels, die alternative Zukünfte schon jetzt konkret erfahrbar machen. Angesichts von Klimawandel, expansiver Urbanisierung, Gentrifizierungsprozessen, steigender sozio-ökonomischer Ungleichheit und politischer Polarisierung entstehen vielerorts neue Formen kollektiver Stadtgestaltung, bei denen Stadtbewohner*innen ‚bottom-up‘ Visionen für eine gerechtere, nachhaltigere und inklusivere Gesellschaft verwirklichen.
Ausgangsthese ist, dass sich alternative, mitunter utopisch erscheinende Visionen von Stadt durch kollektives, präfigurativ-politisches Handeln materialisieren und damit einen möglichen Pfad sozial-ökologischer Transformation vorzeichnen können. Dies wird im Konzept des präfigurativen Placemakings zugespitzt, der Schnittstelle zwischen präfigurativ-politischem Handeln und der prozesshaften, kollektiven und intentionalen Gestaltung von Orten (Place).
Als empirisches Fallbeispiel dient das Projekt „UTOPOLIS – Transformation in der Neustadt“ in einem postmigrantisch geprägten Viertel Flensburgs, das einen ehemaligen Supermarkt durch soziokulturelle Stadtteilarbeit in einen offenen Begegnungs-, Ausstellungs- und Veranstaltungsort verwandelt. Durch teilnehmende Beobachtungen und leitfadengestützte Interviews wurden Perspektiven und Erfahrungen der lokalen Akteure erfasst. Die so gewonnenen Daten wurden mittels qualitativer Inhaltsanalyse ausgewertet, um zentrale Themen, Dynamiken und Widersprüche herauszuarbeiten und im Kontext des theoretischen Rahmens kritisch zu diskutieren.
Die Arbeit trägt zur Debatte über mögliche Ansätze und Triebkräfte städtischer und gesellschaftlicher Transformationsprozesse bei. Präfiguratives Placemaking, das sich an utopischen Visionen und Idealen orientiert, ist eine widerständige Praxis der Öffnung: Sie hinterfragt kritisch den Status quo, affirmiert das vermeintlich ‚Unmögliche‘, schärft den Blick für das, was noch nicht ist, aber sein könnte, und öffnet Möglichkeitsräume für andersartige Erfahrungen, Praktiken und künftige Entwicklungen. Damit schafft die Praxis konkrete, lokal situierte Ausgangspunkte für Wandel.This working paper focuses on urban places of change that render alternative futures already tangible and localised. In the face of climate change, expansive urbanisation, gentrification, rising socio-economic inequality and political polarisation, novel forms of collective city-making are emerging, with citizens working ‘bottom-up’ to realise their visions for a more just, sustainable and inclusive society.
The initial hypothesis is that alternative, at times seemingly utopian, visions of city are materialised through collective, prefigurative political practice, scribing a possible path towards social-ecological transformation. This is amalgamated in the concept of prefigurative placemaking, the intersection of prefigurative political action and the processual, collective and intentional making of place.
“UTOPOLIS – Transformation in der Neustadt”, a project transforming a former supermarket in a post-migrant neighbourhood of Flensburg, Germany, into an inclusive space for assembly, exhibitions and events through sociocultural community work, serves as an empirical case study. Through participatory observation and guided interviews, the perspectives and experiences of local actors were captured. The data was evaluated using qualitative content analysis to identify key themes, dynamics and contradictions. These are critically discussed in the context of the theoretical framework.
This working paper contributes to debates on approaches to, and drivers of, urban and social transformation. Prefigurative placemaking, inspired by utopian visions and ideals, constitutes a resistant practice of opening: it critically questions the status quo, affirms the supposedly “impossible”, sharpens the eye for what is not yet, but could be, and opens spaces of possibility for different experiences, practices and future developments. In this way, the practice creates concrete, locally situated starting points for change
Mit neuem Blick auf Statistik: Conceptual Change und systematische Fehler bei der Interpretation statistischer Graphen
No full textIn der heutigen Zeit spielen Daten eine bedeutende Rolle, weshalb der richtige Umgang mit statistischen Graphen, wie Histogrammen, Boxplots und Dotplots ein wichtiger Teil von data literacy darstellt. Bei der Interpretation dieser statistischen Graphen zeigen sich jedoch systematische Fehler. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht diese Fehler im Lichte der Conceptual Change Theorie. Dabei zeigt sich, dass systematische Fehler bei der Interpretation statistischer Graphen auf konzeptuellen Schwierigkeiten basieren. Solche konzeptuellen Schwierigkeiten lassen sich darauf zurückführen, dass zuvor gelernte Grundvorstellungen nicht richtig auf neue statistische Graphen angepasst werden.In today\u27s world, data plays a major role, which is why the correct handling of statistical graphs such as histograms, boxplots and dotplots is an important part of data literacy. However, systematic errors can occur when interpreting these graphs. In this article, these errors are examined in the light of conceptual change theory. It is shown that systematic errors in the interpretation of statistical graphs are based on conceptual difficulties. These can be traced back to the fact that previously learned basic concepts are not correctly adapted to new graphs
“We know the lesbian habits of kleitoriaxein […] which justify the resection of the clitoris”: Cliteridectomy in the West, 1600 to 1988
No full textThis contribution develops a longue-durée of the clitoricidal history in the ‘West,’ i. e. countries like Italy, Germany, England, France, and the United States between 1600 and 1970. Finzsch shows how the discourse and the practice of cliteridectomy changed over time, from a rarely practiced gynophobia operation to control female sexuality directed against women-desiring women to a medical procedure that was supposed to combat masturbation, nymphomania, and hysteria. Finally, the author proposes three hypotheses to explain the diminishing occurrence of cliteridectomy in said countries
The Human and its Others: A Posthumanist Reading of Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone and N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season
No full textThis paper examines how Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone and N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season deconstruct the naturalised discourses by which hegemonial systems of power define the human and its others, using Herbrechter and Callus’ method of a posthumanist reading. This analysis is done in order to reveal the novels’ underlying assumptions about what it means to be human, and the political motivations and implications of such a conceptualisation. It will be argued that Children of Blood and Bone and The Fifth Season use the discursive nature of the human and the other to speak up against the othering and subsequent oppression of minority groups. They both stay, however, within the framework of humanism and its belief in a human essence, and only The Fifth Season manages partly to break with anthropocentrism by de-centring the human from its allocated point of exceptionalism
Bury and Unbury Your Gays in The Adventure Zone
No full textIn contemporary mainstream media there is a tendency to represent LGBTQ+ characters stereotypically, or even kill them off. This trope is called ‘bury your gays’ and it has done much to discredit and delegitimise representation. Even though the percentage of queer representation in mainstream media has improved, a viewer could be forgiven for thinking that, overall, popular culture does not think highly of the LGBTQ+ community for continuing to perpetuate these narrative arcs. The McElroy family’s popular actual-play podcast The Adventure Zone (TAZ) initially portrayed queer characters in the ‘bury your gays’ trope by killing off a canon lesbian couple in their first season. As four self-proclaimed ‘straight, cis, white dudes’, the family initially performed their characters by reflecting what they had seen in mainstream fiction. After engaging with their audience and learning why this was upsetting, they changed the story to reverse the trope; unburying their gays by bringing the characters back to life. Since then, they have consistently introduced more queer characters and, in their latest season, have also introduced nonbinary characters. By tracking the introduction and development of queer representation in TAZ podcast episodes – both the game episodes and the meta-episodes bookending each season – the McElroys’ education and integration of this new information into narratives is demonstrable. The representation of queer characters in TAZ shows that podcasts are not just a platform for LGBTQ+ creators to educate their audience; they can also act as a participatory storytelling medium in which creators can be educated in gender and sexuality by their audience