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Well, this sucks. I was already exploring alternatives to the fractured legal publication landscape, but this probably make those more challenging. Some of my most successful work owes a lot to SSRN's cut features. Maybe expected, but still sad. www.stephenbainbridge.com/p/the-social...

A lot of this in the air right now, so heads up that it has ALWAYS been like this and will get worse. One of the earliest ingredients in my AI Haterade was a presentation titled "The ROI of AI" that considered neither the cost (I) nor savings (R) of AI. One is deflated, the other unverifiable.

Update: Apparently nobody knows what I'm talking about when I mention this?! I'm so happy for these people but wow does this hammer home a lot of the thoughts in the shorter piece I'm working on...

My summer got off to a raucous start as I just had to explain what 538 and Nate Silver is/was to a coworker. I know that this is a symptom and cause of my self-inflicted political junkie brainrot, but who are these people?! Do they know peace?

A student mentioned that they didn't know Appa (who I dress up as for class around Halloween) and wondered if I was an Axoatl (which they also didn't know much about). It's sort of a layered joke, but I find the conflation of these two things (especially with regards to me) very funny.

Point/Counterpoint (unsure): You'd have to stop the world just to stop the feeling.

Last weekend I was interviewed by comedian Steve Byrne as part of the Idaho Film Society's "Idaho Film Hall of Fame" gala. It was fun! It was probably the most "some guy" interview I have ever given in my entire life, but apparently people liked it. I DID get upstaged by Scott Glenn but I'll be OK.

First comments on Legal Elysium: "I think I have to play Disco Elysium now?" I'm not sure I'm cooking quite as much as LOTR, but if nothing else I seem to be meeting my hype man obligations for the year.

What a perfect asshole. I liked him more when he was talking about typewriters.

Good thread. I'm in the middle of a project to become a new guy who cares A LITTLE about fashion about fashion or my physical appearance- it's not going great, thanks for asking- but the case for fashion as an art form is even stronger than the same case for legal scholarship (which I DO believe).

Alright, I have officially run my first half marathon! It's a real Sam special of being distinctly average at an impressive thing, but still... We did it!

I've been going through a very stupid and self-inflicted crash out for the past week that has ended with multiple people suggesting I develop any discernible fashion sense. Anyway between the first effort and Legal Elysium what if I just stopped being a law prof and became a disco detective?

Follow up on this: if you've ever found yourself feeling old with your pop culture references in class, I encourage you to lean into it. I had a (noticably younger) student mention that they had never felt older than when I referred to Friday as "ancient internet lore." They will know our pain!

Early reviews of the "smell test draft" of this year's first writing project are in: "Needs more LotR!" "Too likely to start beef!" Fam, I think we're COOKING.

How gauche is it to nominate yourself for your 10 year reunion (😬) Excellence in Law award? Especially when your contribution to law is... Whatever it is that I do?

My friend has a running joke where she lists her friend's favorite movies, with the bit being it's always the lesser known or controversial stuff they talk a weird amount about. This joke didn't really work for me because her list resembles my real one more than it should. The latest addition:

Frighteners is a fun one for me on a similar axis. I remember like 75% of it in vivid detail, and every time I think about that 75% I wonder why it's not the greatest movie ever made. Then I rewatch it and... Yep, adds up. Overall, though, big fan! A direct link between Dead Alive and LOTR.

I'm in a little bit of a "defend legal scholarship as an artform" era (stay tuned, I've already done it once and have a couple of bangers in the works expanding on it), so I do want to push back on this. But also it is really bad, and its best characteristics are further proof of just how bad it is.

I think it's more eerie than weird myself, but very happy to see @edzitron.com join the Weird AI discourse! (Yes, I do cite him in this). scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/hlr/vol53/is...

As a long-time rat partisan, I encourage you to check on the date that this article was published. But also they are the best and every opportunity to celebrate that fact should be taken with gusto.

This is more or less exactly what I would have guessed his very bad take is (and I say that as a fan of the books!). Obliviousness to subtext does not remove that subtext. Garth Marenghi's Darkplace understood this, gave us a banger quote, and truly is one of the greatest creative works of our time.

I respect the vision, but I feel like we need to define our terms and conflict a bit. Are we just excluding the boys because their victory is so certain unless they are excluded by weight class?

OK, so this is kind of an involved joke with a lot of backstory, but I feel like there's something to the thought: Can you imagine the world where Taylor Swift's Wood is about Eywa the World Tree (of Avatar fame) and not Travis Kelce's dick? And is that world a better one?

Woof, the case for the probative value of "The Definitive Ranking of Legally Relevant Sams" gets stronger by the day. Yes, this makes it less likely I make it because it's too relevant to be fun, but that turn in itself is absurd. (Hard to be worse than Alito but the competition is heating up!)

Alright, this semester's recs from students: Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and a South Park episode about going on a "privacy tour" (bonus points for using this as a way to explain an issue that came up in class). Best I've done is a partial defense of The Matrix Reloaded: I need to step up my game!

This is fantastic news, I was genuinely worried that this approach was dead. When you're comfortable sharing, I would love to hear details- who offered, what social media was most effective, etc.!

Interesting follow-up. It doesn't really address my issues with it, but I think there's interesting discourse to be had here. Now, one thing that I did clock (not proud), is that there's a HUGE difference between SMU and SMU Forum. This reshapes the initial claim a bit IMO.

Thoughts on opening/preceding Internet Law with an in memoriam for Chuck Norris? On the one hand, he truly is an icon of the early internet era. On the other hand, that's probably a bad thing, he sucks, and it will mark me as old. (Similar question: Best Norris movie to watch in dubious memory?)

Despite the (frequently assumed) fact that nobody reads legal scholarship, I get great pleasure in writing. Learning to write it has connected me to my colleagues and made me a better teacher, librarian, friend, and person. I cannot figure out why offloading this work is even remotely desirable.

What a wonderful night with the IFS crew!

Me on Monday: "The words are flowing, I'm making cogent and well documented yet novel claims, my pop culture reference is concise and illustrative, is this... Good?" Me on Friday: "Consider Tom Bobadil"

Law prof brainrot: Midterm is done, I have two weeks of minimal commitments and a colloquium + conference submission due in 2-3 weeks (one or both of which really ought to be a sabbatical project), and for the life of me all I can think about are ideas for this: thefacultylounge.org/2026/03/call....

It has been hard out there this cycle. I always want to advise caution, it is distinctly possible that our work just isn't as good as we think it is, but it is very helpful both practically and morally to know that I'm not alone on this front!

I think I have a new scholarship goal. Here's hoping I make it into this one, but failing that I hope it's successful enough that we get one of these bad boys every year. thefacultylounge.org/2026/03/call...

NGL, a little cheesed nobody mentioned Fried Green Tomatoes while I was writing Legal Wendigos. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

OK, SSRN might not have done it, but the fact that they're trying to get in on it means I'm clearly behind the times. Not sure if I'm doing it right, but here's my effort:

@msmith750.bsky.social is the visionary here, but if NYU wants to tie weird or odd work into their stated preferences, climate doomerism (working on it, maybe your symposium can help!) is a driving force for a lot of my more offbeat projects...

What do we think, did Justice Roberts read it? Was the Ipse Dixit boost enough to get it on his radar? (He didn't, but a colleague who has read this asked if my opinion on Roberts had changed based on today's decision and I'll take the opportunity.) hedgehogsandfoxes.org/index.php/20...

Spider-Man: No Way Home is the nadir of cinema. It is barely a movie and the worst part is that it's all people want. This realization broke my heart more than any other combination of movie and response has. RoS came close but NOBODY liked it so I didn't feel nuts and I have started to move on.

Wow AND my first rejection of the cycle, what a day!

It has come to my attention that I may need to start "demanding respect" and introducing myself by "my title" in order to avoid name confusion. Sad! Let me live in my fantasy of not being a law professor just a little bit longer!

I don't think this one quite works and it is based on rumor more than anything, but for low-art fans: Sam Raimi?

Yet another banger from @msmith750.bsky.social! He and his illustrious co-authors make several compelling arguments here, and really do cut to the core of what seems to draw people (even less terrible ones!) into AI's clutches.

Good post, but to add: 1) this is how a lot of law profs sound when they talk about using AI for legal scholarship (and other things but that's especially annoying). 2) bad art is extremely valuable and deeply underrated, and I think this is a big part of why ai discourse is the way it is.

Will they take away my Internet Law badge and gun if I admit that I just really like teaching internet law? The material's fun, the discourse is exciting, and I even found theoretical support for one of my earliest crackpot legal theories.

I posted it separately, but big thank you to @msmith750.bsky.social for getting this together! I had a great time and it really is quite an honor to make it onto the show. :)

If you want to listen to a man who sounds like the bird from Rio pontificate about legal scholarship for an hour, check outthe latest episode of the Ipse Dixit podcast! The weave got a little wide on this one, but that's expected by now. One of my great honors to appear- I hope you enjoy!

This is a very good question, and I'm very worried I've over-learned my lesson on it, but I've shared this meme frequently and I think it conveys a simplified version of my take well. If you're a smart person who thinks about your subject a lot, there's probably something there.

I was going to back off of this one as I'm already very tired of thinking about AI and the LotR connection was getting so tenuous that I was thinking of cutting it, but uh, stay tuned I guess because JFC...