Occam's razor. DOJ hasn't released key documents, including the original 60-count draft indictment of Epstein and the victim statements. Why? DOJ really doesn't want us to read them. Why does DOJ care so much about these? Because they directly or indirectly implicate Trump.

My god. From Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her ‘60 Minutes’ colleagues, posted by the NYT Michael Grynbaum:

Neither is herpes, but I’ll keep doing my work without either.

What once was largely limited to Stormfront and the fever swamps of the internet just a few years ago is now accepted discourse from the White House.

Why would anyone risk themselves to go on 60 Minutes after this? How can viewers ever trust CBS News to report fairly on topics this White House is sensitive about?

Update: Dirah Gowanus posted "we've gotten a little more information from people who saw the menorah down, and it seems very possible that it was knocked down by the strong winds. Regardless, it was beautiful to gather today to inaugurate the new, bigger, menorah." www.instagram.com/p/DSgeqp1DD1m/

8 guys with the last name Smith had similar lives, but 3 did not. An LLM is going to assume anyone with the last name Smith had a life similar to those 8, even if theyre one of the 3.

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

My diss depends on research gathered at ~7 disparate archives. Basically none of the materials I consulted have been digitized. The bulk of my work now has been digitizing interviews conducted in Persian and then translating them into English. Wouldn’t touch AI with a ten-foot pole for any of this.

“60 Minutes” abruptly dropped a segment about Trump deportees sent to a megaprison in El Salvador Sunday — two hours before it was set to air

100% this. Do non-historians think all the answers are on the Internet and in the training modules? The real work is in what’s not digitized. But also in asking the questions that get us there and help us make sense of it.

An Editor’s Note from 60 Minutes

the vice president is a klansman

Like, it's a double theft machine. It steals knowledge from scholars, while also stealing developing knowledge from students.

TIRED: You can say Merry Christmas again. WIRED: You don't have to apologize for being white anymore.

I'd like to stream Netflix all day & veg - but it's time to turn back to the syllabus for the new History of Media class I'll teach in spring. Book order should've been in in Oct.😆. I'll need to have them use only online materials. I do have @sepinwall.bsky.social lined up as a guest! 🤗

lol, this is also why I don’t use research assistants. But I suppose for journalists, who are just summing up what others have said, rather than scholars *creating new knowledge*, it seems “daft” not to outsource your research thinking to a bot, or an underling!

“Camp East Montana” is the tent camp on Fort Bliss in El Paso. It was supposed to be where people would be held for max 14 days. She was held there three months.

One of my best research discoveries, which I later published in the Journal of Modern History, came from a question sparked by a footnote. A bot would have told me meaningless “summary” of the article. A historian using THEIR BRAIN & constantly asking questions is what writing is about. 🗃️

The climate is such that they no longer feel a need to wear hoods.

AI summaries might automatically discard a document that I will eventually discard myself, but if I only relied on AI, then I wouldn't know of the document's existence at all. Again, I need a broad foundation to build my books on. We need to know everything in order to know what is/is not vital.

I found so much stuff in the archives that I had no idea was there. It changes your research significantly! Some that I couldn’t even really use on the current project but made note of for another time. That part is so fun I can’t imagine not wanting to do it.

Epstein files.

Because nothing says "free thinkers" like regurgitating the same tired old antisemitic conspiracy theory that they've been playing for years now.

💯. And for those of you who think antisemitism is dead or fake, the GOP uses us as its bogeyman (secret powerful Jews controlling the country)… while destroying universities and pretending it is to protect us.

When I attended my community college in Washington State in 2013-14, a bunch of "It's OK To Be White" posters appeared on campus. I later learned they originated from online hate groups on 4chan, with support from local hate groups like Patriot Prayer.

Well, the masks weren’t on very tight to begin with, but they’re fully off now. Weak, pathetic, hateful, insecure weirdos.

My heart is so gladdened to see people of good will standing up for the rights of the most vulnerable in our communities. No one is “garbage.” No one. We are all one human family.

Sitting down to watch the season premiere of #CulinaryClassWars 🇰🇷 😋on Netflix. Who’s with me? (& if you like Top Chef and have never watched this, you are missing out!)

I read this and am very grateful to be unionized! My university couldn’t unilaterally declare our syllabi as their intellectual property (at least I hope they couldn’t!)

Great article in the SDUT about the threat the local Somali community is under & solidarity efforts. Good to see they were at the rally my synagogue friends and I showed up for too, with our Jews Against Xenophobia & Jews Against Islamophobia signs! www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/12/21/t...

Wayback Machine grabbed the original Epstein files dump before that photo of Trump got pulled. You can't get to the individual PDF page for the missing image, but if you click "download all files" and download it locally you can find the now-deleted file in: IMAGES / 0001 / EFTA00000468.pdf

You know who, as a class, is mostly immune to the lure of nostalgia? Historians.

LOL. Perhaps relying on someone else's summary is "normal and appropriate" for "software developers" "applying LLMs" - but definitely not for... the scholars who were in the middle of this conversation you just wandered into...

This is one of the reasons I remain horrified by seeing @historians.org suggest "ways to use gAI" that included this:

I don’t want your bullshit AI summary. Reading the article and writing your own summary IS the learning. Jesus H Roosevelt Christmas, we are doomed.

My 2100 progeny would definitely not want me telling people they're only trustworthy if they use the climate-destroying plagiarism machine....

Coming back to this, I'm still struck by the implication that academics should care if the AI pushers "trust" all our work that's done without AI. I don't know, man, you all seemed to trust our work enough to steal it from us wholesale.

This was 100% a terrible idea. I'm getting back to this draft now, and who TF has time to write something 🔥just to show their Dean? I'm going to do a very empirical, staccato statement of why they need to #Recognize & then go back to my real work!

Posting this "just because" (aka, in advance of the AHA meeting...). Yes, historians should avoid "getting political," and keep our noses in the archives! unm-historiography.github.io/metahistory/...

There is *no* ethical use of genAI. It is built on stolen art, through exploitative labour, and every day as they train new model and answer query, they burn immense amount of energy & water. It has no place in our field, none.

IIRC, this is the first time something I've written for comics has sold out and gone back to press. I want to say thank you again for the support, especially during what's been an absolutely miserable year in so many ways. Some special things coming up in Bat/Stat, and maybe a small surprise or two.

Mass deportations don’t protect working people—they weaken labor standards, silence organizing and empower bad employers. An attack on immigrant workers is an attack on ALL workers. @jimmy-iupat.bsky.social

To be blunt: if you are doing anything at all right now to reduce your risk of infection from SARS-CoV-2, you're being smart. As a result of the current high prevalence of flu, masking is back in the media. Ignore anything negative said about it. Political nonsense is irrelevant.

“Asylum Cooperative Agreements” or safe third country agreements are not supposed to be tools to deny hearings on asylum claims en masse, to coerce asylum seekers to accept reparation to potential danger, or for the U.S. to shirk all responsibility. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/u...

I was going to yell at the guy who is saying stupid AI shit to Ryan & Nathan… but then I remembered to tap the BlueSky sign in my head: BLOCK ASSHOLES ON SIGHT & don’t spend more energy on them! (But go ahead and block first!)

“It’s the mayor!” 😆

🧵🗃️! Public service by @lmacthompson1.bsky.social to call this out and get the OAH to retract/delete.

The whole point of being an academic is that you need to be willing to spend three days creating a 700-word footnote that you will later delete. And you need to LIKE IT.

I feel like "academic hiring" discourse is always kind of downstream of the fact that in the 50s we started building a giant public system to make a college education almost universally available and in the 80s and 90s we started taking it apart to go back to the only-the-rich model