A story about an AI-generated article contained fabricated, AI-generated quotes.

It is absolute and utter neglect to let this come this close to the wire just as the US has let most of its overseas broadcasting shutter.

The Ladybird Adventures in History books by Lawrence Du Garde Peach. For many of us they sparked a love of history

Excited to see Maurits den Hollander’s Court, Credit, and Capital in print with Studies in Legal History at CUP. Court, Credit, and Capital uncovers how Amsterdam’s 17th-century insolvency court transformed insolvency law—from punishment to rehabilitation 1/3

The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering The concentration of AI wealth into the hands of a few tech barons + plutocratic capture ==> unchartered territory

Net favorability of how Americans view Trump: -18 Hegseth: -15 Vance: -14 Rubio: -10 RFK Jr: -4 www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

"documents related to American financier and convicted sex offender, the late Jeffrey Epstein and his former lover, Ghislaine Maxwell, reveal that at the age of 18, Korshunova was flown to Epstein’s Little Saint James island on his infamous private Boeing 727 aircraft, known as the Lolita Express”."

NEW: Read this terrific piece @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social for @thenerve.news in which she unpicks Edge.org, the hugely influential 'salon' funded by Epstein & threaded through with race science & eugenics. 1/ www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...

Noting in this NEH grants filing from the Author's Guild that Michael McDonald wasn't the only NEH staffer collaborating: Adam Wolfson also helped triage which chat-GPT flagged grants might actually be related to the garden of heroes or America 250. www.neh.gov/staff/adam-w...

I'm still SHOCKED by the obscene rise in billionaire election spending since Citizens United in the NYT piece, despite already knowing that election corruption w/ $ was profound. (Recall that BCRA fought dangerous campaign $ in *2002*) The article data didn't have a graph, so I made one to show it.

NEW: "This was not a decision to reject the Moderna vaccine. It was a refusal even to think about approving it." www.thebulwark.com/p/this-is-wh...

How many times, in how many contexts, in how many ways am I going to have to say that this is what "AI" does— what it fundamentally *is*— before it sinks in? That all Bullshit engines do is statistically correlate training data & inputs via their weights to produce outputs you are likely to accept…

I've been shouting this from the rooftops (and a podcast, and a book) since 2019. One extremely frustrating iteration is the people who say "Yeah, that was true of the 2021 models, but not today's models". >>

Some striking arguments here from Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) to Pam Bondi "You replaced real prosecutors with counterfeit stooges who robotically do the President's bidding" "Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza.. and you deliver every time"

My Trump-supporting cousin-in-law just texted my husband to say he encountered this Mother Jones on social media, read it, realized I wrote it, and told him to tell me I’m doing good work and to keep going. Things are changing, y’all. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Of course if it’s not Anthropic it’ll be just another AI company who will gladly acquiesce, but it’ll be interesting to see how firm Anthropic’s red lines will be now. The bar is already quite low www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

ICE using the same ruse that Ted Bundy used to kidnap people should tell you something.

SCOTUS effectively OK’ed third-country removals as the Trump admin is using them on the shadow docket, staying lower court orders reining them in. Further, the specific questions raised here — about refoulement — have come up before, like in this case: www.lawdork.com/p/ghana-refo...

Reading Marco Rubio’s speech about how “western civilization” is about embracing God, rejecting the foolish ideal of cosmopolitanism, and celebrating the genius of bands like The Beatles who were founded by the guy who wrote that song about a world with no countries or the concept of heaven & hell.

Even older than the Republic…

3/ Here’s a link to the Brennan Center’s July 2025 report warning about the problems with both the SAVE System and the Social Security Number database when used to purge voters from the voter rolls, as would occur under the “Save America Act”. Everyone should read it.

Very proud to have contributed a paper "What Does Fascism Look Like In The 21st Century?" to this swell collection www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/978...

What’s troubling about Rubio’s speech is how he sees history framing current alliances but in a racialized way. He misrepresents history (e.g. pioneers brought “civilization” to “empty plains”) when they were not empty—& denies American responsibility for the past but emphasizes European heritage

Of all the speeches at Europe by American arseholes: Trump, Vance, Hegseth, Bessent - Rubio’s speech to the Munich Security Conference this morning was perhaps the most chilling. Unambiguously the language of fascism. They sound like they’re preparing to form a new world empire.

Models we know were trained on pirated books (a non-exhaustive list): GPT-3 (OpenAI) GPT-3.5 (OpenAI) Claude 1 (Anthropic) Claude 2 (Anthropic) Llama 1 (Meta) Llama 2 (Meta) Llama 3 (Meta) OpenELM (Apple) BloombergGPT (Bloomberg) Megatron-Turing NLG 530B (Microsoft & Nvidia) 🧵 1/2

Call for Chapters: Evident Tongues, Evident Bodies Deadline to submit: 12th April 2026 We invite chapter proposals for an edited volume examining how encounters through language and the senses shaped the production of evidence in the early modern period (c.1492–1700). www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...

2/5 Parallèlement, on apprend que l’administration met la pression aux grandes firmes de la tech pour obtenir l’identité des personnes qui animent les comptes hostiles à l’ICE sur les réseaux sociaux (€) www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

On Trump's failed attempt to indict six members of Congress At @prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th... And further points on the 1642/2026 comparison at my own blog: emptycity.substack.com/p/1642s-five... / davidallengreen.com/2026/02/1642... >

Even older than the Republic…

Calling the requirement for a judicial warrant before entering a person’s home one of the Democrats’ “new restrictions on federal immigration agents” crosses the line into outright falsehood. It’s in the Bill of Rights! A rule as old as the republic.

Resolved to bring up the word “horsefeathers” more in casual conversation

Loving the word “horsefeathers.” That judge has zero respect for Pete Hegseth’s attempt to demote Senator Kelly— (for supporting that video about service members not following illegal orders). Somehow this single word, in this context, is so reassuring.

Including mine on (checks notes) England's Financial Revolution.

Don't worry yall. This isn't bigoted because AI can't be bigoted because its a machine and machines are neutral! Wild af how people bought into the myth that a machine made by bigots wouldn't be bigoted

DOGE allegedly used ChatGPT to identify 1,400 NEH grants it said were DEI. Grants were terminated April 2025, according to a court filing. E.g. Film: 1873 Colfax massacre Film: first female pilots flying for U.S. military in WWII Film: “Untold Story of Jewish Women Slave Labor in the Holocaust"

An amazing essay by art historian Dr. Denva Gallant. 😇 hyperallergic.com/all-about-lo... for @hyperallergic.com

Resolved to bring up the word “horsefeathers” more in casual conversation

“His every word was a lie designed to project onto enemies his own criminal intent in the belief they will chose to protect themselves and the truth rather than go on the offensive against him.”

I wrote this before Trump’s declaration today that there will be voter ID laws enforced in the midterms whether Congress approves or not. www.editorialboard.com/how-do-we-kn...

I had a great time taking part in this conversation on originalism in the lower courts with my excellent colleagues, @orinkerr.bsky.social and Jud Campbell. Thanks to Short Circuit for putting together such a terrific event.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: “I was literally begging the agent who was holding me back to let me do CPR,” she told The Intercept.

(4) This leaves humanists in a bind because there is no political support for the idea of publicly funded curiosity driven humanities research. So how do we create that? How should a future Democratic administration rebuild the NEH?

This week, I spoke with VA community college leaders. Key provisions of my bill to expand Pell Grants to cover high-quality, short-term job training programs were signed into law, and it was great to discuss ways to build on this to help Virginians access good-paying jobs.

All this, plus: the modern polling system is *designed* to prevent fraud! Significant election fraud would require the participation of every party at multiple polling stations, *plus* the that of town-level election officials of all parties. In secrecy. A minimum of 8 people per polling place.

My graduate readings this semester, minus Brownell's 24/7 Politics (Princeton has a silly desk copy system that I had a tough time navigating but enroute now). The course is recent US history.

A $12 trillion bribe to end a war Putin started.

Hell no wapo.st/3OfarSk

My university outsourced our bookstore to some new company, and they stopped carrying books written by faculty. A faculty member offered to donate copies of their book for the bookstore to sell, and they said it was against corporate policy

Loving the word “horsefeathers.” That judge has zero respect for Pete Hegseth’s attempt to demote Senator Kelly— (for supporting that video about service members not following illegal orders). Somehow this single word, in this context, is so reassuring.