A poem for this evening. Not a new one, but one I come back to, and something to remind myself of in the new year.

somebody at UChicago is feeding preprints to LLMs without authors' consent, in a research study they have the gall to suggest to authors they've opted-in that they volunteer to evaluate the LLMs' suggestions regarding their own work. lol, lmao even. here is the invite and my reply

This is billionaire-controlled media. They want to sleepwalk us into another forever war. We must break free.

Teaching a class on Europe from about 1000-1600 this spring. The theme is emergence of "Europe" over this period paired with "Europe" interfacing with the wider world. Thinking of assigning Francisco de Vittoria's De Indis as a source for a paper. But it is kind of...legal/technical? Is this nuts?

Cover reveal. It's about how & why colonies/states controlled international & domestic migration until 1888, why in the late 19th c the feds took over, & what it was like for politically disfavored groups to live under that arrangement of power. You can't understand voluntary migration history 1/

This. I know someone who was a (supposedly) slow reader but became an avid one aged around seven thanks to reading comics at home. Some raised eyebrows at parents for "letting them" but it was parents trying to help the kid. They went on to get two Cambridge degrees and a University of London PhD.

“Insofar as LLMs are used to avoid reading, thinking, and writing, their use is incompatible with liberal education. It is not more complicated than that.” open.substack.com/pub/mattdina...

When universities tout their partnerships with OpenAI, parents, faculty and everyone really should be asking how they intend to account for the increasing evidence that their technology is hurting people, especially young and vulnerable people. How many instances of harm will be enough?

If you’re wondering why your friends in academia are a little on edge right now, it’s because an eighteen-year-old who hasn’t done the reading, doesn’t look at the assignment, and has does no critical thinking skills more complex than “because I think it’s in the Bible” can literally end your career

Ed Muir told all of his graduate students that our job was to tell him and his generation why they were wrong. A field in which younger scholars aren't doing that is no longer a field. It's just a museum of itself.

Excellent thread on Hankins. I was just saying to a friend how sad his transformation has been. His early work was great. I read his book on platonism as a late undergrad, along with his early articles on the myth of the platonic academy of Florence, and they were gateways into the field for me.

Another wtf from @academic.oup.com . What the heck is with these prices on the graphic histories??!! This is prohibitive for students. #skystorians what is going on here? 🗃️

God save me from aging into an angry old man who turns simply getting old and retiring into a drama of grievance and self-congratulatory narratives of personal sacrifice.

Apparently senior members of the field out there crying about the exclusion of white males? I can't even. People need to get a grip.

YES! I have been banging this drum constantly for years now, mostly at my prior institution. Premodernity is marginalized even in history departments, which should absolutely know better.

Ran into Mel Torme in a liquor store in East Lansing in the late 90s. Well, my buddy ran into him physically, but I was, you know, right there.

Whatever they cannot control or grift they will destroy

"Academics literally cannot make genAI go away" we also can't make underage drinking go away and we're not advocating for installing bar carts in every classroom.

Anyone, especially historians, who is doing in-class paper writing to get around AI, please tell me about your process and experiences. I already do blue book exams.

I am not sorry. This is simply true. Academics should be able to write fluently and express themselves clearly and academics should do their own work. It’s literally our job. It’s what we trained until 22nd grade to do. This is a simple observation that should require no explanation or defense.

This is extremely dumb for a variety of reasons but perhaps the most obvious is that the Romans didn't apply their adoption law to grants of citizenship. I cannot communicate how basic an error he is making here. Staggeringly elementary, a thing you learn in Roman Civ 101.

I'm planning a "how to do college" course for first years, oriented around the idea of wonder and the wondrous. I would like this to come at the the theme from many angles. I'm a medievalist, so there'll be some stuff like that. But I would really like to hear other suggestions.

People have historically, and rightfully, seen the evil of Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, and now CECOT for what it is, but I wish more people would also see the evil in our domestic prisons too. How we treat our most vulnerable, including prisoners, really sets the tone for our whole society.

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

I’m sorry, but it is disgraceful to be an academic who uses this technology to conduct research. It should be prohibited in all of our scholarly institutions, including universities and journals.

Such an impoverished view of education.

brilliant

I think this post nails the actual problem, for researchers at least—AI hallucinations would simply not be a problem in academic work if we’d not normalized citation-as-signaling rather than actual engagement—you can only cite a fake paper if you’re not in the habit of reading the papers you cite

Northwestern claimed its deal with the Trump administration placed “no restrictions” on its trans community. But students worry it’s set to exclude trans students across multiple programs and facilities, possibly violating state law. — Reported by @ryaninevanston.bsky.social

***My department is hiring*** Assistant Professor of the History of Brazil networks.h-net.org/jobs/69649/s...

What's most clear from this speech/order is that Hegseth knows very little about the chaplain corps -- its history, its purpose, and its operations are not what he imagines them to be.

I'd buy it.

And tbh we had better, because this shit at scale is going to introduce so many more harms we can’t even fully comprehend yet.

Add this to the list of reasons I'm happy to be out of the cesspool that is Florida.

I would say ESPECIALLY in the humanities. Trust me on this.

Generative AI platforms are bullshit machines based on stolen intellectual property. Why are *any* of you still using then for anything significant?

Gee who predicted this, oh wait most of us did. It's only going to get worse. We are passing beyond enshittification now--because the content of scholarly knowledge is now substantially digitized, generative AI is potentially going to start altering already published work, not just new work.

This is a reckless and self-destructive decision by ACM. It violates trust to cover up the peer-reviewed abstract with a lousy, error-ridden counterfeit. It sets a bad example for the community, implying that LLM "summaries" have epistemic value and that reading isn't necessary.

Every time I see this genre of article, I'm reminded of the time I applied for a job that got 500+ apps for 3 US history positions. There was a .6% chance of being hired. At that point, most applicants are qualified, everyone's odds are terrible, and getting hired involves some measure of luck

“there are 3 tenure-track openings in my field and 239 qualified applicants. yet I got nothing. coincidence?”

It's been ghastly to see so many academics on here this evening share how they scan their classrooms for ways to keep students safe in case a man with a gun walks in. Sometimes, as an immigrant from a basically gun-free society, I can't believe I've normalized this evil.

The same people who think we need to bring back real standards to academia also want to give all students a “suspend my professor” button if they don’t like how things are going

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

What does Gen AI mean for the work of the historian and the value of historical experience, skills and craft? 'The Historian in the Age of AI' by @chriscampbell1.bsky.social. New Comment article now available in 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society' bit.ly/4atErTB #Skystorians 1/2

someone should invent a thing that's like a university but it's goal is to facilitate learning