I started this thread because some folks had suggested that Historians could do their research using LLMs, and anyone who disagreed was ignorant. I wanted some stories that illustrated why that's not true. The results exceeded my expectations. Most of the replies are in the form of quote-skeets.

Well, they wouldn't want you falling asleep and drooling on the documents.

So they're going to spray paint a radio controlled toy battleship gold and let him play with it?

I think we need a mega thread of everyone's craziest archive stories.

Or in a barn. There's a true story about the archives in Vicenza and a now retired historian, Jim Grubb. The archive got a call from a farmer asking whether they would be interested in a pile of old paper in his barn. So they sent someone out to look.

Counterpoint: it's almost certainly wrong, so no one should care that it is being kept under wraps.

Waiting to board my flight back to the US, and I just realized that I am going to have to watch that fucking Kristi Noem video when I get there.

Never change, Brooksie. You're beautiful just the way you are.

Palate cleanser, for those who need one. Venetians on ice.

Okay, sure. But $638K for two mattresses? How is that even possible?

Today on the Ponte degli Scalzi (the bridge over the Grand Canal near the train station) I saw a mother making her daughter, (who couldn't have been older than five) take multiple and multiply posed pictures of her. I remember when it was the five year olds begging for attention from the parents.

Obviously a joke, but somehow just plausible enough that you kind of wish it were true.

Working on eighteenth-century sources is usually relatively easy. Then every once in a while there's some secretary who was apparently mad at posterity.

It's been unseasonably clear the past couple of weeks. This is what Venice in November is supposed to look like.

It's 100 miles to Fossanova, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and you're wearing a reliquary. Hit it!!

Flipping the sign to "Zero Days since the Last Typeface Wars." Also, Minion Pro or go home.

She just invented DeVry.

I want to agree with this so much. And I think it is obviously true at the vast majority of private schools you have heard of. But there is some category of private college where this won't be true because the students won't know the difference.

On the other hand, they thought they were solving their bullpen issues last year with Tanner Scott. I'm not wishing injury on anyone, but I don't think there are any guarantees here.

As a Charger fan, this is not in the least bit surprising. Of course he did.

The guy at the liquor store gave him the lie. What else could he do but defend his honor.

I had a joke about Theseus, but I kept rewriting it.

I had lots of jokes about the Thales, but the punchline was always "Water!!"

I had a joke about Zeno, but I could only ever get halfway through it.

In the business this is known as Human Centipede (Final Sequence) ♻️

I named my fists Principia and Mathematica because I'm about to send you into orbit.

This right here.

People on here are dragging the Harvard and Yale players as if the Chicago Bears franchise record for interceptions isn't held by a Yale grad who was one of the anchors of those 1980s Bears defenses. It ain't the SEC, but you might want to slow your roll anyway.

Happy Veterans Day. But I wish the radio stations would stop playing fucking Lee Greenwood. Speaking only for this veteran, I hate that song. It's shitty on the merits, and shittier because of who has appropriated it.

Exactly. Having the self-resepct to be a decent person shouldn't be such a heavy lift that we have to reframe it as something else.

Given the Roger Revelle legacy, it makes sense that UCSD would do this. Definitely one of those moments when I am proud to be an alum.

That tracks. Sliwa is an asshole with integrity. The other two are just assholes.

I could smell the mustard and the onions

I could smell the mustard and the onions

Has anyone else seen the Cuomo campaign truck with the jumbotron screen that says you should vote for Cuomo because "the drug dealers are already in the schools?" I saw it in my Bronx neighborhood yesterday morning but didn't get a picture.

Man, a Lomborg endorsement should make anyone reconsider their life choices.

Maybe we could organize a trade. The three West Coast states plus New England and New York to Canada and Alberta and its tar sands to the US.

I don't want to brag or anything, but the doctors said that they don't give dementia screening to just anyone.

"Are the radiators going full tilt?"

That's a given. The whole point of the ballroom is for him to make money. There's no reason why an official state dinner should have more than 140 people in attendance. These are, by definition, restricted events. He wants extra seats so he can sell tickets to the highest bidder.

Asbestos? What asbestos?

If the East Wing was never built, you can't be criticized for tearing it down.

Is there even a question here? www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO0V...

So was the Washington Place game held in the back of the NYU ID Card office, or the back of the Campus Security Office. Just curious.

It can't, and it won't. It's the continuation of our burning of fossil fuels, or stopping it ASAP, that will either save the world or destroy it.

I can easily imagine, as a vet myself, that he picked it out of a sample book at random. But he evidently figured out what it was eventually. That he didn't have it removed or covered up once he figured it out is where it moved from dumb mistake to active choice. He can't come back from that.

Ouch

Talmon clearly has rocks in his head, but I don't think that the fact that he majored in History has anything to do with it. If he'd majored in Econ, he'd still have rocks in his head.

Evil-doers beware. He's on the case.

To be fair to Altman, whose only occupation seems to consist of producing over hyped press releases, Chat GPT can definitely do his job.