Open AI loses copyright case in Germany. Judge Elke Schwager summarized the case saying that if you want to build something and need components, "then you purchase them and do not use the property of others."

Well deserved!

Some zingers but more insights in this Granta interview of historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam 🗃️

Great piece by Zadie Smith. When the right talks about classics or "Western" culture, these works are only important to the extent that it demonstrates their superiority, they have no interest in art in and of itself beyond that www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"Historical analysis is fundamentally different and more complex than producing a mass of visualizations and statistics that are the lifeblood of many A.I. programmes." Gordon McKelvie @gordonmckelvie.bsky.social on the problematic use of A.I. within historical research.

#NorthernLights in north Chicago tonight

40 years ago we’d have congressional hearings falsely accusing metal bands of putting backwards messages in their songs that told kids to kill themselves & now we have a planet-killing chatbot that’s all like “bet you won’t commit suicide chickenshit bitch” & the government is like here’s $5 billion

Loving today's news that the mysterious "fedora man" outside the Louvre heist was actually a 15-year-old museum visitor who dresses like a 1940s French detective all the time, just because. apnews.com/article/louv...

An U.S. citizen of Indian descent being questioned about Zohran Mamdani (as if there is something wrong with knowing who the mayor-elect of NYC is) by masked men.

One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc

"If Norman Rockwell were alive today, he would be devastated to see ... that his own work has been marshalled for the cause of persecution toward immigrant communities and people of color," writes the family of late artist Norman Rockwell. bit.ly/47P4SQz

Why was Orwell’s wife, Eileen, written out of his story when she co-wrote Animal Farm? As a writer who was so ahead of his time on imperialism and totalitarianism, why did Orwell fail when it came to his attitudes to women? linktr.ee/empirepoduk

"Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer a city where everyday residents have to work three jobs and are under constant threat of eviction. Anything short of an excruciating existence for the working class just doesn’t cut it for me."

One of the most important articles you will read this year. Esmat Elhalaby, "Genocide and the Limits of History in Gaza," Journal of Palestine Studies. @esmat.bsky.social 🗃️

I’ll never get over the look on my dog’s face when I pick up his poop and throw it in the garbage, like, “bro why u do that I left it there ON PURPOSE” 😂

Once again, @mcsweeneys.net does not miss. ------------------------------------------------ "In 2004, you saw some college guy using me and thought, 'What a lazy cheater.' Now you’d think, 'At least he’s not asking Gemini.' In a few years, you’ll say, 'Wow, look, a human being who can read.'"

Cheating with an LLM is the easiest thing in the world for a student to do, but it creates a massive, laborious headache for a prof, if you intend to take it seriously. There’s meetings, emails, discussions, moral dilemmas. It’s just incredibly burdensome, on top of everything else right now.

RIP to David Bellos whose book Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything massively contributed to me wanting to become a literary translator. When I was writing my own book about translation, I kept in mind how funny and accessible his book was.

India's denial of entry to Prof Francesca Orsini is another marker in the grave threats to academic freedom globally.

More people at the Evanston #NoKings protest than are gonna go to the Northwestern football game lol

The “compact” for higher ed is an unserious document written by unserious people from a position of spectacular ignorance. No one should take it seriously. Sadly, my bosses are taking it seriously. newrepublic.com/article/2013...

Attention translators and friends and lovers of translators! The 2026 Humanities in Translation (Hit!) Prize Competition is now open. Deadline Jan. 16. nupress.northwestern.edu/humanities-i...

"Why would OpenAI and Microsoft spend $23 million to give 'free training' on how to use AI to teachers? Because they love teachers? No. Because they want to get their products into public schools in an attempt to cultivate the education market." — @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social

I know that with everything going on in the world this is kinda dumb, but nevertheless it pleases me greatly that (I think) my dog likes Chopin’s Nocturnes as much as I do

This has nothing to do with anything, but, fwiw, beautiful sunset this evening to please your eyes, friends

The white supremacist conceit that everyone in antiquity was living under some kind of global jim crow segregation is just complete bullshit news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

The cover for my book, The Future That Was, is now live! It features the MacArthur genius artist Shahzia Sikander's Infinite Woman (2021), where earth is surrounded by an infinite series of women marching around the globe who, from afar, become rays of the sun ☀️ press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Yes, “the worst of the worst.” Drug traffickers. Predators. 73 year old Sikh grandmas who sew saris and pay taxes www.bbc.com/news/article...

Chicago Tribune publishes essay by President Sosulski on value of the humanities www.lakeforest.edu/news-and-eve...

Judith Butler: "It is important to refuse the notion that this is just how things are right now, invoking a feckless realpolitik that justifies complicity with a brutal and rising authoritarianism."

I spoke to the Irish Times for this very good and rounded piece on the real-world effects of C***GPT in the humanities classroom: www.irishtimes.com/ireland/educ...

If *your department head and your dean* can be removed for supporting your colleague in teaching in their area of expertise, then you have no academic freedom. In a functional sense, you don't work at a university at all.

Muhammad Hanif on American love for Pakistani military men who love America.

When you stand up and fight; sometimes you lose and sometimes you win. But do you know what happens if you don't fight at all? Nothing.

These are incredibly useful tips for all teachers and professors starting a new academic year...

AI-assisted design hits another one out of the park

My op-ed in the @chicagomaroon.bsky.social on the University of Chicago’s appalling plans to gut the humanities and possibly eliminate the South Asian studies department chicagomaroon.com/48353/viewpo...

Your occasional reminder -- as arrivals on student visas decrease 28% -- that tuition from foreign students counts as an export, which means that every rejected student visa is going to contribute to the US trade deficit. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The only thing I can say about this paragraph is read it. Sit with it. Read it again. @michaelharriot.bsky.social

i'll say it again, my loud and vigorous support for any democrat who calls for televised hearings and criminal charges for everyone involved in DOGE. this guy should never be able to live in peace again.

Since 2023, translators and interpreters have seen work dry up, rates plummet and their jobs reduced to editing AI-generated output. Some are leaving the field, others are considering bankruptcy. All despite any major upgrade in translation quality. This is how AI is killing translation work:

James Dobson dedicated his life to evil and the world is worse because he made it so on purpose. defector.com/james-dobson...

Every year the consequences of climate crisis become more deadly for Pakistan.

"You do not need the strongest powers of observation to see that crime is a pretext — and not the main reason — for the military occupation of Washington by federal agents and soldiers from the National Guard."

This attack on one of the most important social science research group by BJP is (once again) a harbinger of whats to come here in US.

My best tweet ever was “Let’s put the cialis in socialism” and I’m still mad it didn’t go wildly viral

"Since the Health Ministry only counts recovered bodies, every single unrecovered body is also uncounted." "The minimum scientifically plausible number of deaths attributable to the genocide overall is more than 460,000." #Gaza #Palestine #Israel #USA #Genocide

This story is wild

It is mind blowing to hear Democratic politicians talking about the president sending the military into American cities as a “distraction.” Actually you are all now one degree away from being violently removed from power. The fact that this may not happen does not erase the fact that it may happen.