Back in 1875 they called it the Mississippi Plan for a reason

The best time of year for an update to a mission-critical academic system? You guessed it, the last week of classes. WOOOO

On House floor last night, Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla) praised so-called "Rededicate 250" while standing next to painting of George Washington praying in snow at Valley Forge. But that story about GW was made up (publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/the-trump-...). Bad history to justify bad governance.

and what is more, the Sperm Whale has done it

In response to the year of negative reporting on Flock and its harms, the vendor has started hosting webinars on how police chiefs should engage city government at budget hearings. What you’re seeing is a corporate-backed propaganda campaign in real time.

An interesting summary, though it’s hard to do justice to all the weird bends and crooked lines of Delaware constitutional law in a short space. The subtitle hits an impt fact, which most Delawareans don’t know: “Ironically, Delaware is last in allowing its citizens forms of direct democracy.”

New paper in Nature. The more a government controls its domestic media, the more it dominates AI training data, the more pro-regime outputs we get from AI. By scraping the open web, LLMs are unwittingly laundering state-coordinated narratives into seemingly objective answers.

🚨 NEW TOOL for U.S. legal journalists ⚖️ I turned @allyjar.bsky.social's incredible crowdsourced Google doc on accessing state court records into an interactive map. Check it out and let me know about any errors, missing information, or ways I can improve this thing (link below)

New from @econroy.bsky.social at Can We Still Govern? FAFSA is a big deal for college access. Progress has been uneven, but over the last decade policymakers and a government team have made it significantly less burdensome. It is possible to fix things. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/good-news-...

Funniest spam follow account I’ve gotten on here so far (now since blocked ofc)

“ ‘Even when criminals claim they’ve deleted stolen data or provide ‘proof’ of destruction, there is no reliable way to verify those claims, and history shows that data is often retained, resold, or used in future extortion attempts,’”

Just me and @unlawfulentries.bsky.social chatting about her book (Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship), immigration, federalism, and academic freedom. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Just to be clear, this is about the *federal* crypto bill that will turbocharge Trump family corruption, no the various *state* bills that will do the same (most notably those sponsored by Delaware Democrats, who make the law where their crypto corp is based)

I can't hear the name Chris Coons without remembering that in 2021, a month after the insurrection, he cut impeachment short so he wouldn't miss Valentine's Day. We've all been fucked ever since.

History might offer us some lessons for the present, but only if we're honest about it. The "Hayes Tilden Compromise" is a myth. Reconstruction remained strong in some southern areas well after 1877 while, in others, white violence had effectively choked Black political success well before then.

I DID NOT KNOW HE WAS A BUSINESSMAN

In other Delaware news, the former Dem governor who stepped down to work full time for real estate developers as mayor of Wilmington has suddenly decided that violence and prisons are the only proper way to address the housing crisis. It's never, ever worked before, but maybe this time!

The article doesn't mention this, but it's pretty important context: the judge who seeks to violate state law so ICE can go on fishing expeditions is - of course - a Trump appointee. One of his former gigs was working for the Wilmington corporate law firm that Elon Musk favors...

“Instructure did not say what it had given the hackers in exchange for the return of the data. The company did not immediately respond to questions about the deal.”

“The Innes lab shares contiguous space with other research facilities, which remained on lockdown Monday. For the almost 50 researchers who rely on those labs, offices, grow rooms, equipment and freezers, the consequences are dire”

This post puts the “initial” hack into context with a successful theft of data from Penn from last fall, and includes an update on on today’s announcement.

For context, there are syndicates who have a reasonable record and then there is ShinyHunters. Maybe the folks who've been studying them are all wrong! But I would trust them much less far than I could throw all that money. krebsonsecurity.com/2026/02/plea...

This post (by a cybersecurity professional) gives some background on the gang that claims to have perpetrated the hack, which apparently is a group of (mainly) teens based in the UK.

I’ll tell ya what, submitting hard copies of essays and tests only very rarely involved bribing mafiosi

“…Instructure reached an agreement with the unauthorized actor involved in this incident. As part of that agreement: The data was returned to us. … We have been informed that no Instructure customers will be extorted as a result of this incident, publicly or otherwise.”

It appears that Instructure (makers of Canvas) just straight up paid off the criminal gang www.instructure.com/incident_upd...

Great conversation, not least bc the phrase “we should regulate the infinite scroll” comes up

Ah well, nevertheless

Henry Clay 1819-1820 and/or Henry Adams in 1898

As Congress considers crypto market structure legislation, @bradlipton.bsky.social explains why shifting jurisdiction away from strong securities protections could leave investors exposed and financial risks underregulated: 🧵↓

The past is a foreign country

WBZ talked to the Marblehead public meeting guy and it's INCREDIBLE content

“shoppers still want beef products that are within their means”

Not a defense of this particular project, which looks great but is also apparently a marketing tool for some kind of AI company. As the OP mentions, the EFF has a somewhat less slick tool that nevertheless explains browser fingerprinting more fully. coveryourtracks.eff.org

Overheard at the coffee shop: “You heard about the Council of Nicaea? Yeah, I got some BEEF with the Council of Nicaea. ... We’ll talk about it later; you want that iced or hot?”

look around you afresh

As the DE legislature rushes to pass bills giving crypto corps legal cover in the US money system, an interesting new article... Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr. “The Looming Threat of Uninsured Nonbank Stablecoins,” Delaware Journal of Corporate Law 50, no. 1 (2025): 3–137, heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein...

Oh my. This is spectacular. sinceyouarrived.world/taken

What I wish for everybody to remember when Canvas comes back online: The reason OUR data can be held for ransom is because Instructure, their owners (KKR private equity & Dragoneer venture capital), & our own employers (see ASU Atomic) monetize it. It's Canvas that hacked education & stole our IP.

personally I think it's a very big deal that the Canada bureau chief for the @nytimes.com — certainly one of the highest-paid journalists in the country — asked an unspecified "AI tool" what Poilievre said & published its AI-hallucinated quotes in her reporting.

It always kills me when I see a great post that is doomed by the hyperspecificity of its intended audience.

"...there was no International Society of Philology. The American university to which it was supposedly affiliated existed only online and its address was given as a business services company in Lewes, Delaware."

Today in suspicious state bills: a random assortment of Delaware legislators is co-sponsoring an "Artificial Intelligence and Extended Reality in Schools Pilot Program" - i.e. to push AI and "extended reality" (whatever the heck that is) into schools. HB 404: legis.delaware.gov//BillDetail/...

L. Frank Baum really really loved using the word "meat" adjectivally and I have to bring this to your attention. Here is a meat thread of some of L Frank Baum's meat mentions: 🧵

Canvas, the Strait of Hormuz for American education

Just want to loop back with one final observation, that the evil video game company also being an evil military contractor, both part of the same conglomerate division run by a paranoid AI with delusions of grandeur … that is the least fantastical aspect of this film. That’s just the NASDAQ-100.

The internet has eaten this story I wrote, but the history of that movie is bananas.

In honor of Humpty Dumpty’s Learning Management System splashing out on the pavement, tonight’s entertainment is a movie I must have seen at some point but have forgotten completely, Disney 1989 attempt to use the aesthetics of neon spike tape to craft an unforgettable workplace & digital dystopia

ACLS / MLA / AHA / Authors Guild won the NEH case against the mass termination of grants.