The Sydney Opera House illuminated with Gustav Klimt's The Tree of Life

Excited to see my new article "Regulatory Sandboxes: One Decade On" out in print. There's not much evidence that fintech sandboxes have benefitted anyone other than tech businesses - something we should bear in mind as policymakers rush to adopt AI sandboxes. www.law.georgetown.edu/internationa...

Cutting trillions in taxes for 900 billionaires but garnishing wages for 45 million working people with crushing student debt is the modern version of let them eat cake.

A Company Reminder for Everyone to Talk Nicely About the Giant Plagiarism Machine by Amanda Bachman (Could just as easily have been a memo from @ass_deans.) www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-c...

If you think of "hiring in entry level positions" as "procuring labor to do the tasks entry level people do" then you probably do think AI is a magical headcount reduction machine. But the point of hiring in entry level positions is to produce mid-career employees.

This spectacular image of the planetary alignment of Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter above the Sydney Opera House was taken in the early morning around April 21, 2022, and featured as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on April 26, 2022

Remember: When Tylenol was poisoned *by an outsider* and killed people, the company recalled all their products & redesigned them. When Intel’s Pentium had a bug so obscure it affected 1 in _9 billion_ long division calculations, they recalled their chips. ChatGPT was made deadly *by its team*.

An attorney short story in 6 words or less: Everyone agreed—until there was money.

Hey Sam, I'm a professor of tech ethics, and I'll do this job for free, here's my 100% serious recommendation: you can't solve these problems, the whole thing needs to be shut down. Take your billions and go do something else. Honestly. www.theverge.com/news/850537/...

Every single group mentioned by Pope Leo here is a group that Trump & Vance express either disdain or hatred toward. In Christmas Day Message, Pope Leo Pleads for Peace, Compassion for the Marginalized, the Poor, the Desperate Migrants and Refugees thecatholicobserver.substack.com/p/in-christm...

Experimental evidence that students are more likely to contest grades when they are delivered by an evaluator with a female-sounding name. "These findings suggest that women in evaluative positions face disproportionate resistance when delivering negative assessments."

I guess it’s time to settle in. Assuming I can even make a thread, I’m restarting my running list of easily missed typos in legal writing: Statute / statue Claims / clams Public / pubic 😬 ⚖️

One of the most conservative organizations in the world, again, selects a leader who seems more moderate, passionate, and reasonable than most leaders of conservative political parties.

Pope Leo XIV Calls for ‘Solidarity’ With Migrants ‘Who Traverse the American Continent,’ ‘Tormented People of Ukraine’ in First Christmas Message

It’s Xmas Eve and yet I’m still gonna be a little spicy. The fact that the first American pope is from Chicago matters because unmooring power and perspective from the coasts especially east coast is an imperative for building something new and better

Pope Leo said in a Christmas Eve sermon that the story of Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room at an inn should remind Christians that refusing to help the poor and strangers today is tantamount to rejecting God himself. For @reuters.com

Absolutely right. AI might be able to summarize (poorly) what we currently know, but a major goal of historical research is to find the hidden surprises out there. Let me illustrate …

“Frank Lloyd Wright had a long and productive life, but you still won’t see one of his houses just every day,” Betsy Bradley said. “Preserving the legacy of such a genius of commercial and residential architecture will have a profound impact on the city of Jackson.”

Unprecedented corruption

Uh, Denver should not be 72 degrees at the end of December. 😑

A new report from researchers at the Yale School of Public Health warns that the U.S. government’s abrupt cancellation of funding for mRNA vaccine research could have devastating health and economic consequences for the nation.

A really lovely list here from @justinhendrix.bsky.social and @techpolicypress.bsky.social, and I'm not just saying that because my new book is on it. Read these books!

I fell in love with this sentence: “Forgive yourself for not knowing earlier what only time could teach.”

“.. A backlash from Canadian consumers .. has virtually stopped the sale of American whiskey in what was once among the industry’s biggest export markets.” @nytimes.com 🇨🇦 www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/d...

NEW: Todd Blanche, the second-highest official at the DOJ, issued a memo to shut down enforcement against crypto companies while he still held more than $150,000 in crypto investments, ProPublica found. One expert called it “an obvious conflict of interest.”

American food safety could be headed for a breakdown www.statnews.com/2025/12/22/a...

For many, the end of the year is an opportunity to catch up on reading or to purchase books as gifts. In 2025, a number of authors joined the Tech Policy Press podcast, providing fresh insights into how technology interacts with people, politics, and power. Check out the list:

Here is what CBS and Trump don't want you to know:

The only known photographs of mathematician and computing pioneer Ada Lovelace have been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery just before they were expected to be sold to a private buyer. www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/nat...

The New York Times investigated 346 people who donated at least $250,000 to Trump and found that more than half of them (197) have received pardons, jobs, government contracts, special treatment, or favors.

Now seems like a swell time to point out that Frontline just released this excellent 11-minute mini-documentary about what happened inside CECOT.

Lawgeeks, this one is worth a read. Judge goes beyond the usual monetary sanctions into serious correction territory.

An attorney couldn't stop using Grok (?!) to help draft filings, producing "a flood of tainted filings" & apparently triggering the implosion of a law firm & 3 lawyers' careers 🤖😵 The court called her misconduct "particularly egregious & prolific" cases.justia.com/federal/dist...

What historians (and other scholars do) is create knowledge. We should use that phrase more and talk about what it means. I think we don't, and it's part of why AI enthusiasts are confused when we don't readily agree that our work can be replicated/replaced by their products.

"cite your sources" is how you keep yourself accountable to others. "cite your sources" is what enables people to run down the origins of myths and bullshit passing themselves off as "common knowledge." "cite your sources" KEEP US ALL HONEST

suspect a big reason why many academics and others who work in areas where getting facts RIGHT is key are disinterested in using LLMs for research: they’ve tried it, they keep noticing major errors in output, and they conclude that having to verify all that doesn’t actually save them time.

From wildfire warnings to flood forecasts, NCAR's research impacts everyone in America. President Trump's attempt to dismantle it for political vengeance is beyond reckless. We will fight against this dangerous scheme every step of the way.

This month, OpenAI announced "up to $2 million" in funding for research on AI safety and well-being. This may seem generous, write J. Nathan Matias and Avriel Epps, but following in the footsteps of other tech giants facing scrutiny over mental health impacts, it's nothing more than grantwashing.

Excellent news: Paulina Borsook's "Cyberselfish"—which warned of toxic tech politics back in 2000—will be republished in 2026! Will share full details when they become public. You can support her work here: www.gofundme.com/f/support-fo...

the epstein files as rick owens fall/winter 2024

we are one tech bro donation away from Trump saying he thinks people who criticize AI should be arrested and that the term "slop" should be considered hate speech

You have to be fucking kidding me...

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

Honestly when envisioning the second Trump presidency I didn’t expect this much cheap adhesive shit stuck to walls

AI making up citations. This is happening and is really hard to check if it is not the editor or referee they are citing. Makes good editing more and more important and more and more time consuming.

The value of money is debated openly as well as dramatised in Austen’s novels—she rarely introduces a major character without also enumerating their finances

"This promise of an AI future, is really just a collective anxiety that wealthy people have about how well they're gonna be able to control us in the future." - @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit. Incredible words. Listen to all of it!

Mitt Romney is in the New York Times saying we should tax the rich.