“He was 93 and was still working full time on a Pentagon-supported advanced computer security design that is being adopted by companies like Google and Microsoft.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/t...

sir, this is an Arby's where we talk about Deep Space Nine

With permission from one of my habeas clients, I can share that the Bloomington Police Department is proactively cooperating with ICE to detain our neighbors. This is a screenshot of official ICE records which show that a BPD officer reached out to ICE to drop a dime on someone in local custody.

possibly better than the original

"I ask all of you to think of it, graduates and families alike, let yourself dream of a future in which we can harness this amazing new technology to eliminate entry-level jobs entirely. Indeed, that work has already begun, and that future is now." /college kid booing intensifies "Wow okay,"

CIS PEOPLE TIME TO STEP UP it’s once again time to yell at our bad government via online comment form the FCC is trying to make trans and nonbinary content require special ratings on shows GLAAD has a good writeup on it below TELL ‘EM NO direct link to comment form: www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings...

I GET LOGGED OUT. BUT I LOG IN AGAIN

too soon

Bluesky was down so I couldn’t show you guys this dog I saw in the Haagen Dazs. But now I can. Well, bye

The whole AI-to-make-graduation- efficient is bizarre. The most efficient way to award diplomas is by mail; there’s no logical need for ceremonies. The whole reason they exist is for the human touch & so people can celebrate each other. AI for “efficiency” here is nonsensical (& doesn’t even work🫠)

HUGE NEWS: ICE’s courthouse arrests have been STAYED by a New York district judge. That means that ICE will have to stop arresting our immigrant neighbors on the spot when they show up to court at places like 26 Federal Plaza, 290 Broadway, and 201 Varick. (1/2)

Went to my brother’s college graduation at Penn State a couple weekends ago and they used an AI voice scanned by a QR code, so apparently. (They asked the students via email in the weeks before to confirm pronunciation, but besides that, code was scanned right before they crossed in front.)

Sir, another graduation ceremony in which the students booed AI has dropped. "College graduates were pissed after their school used AI to announce graduates’ names and missed hundreds of names" (via @/FearedBuck on Twitter)

A Sportico editor accused Sports Illustrated of plagiarism, suggesting that AI may have been used to generate the plagiarized piece. SI deleted the author and his entire archive from its website. Social media profiles associated with the author have also disappeared. futurism.com/artificial-i...

Imagine a health official saying "we all loathe condoms" Framing an evidence-based public health tool with collective disdain undermines public confidence. The same principle applies to masks

I’m late to the party, but it’s finally hit me that too many people equate wealth with intelligence. Get serious, people! No, I do not think you’re particularly smart or qualified to run a government because you’re a billionaire.

every day I admire MySpace Tom a little bit more

"at a school in Florida" is a bold way to describe UCF, the largest school in Florida

The protestations here are ridiculous. Even in co-authored scientific pieces spanning multiple fields, every author should have read and understood every cited article. You should not put your name to something that you don't understand.

I had the conversation last week in our Rural Modernism workshop, how historians don't often have an explicit methods section in articles, because the footnotes *are* the method. Citation and synthesis of the secondary literature is our method.

And they always become enraged when you point out that what they are basically arguing for is that we should let people die of preventable disease if saving them requires any degree of unselfishness or personal responsibility from people who are unused to thinking in these terms.

Anyone else watching “Widow’s Bay”? Liking it so far… only watched an episode and change though

Whether it’s Ken Paxton committing multiple felonies or James Talarico ordering a vegetarian taco, both Texas Senate candidates have troubled pasts.

I think a lot about James Baldwin's explanation of reading as the discovery that you are not alone

The Claude Pro ToS say it’s for non-commercial/business use. And yet one of the first things Claude will ask you to see house it can help is what kind of work do you do… I’ve asked Anthropic to clarify multiple times how but no response…

I don’t know what to tell you, man. I’m a medieval historian, and, in my field, if you don’t check your sources (and your sources’ sources) you are just asking to be taken for a ride by some bored 19th C. aristocratic English antiquarian with a penchant for inventing history.

A bald eagle I saw today on Chicago's South Side

Musk has half a trillion dollars *because* he has meltdowns on a website. It's his only skill

Id probably do option 2 of i were that rich icl

every day I admire MySpace Tom a little bit more

As a guy with half a trillion dollars, I have lots of options: 1. Enjoy a 100% stress-free life doing whatever I please in unfathomable luxury all over the world with people of my choosing 2. Have 87 meltdowns a day on a website

pre-stock market crash lookin dog

When the terms of service and the PR don’t match:

For people telling me I'm wrong, that generative AI is private and intended for use as a lawyer, this is from ChatGPT's Terms of Use:

anytime i hear about how dems didn't actually have enough votes during obama's start bc of blue dogs, i just go "okay, let's take that as a given. what was the party's plan to, over time, get those votes or replace those guys?" and it was "nothing" or "we actually will support these guys forever"

Sad as it is, this is entirely inevitable. If you are a progressive in American politics today, you simply have to price in the relentless opposition of the oligarch media.

In my darkest moments as a writer who sometimes finds it maddeningly hard to write, I have never once considered plagiarizing or using ChatGPT. I have resorted to drugs, coaches, thesauruses, timers, formulas, prayers both recited and messy. But never theft. www.npr.org/2026/05/17/n...

A great day in Montgomery, AL as thousands gathered under the theme “All Roads Lead to the South” - a rally to mobilize awareness & action in opposition to southern states racial gerrymandering to dismantle majority Black congressional districts after the SCOTUS decision in Louisiana v Calláis.

if i was going to give a college commencement speech i would make sure to start with something the students could rally behind. something like "we will mechanically suck the youth from your bones to feed a mechanical eschaton, which my generation will use to climb heaven and become new gods"

University President: Good afternoon Class of 2026! Please put your hands together for this year’s graduation speaker, MOLOCH!!

This past weekend, I was honored to receive an honorary doctorate from American University and to give the commencement address to their schools of education and communications. Shout out to the class of 2026. Keep going. We need y’all.

I have been thinking about this a lot because of a project at work about creative writing and AI (more to come soon). It's driven home, in a new way, how much it matters in writing, art, and single-author no-RA fields like history that what you produce is of you. Your labor is an extension of you.

This is not unrelated, by the way, to the fact that few of the world’s economies could survive acknowledging and compensating women’s labor.

I had a job interview recently where they asked me: where do you see yourself in 5 years? I told them I was pretty sure we’d still be using mirrors.

It’s gotten so bad

Leaked image of new Apple EV.

$80 to fill the tank of the not-electric car that we hardly ever use anymore; running the EV charging at home hasn't ever cost more than $75/mo.

My first story for @theatlantic.com is about how ed tech slop is taking over American classrooms. Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

I know there’s a lot going on in the world, and we don’t have enough attention to pay to any of it. But the throttling of Cuba by the US should be a bigger story than it is. There are about 10 million people in Cuba, subjected to horrendous collective punishment. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...