Harder to think of a clearer example of "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House" for this era than people using "generative AI" to protest the outputs and infrastructure of "AI"

“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (6), food prices in the U.S. have increased 33.3% since the beginning of 2020, while housing costs are up 32.5% (7). Energy prices, meanwhile, have surged 48% (8) over that period.” Fuck the economy gaslighters claiming we just dont understand gdp

I have a new blog post updating the story of how Cornell President Kotlikoff backed his car into a student. The trustee committee's investigation utterly failed to consider the central issue: whether his actions (rather than the others') were misconduct. 🧵 3d.laboratorium.net/2026-05-22-h...

<pointing at sign>

"The funniest possible outcome of the AI mandate era is about to be HR departments discovering that 'sincerely held religious belief' under Title VII has a much lower bar than they assumed, and Pope Leo handed every Catholic employee a written excuse" www.businessinsider.com/worker-got-r...

This really is it. The Dems haven’t been able or willing to maintain a bench of new talent under 70 years old, so the only candidates that make it through generally are weird cranks with a thousand skeletons in their closets

It’s been pretty obvious who Platner was from the beginning of his media campaign, and his waffling attitude towards his imperialist misadventures was always the clearest tell

Sama Safi is a 20-year old American citizen and honor student at Birzeit University who was kidnapped by Israeli soldiers from her family’s home on June 2nd at 3 AM. She is being illegally held in Israel's notoriously unsafe prisons, known for human rights abuses. Her family cannot contact her.

Monkey’s paw kind of stuff that it took a rightwing revenge campaign to send this warmongering criminal to jail

📖New book! Edited by John-Paul Ghobrial, Michael A. Reynolds, Christian C. Sahner & Jack Tannous, it reimagines the history of the region by integrating Christian experiences and sources📖 edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-christi...

Betting the national economy on the job-stealing factories that suck up fresh water and belch pollutants is surprisingly unpopular

ICE vehicles have been seen this morning in the Corcoran and Powderhorn neighborhoods/ South Minneapolis. It would be great to get extra support from community today. Please help out in your local area. 1/

Vinay Khetia from the Shia Research Institute at the University of Toronto was kind enough to interview me on my recent book (now out in paperback!) about relics and sacred spaces in early Islam. It’s an interesting conversation! You can also listen as a podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

lol

68% of DFL convention voted to pass a resolution against AI deepfakes north star dawn, a super PAC in support of angie craig, is using a deepfake of peggy flanagan in an ad. their biggest donor is an AI billionaire. the convention also passed resolutions against data centers craig is out of touch

There is a legal term for gov agents detaining someone and refusing to provide info on their fate or whereabouts: enforced disappearance. Enforced disappearance has long been used as a tool of border management in the US, but this administration has pushed this strategy into hyper drive.

Today, you might see a TV ad starring something that... kind of looks like me. My opponent's super PAC is using an AI deepfake of me to mislead voters. They can't win with the truth - so they're resorting to lies. It's disgusting. Minnesotans deserve better.

Compare how Keith Ellison’s past association w/ Nation of Islam and Black nationalism were treated when he ran for DNC Chair in 2016-17. Essentially considered disqualifying despite his active repudiation. And his past didn’t involve war profiteering for Blackwater or having a Nazi tattoo

BREAKING: In an unsigned, per curiam opinion on the shadow docket, the SCOTUS conservatives allow Alabama to use a congressional map held repeatedly by a lower court to have been enacted with discriminatory intent.

One big issue in the data center fight is that local officials are signing (being pressured into signing?) NDAs with the companies going to install the data centers. Which begs the question: are electeds actually allowed to sign such documents? >>

“In a preliminary MIT Media Lab study, 83% of participants who wrote essays using ChatGPT couldn’t quote a single sentence from what they’d submitted moments earlier. ‘It passed from the computer screen onto the homework assignment without ever entering their brain,’ So said.” 🫠

This has been the main issue in US adventures in the middle east since forever. Along with many others we’ve done a lot of work to “humanize” the people of the region since 2001, but I think the recent crises have perhaps highlighted how much that effort failed to extend to the realm of strategy.

“We can’t just be the lesser of two evils”

In some ways the fact that AI doesn’t work in most (any?) industries as advertised isn’t entirely the point. Barring continuing and huge public outcry, those data centers are getting built and they’re gonna be used for something or other, and it’s probably not something cool and fun

Mikie Sherrill’s state police destroyed the mutual aid tent for families of the detained that had been in operation at Delaney Hall for more than a year, providing clothes, food, even stuffies for the kids. They just trashed it. I’m pretty speechless at the kind of person you have to be to do this

“.. The U.S. is now spending more on data center construction than on public transportation infrastructure, according to new Census Bureau figures out today.” @bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Obviously the human cost is the most important factor in these college closures, including in the lost future educational opportunities, but I also think there must be whole archives of various kinds of information that colleges/universities hold and that are mostly just going to go into dumpsters.

Has the @startribune.com or @mprnews.org done a story on this yet? If not, why not?

"I watched a construction loader pour thousands of books into a big green dumpster. It had appeared overnight, parked behind the library at the university where I taught English." #HigherEd #libraries #edusky #edchat #phdchat yalereview.org/article/shei...

Velshi is one of the most well-known names and faces in centrist mainstream news media. This is absolutely wild.

This guy clearly didn’t listen to the song I guess 🙄

“an increased ICE surge in the area outside of Delaney Hall is a threat to public safety … This was absolutely necessary to protect public safety, and avoid escalation from ICE.” How is suppressing protests going to keep ICE from surging? Minnesota’s experience doesn’t prove this at all

For sure

As Cornell prepares to welcome 6,941 alumni to next weekend's reunions, its officials have now banned a 2nd alum from campus following leaders' attempted cover-up of the President's highly unethical behavior. ithacavoice.org/2026/05/corn...

Someone is very badly injured at Delaney Hall after Mikie Sherrill sent in the state police to attack protestors. Folks who were in Chicago and Minneapolis are saying this is the worst attack by state police they have seen. ICE was shooting pepper balls from the roof while state police attacked.

I mean

last call for this sale on books in our series Intersections: Histories of Environment, Science, and Technology in the Anthropocene 👇👇👇

All eyes on New Jersey. Minnesota stands in solidarity. ABOLISH ICE EVERYWHERE

Covering up the whirring data vacuum with a garbage bag out of fear and confusion

The unmooring of conceptions of the health of the economy from any material reality of most people—a nearly complete epistemic break between classes—seems like the endpoint of our politics. Dismissing it as “vibesession” is not good

I just spoke with Sister Sharon of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Philly. She drove straight from the ICE prison there where she was doing a weekly prayer session to Delaney Hall to support the hunger strikers. This is what she had to say:

MIT closing three of its four libraries is shocking and appalling and underscores that the source of so much of the crisis in higher education comes not from attacks from the far right or the collapse of public trust, but rather from the university administrative class itself.

All this is pretty funny after they administratively stripped the DFL endorsement from Omar Fateh because the party didn’t like that he’d won it

MIT (endowment: $27B) shuttering three of its four main libraries is one of those news items that just knocks you off balance, auguring, as it does, profound and permanent changes to the entire institutional apparatus of higher education in this country.

Leo XIV's encyclical rightly calls for AI that protects human dignity. In @techpolicypress.bsky.social, I warn against piling responsibility on individuals while systems are built to undermine their judgment. I point to initiatives by @newpublic.org & @datasociety.bsky.social that seek alternatives

May's Document of the Month explores a surprising phenomenon among the Cairo Geniza documents: Muslim blessings for the prophet Muḥammad in mercantile letters sent by C12th Jewish traders. Read Alan Elbaum's piece now on our project website: bit.ly/DotMMay26 #medievalsky #cairogeniza #documents

lol

Exactly this. Every statement from almost every institution is kneecapped waaay before it begins by the unspoken but unilaterally understood requirement to first accept/protect the interests of the investor class. Without capitulation, you cannot be taken seriously. But the Pope can just go for it.