Cornell's task force on institutional voice has issued a draft set of recommendations. I think they're pretty good overall, as I told the Sun. 1/3 Draft: provost.cornell.edu/_assets/docu... Sun article: www.cornellsun.com/article/2025...

Lon Nol Ranch

Bad content drives out good. kotaku.com/robin-willia...

anyways

Feels like more execs should have read Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith's The Dictator's Handbook--there is currently competition to be a preferred crony, which means both instability and less revenue extraction for businesses trying to cozy up

<general contractor slapping a rotting post> Well, there’s your problem right there. Whoever built this thing used Marbury v. Madison as a foundation. You’re lucky it lasted as long as it did.

I misspoke at work babbling too fast because OF COURSE I DID while telling co-worker about ADHD and yeah that leads to this.

Day Two of the new Platformer format and I am really not digging it. The thing I wasn’t getting anywhere else (the curated link roundup) is gone, replaced with a thing I can get tons of other places (short takes on already widely-reposted stories).

If, hypothetically speaking, one thought that the AI boom were a bubble, what asset classes would be most insulated from it?

So Trump is now going to try to rule like an early modern king - just avoid calling the estates general or parliament or the diet and so rule by fiat. Maybe someone in the GOP should turn the page in book and see what happened next...oh, oh dear...oh no...oh dear ohnonono....

Bill Swerski’s Superfans deployed to Chicago abcnews.go.com/US/texas-nat...

might of heard have

Chaser.

Shot.

“Money shall be drawn from the Treasury” as a Grant of Executive Authority

It’s 1992 in Trump’s brain, and if there aren’t riots for him to send the National Guard against, he will manifest them.

Very nice piece from my colleague @stevevladeck.bsky.social in today's Times on the illegality of Trump's troop deployments to American cities. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/o...

Just so. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

“Maybe another sector AI is disrupting is the ability to "rely" on overcaffeinated and drugged up twenty-somethings to kill themselves on consulting assignments to squeeze a few more dollars out of the bottom line.”

I've been rereading Havel, as one does in times of need. Has anyone written a careful comparison of the greengrocer in _The Power of the Powerless_ who hangs a "Workers of the World, Unite!" sign in his window with the displays of servile flattery that Trump and Trumpism demands? 1/5

Fourth factor, third factor, second factor, first factor.

The new analysis-heavy Platformer format is dramatically less interesting than the old one, and much less useful to me professionally. My subscription just renewed two weeks ago, so I guess I have a year for it to grow on me, but I'm not optimistic.

In this blog post, the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University exhibits the same keen understanding of contemporary American politics previously on display in her debate with the guy who believes in "the liquidation of democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law."

Trump take library books. www.404media.co/libraries-ca...

Apparently in the first nine months of 2025 the US Copyright Office registered over 3,000 works which list AI content in material which is in the work but excluded from the claim. This is the standard practice now. The vast majority were text but hundreds in music as well.

Listeners' Choices Online is now online. I hope you will choose to listen to it! james.grimmelmann.net/files/articl...

I thought I'd put the administration's proposed "compact" with universities in context, so I wrote the blog post below. It's especially for journalists covering this story! Many details about how the compact itself works and why the administration has retreated to this strategy.

If you an alum of one of the schools that the Trump administration just made an "offer" for preferential treatment to, please sign this petition to indicate that as an alum you do not believe your school should trade its independence for special treatment. alumni.controlshift.app/petitions/tr...

This is how a university that understands its mission and values behaves.

I think we should establish an understanding in the United States that if you order the military to carry out a lethal strike against something that is not an imminent threat without congressional authorization, what you did was murder and the entire chain of command is guilty.

Asked to create JFK, Sora seems to have returned a weird Donald Trump hybrid. Slop all the way down. sora.chatgpt.com/p/s_68def52f...

Uh, Microsoft: Maybe switch off the AI summaries for Bing queries about AI nudifiers? Just a suggestion.

Sora isn’t even bad content driving out good. It’s just bad content. www.404media.co/openais-sora...

Bad content drives out good. www.404media.co/ai-generated...

Bad content drives out good. www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

Bad content drives out good. kenliu.substack.com/p/please-don...

OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this

"They don’t have enough guards, and they know it. They’re afraid. Right now, they’re afraid. … Power? Power doesn’t panic."

Bad content drives out good. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

September 26: Meta releases an AI-generated video social network September 27: Donald Trump posts an AI-generated video of himself promoting a nonexistent medical technology September 30: OpenAi releases an AI-generated video social network

There is a version of this plan that would be a great improvement to American higher education, but I don’t trust either Trump or Harvard with it.

It's always nice to see senior Harvard faculty upholding the highest standards of public service in their choice of clients. No, not the Tylenol guy. A different one. 1/4 www.wsj.com/finance/star...

My friend Rivi drew a remarkable graphic narrative for Inside Higher Ed, in which she uses her illustrations to let six Chinese graduate students in the U.S. tell their stories of visa chaos, political fears, and uncertain futures. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

the president of the united states wants to use the american military to kill american citizens on american soil. that's the whole story!

Now might be a good time for Democrats to remind people that when they return to power they will not hesitate to prosecute people who murder civilians.

It's kind of amazing that every issue of Platformer comes with a warrant canary for @caseynewton.bsky.social's relationship.

TikTok, Electronic Arts, prime Miami real estate—we are entering a new phase of the corrupt enrichment of Trump and his family and courtiers. Not just government contracts and cryptocurrency scams, but thinly-veiled expropriation of other people's property for their private benefit.

LinkedIn's Queens puzzle game that borrows a single rule from chess and gets that rule wrong. It's a good metaphor for LinkedIn.

Don’t need public support to back you up when you rule against the President if you don’t ever rule against the President.