NickKauf

Picture of DOGE guy Nate Cavanaugh

Screenshot of my DOGE letter “Dr. Joseph Rezek Dear NEH Grantee, This letter provides notice that the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is terminating your federal grant (Grant Application No. FEL29509824) effective April 3, 2025, in accordance with the termination clause in your Grant Agreement. Your grant no longer effectuates the agency's needs and priorities and conditions of the Grant Agreement and is subject to termination due to several reasonable causes, as outlined in 2CFR§200.340. For instance, NEH has reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President's agenda. The President's February 19, 2025 executive order mandates that the NEH eliminate all non-statutorily required activities and functions. See Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, E.O. 14217 (Feb. 19, 2025). Your grant's immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities. Any objections or appeals to this termination will be managed in strict accordance with the President's Executive Orders,

Last year, this guy (left) from DOGE used ChatGPT to find NEH grants that were too “DEI” for Trump, and canceled them, including mine, as shown by the letter I received last April (right). Huge new NYT article on the back story link below

At Largest ICE Detention Camp, Staff Bet on Detainee Suicides, AP Reports Camp East Montana has received several 911 calls in the span of five months about immigrants trying to harm themselves.

Staff at the nation’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility have placed bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide, according to new reporting from the Associated Press based on 911 calls and detainee accounts.

He’s not even a good liar.

Exclusive: US investigation points to likely US responsibility in Iran school strike, sources say Military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children on Saturday, two U.S. officials told Reu...

Exclusive: US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children on February 28 but have not yet reached a final conclusion or completed their investigation reut.rs/40b19JN

Really enjoying seeing all of the ways people are building on top of the financial disclosures project. projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f...

Police body cam footage shows DOGE knew Institute of Peace was private property during raid Footage obtained by The Handbasket’s lawsuit shows a hostile takeover on March 17, 2025.

SCOOP — Body camera footage obtained as a result of my lawsuit against the DC Metropolitan PD confirms DOGE and the Trump administration openly admitted they were entering private property when they raided the building on March 17, 2025. That didn't stop MPD from breaking down the doors.

My report:

Figure 1: The important dimensions of CAILs across research and education; clockwise from 12 o’clock: Con- ceptual Clarity is the idea that terms should refer. Critical Thinking is deep engagement with the relationships between statements about the world. Decoloniality is the process of de-centring and addressing dominant harmful views and practices. Respecting Expertise is the epistemic compact between professionals and society. Slow Science is a disposition towards preferring psychologically, techno-socially, and epistemically healthy practices. The lines between dimensions represent how they are interwoven both directly and indirectly.

New preprint! @marentierra.bsky.social @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I have been working on what CAIL means to showcase & propagate the idea of thinking very differently to tech industry norms on "artificial intelligence"

Towards Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacies doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

1/

the cartoon Ed, Edd, and Eddy is the perfect archetype of silicon valley tech capitalism. You have the neurotic inventor, the brash know nothing leader trying to enclose the market seek rent with shitty contraptions, and the "degen" goofball.

ed.fandom.com/wiki/The_Cab...

Moltbook was peak AI theater The viral social network for bots reveals more about our own current mania for AI as it does about the future of agents.

And so much "emergent behavior" is more or less theatre. Maybe theatre / frame analysis and roleplay is actually a productive way to view what llms do to archives/datasets? Ppl keep falling for it after all www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/06/1...

The Latent Space Myth Is Gen AI a Perpetual Motion Machine?

I dont have a nlp or ai bg and Its so hard to try to do anything creative with LLMs that actually works with what they really are and how they behave that doesnt fall into the metaphors at play around them. open.substack.com/pub/cybernet...

HOME | Pharmaicy Code based substances for AI Agents

Distillation and such reminds me of how the UK "decants" people from their housing estates. the AI potency language also rhymes with drugs, dabs and strains, and sure enough someone is trying to hawk drugs for your agent. They get to have all the fun now.. www.pharmaicy.store

It’s insane this is legal. People around Trump are profiting off war and death. I’m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this.

We are lost without an anti-war party. National repression (ICE, the cops, silencing speech, etc.) are not separate from international oppression (war, assassinations, occupation). Any party that addresses only one side is at best buying time, at worst stalling.

I like the one where they go to the lowtech communitarian planet and it's great until they find the 'punishment box'. and also the Voyager ep where their own "AI doctor" investigates the hospital run by eugenic AI healthcare allocator. + the TNGs w/ Barclay and Geordie's AI addictions.

Lavender, Military AI, and Technological Delegation Earlier today, the Tel Aviv-based outlet +972 Magazine published a long exposé on “Lavender,” an artificial intelligence-based program that Israel uses to automatically identify and target suspected H...

reposting this old piece of mine on military "ai," since the issues in it are likely to become live again.

Had to take my agent in for an alignment

highly rec this @nyreviewofarch.bsky.social story on sunnyside yard nyra.nyc/articles/ava...

i cannot stop thinking about this man, who survived the Rohingya genocide but couldn’t survive border patrol. “He died trying to get home” is a gut punch

10 hour study with me at Columbia showing lunch

Her in the library

DHS illegally arrested me please help Text against image of her knees

Columbia student detained today is a day-in-the-life influencer with 100K followers. Her stories right now go from her studying for a Genetics exam in a nicely edited "ten hour study with me at Columbia" video, to a photo of her knees with the caption "dhs illegally arrested me please help"

Council Member Shahana Hanif Will Rally to Ban Biometric Recognition Technology Alongside Advocates — S.T.O.P. - The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project

MEDIA ADVISORY: Council Member Shahana Hanif Will Rally to Ban Biometric Recognition Technology Alongside Advocates

Monday, March 2nd, 9 AM. Details here:
www.stopspying.org/latest-news/...

TIL China Mieville wrote something on Familiars:

FULL HEARING: ICE Whistleblower Testifies Before Congressional Dems About 'Defective' Training YouTube video by Forbes Breaking News

The executive branch is training criminals directly aimed at violating your individual rights !

www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_o4...

Unmasking Academe’s Gilded Boys’ Club The Epstein files reveal an elite, chummy, and venal scholarly network.

I’m quoted quite a bit here so perhaps I’m biased but I feel this is a good run down of what the Epstein files tell us about how power works in academia. with some good commentary from @jessicacalarco.com, too:

Claude, soon: "I've found an element in the network that can be streamlined."

Smart glasses in court are a privacy nightmare Putting smart glasses on trial.

A judge threatened contempt when Zuckerberg's team wore Meta Ray-Bans, cameras disguised as eyewear, into a no-recording courtroom.

Smart glasses need smart regulation when even a courtroom isn't safe from surveillance. Read more here:

idea *generation* you say? open.substack.com/pub/subconsc...

0-3 minutes / 3+ minutes

JUST IN: Judge Provinzino in Minnesota has held a Justice Department attorney in civil contempt for violations of her order requiring the return of a released ICE detainee’s ID documents. He must pay $500 a day until the documents are returned.

For ICE to build concentration camps quickly, they're leaning on this Dept. of War program WEXMAC TITUS helps contractors bypass the traditionally lengthy government contract bidding process

The Dept. of War started announcing WEXMAC TITUS awardees in September, and the most recent list dropped on Friday.

One new vendor is GEO Group, the private prison company that already runs some of ICE's most brutal prisons. CoreCivic, another private prison group, was an earlier awardee.