KMS Bezio

I feel like it should be bigger news that Trump is now openly considering a military draft. Young men haven't been called up for a draft since 1972. Not during the Gulf War. Not during Iraq or Afghanistan. He received five draft deferments but is now open to drafting your kids.

Macbeth and Richard III. And Sir Thomas More.

Shakespeare and Identity in a Divided World Shakespeare and Identity in a Divided World examines some of the most pressing issues about identity and so-called identity politics in the highly polarized twenty-first century. The book uses Shakesp...

New book out today! www.routledge.com/Shakespeare-...

This is the book that led me to learn a lot about a lot of things, but also about hunting down the creator of a meme to get image permissions. (It's in the epilogue.)

For exams, they don't know. I have a colleague who allows sheets of quotations and they're doing multiple sessions of in-class writing.

Grammarly Is Offering ‘Expert’ AI Reviews From Your Favorite Authors—Dead or Alive The tool, offered by the recently-rebranded company Superhuman, gives feedback based on the work of famous dead and living writers—without their permission.

Once a simple proofreading tool, Grammarly is now bristling with AI features and a suite of "expert" agents based on the works of real authors. But the company doesn't ask permission and in some cases offers feedback from virtual versions of dead writers—including one historian who died in January.

my main concern is the harm rather than the output, so i don't really need to hear a product testimonial from someone who found it useful. because i don't care

A screenshot of an email from an ad agency to Evil Hat Marketing: Hey Evil Hat team, Promised this is the last time you’ll hear from me. We are wrapping up generating content on the house. The AI studio is starting to get fully booked with our paying clients, and I have strict orders to stop promoting this come the weekend. I figured Evil Hat might as well get some work out of us at no cost while you can. Want in before we close it up? Best, [redacted] And then our reply: Hi [redacted], We will never use AI for our games or for our marketing. It's toxic to our customer audience and it's an ethical violation of the hard work put in by the human artists we hire to illustrate our books and the human writers who design our games. In short, it's not "free work" it's theft. Feel free to take me off your mailing list. Hope you turn around your business model because frankly, your current approach sucks shit. -Tom

sometimes you have to be clear about your values

In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.

This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.

Ring Superbowl Ad Shows Americans How Powerful Surveillance Systems Have Become, Freaks Them Out | ACLU Think twice about sending video from your home to companies, and possibly police and hackers

Data collection devices like Ring pose a serious threat to our privacy and are downright creepy.

As cloud services and AI analysis make these tools more powerful, our leaders must pass protections to shield us from mass surveillance.

I'm an academic. Books are the stock and trade of how we progress knowledge. (I've written three.)

If I could change one piece of the discourse-that-drives-policy it’d be to underscore that higher education is not only a benefit to the individual but to all of us. It’s a collective good.

The utterance of "A.I.'s inevitability" is one of the most stark pure performatives I've seen in my time working in higher ed. Every time it is uttered, it is clearly not reporting a fact about the world but instead actively trying to create the reality it narrates. We can and must refuse.

One in six children who died by suicide were LGBTQ+, new data shows Amid heated public debate about whether trans children are dying by suicide, campaigners say we need to "take the politics out of policymaking"

The National Child Mortality Database repeatedly refused to tell us what they knew about LGBTQIA+ youth suicides.

But we didn’t give up.

With New Momentum, Republican States Push Broader Limits for Trans Americans In states that once focused mainly on health care and sports for transgender minors, debates now revolve around the validity of transgender identity.

The subheadline on this NYT piece is going to turn me into the Joker.

Like... this... is exactly what trans people have been saying was going to happen for years.

'We’ll believe it when we see it': Minnesota city leaders react as 1,000 ICE agents removed from state A coalition of city leaders across Minnesota is speaking out as federal officials begin scaling back immigration enforcement operations in the state.

Federal agents are still patrolling Minneapolis and posing a threat to our constitutional rights.

We're continuing to fight in court to end DHS’ unlawful actions in Minnesota and to get relief for the people who have been victims of their lawlessness.

Wild that the president of the united states is reacting to a supreme court ruling by having a crash out temper tantrum meltdown press conference where he's literally saying this isn't fair, I'm allowed to do whatever I want, even destroy countries, and people are acting like it's situation normal.

Orange and white cat looking grumpy. He says, "good morning Gonzobongos! I would like my tarriffs money returned now please."

Goodemorning Gonzobongos! I woulde like my tarriffs monies retornd naow pleez

Turns Out There Was Voter Fraud in Georgia—by Elon Musk The state board of elections found Musk’s PAC sent prefilled ballot applications.

The story that Elon Musk committed voter fraud has gotten next to no coverage -- one of those things you can't make come up on a Google search.

But I think it's time for Dems to go on offensive abt right wing coddling of this immigrant interfering in our elections.

newrepublic.com/post/206857/...

This is a bonus of being a Shakespeare scholar. Public domain. (I did have to secure permissions for a meme, though, and finding the creator was a multi-hour slog.) I feel you.

If you really think college students need to learn to use AI (by which I mean LLMs), I suggest you create and fund a department of expert professionals who can teach them. The humanities professors are busy trying to teach those classic texts you keep whining about disappearing from the curriculum

Acting ethically in an imperfect world Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somew...

I was disappointed to read Cory Doctorow's post where he got weirdly defensive about his LLM use and started arguing with an imaginary foe.

@tante.cc has a very thoughtful reply here:

tante.cc/2026/02/20/a...

A few further comments, 🧵>>

look if a Democrat wants me to be really fired up about voting for them, they will promulgate the Crimes Against Humanity Reparations Act which gives US citizenship to everyone targeted by the Trump administration.

Man Opposing Data Center Arrested for Speaking Slightly Too Long An Oklahoma man tried to talk about a data center coming to his community. Police arrested him when he went a few seconds over his time limit.

a man in Oklahoma was speaking out against a data center in his community. He went a few seconds over time and the city had him arrested for trespassing

I received notification of yet another death at an ICE facility, meaning 38 people have died in custody since Trump returned to office.

ICE is failing to ensure the health and safety of the people it is responsible for.

We need immediate oversight of this entire operation.

What I need people to understand is when legislators argue that professors should teach more and research less, it's not because they think our research is actually worthless. It's because they don't want anyone to be able to develop or disseminate expertise that goes against their party line.

"how many agents do you have running?"
"more confidence"
"bolder"
"harnesses and reins like they're controlling labor"
"a looser leash for creative work"

"...borrowing language of how we treat animals"

No, like they're talking as if about slaves. Really. Take a moment and ponder the word choices.

My school system told us all this fall that basically every major AI system except Gemini is a walking FERPA violation. Can't wait to see what you find.

Democracy is when voters choose their leaders. Autocracy is when leaders choose their voters.

I love them.