Jamie Pietruska

My book has a cover! IN LATIN AMERICA YOU COULD BE FREE: AN AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY tells the story of the place and promise of Latin America in the political imagination of African Americans and of their movements to the region in the antebellum period.

Out on Basic Books, November 11, 2026! 🥳

Congratulations!!! This looks so fantastic.

I would suggest the excellent review essay by Jeroen Puttevils et al., "State of the Field: Histories of the Future," History 109, no. 384-385 (April 2024): 150-172 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

For ease of navigation and sharing, I have turned my little list into a website: standwithminnesota.org

Renee Macklin Good’s wife says she nurtured kindness On Wednesday, Renee Macklin Good was fatally shot by a federal ICE agent. Becca Good, her wife, shared the following statement with MPR News.

"I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him. That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way." www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

We Need to Talk About How We Talk About 'AI' | TechPolicy.Press We share a responsibility to create and use empowering metaphors rather than misleading language, write Emily M. Bender and Nanna Inie.

"The media has largely let [tech companies] set the terms of the debate, right down to the terminology used in any discussion of these systems."

From @nannainie.bsky.social & me in @techpolicypress.bsky.social on how to spot and resist anthropomorphizing language about so-called "AI".

A map of the US with each 2025 billion-plus dollar weather and climate disaster geo-located on it. Source: Climate Central

After the US admin cancelled the $B Climate + Weather Disaster dataset, @climatecentral.org hired the scientists who ran it and set it back up.

Now the 2025 numbers are in: it's 3rd highest year on record and highest year w/o land-falling hurricanes.

More: www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...

The data center rebellion is here, and it’s reshaping the political landscape As the buildout of AI infrastructure alarms communities, it is fast emerging as a potent electoral issue across the political divide.

YES! We don't want this!!! //

The data center rebellion is here, and it’s reshaping the political landscape

As the buildout of AI infrastructure alarms communities, it is fast emerging as a potent electoral issue across the political divide.

www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

OpenAI is now facing a total of 8 wrongful death lawsuits from grieving families....who claim that ChatGPT, in particular, the GPT-4o version, drove their loved ones to suicide. Soelberg’s complaint also alleges that company executives knew the chatbot was defective before it pushed it to the public

This is important (and not good, in my opinion): anyone with advance knowledge of a specific event in geopolitics, business, sports, culture, etc. can easily cash in on minimally regulated prediction markets. What could possibly go wrong...?

Flu activity is very high and rising in many parts of the country, with levels similar to last year's big season. Be careful out there. caitlinrivers.substack.com/p/widespread...

Excerpt from Critical AI article: ‘As they promise gains in efficiency and productivity, LLM research assistants purport to “streamline”—or bypass—the challenging, recursive, and often messy work of identifying, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing the existing research on a given topic. Over decades of practice, educators have come to understand these processes as themselves integral to building students’ intellectual abilities and skills. Indeed, from the standpoint of learning, the process of research and writing is often more valuable than the final product handed in for a grade.’

So many aspects I could quote from this, but this was the first that stood out to me. read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/...

Four Frictions: or, How to Resist AI in Education - Public Books We are calling for resistance to the AI industry’s ongoing capture of higher education.

"We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction."

"How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social
www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...

I’m sorry, but it is disgraceful to be an academic who uses this technology to conduct research. It should be prohibited in all of our scholarly institutions, including universities and journals.

So embarrassing & one of many reasons I am glad I am no longer a member of @historians.org . V disappointing to see the largest professional organization of historians get right in line with "let's boil the oceans training LLMs on stolen work so we can paraphrase the internet badly & inaccurately"

Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

You know that thing where students use AI to write their papers, and it hallucinates quotations and sources?

Well now, it's in you podcast feed too!

What could possibly go wrong.

Unfathomably stupid idea

Even God Is Worried About ChatGPT Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’

Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’

"The humanities really are a resource — a confidence for living in our times.” Dean Sara Guyer on the modern utility of humanities degrees This interview originally appeared on the Division of Arts

"While other universities report that the humanities are shrinking, at Berkeley, the opposite is true. The music major is the fastest-growing major on campus. We are finding bigger classrooms because film is exploding. English is back to the numbers we saw 15 years ago. We are hiring" bit.ly/4ohKuOe

If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features."

There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

Hey authors! Check to see if Anthropic stole your book to train their slop generator on. You’re entitled to $1500 per stolen Work.

Look up your work, and if you’re in the database, file a claim
secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/

Buried the lede: "(Premium users can also converse with Satan.)"

OVER A MILLION USERS

DISCUSS SUICIDE WITH CHATGPT

EVERY *WEEK*

what the fuck are we DOING here

Map of US with purple and blue icons over central US indicating severe weather billion dollar disaster events in 2025 and one fire in LA.

The Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disaster dataset is back and now at @climatecentral.org!

Through the first half of 2025, there were 14 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters across the United States, costing $101.4 billion. 1/2
www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...

Taylor’s Version “With unfailing lucidity, empathy, and wit” (Greil Marcus), a preeminent Harvard professor and poetry expert explains the artistry—and the celebrity—...

Publication day for Taylor's Version! I'm so happy for my baby and for all the work @hachetteus.bsky.social & @johnmurrays.bsky.social did to bring her out into the world. Consider an order here: www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/steph...

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...

@davidveevers.bsky.social useful required reading for students www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

Choose your next read/watch from the favorites of these brilliant thinkers on env. futures and futurity: @sgallini.bsky.social @jessicahurley.bsky.social @ceirr.bsky.social @scobrien.bsky.social @jpietruska.bsky.social Leida Fernández Prieto & Michael Rawson 🫶