John Sands

Patterns on mammoth tusks help to retell history of writing Scientists believe they have found evidence of written thoughts of Stone Age people on ancient objects.

Writing earlier than we thought: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Bar chart showing American teens' views on whether AI will have a positive or negative effect on them personally over the next 20 years, as well as whether it will have a positive or negative effect on society more broadly. The chart is based on a September/October 2025 Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens.

Teens in the US are much more likely to say AI will have a positive than negative effect on them personally over the next 20 years (36% vs. 15%). www.pewresearch.org/internet/202...

The zoom-in on McBride was something

Human interaction is going to shift to discords and group chats, invite-only. The open web and social media are going to be left for the agents lurking amongst the ruins. Everything public will be Moltbook.

It hasn’t fully hit BlueSky yet, but LinkedIn and X are just meaning-shaped comments by LLMs

The universe of critical, fundable research is much, much bigger than gen AI

AI is turning research into a scientific monoculture - Communications Psychology The rush to study generative AI is producing a feedback loop of topical and methodological convergence, flattening scientific imagination and crowding out the pluralism needed to keep research adaptiv...

This paper argues that the rush to study gen AI has led researchers to focus on the same topics and rely on the same methods. As a result, creativity is limited and the diversity of ideas needed to keep research flexible, strong, and innovative is being pushed aside.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS A Thought Exercise in Financial History, from the Future

THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS
The Consequences of Abundant Intelligence

Today I'm helping to lead the first convening of the Reconstructing Free Expression project at @knightcolumbia.org. I'm excited to brainstorm with the other participants (including @genevievelakier.bsky.social, @jamalgreene.bsky.social & @ksabeelrahman.bsky.social). Preview here 👇

Column | It’s time to retire the restaurant monologue When did dinner out start to feel like a TED Talk?

Such a great column by new @washingtonpost.com food dude — I hate a bossy restaurant www.washingtonpost.com/food/2026/02...

A fake ICE tip line reveals neighbors reporting neighbors A Nashville comedian’s deportation hotline, set up as a joke, has gone viral among viewers who say it shows the “banality of evil personified” in the U.S. immigration crackdown.

New: A comedian set up a fake ICE tip line as a joke. Then 100 calls flooded in: neighbors ratting on neighbors, a teacher reporting a kindergartener. Fans say the viral TikToks revealed deportation's "banality of evil." Conservatives say he should be in prison wapo.st/4kM4qbF

Free Expression in the Shadow State

First contribution to @knightcolumbia.org’s new initiative on “Reconstructing Free Expression” is from @jamalgreene.bsky.social—and it is exceptionally insightful and worth reading. knightcolumbia.org/blog/free-ex...

Can we talk a bit about the terms “First Amendment absolutist” and “free speech absolutist,” and whether they have any agreed-upon meaning?

I promise to try, to the utmost of my ability, to Be Respectful Of Other Opinions.

/1

Why Americans discuss the news – or don’t – with others Even as most Americans discuss the news with others, a growing share have stopped talking to certain people about political news.

Discussing news is a key way Americans make sense of what is happening around them.

At the same time, a growing share have stopped talking to certain people about political news.

Ferguson, Smith, Hume and Hutch
Said “This strife over God is too much—
Let’s build upon sentiment
To increase contentement,
And avoid logique, raison, and such.”

‘The time of monsters’: everyone is quoting Gramsci – but what did he actually say? Line handily sums up people’s bewilderment at state of world, but it isn’t quite what the Marxist thinker wrote

“Monsters are something exceptional, an inverted miracle that comes out of nowhere with no real explanation”
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

Cormac McCarthy’s Valentine’s Day Candy Hearts Taken from works of the late great Cormac McCarthy. - - -

Happy Valentine's Day?

@jkbjournalist.bsky.social making trouble with @postbaron.bsky.social at #kmf26

@knightfoundation.org

When I wrote Section 230 I did so knowing it would be critical for protecting free speech online. 30 years later and it’s one of the last things standing in the way of Republican censorship of the internet. Here’s to many more years of defending this vital safeguard of free speech.

From the bestskeeting author of the Bluesky-famous six-week Bad Bunny 101 comes this essential close reading of the halftime show! 🧵

I was really hoping that halftime show from a stellar Peurto Rican artist would have beem more political.

Bad Bunny should have looked at the camera and said loudly in English "End the Jones Act Now"

Words That Could Conceivably Be Used to Describe Both the Super Bowl and a Superb Owl Unpredictable Head-turning Majestic Fast-paced Expensive Bone-crunching Spirited A hoot

Unpredictable
Head-turning
Majestic...

Great week to thaw out at #kmf26. Looking forward to seeing everyone! 😎

@knightfoundation.org

A Volcanic Opinion in the Fifth Circuit Destabilizes International Copyright Law—Vetter v. Resnik (Guest Blog Post) - Technology & Marketing Law Blog By Guest Blogger Tyler Ochoa [Eric’s note: this is another Long Read post from Prof. Ochoa, clocking in at over 10k words.] Territoriality is a fundamental principle of international intellectual prop...

Holy cow. This 5th Circuit ruling on U.S. copyright overriding other countries' copyright laws, while a little arcane in its details, is a huge mess for everything from basic commercial licensing to national sovereignty and comity.

Washington Post undergoing significant layoffs as part of ‘strategic reset’ Employees were told Wednesday that the paper’s sports desk would close among other cuts and restructurings

The biggest threats to journalism in this country, and to the possibility of an informed and empowered electorate, stem from the political economy of the media. www.theguardian.com/media/2026/f...

Troublemaker is my middle name.

@philorch.bsky.social and @nezetseguin.bsky.social in top form tonight. Breathtakingly perfect Ravel.

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college:
1. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Derrida
2. Music & Cognition
3. Modern Political Thought
4. 20th C. Architecture History
5. Southern Literature

2025 Transparency Report Overview - Bluesky In 2025, as Bluesky grew from 25 million to 41 million users, we improved the trust and safety infrastructure to better enable our mission. Here's what that looks like in plain language.

In 2025, as Bluesky grew from 25M to 42M users, we took actions to keep it welcoming, using proactive design to reduce toxic content by 79%.  Our 2025 Transparency Report shares how we're building a safer platform while keeping a transparent and human-centered approach: bsky.social/about/blog/0...

Science Is Drowning in AI Slop Peer review has met its match.

For more than a century, scientific journals have been the pipes through which knowledge of the natural world flows into our culture, Ross Andersen writes—now they’re being clogged with AI slop:

www.theatlantic.com/science/2026...