Will Smiley

This is why it’s bad that student newspaper op-eds are now online, and why it’s bad for people to record undergrad classes. Kids need the privacy to be wrong and learn.

By Chris Quinn, Editor, cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer A college student withdrew from consideration for a reporting role in our newsroom this week because of how we use artificial intelligence. It reminded me again how college journalism programs are failing to prepare students for the workforce. I mentioned this in a column before, and readers asked me to explain

A conscientious journalism grad withdraw from a job when she learned the Cleveland Plain Dealer uses AI to write its stories.

Now the editor is castigating her and journalism professors for not being “prepared for the workforce.”

You can’t make this shit up.

www.cleveland.com/news/2026/02...

Almost every complaint about what academics in the humanities study could be solved by quantities of money that are - in the scheme of these sorts of things - very small.

In that context, what is telling is that the right, aware that the humanities were for sale, opted to destroy them instead.

Yep. I had to read George Fitzhugh's "Sociology for the South" as an undergrad and it's a searing memory. Also a useful touchstone later in life to avoid falling for evil arguments from smart people.

If you can look at a world in 1945 where Algerians are marching for freedom, Ho Chi Minh is quoting the Declaration of Independence, and Mao is glossing Marx, and you say “the West was contracting,” it only proves you think “the west” equals “white people”

I remember a moment a decade ago where I wondered if we no longer needed to teach counter examples to Huntington, because a new generation of students hadn’t internalized that way of looking at the world. LOL

I continue to wonder why these Zodiac murder notes unfailingly claimed, up until December I think, that every single victim was male—but since then none of them have said that. I don’t know why but it’s a very consistent pattern.

THE SHAH’S COSSACK BRIGADE WILL RIDE AGAIN

On Nov. 16, a mental health counselor recorded in Kamilla’s medical records that her mother reported the girl had lost her appetite after being “served food that contained worms.” A week later, the couple said, children were told to gather in the gym for what they believed would be a Thanksgiving celebration. Excitement spread as families saw tables set with turkey, sandwiches, pastries and pies, they said. The children waited expectantly. But when a parent asked when the celebration would begin, Oksana said, staff told them the holiday meal was for employees, not detainees. The children, she said, watched despondently as the feast was packed away.

On Thanksgiving, the immigrant children held at the Dilley detention center gathered in the gym for what they thought was a holiday feast.

The kids salivated over a spread of turkey, sandwiches, pastries and pies, a family told me.

But the food wasn’t for detainees — it was for the staff.

This is funny, it had never even occurred to me the bookstore could carry faculty books (except Ivy bookstores selling celebrity faculty books to tourists). They should!

Gender studies courses are shutting down across the US. The Epstein files reveal why | Joan Wallach Scott Texas A&M University is the latest school to end women’s and gender studies programs and teaching race. We know why

Eliminating gender studies courses helps to ensure that universities and other institutions will continue to protect men who benefit from the abuse of women and girls, either directly or through their connections to those who exploit girls and women for profit.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

John Gallagher · Quickly Quickly Quickly: Early Modern News In early modern Europe, couriers represented the increased connectivity of the Continent. They travelled faster and...

‘Couriers communicated gossip, rumour and political intelligence between cities and states, labourers in a vast information infrastructure that worked across languages and borders.’

@earlymodernjohn.bsky.social on early modern news.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

The "boat strikes" are still happening. Five things you need to know.  - WOLA U.S. military strikes on drug smuggling boats have killed 131 people since September, yet media coverage has faded. These extrajudicial killings violate international law, fail to stop drug traffickin...

After 35 attacks and 131 deaths, we’re normalizing the illegal boat strikes, erasing the dead as "narco-terrorists"—even while drug supplies appear unaffected. Some in the military are growing comfortable with this. But the slippery slope is clear: impunity breeds escalation, perhaps even at home.

exactly

it's funny how one part of the right-wing coalition is thinking about demons, while the other is thinking about superhuman AI

This Is How a Child Dies of Measles When your family becomes a data point in an outbreak

This is a vivid, horribly relevant read. “She does not sleep well. And as you lift up her pajama top to check her rash one morning, you see that her breathing is labored, shadows pooling between her ribs when she sucks in air. You suffer an icy moment of realization: This is a medical crisis.”

"A scene from the harem" (Female musicians and dancers) Franz Hermann, Hans Gemminger, Valentin Mueller (1654), Pera Museum https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Franz_Hermann,_Hans_Gemminger,_Valentin_Mueller_-_A_Scene_from_the_Turkish_Harem_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

There is music in the air! 🎶

Our summer lecture series "Music in the Ottoman Empire, Iran, the Caucasus & Central Asia" brings together an international group of scholars exploring musical cultures, sound, and exchange across regions.

Details coming soon — stay tuned!

Opinion | A.I. Companies Are Eating Higher Education

Just Out: My @nytimes.com op ed on how AI companies are eating higher education. As educators, we have a duty to defend — and advance — human intelligence.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/o...

7-Year-Old Migrant Girl Dies Of Dehydration And Shock In U.S. Border Patrol Custody The girl's death underscores the crisis precipitated by large groups of families seeking asylum where there are inadequate facilities to detain them.

CBP didn’t give her or anyone any water; she asked 3 times accg to other reports. CBP killed a 7yr old.

“8 hours after the girl & her father were taken into custody, she began having seizures & her body temperature was measured at 105.7 degrees by emergency medical technicians. shorturl.at/d2OTJ

*no longer at a SLAC since a year or two ago, as far as I can tell. I don’t know what the story is there.

Opinion | How A.I. Companies Are Preying on College Students

I've said it before, but the first school that promotes itself as "AI-free" is going to corner the market on folks committed to learning. (gift link)

Adelphi Student Wins AI Plagiarism Lawsuit An Adelphi University student who was accused of using artificial intelligence on an assignment has won a lawsuit against the institution, Newsday reported, with a federal judge ruling that the findin...

"The family said they have spent six figures on legal fees."

The thing is, all our institutions have given themselves over to an ideology of learned helplessness, denying any role for elite guardrails. Leaders in every institution have convinced themselves that savvy leadership actually means following the “metrics” and “trends,” never mission or ethics.

This seems to divide the more materialist left, who follow Marx in seeing technology as mainly good (distribution is the problem) from the religious and humanist left (who have spiritual concerns)

Meanwhile the right can see AI as vindicating their own spiritual views (reinforcing human hierarchy)

The application deadline for the OTSA Undergraduate Scholarship, in the amount of $1,500, has been extended to March 1. Students with diverse academic interests related to Turkey are strongly encouraged to apply.

Please see: ottomanturkishstudiesassociation.org/awards-prizes/

Coming soon: “The Unconstitutional Grand Jury,” by Randy Barnett and Ilan Wurman, published in the spring edition of the Prager University Journal of Law, Podcasting, and Race Science/MAHA Roadkill Cookbook.

1,300-Year-Old World Chronicle Discovered in the Sinai A newly discovered Christian world chronicle from the early eighth century offers fresh insights into the political and religious upheavals from Late Antiquity to the rise of Islam. Researchers at the...

Don't want to get my hopes up, but this sounds genuinely exciting. The seventh century is one of the most important era's in Western Eurasian history, witnessing the rise of Islam, the end of Ancient Persia, and the dramatic reduction of Eastern Rome losing its status as Mediterranean Empire.

I do think it will be useful and may replace some work. I’m less sure about whole categories. I think it be more change what work looks like, and replace *some* roles with worse approximations (like basic translation and customer service). The key variable is what bosses can get away with.

Entirely seriously, I’m curious what has made you think this is more likely than it was a year ago?

To me it still seems possible, but LESS likely than in 2024 or early 2025.

I’m a bit puzzled by this. I don’t dispute that this very well might happen. But it seems to me the odds appear LOWER now than they did a year or two ago. Have I missed something recent?