💚 Mandi Barnard, Ph.D. 🍂🍁

Thousands of authors publish ‘empty’ book in protest over AI using their work About 10,000 writers including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman join copyright campaign

You may have seen on the news that I have co-authored something with Kazuo Ishiguro, and some other people. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

African American Muslims | Religion and Public Life

FFS, roughly 10-30% of enslaved Africans were Muslims. 😒

"Due to high levels of literacy in West Africa at the time, most Muslim slaves were better educated than slave owners." 🙄

African Muslims in Early America A collection story highlighting African Muslims in Early America.

Source:

There’s a lot of competition these days but fucking gates of hell OpenAI is truly an evil corporation

There’s never enough money for schools or healthcare or veterans.

But there’s always enough money to bomb people on the other side of the world.

We can support the democracy movement in Iran without bombing innocent schoolchildren and sending our American troops off to die.

AI error or not, Iran school bombing is a permanent stain on America’s soul | Will Bunch A debate on AI in warfare obscures the truth about an Iran school bombing. U.S. humans are to blame for this war crime.

They had names. They had beautiful faces. And they had the same dreams as your kids - crushed when American "precision" bombs slammed into their Minab elementary school, killing 175

Don't blame AI for this. Blame the sick humans who see war as a game

My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/iran...

Just a reminder that Muslims have been on this continent since the first arrival of non-Indigenous people. They were among the first generation of Americans, and have been here ever since.

a bright spot

Gullible, Cynical America The trouble with believing anything and nothing at the same time

The data economy has made us dumber in ways that also make us vulnerable to authoritarian takover. We are have become both cynical and gullible in the sense we think we are too jaded be fooled and as a result are tricked more easily www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

#MappyMonday! Take a look at this survey of London, 1824-1826.

This map shows both the growth of London and its contemporary administrative structure.

Check it out on @layersoflondon.bsky.social , c/o MOLA and @britishlibrary.bsky.social

www.layersoflondon.org/map/...

Iran may be activating sleeper cells outside the country, alert says The U.S. has intercepted encrypted communications believed to have originated in Iran that may serve as “an operational trigger” for “sleeper assets."

The U.S. has intercepted encrypted communications believed to have originated in Iran that may serve as "an operational trigger" for "sleeper assets" outside the country, according to a federal government alert sent to law enforcement agencies. abcnews.com/US/iran-acti...

The Trump admin tried to use emergency rulemaking to erase the Board of Immigration Appeals, requiring that basically all appeals (which cost $1,000 to file!) be summarily dismissed without any review.

Thanks to our @immcouncil.org legal team and others, the rule is now BLOCKED!

#1 in Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department of War (N.D. Cal., 3:26-cv-01996) – CourtListener.com COMPLAINT for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief against All Defendants ( Filing fee $ 405, receipt number ACANDC-21731347.). Injunction against the US government/official or APA vacatur requested. Fil...

Here's the Anthropic complaint against basically every federal agency

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Anthropic sues the Trump administration after it was designated a supply chain risk | CNN Business Anthropic is suing the Department of Defense and other federal agencies on Monday over the Trump administration’s decision to label the AI company a “supply chain risk.”

www.cnn.com/2026/03/09/t...

Come for the fiery takedown of the US' founding myth, stay for the Princess Bride clip.

Denmark responded to 1973 oil crisis by reducing car-dependency. Let's do that now. - Streetsblog Chicago "The government had to introduce car-free Sundays. And then people realized that the car-free Sunday was the best day of the week."

FYI the 1970s oil crisis was the impetus for Copenhagen turning into a cycling city

Trump Forced Into Humiliating Reversal After Mass Firing Mayhem After campaigning on promises to shrink the size of government, the Trump administration is stepping up hiring.

After campaigning to shrink the size of the government, Trump's administration fired more than 387,000 employees and now needs to hire back to cover significant operational blind spots.

Trump Confounded by the War He Started It’s now clear: There was no plan.

"It’s become increasingly, painfully clear: They didn’t think there was going to be a *war*." Trump's confident blunder is now our problem.

Today's Morning Shots from @eggerdc.bsky.social and Ben Parker: lnk.thebulwark.com/4lfT5Ru

This is a far bigger fuel, fertilizer, food crisis for Asia and Europe than it is for the US.

US dependence on Persian Gulf oil has almost never been lower

A thread by @sstapczynski.bsky.social on how Asia is alreaddy within days facing a destabilizing.
x.com/SStapczynski...

there is a macroeconomic reason novels are not written in the third person anymore and it is not good

www.versobooks.com/products/303...

Scoop: U.S. dismayed by Israel's Iran fuel strikes, sources say The U.S. message to Israel was "WTF."

The Trump admin launched a war alongside, and at the urging of, Netanyahu. Not one U.S. official is allowed to claim surprise or dismay that Netanyahu escalated the conflict; that is what he does. Escalation wasn't just foreseeable, it was guaranteed.

State Dept. Said to Order Diplomats in Saudi Arabia to Leave

NEW: The State Dept. has ordered diplomats in Saudi Arabia to leave. It's the first mandatory ordered departure issued by the agency during the US-Israel war on Iran, and indicates US officials fear more violence. Iranian drones hit the embassy in Riyadh. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/w...

Thread. Hard to reach any other conclusion. The goal is destruction and ultimate state failure, societal collapse, and chaos, without any actual regard for the Iranian people or their future.

Carmen Sandiego from the 90s cartoon

Happy International Women's Day to the original International Woman

President threatens to block all legislation in order to disenfranchise large numbers of married women, others donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-save-a...

The constituency of Americans who see DEI as detrimental to the country is vanishingly small, the sort of constituency that can easily be ignored if politicians want to ignore it.

Damn.

Please read this, from my big brother @djrothkopf.bsky.social .

When DOGE Unleashed ChatGPT on the Humanities

"Even an effort to catalog and digitize the papers of Thomas Gage, a British general in the American Revolution, was guilty of “promoting inclusivity and diversity in historical research.”

+ Important update on the lawsuit fr AHA, MLA, ACLS etc. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/a...

sure seems like it was a bad idea to tariff Canada