Sonja Drimmer

Sonja Drimmer, Associate Professor of Art History at UMass-Amherst, will talk on “A Grand Larceny: How the AI Industry Steals Our Past to Rob Our Future.” Here, she will discuss how universities and museums have partnered with commercial technology firms like Google, Microsoft, and Meta, which have promised that their AI products will enhance both historical research and accessibility to historical collections. Her talk responds to the question of why universities and museums would work with companies whose products are in many ways obstructive to the mission to educate students and the public at large about history.

If you're near the University of Hartford on February 10, I'd love to see you. Free and open to the public.

www.hartford.edu/unotes/2026/...

Interesting! @drleonj.bsky.social would almost certainly know about this practice. The 19C is way outside of my wheelhouse.

were used for the same purpose. Manuscripts commonly use both, tho typically the quire signatures are placed on the first half of pages in a gathering while the catchword just occurs on the gathering’s final page, reiterating the first word or words on the next page at the start of a new gathering.

What you’re describing is called a catchword! They were used in manuscripts at the end of each gathering to ensure they were bound in the right order. The ‘D’ in my example isn’t a catchword, just the start of the psalm, which begins on this same page. Quire signatures (a letter for each gathering)+

yes to this

I love using this example to show that it was intellectual and institutional changes that preceded technological ones in a century that was enormously important for the history of the book in the Latin west.

I am of the micro-generation old enough to remember the eXile and young enough to have never been deluded into thinking its staff was anything but dirtbags.

Everything is dumb and I am sad.

"The market" isn't freely deciding anything here.

www.cnbc.com/2026/01/22/o...

EBSCO is a tech company that has eaten yet another sector in higher ed. It does the job so poorly that educators and librarians have to work more and harder to compensate for its failures. And students lose out because they lack expertise needed to use it so that they get quality results.

And this is an allegory of the modern American university.

I don't want to be doing this. I really don't. But when the catalogue infrastructure is so dysfunctional that I cannot find a shelfmark of an actual book so that I can physically consult it, we have a fucking problem.

EBSCO is so bad that it is easier just to download a book from a lib gen rip-off than it is find the actual book in my actual library.

Preschooler and three other students detained by ICE, school district leader says The detentions of Columbia Heights students come after weeks of heightened concern and enforcement presence near and on Twin Cities school property.

A 5-year-old preschool student was taken with his father by federal immigration agents shortly after arriving home from school, Columbia Heights school leaders said Jan. 21.

Action Network petition: Cancel ChatGPT Edu. Invest in Humans. In February 2025, the California State University system announced a $17 million contract with OpenAI to provide ChatGPT Edu to all faculty, staff, and students on its 22 CSU campuses as part of a larger “AI-Empowered University” initiative. This is the largest contract ever established between a university system and an artificial intelligence company. Despite the name, ChatGPT Edu is not educational technology. It is a general-purpose chatbot that is not designed, trained, or optimized for education. Beyond its privacy and security features, ChatGPT Edu is identical to the free online version of ChatGPT. ChatGPT Edu does not use reliable peer-reviewed sources to answer students' questions and is indifferent to whether its answers are correct. Experts argue that ChatGPT Edu is harmful to academic working conditions, diminishes the quality of teaching and learning, introduces new forms of discrimination, and is dangerous to students' mental health. Recent polling shows that CSU students share these concerns, with the majority of students expressing that they are worried about the negative impacts of generative AI on human creativity and the environment.

Cal State University’s deal with OpenAI — providing ChatGPT to all faculty, students, and staff — will expire in June 2026. Amid the prospect of layoffs in the CSU, we’re asking the chancellor not to renew this costly and demoralizing contract.

Link below and anyone can sign:

Everyone is quick to celebrate a hero the moment someone presents a glimmer of that possibility. It’s worth tempering the enthusiasm by noting that Carney mentioned lowering taxes on capital gains, increasing defense spending, & mining in more places. It was Davos and he’s of Goldman Sachs pedigree.

A labradoodle curled up asleep on an armchair next to a window, looking sweet and peaceful

HELLO IT’S ME AGAIN

the smartest i've ever felt is when i realized i could leave a short note to myself in the request, which is then printed out with the ILL receipt upon collection

You for president!!

<<narrows eyes intensely>>

Why did I request this book from ILL?

The powerful have their power. But we have something too: the capacity to stop pretending, to name realities, to build our strength at home, and to act together.

Am I the only one who didn’t like Mark Carney’s speech?

Its whole premise was that we need “stop pretending,” to “name realities,” yet somehow he doesn’t mention climate change even once.

And worse than that…

1/4

Thanks for tagging. Following her now.

This is the part where one catches tedious responses (“what should Carney have said?”). Nothing different from what he did say. He is a banker and he was at Davos. I’m criticizing the lionizing reactions cranked up to 11, fueled seemingly by selective listening.

Holy cow I can read Swedish.

Exakt min reaktion. Ja, det är nödvändigt och bra att bryta USA-hegemonin men skippa den trötta nyliberala ekonomiska politiken.

The original, salty version of my post was

Carney: “free trade!”

Everyone: “yay he hates Trmp!!! ❤️❤️❤️

He articulated bog standard neoliberalism minus Trump’s America. With some Havel for spice!

Everyone is quick to celebrate a hero the moment someone presents a glimmer of that possibility. It’s worth tempering the enthusiasm by noting that Carney mentioned lowering taxes on capital gains, increasing defense spending, & mining in more places. It was Davos and he’s of Goldman Sachs pedigree.

Like me, it is full of onion.

That sounds more like melon pan, but I still believe it!

Trademark it now, Ben. You’ve discovered the center of kosher vocal white liberal center of gravity.