Mary Beth Corrigan

We won’t all be in the streets but that’s why it’s important to know the difference between Community and Political Organizing.

Inside an AI start-up’s plan to scan and dispose of millions of books Court filings reveal how AI companies raced to obtain more books to feed chatbots, including by buying, scanning and disposing of millions of titles.

"Books were viewed by the companies as a crucial prize, the court records show. In a January 2023 document, one Anthropic co-founder theorized that training AI models on books could teach them 'how to write well' instead of mimicking 'low quality internet speak.'”
tinyurl.com/3u76tb7k

‘Fascism is here now’: the US athletes pushing back on Trump’s America World Series winner Sean Doolittle, Super Bowl champion Doug Baldwin and college star McKenzie Forbes have strong opinions on a troubled era

My closer ❤️

www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/j...

@adamrothman.bsky.social Please share. TIA.

Join me for a virtual workshop "Identifying Enslaved and Freed Black Individuals in the Historical Resources at Georgetown University" on Sunday, February 22, from 5:00-6:30 (ET). RSVP required. For more info, see tinyurl.com/44fd2exj

Art credit: "Write Their Names," (2021) Joy Kang

Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

Common Sense, published 250 years ago today.

When federal agents shoot people in D.C., there are few details — and little accountability D.C. police officers are held to one standard, federal agents another.

And less than a month later, another federal agent shot at another driver they said was trying to flee a stop. As I reported at the time, having lots of federal agents policing means training and accountability standards are all over the place: 51st.news/federal-poli...

kind of darkly funny that "gender studies" is the stereotypical "useless degree" because gender studies will help you understand a large and important chunk of the current psychosis in american life

Yea we can hire professors on merit - merit of how much drip you had on PhD graduation

My review of Sven Beckert’s *Capitalism: A Global History* appears today on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Book Review. As you will see when you read the review, I highly recommend the book. Congratulations, Sven!

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/b...

Literally just finished reading this incisive portrayal of the New Right thinkers. It’s easy to dismiss a bunch of intellectuals, but they do believe in the power of ideas, whereas the left is only beginning to engage in ideas that will help them envision a future.

I think this post nails the actual problem, for researchers at least—AI hallucinations would simply not be a problem in academic work if we’d not normalized citation-as-signaling rather than actual engagement—you can only cite a fake paper if you’re not in the habit of reading the papers you cite

Really good episode featuring Arrington Dixon talking about the early days of "home fool." Looking forward to the rest of the mini-series. (I also recommend Sunil Dasgupta's episodes on Maryland politics).

Big congratulations!

Disgusting. And I'd bet it's because the word "Gaza" is all over it.

The sign above John Thompson Jr. basketball court at CapitalOne Arena says HOYAS WIN - Georgetown 90, UMBC 81

Georgetown basketball is good this year.

Hyattsville Renames Forested Area After Nacotchtank Indians Hyattsville Wire The city of Hyattsville renamed a forested area around Driskell Park after the Native Americans who used to live in the area.

hyattsvillewire.com/2025/11/03/n...

I want him to challenge Schumer. He would be good.

This is set in an alternate version of Maryland where the Catholic colonists revered wolves instead of destroying the region’s population.

That's right. 🥪

This is important.

Nicely done!!! Thanks!

White House Architecture Was an Honor System. Trump Noticed. For 125 years, informal norms constrained what a president could do to one of the nation’s most famous landmarks.

When I got the chance to write this article, I wanted scholarship that put the preservation of the White House in context. I see three themes in the story:

1. Reification of expertise
2. Growth of executive power
3. Use of DC as a testing ground

(thread) 🗃️

Turns out that trying to prove you’re not really a misogynist by proving you are most definitely a racist isn’t as persuasive as the consultant class thought. But how could they have known??

This

Yeah, marble bathrooms were all the rage in Civil War Washington. It was just the water that was so putrid, leading to Willie Lincoln's death of typhoid fever.

When I worked in WaPo Opinions in 2017-2018, senior editors specifically told junior editors not to factcheck Marc Thiessen and other MAGA columnists, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to publish anything by them at all, and “we need them for intellectual diversity.”

They are good!

Mostly for @jcassedy.bsky.social

Kind of think that he probably WAS an invited guest, but not so any more.