“Given the lack of any explanation for Fani’s dismissal or even an initial acknowledgement, we are left to conclude that what was presented as a procedural intervention was in fact an act of academic censorship motivated by ideological objection to Fani’s statements.” www.dailyuw.com/article/on-t...
“I want students to be resilient. It's a very difficult time right now to have hope. But we must exercise our agency. We can't just be passive and let warmongers destroy everything on our planet. We must fight back. This is an existential fight.“ www.dailyuw.com/article/remo...
Berklee College of Music students are calling out an AI course, taught by an advisor to "AI music generator" Suno.
“Why would I go to the school where I was told I would have access to amazing musicians and industry professionals... to have that be cheapened, to hear some plagiarized content."
“There was a 90-year-old who I just left a bit ago. He passed away from his wounds … There was nothing we could do...These are civilians who, without any warning, their whole apartment building was flattened. So you can imagine the severity of injuries that we’re getting.”
Hermel district 9 killed and 6 injured 08 04 26 LB Beirut 92 killed and 742 injured Dahiyeh 61 killed and 200 injured Baalbak district 18 killed and 28 injured Saida district 12 killed and 56 injured Aley district 17 killed and 6 injured Nabatieh district 28 killed and 59 injured Tyre district 17 killed and 68 injured Civil Defense 254 KILLED IN ATTACKS TODAY
This seems to be the most recent update of the death toll in Lebanon following today’s Israeli strikes
Don't taco Tuesday this shit. Millions of people spent the day wondering if they would get vaporized, and no one in our government stood up to him. Nothing cutesy about it.
It’s actually not okay to pay someone with a PhD $2500 to teach a college course
So well deserved! I assigned chapter 4 of EMPIRE OF AI to my history honors students in the fall—about, among other things, the history of the concept of AI—and they really connected with it. The whole book is great.
It's never mentioned in Western media, but Iran has types of people other than "bearded mullah" and "media-friendly feminist activist" like there's also regular municipal workers, and it's a crime to murder them too. Idk what their politics are, but they don't deserve to be murdered by anyone.
Professor of Gulf studies @lalehkhalili.bsky.social lays out the global economic implications of the effective closing of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s “major choke points for oil.”
People shouldn't feel bad about previously admiring someone when they didn't know about the terrible harms that person committed, but we should challenge ourselves to consider how pedestalizing and prioritizing the legacies of charismatic leaders can create harmful dynamics. That can be addressed.
March 16th is also significant to Iraqis because it is the date of the Halabja massacre, twenty years to the day after My Lai bsky.app/profile/absh...
This passage appears in Husry’s 1974 article “The Assyrian Affair of 1933,” one of the most widely cited works in modern Assyrian history www.jstor.org/stable/162383
I discuss the impact of this work on the field in a forthcoming article on Assyrians in Middle East studies
No historian, with the evidence available, whether circumstantial or other-wise, can claim that Summayl was a planned massacre ordered by the general commanding in the north or the higher command in Baghdad. Summayl has nothing of the deliberate and premeditated German massacres of Auschwitz and Belsen, or the Russian one of Katyn Forest. It is more like the American massacre of My-Lai, ordered by a junior officer on his own. The world has sadly learned since 1933 that My-Lais occur in modern wars. At the time, Summayl shocked the civilized world, and brought Britain's relations with Iraq and with Faysal to breaking point.
Thinking about the My Lai massacre this March 16th. Specifically, thinking about how Iraqi nationalist historian Khaldun Sati al-Husry compared it to the Simele massacre of Assyrians in 1933—by way of dismissing it as a tragic but normal occurrence
Thinking of My Lai and Halabja, as I do every March 16th
Years ago I wrote a Twitter thread about revisionist takes on Halabja on the antiwar left. I re-did it for Mastodon two years ago, and it’s still there to read #Iraq #Vietnam spore.social/@abshlimon/1...
Oh my God
In Google Docs, go to Tools > Preferences > uncheck Show Smart Compose suggestions. You’re welcome
There is a direct reference to my & Harriet Murav’s “In the Shadow of the Holocaust” project in the summary judgment filed by @acls1919.bsky.social against the National Endowment for the Humanities for canceling pretty much all the grants a year ago. www.historians.org/wp-content/u... (see p.8) 1/3
“you need to go to school to learn how to use AI critically” is the academic version of “ICE agents just need better training”
Iran's parliament speaker said Saturday that the attack on a freshwater desalination plant on Qeshm Island was carried out with support from one of the airbases in a southern neighboring country. He did not name the country. "The crime will receive a proportionate response," he said.
The US doesn’t seem to understand how many targets there are for Iran in the Gulf.
Attacking the desalination plant in Iran is monstrous in itself as so many people depend on them, but it also opens up the way for Iran to target the Gulf’s desalination plants, which would also be monstrous
Floor of the US House Chyron: on motion to suspend the rules and agree H Res 1099 Republican: Yea, 215, Nay 0, Pres 0, NV 3 Democratic: Yea, 157. Nay 53, Pres 2, NV 2 Totals: Yea, 372, Nay 53, Pres 2, NV 5
157 Democratic members of the House just voted yea for a resolution that confirms they agree with the Trump administration's reasoning for starting with a war with Iran.
It passes 372-53-2
A screenshot of the Polymarket website showing a prediction market titled "Nuclear weapon detonation by...?" under the Geopolitics and Ukraine categories. The market displays three betting options with their current probabilities and "Buy Yes" or "Buy No" prices: "March 31" at 5%, "June 30" at 12%, and "Before 2027" at 22%. The total trading volume shown is over $843,000.
Polymarket has created a betting market on the use of nuclear weapons. Everyone involved in this should be put in prison for life.
Heartbreaking.
Infuriating.
Intolerable.
Yanar Mohammed runs a secret network of safe houses for women fleeing violence in Iraq
www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/w...
Yanar Mohammed is one of Iraq’s most prominent women’s rights activists and established the country’s first shelters for survivors of domestic violence and trafficking. She was assassinated outside her Baghdad home when two gunmen on motorcycles opened fire in the morning.
I don't care if Congress authorizes War on Iran. NO WAR ON IRAN. I want people to fucking reclaim their morality.
ai is a rhetorical technology.
when it produces a list of permissible targets, its value is not producing targets but producing permission
The mass murder of civilians in Gaza, the brazen attacks on hospitals and schools, without any accountability has created a new kind of warfare that should terrify and enrage all of us.
Every child lost is someone’s whole world. Every life lost matters www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
“direct your anger at trump not the democrats” buddy you are severely underestimating the amount of anger i have available to me
Anyone who has been alive on this earth for more than 20 minutes has no excuse for not knowing that this is nothing but mass murder built on lies and is criminally arrogant, stupid, and cruel and will end badly for many, many thousands of people.