"We are pleased to share more than 125,000 U.S. Supreme Court records and briefs. These materials which span nearly two centuries of American law are now freely accessible online."
"Includes records and briefs spanning cases from 1830 through 2019."
That one led to so many intense debates amongst the dissertation writing group I was in.
IRBs had no idea what to do during that era. No idea. Gargantuan amounts of social media data? No problem, use away. Historical newspaper data? Inexplicably put to more ethics scrutiny. Wild times they were
The first half of the 2010s was just a big data ethical free-for-all
I counterpose Xiaoice and Tay in my course. I believe Tay was released because Xiaoice was so successful. It's a good way to get into the social embeddedness of technology.
Not NLP per se, but the guy who merged NYC taxi data with paparazzi photos to identify which taxi rides a celebrity took and then published whether they tipped or not.
It's Tey! The Microsoft chatbot that turned into a Nazi within 24 hours of being released. Disaster.
I agree with the overall thread, and this is really neither here nor there, but much to my surprise, I could not find a single, solitary public laundromat in Stockholm. I packed lightly and then had to wash clothes (for three people!) in the sink and they took *days* to dry.
One of the many things I love about living where I do is that our garden is inundated with (harmless) spiders in the summer. We have to clear the webs out of our path into or out of our house twice a day they spin webs so big and fast. Kiddo is fascinated by them
This is important additional context
And the service they provide is far more valuable
I have not had the privilege of working with them yet. But I think it's a great service, and I read it often.
I'm ok with this.
The Conversation makes academic work accessible to the public. I, an employed academic, am paid to produce academic work, and work with The Conversation to translate it for the public, with my portion of that work paid via my (public) salary. They're not publishing freelancers.
I have written elsewhere that academics demanding pay and credit for public engagement is a neoliberal trap. People need jobs, healthcare, housing, and education. This includes artists and writers of all kinds. Employed academics don't need micropayments and merit points for doing public engagement.
Yes it is OK with me. Writing is work and I am paid by the State of Maryland to do that work. The Conversation is professionally edited, and publishes OA with no fees, with CC licenses that allow local media to republish.
Cultivation I, 260413
I also want us to remember that the initial calls for computers in the classroom came at a time when few people had computers at home. School is one of the few places many students would get access to a computer. As PCs became ubiquitous, their function in the classroom should of course shift.
Now that you mention it, clay might be where that magic enzyme is
Yes precisely
I hope we can be intentional about the conclusions we draw from this. Both analog and computers can be used well (active learning, make things) or used badly (memorize a textbook, click mindlessly on a screen). It's edtech that's the problem. Edtech is the curse.
fortune.com/2026/04/10/a...
I don't think I was clear enough about what I meant here. This whole thing was kicked off by a person deliberately making up a disease and uploading two fake papers about it to a preprint server. I find that completely unacceptable. (Mods should not be expected to catch AI generated papers)
Ha that's an appropriate consequence
Major yikes. I'm so sorry you're dealing with that.
In this case I'm talking about the one person who deliberately wrote two fake papers. Indicated they were fake in the paper itself. And uploaded them to a preprint server. If I were a moderator, I would be mighty upset with them for using volunteer-run preprint servers to "prove a point".
Not only are they not facing any costs, they seem to be actively proud of what they did? Thinking they did some great service to science by exposing (?) how LLMs work?
I can't imagine, and thank you for your service 🙏
All the comments on that report have been around how this proves LLMs are bad. I'm surprised more of the commentary hasn't been directed at the person who knowingly submitted a fraudulent paper to a preprint server, wasting volunteer mods' time.
The fundamental asymmetry in scientific publishing today is that people can submit absolutely mind boggling crap, and face zero real costs. Unless these kinds of things are tied to substantial costs/risks, and while we rely on volunteer labor, nothing will get better.
Seems like the actual scandal* is that this was accepted to a preprint server at all, given it said "this is fake" in the paper itself.
* Not really a scandal. No system is perfect. It should never have been submitted in the first place.
I have lots of thoughts about this. But what I really want to know, because I'm not one:
Are preprint moderators ok with their sites being used in this way? Y'all ok with folks uploading fake papers?
