iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 24m

I don't know why I do this to myself, but somehow resurfacing these cursed images was research for a new piece so now you have to look at them too.

From Trump's Truth Social: Fake movie poster made with AI about Trump and George Washington being time travelers.

From Trump's Truth Social: Ai image of Trump and George Washington on horseback.

From Trump's Truth Social: AI image of Trump and George Washington touring his ballroom.

From Trump's Truth Social: Actual image of giant banners of Trump and George Washington at Dept of Interior building in DC.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 28/09/2026

Apparently the "Presidential Walk of Fame" AND the entire ballroom are also gonna get brought down to Miami.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 28/09/2026

Will the front of this building have a big gold statue? Can't wait to find out.

Front of Trump Library, with air force one visible inside the window. No gold statue.

Front of Trump Library, with big gold Trump statue.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 28/09/2026

Don't ask me what I'm working on that demanded this, but I've watched the AI-generated video from the Donald Trump Presidential Library and Museum about 20 times today and I'm losing my grip on reality. www.trumplibrary.org

AI slop from Trump Library. A seal that looks vaguely like presidential seal, but very messed up

More slop. What looks like "PRESIDERPIAL EIRRACE"

More slop text. United States of Anaica?

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 28/09/2026

For example, the "critical thinking" frame did more to get people to see not only why history is valuable, but to support greater public funding for museums and historic sites far better than "history reduces prejudice in society" and "history is essential for participating in democracy."

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 24/09/2026

Almost ran out of time but I made it to The Valentine. Well worth it.

Defaced Jefferson Davis statue, covered in paint

“How do history and art influence politics and power?”

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 24/09/2026

Really excellent exhibit about free Blaxk Virginians here at VMHC in Richmond. Not often that free Black people are the primary focus rather than an afterthought.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 19/09/2026

Had an energizing and enlightening few days in Providence, RI for the @aaslh.org / @ncph.bsky.social conference. It was great to connect with so many old and new colleagues from all across the public history ecosystem. History museum people are out here working hard, go visit them.

Photo of street lamp banner promoting AASLH / NCPH conference

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 16/09/2026

He’s basically guaranteed to hate it

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 15/09/2026

The Juneau-Douglas City Museum in Alaska is an interesting case. It was a small museum (4 FTE) supported by the city, very typical for history museums. Then the Juneau Assembly cut $260,000 from its budget. Director and curator laid off, one other employee left. Statements from former director:

“That’s what we do. We take care of objects and we take care of our history and the past, and make sure that that’s known, so as we go forward, we have a place that’s rooted – that we know where we’ve come from and where we can go,” Weigel said.

And she thinks of the city museum as the community’s museum: “It’s the people’s history; it’s not the City and Borough of Juneau’s history. That’s in there, obviously, but it’s all of our community, and everybody’s stories can be shared there.”

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 13/09/2026

George Washington has more monuments to him than any American but Abraham Lincoln. He doesn't need another now. Nevertheless, here are some photos of George Washington statues from 2020.

Washington statue pulled to the ground, spraypainted with "1619"

Washington statue in Baltimore doused in red paint.

Washington statue in NYC doused in red paint

Washington statue in Chicago with "SLAVE OWNER!" spray painted on its base.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 13/09/2026

To unironically say that we need a Washington statue to show someone who triumphed over oppression is just unbelievable.

Trump said the museum is too focused “on those who have been oppressed” and that there is “no attention paid to those who triumphed over great oppression.” He said Washington would be a good start.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 12/09/2026

My dog is 14 and for several years has refused to engage with any toy but this one. Every other stuffed toy he’s ever had he has chewed holes in and so he could tear its guts out. This one he only licks. I’m pretty sure he thinks of it as his son.

Little white dog with his head resting on a brown and tan stuffed dog only slightly smaller than he is.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 11/09/2026

Glad this ICE agent Halloween costume comes in youth sizes!

“Skull commando” Halloween costume, with tactical vest and skull face covering

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 10/09/2026

Love to see the Post trying to hire replacements for people they fired just a few months ago.

Job listing for an "Arts & Government Reporter" at The Washington Post

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 09/09/2026

Cal Newport is not an AI alarmist. But he is a computer scientist, and the tone of his most recent email is incredibly alarming. "As these companies increase their agents’ power, it’s becoming more like mounting Gatling guns on a pack of horses and then letting them loose in Times Square."

All of this should make you angry.

Like many computer scientists without formal connections to Silicon Valley, I don’t believe that LLM-powered agents, on their own, can become superintelligent and create existential risk, as LLM capabilities are more jagged and limited than the average person reading triumphant OpenAI press releases might realize. But you don’t need superintelligence to create a super amount of harm. The combination of unpredictable, non-normative output from unrestricted LLMs and powerful digital tools will inevitably create issues.

(I previously compared equipping long-horizon agents with hacking tools to strapping a weedwhacker to a dog. As these companies increase their agents’ power, it’s becoming more like mounting Gatling guns on a pack of horses and then letting them loose in Times Square.)

Clearly, action is needed. These companies are acting outside market interest with disregard for the safety of the general public, developing tools they explicitly describe as weapons, likely motivated by the anti-humanistic visions of an unsettling ideology. And now they’re bragging about it.

This is not a state of affairs that can long stand.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 05/09/2026

When you’re SO tired but also you’re hoping something will fall.

Small white dog lying on the kitchen floor with his eyes closed

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 03/09/2026

Not all the cringe 9/11 merch is 25 years old. Some of it just came out!

America250 t-shirt with “From the ashes liberty prevailed” and “FDNY” on it

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 02/09/2026

Great talk last week at The Filson in Louisville! Was an honor to be part of their "Dine & Dialogue" series. More than 100 people came out on a weeknight, and a few dozen hung around for dinner and conversation afterwards. Fun event!

Me speaking with my hands at a lectern at The Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 29/08/2026

Living in the Maryland suburbs rocks

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 28/08/2026

Also got pins of my great uncle Warren’s racing silks. He won the Derby—and then the triple crown—in 1946.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 28/08/2026

The Kentucky Derby Museum opens at 8am, so I got to stop by before I left Louisville. Even got to see horses out on the track training.

Horse running on the track at Churchill Downs

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 27/08/2026

It’s great to be back at the beautiful Baltimore-Washington International Airport.

Exterior of staircase column badly burned, looks like some explosion.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 26/08/2026

Shoutout to Rachel. If you’re looking for a “phenomenal book,“ maybe read mine! bookshop.org/p/books/thy-...

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 24/08/2026

What a deal only $4 to feel like shit all day

7-Eleven deal for a waffle breakfast sandwich, “waffle tots” and an energy drink for $4

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 24/08/2026

Finally added some paint to my basement office. Kind of “industrial chic” by necessity but starting to feel like a place I actually want to be.

Basement office with dark green walls, brown leather chair, bookshelves.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 22/08/2026

Had a great book talk at Riversdale historic house and museum earlier this week. They’re doing really great work there—they managed to get a packed room for a Wednesday lunchtime talk! Continue to be encouraged that people really do want this history.

Me and the staff of Riversdale posing for photo

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 18/08/2026

I’ll be at Riversdale in PG County, MD tomorrow for a lunchtime talk about my book. Hope to see you there if you’re in the area.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 16/08/2026

The economy is so bad that Americans can only afford HALF of a giant lawn skeleton now.

Torso head and arms of a giant plastic skeleton Halloween decoration.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 14/08/2026

After most of the summer off, I'm hitting the road again for a busy season of book events! Come out to learn about Americans' centuries-long struggle to reckon with—and manipulate—George Washington's involvement in slavery.

Graphic promoting fall book events for THY WILL BE DONE by John Garrison Marks. The full list can be found at johngmarks.com

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 14/08/2026

The most Extreme Dad game Dave & Busters has ever offered.

“Perfect pump” game at Dave & Busters, lit up in neon green. You try to pump gas and land at a perfect amount.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 10/08/2026

This was me a year ago (except outdoor dining table not bookshelf) and lemme tell ya it is Step 1 that leads to attempting to build your own furniture.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 02/08/2026

Heading out for a beach vacation, so of course I dragged my kids to Colonial Williamsburg.

Selfie of me in a black hat at Colonial Williamsburg. I have a dumb mustache.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 01/08/2026

Only about a third of Americans agree with this kind of “heritage Americans” bullshit that prioritizes ancestry over literally anything else. Nearly everyone else think being American is about commitment to shared civic ideals. www.nationhoodlab.org/wp-content/u...

Graph showing percentage of Americans that think “American” is defined by commitment to civic ideals vs heritage and ancestry, via Nationhood Lab.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 27/07/2026

I wrote about how the Trump administration's new exhibit in Philadelphia recasts Washington as an antislavery luminary rather than an enslaver.

The new exhibit at the President’s House Site offers a profoundly misleading interpretation of Washington’s history with slavery, denying visitors an opportunity to contemplate the irreconcilable tensions between American slavery and American freedom. Rather than focus on the decades he spent actively enslaving other human beings—including while president in Philadelphia—the exhibit now uses Washington’s private statements questioning slavery and his posthumous emancipation of the people he enslaved to diminish the importance of the institution to his life. These revisions distort our history and deprive Americans from encountering history’s full complexity at the site where it happened.

Whereas once Washington’s antislavery credentials were wielded to bring slavery to an end, today some conservatives highlight Washington’s ostensible opposition to slavery to deemphasize slavery’s foundational importance in American history. Against a growing insistence that slavery has profoundly shaped American society in ways the country has yet to fully reckon with, they now selectively highlight Washington’s purportedly antislavery views to wave slavery away as a momentary aberration in America’s glorious history of freedom.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 26/07/2026

I wrote for @theatlantic.com yesterday about how the new narrow, whitewashed interpretation at the President’s House Site distorts a tactic once used by abolitionists and rejects what most people say they want out of history.

These losses are especially acute in Philadelphia. Nearly 175 years ago, Pillsbury, the abolitionist, lamented that Americans heaped praise on Washington while ignoring the enslaved people who made his life and achievements possible. “No glory has ever covered their names; no honor has ever been paid to their memory,” he said. “No monument commemorates their dismal toil.” The President’s House Site exhibit once corrected that imbalance. Not anymore.

Many Americans see this whitewashed, censored version of the nation’s past for what it is. Time and again, a majority of Americans express their desire to engage with a full and accurate American history. In Philadelphia, the Trump administration has had to use the power of the federal government to ensure they won’t get it.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 25/07/2026

Replacing an exhibit about enslaved people at the site of their enslavement with one focused so much on Washington’s antislavery credentials is fundamentally misleading, and it deprives us of a chance to learn about history’s full depth and complexity.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 25/07/2026

In 1853, abolitionist Parker Pillsbury complained that Americans heaped praise on Washington while ignoring the enslaved people who made his life possible. It took until 2010 to get an exhibit like he described, but now it’s gone, replaced with one that positions Washington as an abolitionist.

“No glory has ever covered their names; no honor has ever been paid to their memory,” he said. “No monument commemorates their dismal toil.” The President’s House Site exhibit once corrected that imbalance. Not anymore.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 24/07/2026

The only 250th anniversary souvenir I cared about, @bencollins.bsky.social

Cover of The Onion 250th anniversary special edition

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 22/07/2026

That number does represent an increase from 10 years ago though. And it held steady from 2017 to 2022 despite a decline in the number of Americans (to fewer than half!) who read at least 1 book. This one via @rbtownsend.bsky.social / Humanities Indicators. www.amacad.org/humanities-i...

In spite of the overall decline in the percentage of American adults reading at least one book each year, their participation in book clubs and reading groups increased (Indicator V-04c). In 2022, approximately 6% of Americans engaged with books in this way, up from 3.5% in 2012. Women were more likely to participate than were men, and the higher a person’s education level the more likely they were to have been part of such a group. Less than 2% of adults with only a high school education participated in a book group, compared to approximately 14% of those with graduate or professional degrees (Indicator V-04d).

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 22/07/2026

In 2022 (the most recent year for which there is data), NEA's Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found 5 percent of Americans participated in book clubs, about the same as 5 years earlier. Obviously doesn't speak to right now though. I guess we'll see if there's a 2027 SPPA...

At roughly 5 percent, meanwhile, the share of adults who participated in book clubs or reading groups in 2022 did not change significantly from five years earlier. In 2022, for the first time, the SPPA asked the nation’s adults whether they had visited a public library: 23 percent reported having done so. Also new to 2022 SPPA were questions about volunteering in general—20 percent of adults did this activity—and participating in community activities, meetings, or events, which also involved 20 percent of adults. Future NEA research will examine the relationship between participating in the arts and some of these other types of cultural and civic activities.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 21/07/2026

America250 has all the essentials for when you drag your propane grill to the beach to cook up some burgers that are significantly wider than a grill spatula and thicker than an ear of corn.

AI generated image of a man grilling at the beach in various America250-branded items. Uncanny AI food.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 21/07/2026

In **LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME** James Loewen said that adding more coverage of slavery without revising the march-of-progress narrative was like more coverage of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff. A great joke in 1995 right after NAFTA was enacted... less so today. Also RIP. (Image from my book)

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 18/07/2026

When I put myself on the waiting list for this game, I was NOT expecting it to be this big or fancy. Thanks, @constitutionctr.bsky.social! Can’t wait to pilot this with my kids, niece, and nephew this weekend.

Box for the board game “CIVIC QUEST” from the National Constitution Center.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 18/07/2026

The SHEAR session getting live streamed yesterday really exposed me. I’ve got a couple years at most before I gotta start buzzing my head.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 18/07/2026

Not sure how my book ended up on the radar of a reviewer for a newspaper in tiny Hood County, TX, but don’t let anyone tell you people don’t want full and complex history.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 18/07/2026

You know you’re doing good history when your 700sf exhibit has 3 separate surveillance cameras and 5 armed Park Police guards.

Shot of Presidents House site in Philadelphia, with large surveillance cameras visible.

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