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Sam Jackson

@sjacks26.myatproto.social
14K followers 381 following 1.3K posts

Researching right-wing extremism in the U.S, conspiracy theories, extremist language, etc. Professing in Albany, NY Black Lives Matter he/him My book about Oath Keepers: bit.ly/2DOUuh7 CV: tinyurl.com/meyy6xpd

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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 9h
I remember a decade-long panic about undergraduates, activists, or Tumblr pages declaring new language rules and denouncing people for violating them.
post from Trump on Truth Social declaring that anyone who uses the term "Artificial Intelligence" is THE ENEMY!
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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 9h
This is great! I think a lot about whether/how to use LLMs to model language in analyzing texts (I have not done so in published work to date). This is a very clear decision tree to guide such evaluation in a purposeful way rather than a reflexive/emotional yes or no.
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Adam Weinstein @adamweinstein.bsky.social · 10h
It's a distinctly American irony that sovcits and militiamen frequently run into more trouble with traffic courts than with ATF agents
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 10h
I will take weak recommendation algorithms over giving hundreds of millions of dollars to people who are bad for democracy though.
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 10h
This is one of the weak points of Tidal imo. Recommendations end up being the same cast of characters with comparatively little new stuff.
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Stephen C. Rea @stevierea.bsky.social · 11h
It was only a matter of time 😞🤬
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jasmine mithani @jazzmyth.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Absolutely horrifying. Fear of sexual violence prevents women candidates from running for office — a gendered burden that impacts representation overall. It is brave for Bernadette Greene-Placentia to share this. (NB Article contains graphic descriptions) www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/congres...
phoenixnewtimes.com
Congressional candidate is raped while repairing her campaign signs
Embarrassed, she initially didn’t want to report attack. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office's investigation is ongoing.
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 06/10/2026
Based on this interview, @nbedera.bsky.social’s book is jumping to the top of my reading stack
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 06/10/2026
Starter Villain by @scalzi.com
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 04/10/2026
People ask whether these guys are true believers or just massively invested in the hype, and at the point where you are trying to lobby *the pope* to say you are creating the machine god, there is no meaningful distinction.
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 03/10/2026
a lot of people into ai want to talk about how it works, but they either mean the stack inside the software or the things it "can do now" that "can't be explained" but ai is a rhetorical technology. the way to understand how it works is to understand how rhetoric works
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Dan Nexon @dhnexon.net · 03/10/2026
I find it depressing that we're arguing over whether or not LLMs qualify as "conscious beings" when countless non-human animals clearly qualify as such and yet we continue to inflict needless pain and cruelty upon them.
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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Also, plenty of effort to launch a revolution by white men, including McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma City and the Bundy Ranch and Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Plus Charlottesville. It’s not a lack of trying. I did a whole podcast about this: longshadowpodcast.com/podcasts/ris...
longshadowpodcast.com
Long Shadow: Rise of the American Far Right
Episode 1, Waco: The Spark, chronicles the 1993 FBI raid on the Branch Davidian compound which solidified a far-right movement.
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Earlier this week, I agreed to interviews with two USA Today journalists. They wrote fantastic articles about the Cornell case that I'm proud to have been a part of. What I did not know is that their employer considers interviews to proprietary and opens up recordings to be used by any journalist.
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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 02/10/2026
oh this is gonna be an interesting read to be clear tho, when rightwingers start screaming "a judge said you can't punish noncitizens who vote illegally?!", no, that's not what a judge said storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
screenshot of the opening of the linked opinion, which reads as follows:

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
ON DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO DISMISS THE INFORMATION

This is an unusual criminal case. It rests upon a forty-year-old federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 611, that prohibits the act of voting in a federal election by a non-U.S. citizen. Until very recently, no federal court has been presented with the following question about that statute: Did Congress have Constitutional authority to enact it? That’s unusual, all by itself.

But this case is even more unusual than that, because the Government’s principal defense of the statute’s constitutionality invokes a single Supreme Court case that is very, very weak. Let me say that a different way. The leading case cited by the Government to uphold the statute is of “minimal precedential value” (that’s not my characterization, it’s Justice Scalia’s; we’ll get to that), and the
application of other binding precedent shows that the Government’s leading case simply does not control this one. So why does the Government lead with such a weak hand? Because it’s the best
hand it can play. And why is that? Because the text, structure, and original public meaning of the Constitution show that *Congress does not have the constitutional power to enact this statute.* screenshot of the bottom of p. 29 and top of p.30 of the linked opinion, which reads as follows, with internal citations omitted:

The Court does not set aside the application of a statute passed by Congress lightly, so let’s end by underscoring what this unusual case does *not* decide or even touch upon:

1. Can the State of Florida prohibit and punish the exact conduct Defendant Cox allegedly engaged in here? This has already been decided elsewhere and is not addressed here: Florida can and does.

2. Does the federal government have the power to remove the Defendant from the United States for engaging in the exact conduct alleged here? The undersigned must wait for a live case, but
a different federal statute, embedded in Title 8, states that “[a]ny alien who has voted in violation of any Federal, State, or local constitutional provision, statute, ordinance, or regulation is inadmissible.” That statute on its face rests on Congress’s immigration power and does not depend upon setting a federal voting qualification. This case doesn’t address the Government’s power to remove a non-U.S. citizen who engages in the same conduct.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Suuuuper interesting, I was not tracking this. The judge found the law criminalizing noncitizen voting is a voter qualification statute, and therefore outside of Congress’s power. Surprisingly, this is an issue of first impression! Decision is here: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
The best reading of the actual statute that underpins this criminal case yields an inescapable
conclusion: 18 U.S.C. S 611 is a voter qualification statute, and the Constitution does not authorize
Congress to legislate voter qualifications for federal elections. Except for very specific constitutional
provisions (that cannot support this statute; we will go through them, Congress has no power to say
who can vote or who cannot vote in federal elections-that foundational power is reserved for the States,
and limits Congress.
Some legal principles are so fundamental that they form American constitutional bedrock, and
this case reveals a big one: When you're prosecuted based on a law that Congress did not have the
authority to pass, the prosecution cannot stand. That principle in federal law harkens back to cases
like Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 180 (1803), and United States v. Hudson, 11 U.S. 32, 34 (1812), and
has had explicit and unbroken support in criminal cases since Ex Parte Siebold, 100 U.S. 371, 376-77
(1879) ("An unconstitutional law is void, and is as no law. An offence created by it is not a crime. A
conviction under it is not merely erroneous, but is illegal and void, and cannot be a legal cause of
imprisonment."). The principle is so fundamental that it even predates our constitutional republic; it
lies at the very heart of our constitutional heritage. See, e.g., Bayard v. Singleton, 1 N.C. 5, 9-10 (1787) (striking down a legislative act as unconstitutional and holding that a court cannot enforce an
unconstitutional law in any type of proceeding). This principle acts as a shield for every person facing
criminal prosecution in the United States, citizen and non-citizen alike. That shield protects the
Defendant here, and none of the Government's arguments break through it.
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Dustin A. Chacón @lingdustin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:
Screenshot of a Tweet from Pope Leo XIV. It reads: 

"In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgen to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 02/10/2026
What does "internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease" even fucking mean? And no, "I don’t know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment" doesn't make that sentence better.
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 02/10/2026
Like, this simply isn't true! You don't find evidence of introspection, you see a machine generating output that you as a human inject meaning into.
“I will be honest: We keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling,” he said. “We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of introspection. We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease. I don’t know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment.”
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 02/10/2026
It took me three tries to read this article. Almost everything Olah says about Anthropic's model is PR speak. And it's not even smart PR speak, it's just "wow I don't understand it so it must be human like!"
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Jordan @jordanpfot.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Omg Kate Garraway gagged her with that question
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 01/10/2026
a large number of you seem to hold the bizarre mystical woo woo idea that neural networks are identical to brains
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Elizabeth Picciuto @epicciuto.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
At no point while reading this sentence did I correctly predict what was coming next.
Twitter screenshot: New: Kyrsten Sinema's ex-boyfriend and former bodyguard said he threw her paintings into her swimming pool in part because he felt disillusioned by her relationship with a major
U.S. Artificial Intelligence software developer amid the war in Gaza
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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 01/10/2026
Man, imagine you're minding your own business, getting kind of drunk with your friends at a picturesque brewery in Maine, when suddenly John Roberts walks by and you get to start heckling him. Must have felt incredible. That's the dream. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/u...
The chief justice used to preside over a Supreme Court whose members were afforded more privacy and freedom than many other public officials. Once, years ago, Mr. Lipson and the chief justice found themselves up the peninsula from Port Clyde without a car, Mr. Lipson recalled in an interview. So he stuck out his thumb by the side of the road and a pickup truck pulled over. He and the nation’s top jurist hopped in the back and hitchhiked back to town.

Now, Mr. Lipson said, he is cautious about introducing his friend to strangers. This year, on an outing to nearby Monhegan Island, people recognized the chief justice as he walked by a brewery and started to chant: You should be ashamed.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
New from @timnitgebru.blacksky.app and me: "It is high time for us to regulate usage of systems sold as “AI”, not because they are magical machines, but because they are error-prone products that shouldn’t be used in high stakes scenarios." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Forget ‘superintelligence’: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month | Timnit Gebru and Emily M Bender
The risks of AI aren’t what we think they are, as a recent security incident between China and the United States reveals
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Nathalie Maréchal, PhD @nathaliemarechal.net · 01/10/2026
I absolutely know who needs to hear this, though I won’t name names. Progressive orgs need to stop pretending that “AGI” and “x-risk” are ideas to take seriously. No one is building a computer god that could go rogue and turn us into paper clips.
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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
We don’t spend enough time talking about just how WEIRD all these people are. This is just an incredibly weird and insecure thing to say. Imagine any other SecDef ever being this weird and insecure?!
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 30/09/2026
This novel sent me down a bunch of fun rabbit holes. Our Lady of Medjugorje was one of the funnest.
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 30/09/2026
I’m part of @thecoalition.bsky.social, which probably tells you what *my* answer to that question is.
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 30/09/2026
At TASM this year, I heard some presentations that had me thinking about a big question: As researchers of online harms, what should our relationship be with industry when industry isn’t a good faith partner?
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Audrey Gagnon @audreygagnon.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Do you research online extremism at a university in Australia, NZ, UK, US, Canada or Ireland? Consider taking this survey which compare ethics review boards' and researcher perception and understanding of the risk of online extremism research. For more info: soton.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
soton.eu.qualtrics.com
Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management
The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.
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Fr Chase 🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁 @kalanthropos.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
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Razzball @razzball.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
How it started/how it’s going
Trevor Lee
@VoteTrevorLee
Thanks @nickshirleyy for hoodie.
We're cleaning up the fraud in UtahBREAKING: Utah state Rep. Trevor Lee has been charged with mortgage and communications fraud ksl.com/article/
516296... #utpol @KSLcom @KSL5TV
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Noémie Bouhana @noemiebouhana.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
You don't say.
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 28/09/2026
I'm gonna have to read it again so I can understand the dystopia we're living in
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 28/09/2026
Then it asked if I was still there, said it would connect me to a person, and hung up on me.
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 28/09/2026
When I twigged it was a chatbot, I started saying "talk to a person." It tried to talk me out of talking to a person....
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 28/09/2026
But there was silence for like 5 seconds. The computer decided to start making ambient noise, but not to start the voice.
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 28/09/2026
Trying to make a service appt for my car. Now the chatbot not only has vocal fry, they put background ambient noise in to make it more pseudo-real. Not like calming ambient noise, ambient noise like what you would hear if you were talking to someone in a busy showroom.
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 28/09/2026
I HATE AI
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Dr Katie Twomey @k2mey.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026
This is quite cool. My university is the first organisation in the world to force Microsoft to allow us to turn off copilot summaries in Word 365, after a backlash against it from staff (including, very vocally, me). That cannot have been easy for our heroic IT people so hats very much off to them!
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Alex Dukalskis @alexdukalskis.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
My department - @ucdpolitics.bsky.social - is hiring two PERMANENT posts in any area of politics, international relations, theory, or development studies. Please apply if you are on the academic job market, and if you're not, please do us a solid & spread the word! Deadline NOV 9.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Also, all this “frontier AI” nomenclature is so laughably colonialist that it has to be on purpose. 🙄
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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 27/09/2026
Someday, when I am all grown up, I will remember to put tags on my posts. #booksky #fiction #thriller
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Keith Ng @keithng.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Me, setting the blender to MAX with the lid off: "technology is truly advancing beyond our control"
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G. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 25/09/2026
Every day we get closer to this:
Cartoon by the human artist Twonks, showing George Jetson vacuuming the floor while Rosie the robot paints a picture
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G. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 25/09/2026
I was promised robots that would tackle the dangerous and physically demanding work so that humans could be freed up to make MORE art. Where the hell is THAT future
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Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
JUST IN: A federal judge (Trump-appointed Stephanie Gallagher) has held the Trump administration in contempt for deporting a man to El Salvador in violation of three court orders. She's ordering the government to return him. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 25/09/2026
And so many true believers!
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