Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 16/10/2026I was at UTK during the 2008 presidential elections. My conservative friends were *very* excited to get to say "No 'Bama (Alabama) No 'Bama (Obama)" on gameday. 110 1
Reposted by Sam Jacksonrahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 16/10/2026I guess it's as good a time as any to announce the new moderation list I have: "Silence, robot", for bots, LLMs, and agents that speak to you without all parties who will receive the notification having solicited the speech: bsky.app/profile/raha... 13298125 298
Reposted by Sam JacksonAndy Carvin @acarv.in · 16/10/2026I'm sorry, but that's not flying - that's controlled landing without crashing, like a fluttering chicken. 172 7
Reposted by Sam JacksonTom Joscelyn @tomjoscelyn.bsky.social · 16/10/2026In early 2025, I assumed the Trump regime would delete the Department of Justice’s press releases and other statements related to more than 1,000 Jan. 6 cases. So I downloaded them. We’ve now made them available to the public with a search tool. They can’t erase history. jan6memoryproject.orgjan6memoryproject.orgThe January 6 Memory ProjectA public archive of Department of Justice news releases and related court filings concerning prosecutions from the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. 13767302532 6.7K
Reposted by Sam JacksonTed McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 16/10/2026I’m sorry to have to be the bad guy here but we need to recognize that we live in a compressed air thrusters world now. If you’re not finding ways to teach the critical use of compressed air thrusters in your classroom, you’re setting your students up to fail when you could be setting them up to fly 1314080800 4.1K
Reposted by Sam JacksonJ.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 15/10/2026well then i can see absolutely nothing here that would suggest a possible downside 0162 16
Reposted by Sam JacksonWagatwe Wanjuki @wagatwe.bsky.social · 15/10/2026can't take "LLMs are people" discourse seriously when we haven't even convinced everyone that all people are people. 38134203858 13.4K
Reposted by Sam JacksonMatt Thiessen @mattthiessen.bsky.social · 15/10/2026Dear god, it's conscious! 1639388 393
Reposted by Sam JacksonAparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 15/10/2026its not even 10 and I need a stiff drink 691990213 2K
Reposted by Sam JacksonAndrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 15/10/2026some deranged lunatic is going to storm an elementary school with an ar15 looking for the schools surgical center and the media is going to pretend we have no idea where they got that idea from 456109622605 11K
Reposted by Sam JacksonG. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 14/10/2026We're doing a thing! And it's free! 316745 167
Reposted by Sam JacksonHakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · 14/10/2026Apropos of nothing, let me say this: Questioning the normative assumptions that motivate a focus on something like polarization IS NOT an anti-intellectual project. Pretending that one’s arguments or perspectives are free of normative commitments is the unserious, anti-intellectual make-believe. 2538 53
Reposted by Sam JacksonJohn Horgan @johnhorgan.bsky.social · 13/10/2026Your reminder that @jmberger.com's stupendous new novel The Pope's Hitman drops two weeks from today. Do yourself a favor and order/read the book before the Hollywood adaptation comes out. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/836202...penguinrandomhouse.comThe Pope's Hitman by J.M. Berger: 9798892428514 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: BooksJohn Wick meets Conclave in this fast-paced international thriller about a priest with a deadly secret who must stop a plot to kill the Pope on Christmas Eve. Everybody loves Father Francis Loyola, t... 295 9
Reposted by Sam JacksonLiz Fong-Jones (方禮真) @lizthegrey.com · 13/10/2026cpu is dogshit slow for inference, and self-replicating worms already exist (you may know them as rVPNs or botnets) alas they're just repackaging an existing problem as "you should be afraid of everyone's ai except ours" 24612151 612
Reposted by Sam JacksonAnna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social · 13/10/2026NEW: I wrote about why so many people wanted to believe that Ukrainian airstrikes on a Russian data center reduced troll and bot activity online, even though it's almost certainly not true. Featuring @noupside.bsky.social: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...motherjones.comDrone strikes didn't take out a Russian bot farm, but we were primed to believe ItA viral rumor illustrates people’s hunger to make sense of the division we see online. 481546661 1.5K
Reposted by Sam JacksonKate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 13/10/2026Y’all, I hate to rain on the dead bot parade, but the Yandex data center destruction doesn’t seem to have significantly impacted social media bots. I made temporal graphs of X posts about AfD around the time of the attack and there’s no sign of a sudden dip or residual impact on that conversation. 15345231175 4.5K
Reposted by Sam JacksonLily Mason @lilymasonphd.bsky.social · 13/10/2026Edsall wrote an article on my recent article. I do think it’s important to point out here that Sean Westwood has been attacking my work since 2021, regardless of topic. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/13/o...nytimes.comOpinion | What if Political Polarization Is Not the Disease but the Cure? (Gift Article)A debate in the rarefied atmosphere of elite academia is virtually certain to have real-world consequences. 129819 98
Reposted by Sam JacksonRadley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 13/10/2026This is the funniest thing I've seen in a week. 835363851 5.4K
Reposted by Sam JacksonG. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 12/10/2026A solution in search of a problem is not progress. It's rent-seeking. 730531 305
Reposted by Sam JacksonAlondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 12/10/2026Reupping: The ST&SV Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study invites chapter proposals for a volume exploring the relationships between digital technologies, especially AI, and the artifacts, structures and power dynamics of the global political economy. Abstracts due 11/1 www.ias.edu/stsv-lab/cfp... 03125 31
Reposted by Sam JacksonJoseph Menn @joemenn.bsky.social · 11/10/2026No, bombing Yandex has not impacted automated Russian trolling operations in the U.S. 581414486 1.4K
Reposted by Sam JacksonMicah @rincewind.run · 10/10/2026if your agents are going to commit crimes, you are legally responsible if you cannot figure out how to prevent your agents from doing crimes, you’re going to have to choose between releasing them and protecting yourself from criminal liability imo this would do more for “ai safety” than a sex cult 542771545 2.8K
Reposted by Sam JacksonDon Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 09/10/2026My man ended USAID, condemning millions to death 594506895 4.5K
Reposted by Sam JacksonAaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Your regular reminder that the job of an ICE officer is dramatically safer than the job of a regular cop, such that not a single ICE deportation officer has been killed in the line of duty since 1949 (and that was actually a stabbing inside an INS jail in Hawaii, not street enforcement). 451509458 1.5K
Reposted by Sam JacksonEmily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/10/20262. But Anthropic researchers say they see patterns that suggest that Claude can. The employees at Anthropic are telling themselves stories based on the words they input into the software and the words that come back out. >> 131295154 1.3K
Reposted by Sam JacksonJacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 08/10/2026I remember a decade-long panic about undergraduates, activists, or Tumblr pages declaring new language rules and denouncing people for violating them. 571082196 1.1K
Reposted by Sam JacksonJ.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 08/10/2026This 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. 0175 17
Reposted by Sam JacksonAdam Weinstein @adamweinstein.bsky.social · 08/10/2026It's a distinctly American irony that sovcits and militiamen frequently run into more trouble with traffic courts than with ATF agents 510519 105
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 08/10/2026I will take weak recommendation algorithms over giving hundreds of millions of dollars to people who are bad for democracy though. 020 2
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 08/10/2026This is one of the weak points of Tidal imo. Recommendations end up being the same cast of characters with comparatively little new stuff. 120 2
Reposted by Sam JacksonStephen C. Rea @stevierea.bsky.social · 08/10/2026It was only a matter of time 😞🤬 0106 10
Reposted by Sam Jacksonjasmine mithani @jazzmyth.bsky.social · 07/10/2026Absolutely 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.comCongressional candidate is raped while repairing her campaign signsEmbarrassed, she initially didn’t want to report attack. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office's investigation is ongoing. 311047 110
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 06/10/2026Based on this interview, @nbedera.bsky.social’s book is jumping to the top of my reading stack 0113 11
Reposted by Sam JacksonHypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 04/10/2026People 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. 28815 88
Reposted by Sam JacksonAnthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 03/10/2026a 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 415235 152
Reposted by Sam JacksonDan Nexon @dhnexon.net · 03/10/2026I 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. 2467 46
Reposted by Sam JacksonGarrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Also, 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.comLong Shadow: Rise of the American Far RightEpisode 1, Waco: The Spark, chronicles the 1993 FBI raid on the Branch Davidian compound which solidified a far-right movement. 1017554 175
Reposted by Sam JacksonNicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Earlier 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. 6148401434 4.8K
Reposted by Sam JacksonBarred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 02/10/2026oh 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... 615938 159
Reposted by Sam JacksonAaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Suuuuper 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... 341023309 1K
Reposted by Sam JacksonDustin A. Chacón @lingdustin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this: 262185654909 18.6K
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 02/10/2026What 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. 010 1
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 02/10/2026Like, 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. 150 5
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 02/10/2026It 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!" 142 4
Reposted by Sam JacksonJordan @jordanpfot.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Omg Kate Garraway gagged her with that question 1322168415 2.2K