(As with so much else in our politics.)

Final note for next time: when studying secret student societies of the late 18th century for use on a campus walking tour on revolutionary-era culture, maybe start with the premise that annoying codes are likely to be involved so students aren't surprised.

But the entire situation--the student's inability to believe her own eyes looking at a digitized letter, and AI's confident hallucination that redoubled the self-doubt--made very plain that the emotional contours of this tech in unconfidence and a longing for certainty, are our real demon-barriers.

Likely other people have at some point already decoded this; finding their work easily would have obviously been faster for research than any form of AI usage. Though I do believe in (appropriately cited) use of AI to transcribe documents as a good use case for historians in some circumstances.

That was the beginning. I will note that AI did help in one way; Claude *accurately* hallucinated the salutation, written as "Yzrbdzezr", as "Gentlemen" by context from other documents, which jogged along the process (though I like to think I would have gotten there anyway).

And look, I've no more practice than the average person who once attended middle school at breaking (what turned out to be) simple substitution cyphers. But the word "C U Æ Æ U M [P?] A Æ Z B B Æ" struck me as a pattern likely to be "Massachusetts".

... Claude apologized and replied, sorry, it had realized that it was actually German. Amazing. I was still unsure if something involving Greek letters and the Roman alphabet was going to be the root of the code.

Well, I said, let's see if an LLM can transcribe it letter-for-letter to help us along.

It could not, by my prompts. It hallucinated an English-language letter largely extrapolated from recognizing phi, beta, and kappa. When I replied to ask (snarkily) why it imagined the text was in English...

The student's real problem was a lack of sufficient practice with sources that gave her confidence that if the material were indeed in a language known to her, she would be able to read at least some of it! She did notice that she had no problem reading "Cambridge University" at the top of the page.

She shows up with this text. It's ostensibly a 1782 letter chartering Harvard as the alpha chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in Massachusetts, written by some students here at William & Mary.

It quickly became clear, to me at least, that this letter was not in a recognizable language--it must be a cypher.

A parable about AI in history/higher education.

Yesterday, I had a student come to my office. She'd written, "I just cannot read 18th century cursive." Oh, no, I thought, finally, that young person I'm always reading about who simply *can't* read old sources, has arrived in my life.

My mother clocked out and walked past the parking lot to a public sidewalk to conduct 2-minute conversations as a union rep at her federal agency, to avoid doing political work on the job. She wouldn't sign a petition, while on her lunch break on her phone.

hands off, y'all, I've already locked this one down

You, dare I say it, really understood the assignment

I know it's trite at this point, but I can't get over how much the description and media treatment of these incidents makes it seem like a video game and not the end of actual, real-like-you, adult people's lives

“Authoritarianism is wrong, murder is evil, corruption is awful, the law must be followed, America should not be brought to its knees for Trump’s benefit” - simple principles that somehow we struggle to rally around, because of our paralyzing fear that some silent majority will not approve of them

"one officer smiled for a selfie with her as she cried."

We are fighting for the freedom to have time to build, to create, to love, and to live lives not of just survival, but of fulfillment and joy.

Don't. Print. Lies. In. The. Newspapers.

This is just a slightly politer version of the lies Robin Vos spreads about UW all the time (bsky.app/profile/mcop...). It's ugly. It's not true. Nor are the grants lies true. Frankly, it's all obscene given the authoritarian assault now on 🇺🇸 higher ed.

Fascism can die in all kinds of different ways. Shame, ridicule, failure, regret… it’ll even die if enough people find a new sense of empathy.

We should work so it dies in one of those peaceful ways. The damage will be less, the cleanup, easier.

sometimes I feel grateful not to be doing politics in this man's exactly right manner

I came across this report and found it interesting. Even something I might pursue getting I ballot in my state. Short summary in slides.

www.americanprogress.org/article/the-...

imo, it's also indicative of some very high level discussions on narrative management in the wake of Luigi Mangione's actions not being vilified by a majority of the public.

I think that scared a lot of folks at the top, & they were damned sure it wouldn't be allowed to happen again.

I filed my dissertation 10 years ago! joyeux NY/PhD anniversaire

hairbows, unicorns, and (given the flavor) soda cans and gumball machines; straight cis men are not expected to consume Doritos Cuties. It goes viral because when the hairbows break in the bag they often look like genitals (not a graphic designer, it's just an intuition)