Also understand the resistance to AI, there is plenty of slop out there, but FoundersChat by @mark-l-thompson.bsky.social is not! It is based on the original Founders Online sources. It is an academic tool for education and cites original sources. Our university made it available for free, pro bono!

I literally walked into the Code Cafe at 4:00 on a Thursday afternoon at the end of February, talked to DCC data steward Bjorn Bakker for half an hour (turns out, he's a big Hamilton fan!), and within weeks Timo and I were working to bring this project to light. And here it is!

timovaneldijk.bsky.social@timovaneldijk.bsky.social · 2mo ago

A Code Cafe (sign up for today: edu.nl/raw4y) success story: very happy to have been part of this project! Bringing the Founding Fathers back to life with AI, all hosted on @rug.nl infrastructure! @ug-dcc.bsky.social @mark-l-thompson.bsky.social @facultyofartsug.bsky.social @citrug.bsky.social

Many thanks to CIT & Timo van Eldijk @timovaneldijk.bsky.social of the Digital Competence Centre @ug-dcc.bsky.social , who was able to turn concept into action within the space of only a few months: a real doorzetter.

Center for Information Technology, University of Groningen@citrug.bsky.social · 2mo ago

📣 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝟰 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝘀𝗸 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮'𝘀 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗙𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀! 🇺🇸 Check out 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗖𝗵𝗮𝘁: a tool that brings to life the sources relating to the collected papers of seven US Founders. Thanks to the Code Café of @ug-dcc.bsky.social! ℹ️ edu.nl/jwdpq #AI #code #researchsupport

Coming soon: FoundersChat, an app I've built that allows you to make queries to the entire Founders Online corpus. Ask big questions like "what is the relationship between liberty and slavery?" or find out what Alexander Hamilton really thought about Aaron Burr ... & then check the provided sources.

"Freedom is your ticket to sensational events. Gain access to unique Freedom experiences that take you way beyond cashbacking." -- my credit card, getting into the Revolutionary Spirit of 2026

Hard to believe it, but next week is the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. It became a named storm on the 24th and hit Louisiana on the morning of the 29th. It was really quick. www.weather.gov/lix/katrina_....

cc: University of Groningen

Dr. Rachel Schine@rachelschine.bsky.social · 12mo ago

When unis say “we won’t fire you humanities professors, we’ll just take your majors away and merge your department with two others and rename it all,” what they’re doing is they’re making humanities expertise increasingly invisible and inaccessible…

A great accompaniment to Robin Blackburn's "An Unfinished Revolution," too ... !

Andrew Hartman@andrewhartman.bsky.social · last yr.

On the occasion of Karl Marx's birthday, I will send a free, signed copy of my new book, "Karl Marx in America," to a randomly selected person. To be entered in the drawing, simply repost. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Made it into the reference room collection at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I guess my job is done

James Osterberg aka Iggy Pop = 78 🎂

In three years you could get a BA (or one for an MA) from a top-rated American Studies program at a four-century-old Dutch university in the compact, safe international city of Groningen. (Just saying) www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/u...

Leaving the U.S. for College or Grad School? Tell Us More.

The New York Times is looking to hear from students who are considering attending schools abroad because of Trump administration policies.

nytimes.com

Hello BlueSky! The #ITPS has been a quiet on social media for a while as we focused our efforts on our newsletter, Page of Reason, and other projects. We’re excited to reconnect here, so please look out for some updates over the next few weeks, and we’d be grateful if you’d share the word too!

In 2004 I wrote a review of the late geographer Carville Earle's "The American Way." According to his cyclical theory of US history, we're now in the depths of an era of "Bad Times." But that also means that the age of "Third Democracy" & "Good Times" are on their way! www.h-net.org/reviews/show...

@theslowridepod.bsky.social Little Guy's doppelgänger from the New Zealand republic of Whangamōmona www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Hey y'all @lsupress.bsky.social -- Mark Zuckerberg owes us some $ www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

theatlantic.com

Can't wait to see my new royalty checks come in after this score. I can stop grading papers forever💰💰💰

Paul Cohen@paulecohen.bsky.social · last yr.

where do I sign up to be part of the class action suit against Meta on behalf of authors whose work has been ripped off to train their AI? www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

"Reject all"

is on strike in Groningen.🚩 No insightful historical analyses will be forthcoming today

Following this account is like picking up a penny off the sidewalk

"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” - MLK, "Beyond Vietnam," quoted in Tim Jelfs, _The Argument about Things in the 1980s_

News from the Starry Messenger - 415 years after Galileo peered through his telescope on a January night & realized the pinpricks of light near Jupiter were moons, not stars, MT aimed his telescope thru his bedroom window and observed Io, Europa, Callisto & Jupiter's twin orange stripes! So rad.

is proud to say that in a day and a half he was able to figure out how to use the consoles in Claude & Gemini & Google Colab to write a Python script that could download all of Benjamin Franklin's writings from Founders Online and then save them as a nice, fat 12.6 MB CSV file in his Google Drive.

This is a cool journal - check it out

The New American Antiquarian@naajournal.bsky.social · 2y ago

ICYMI, our third issue was published this fall! Download the full issue or individual articles here: naajournal.org/issues/

Introducing Early American HistoriChat, a chatbot trained on the EvansTCP corpus, ~5,000 American printed texts from 1640 to 1800: eahc.mhvdr.nl Inspired by the work of @dorialexander.bsky.social; designed & built by @michielree.bsky.social in collaboration with MLT & the H-GEAR project

Federico Pianzola@fpianz.eurosky.social · 2y ago

Would you like to chat with Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and other Early American authors? Mark Thompson and Michiel van der Ree of the University of Groningen created Early American Historichat eahc.mhvdr.nl #DigitalHumanites #DigitalHistory @dorialexander.bsky.social @tedunderwood.me

Edmund Callis Berkeley, GIANT BRAINS OR MACHINES THAT THINK (1949).