Westlaw is making itself harder to search in because they want you to use their genAI tools to do everything. HeinOnline is adding new search operators based on user feedback. Be like HeinOnline.

HeinOnline@heinonline.bsky.social · last wk.

Once is a mention. Five times? Now we might be onto something. HeinOnline’s new AT LEAST operator lets you set a minimum number of times a word or phrase must appear in a document, helping you surface results where your topic has a stronger presence. See how it works: https://ow.ly/NMta50ZNsFc

I am applying logic to an illogical situation, but wouldn't it make more sense to just...donate a billion dollars? Or start a non-profit or something? Why are people secretly fighting, possibly to the death, in Antarctica to become philanthropists???

Bob McName@bobmcname.bsky.social · 3w ago

And finally, for the true sickos, the entire letter.

My hometown is in Southern IL. The high school mascot is the Midgets. The only entertainment in SoIL is high school football, and lord help you if you suggest your literal slur of a mascot is offensive. Also Centralia is the Orphans. I vaguely remember some other town being pretzels or pickles(?)

Rootin' Tuteankhamun@tenderbeefsteak.bsky.social · 3w ago

My SIL is teaching remotely at a school in southern Illinois and I was not ready to learn about the mascot

WHAT IS HAPPENING

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 4w ago

Actor Tim Curry has died at 80, TMZ reports

Is Outlook on glue

Another day, another database pushing genAI down my throat while simultaneously making itself harder to use. (I know you can click on the menu to get to the links and can set shortcuts further down, but I shouldn't have to do either of those things.)

Large Frances is the best character to ever exist and this book is absolutely fantastic!

Kingfisher & Wombat@tkingfisher.com · last mo.

Oh crap! Uh! I wrote this thing! It comes out next week! It has romance and giant pillbug scholars! us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

They filmed a scene of Chicago Fire a block away from my house and I had to walk through the crew setup area to get to the bus. Once I saw a bunch of vintage-looking cop cars around the Loop, and it took me WAY too long to notice they all said "Gotham PD" on the side

Kevin M. Kruse@kevinmkruse.bsky.social · last mo.

They filmed a Law & Order scene in our old neighborhood in Jersey City and we were excited until the cops kept calling it “the ghetto” And my childhood Catholic Church in Nashville was used by Altman as a Baptist Church, which was hilarious given the huge stained glass windows of saints

Not only did they create a web player, but they apparently kept a record of the time I emailed them asking about it and then reached out to me a week or so before the web player launched!

Libro.fm@libro.fm · 2mo ago

It's cool being an employee-owned audiobook company driven by bookseller and customer feedback, vs. greed 🙃 You say, "Give us a corgi app icon!" and we'll do it. "We need a web player!" Well, it's yours. "Annual plan! Annual plan!" Done and DONE.

Staff were also part of this cut (I understand that laying off tenured faculty is bigger news, but we lost a LOT of people) leiterreports.com/2026/07/29/i...

Illinois Institute of Technology declares “financial exigency” and begins firing faculty, including tenured faculty

Up to one-third of the faculty may be terminated, although in the law school, Chicago-Kent, it appears the number is lower (maybe one-fifth by some accounts). If readers have more details, please e…

leiterreports.com

My sister is a soccer coach at a community college. I finally figured out what offsides is about a month ago. I think we can all imagine how well that would go. And that is so much lower stakes than if she were a SENATOR

Bethany Albertson@albertsonb2.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Thought experiment- if you were suddenly appointed to do your sibling’s job, how badly would you suck at it?

Inspired by @kathryntewson.bsky.social: I am testing NYAYAM. Scenario: I quit working at Target, then the next week went in to pick something up from the pharmacy and they called the police on me for trespassing (if it asks, I will been cagey as to whether I was causing a ruckus) 1/

I set up our microfilm reader to run through a Windows 2000 emulator for this same reason

J.R. Raith@jrronimo.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Days since I've revived a scientific instrument by deploying a Windows XP computer and figuring out the configuration, thus saving the group over $4,000: 0

Last semester our Westlaw rep very confidently told students that CoCounsel doesn't hallucinate, which I found out when giving a research presentation later in the semester (It does in fact hallucinate and also misstates/mischaracterizes case law frequently, which I have proof of!)

Mrs. Detective Pikajew, Esq.@clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social · 6mo ago

Notably, commenters elsewhere are confirming that Westlaw reps say this can’t happen with CoCounsel. Guy probably believed his reps, who probably hadn’t previously flat-out lied to him!

I got Wolf Worm early thanks to @libro.fm and yes, there are botflies, but also, it's a damn good book

Kingfisher & Wombat@tkingfisher.com · 6mo ago

The early responses to Wolf Worm are hatching! Highlights include “What is wrong with you?!?” “WHY?!” and “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, KINGFISHER!”

Have I ever attached buttons to anything before? No. Did I look up how to do it correctly? Also no.

I’m getting a sleep study done, and there is a painting of Sleeping Beauty in my room?? I am here for insomnia??? And a lot of people come here for narcolepsy????

I graduated high school in 2012. There was an implication that because I was "only" good at humanities stuff, I was therefore actually not smart at all. People who were good at math and science but not good at humanities stuff were seen as inherently smarter, even though it should've evened out imo.

Faine Greenwood@faineg.com · 7mo ago

Those who weren’t resigned to the Math Idiot Garbage Bin as kids may not grasp how much “if you’re bad at math, you’ll die in a ditch and all will be better off for it” sentiment was floating around in the 90s and 2000s, but it sure felt real to me. (my parents are great! It didn’t come from them!)

I read "Radium Girls" for the first time a couple of years ago and couldn't help but notice that a lot of the language used in promoting radium is now being used in promoting genAI

Nick Pettigrew@nick-pettigrew.bsky.social · 8mo ago

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

My high school mascot is, horrifically, the Midgets. (I wish I was kidding. I'm not. It's the Freeburg Midgets. Google it.) I cannot IMAGINE what genAI would do with that.

madeline odent@oldenoughtosay.com · 8mo ago

My old high school just posted a GenAI image on Facebook like “we’re jumping on the AI caricature trend, here’s our mascot perfectly showing our school spirit!” And right next to the mascot is a white football player holding the decapitated head of a Black football player

This is genuinely what most sleep doctors sound like: "have you ever tried removing the gong from your room??" as if you never thought of doing so before

H-O-T-T-O-D-D!@klookloo.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Subscribing to the print edition of The Onion has literally helped keep me sane

A few studies have shown Gemini to be the most hallucination-prone genAI, but I'm sure this will be fine! (also, I do in fact think that the DOT should be crafting as perfect a rule as possible? And that an agency rule requires expertise and isn't an email that can be done in a few minutes??)

ProPublica@propublica.org · 8mo ago

NEW: The Transportation Department, which oversees the safety of airplanes, cars and pipelines, plans to use Google Gemini to draft new regulations. “We don’t need the perfect rule,” said DOT’s top lawyer. “We want good enough.” By @jessecoburn.bsky.social

the posts from Forbes that most often show up in my feed are ones with clickbait titles that are about MASSIVE MICROSOFT PROBLEMS THAT WILL MAKE YOUR COMPUTER EXPLODE IF YOU DON'T FIX IT and then it turns out to 1) be paywalled, and 2) not actually be a problem, there's just a software update

Forbes@forbes.com · 8mo ago

Microsoft Confirms Emergency Update For Millions Of Outlook Users

All proceeds from this pattern go to Minnesotans impacted by ICE (have I ever knitted a hat? No! But I started with sweaters, so hopefully I can figure out a hat) www.ravelry.com/patterns/lib...

Melt the ICE Hat pattern by YarnCultMN

In the 1940’s, Norwegians made and wore red pointed hats with a tassel as a form of visual protest against Nazi occupation of their country. Within two years, the Nazis made these protest hats illegal...

ravelry.com

My best friend lives in Lewiston. She's a special ed teacher at a school with a relatively high number of immigrant/refugee students. She's already seen changes among the students and their parents, and she is terrified that one of her kids is going to get hurt.

Progressive News Service@prognews.bsky.social · 8mo ago

ICE descends on Maine. "[Gov. Janet] Mills said, ‘Look, Maine knows what good law enforcement looks like because our law enforcement are held to high professional standards.... they don’t wear a mask..., and they don’t arrest people in order to fill a quota.’” abcnews.go.com/US/dhs-launc...

No one from my hometown has the right to say "Chicago politicians are crooks" to me anymore (Also I went to high school with his kids. Nothing about this situation surprises me.) www.bnd.com/news/local/a...

Freeburg mayor accepts plea deal on St. Clair County hunting violations

His hunting party had been part of an Illinois Conservation Police investigation that also included a former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher.

bnd.com

Guess where my best friend lives? 🫠

Marisa Kabas@marisakabas.bsky.social · 8mo ago

BREAKING — Mayor of Lewiston, Maine posts on FB that ICE is coming to the city imminently. This confirms my reporting the agency is planning a surge in the city and state generally. Lewiston is home to a large Somali-American population, which made up 4.6% of the population as of the 2020 census.

It’s not about drugs. If it was, Trump wouldn’t have pardoned one of the largest narco traffickers in the world last month. It’s about oil and regime change. And they need a trial now to pretend that it isn’t. Especially to distract from his sinking under Epstein and skyrocketing healthcare costs.

People are going to try and lure you into debates about whether Maduro was a good guy or not and the thing is, it doesn’t matter for the purposes of discussing whether violent kidnappings and extrajudicial murders by the US government are ok. No, they aren’t! End of convo.