Vigilante Lawyers Expose the Rising Tide of A.I. Slop in Court Filings; The New York Times, November 7, 2025

 Evan Gorelick , The New York Times; Vigilante Lawyers Expose the Rising Tide of A.I. Slop in Court Filings

"Mr. Freund is part of a growing network of lawyers who track down A.I. abuses committed by their peers, collecting the most egregious examples and posting them online. The group hopes that by tracking down the A.I. slop, it can help draw attention to the problem and put an end to it.

While judges and bar associations generally agree that it’s fine for lawyers to use chatbots for research, they must still ensure their filings are accurate.

But as the technology has taken off, so has misuse. Chatbots frequently make things up, and judges are finding more and more fake case law citations, which are then rounded up by the legal vigilantes.

“These cases are damaging the reputation of the bar,” said Stephen Gillers, an ethics professor at New York University School of Law. “Lawyers everywhere should be ashamed of what members of their profession are doing.”...

The problem, though, keeps getting worse.

That’s why Damien Charlotin, a lawyer and researcher in France, started an online database in April to track it.

Initially he found three or four examples a month. Now he often receives that many in a day.

Many lawyers, including Mr. Freund and Mr. Schaefer, have helped him document 509 cases so far. They use legal tools like LexisNexis for notifications on keywords like “artificial intelligence,” “fabricated cases” and “nonexistent cases.”

Some of the filings include fake quotes from real cases, or cite real cases that are irrelevant to their arguments. The legal vigilantes uncover them by finding judges’ opinions scolding lawyers."

AI Has Sent Copyright Laws Into Chaos. What You Need to Know About Your Rights Online; CNET, November 11, 2025

 Katelyn Chedraoui, CNET ; AI Has Sent Copyright Laws Into Chaos. What You Need to Know About Your Rights Online

"You might not think about copyright very often, but we are all copyright owners and authors. In the age of generative AI, copyright has quickly become one of the most important issues in the development and outputs of chatbots, image and video generators...

What does all of this mean for the future?

Copyright owners are in a bit of a holding pattern for now. But beyond the legal and ethical implications, copyright in the age of AI raises important questions about the value of creative work, the cost of innovation and the ways in which we need or ought to have government intervention and protections."

Ready to Go: Joining the fight to defend libraries, workers, and the right to read; American Libraries, November 3, 2025

Dan Montgomery , American Libraries; Ready to Go: Joining the fight to defend libraries, workers, and the right to read

"When the interview committee asked why I was interested in the executive director position at the American Library Association (ALA), I replied, doing my best impression of famed mountaineer George Mallory: “Because it’s the ALA!” I was responding, of course, to my belief in libraries and in the right to read, both of which have been under serious attack. And library workers and advocates who defend reading, books, and unfettered access to knowledge are critical to protecting American democracy. So, to be part of the organization most squarely in the forefront of that cause seemed to me an unmissable opportunity, and a great honor."

‘This is fascist America’: Anish Kapoor may sue after border agents pose by his sculpture; The Guardian, November 12, 2025

Lanre Bakare, The Guardian ; ‘This is fascist America’: Anish Kapoor may sue after border agents pose by his sculpture

"The artist Anish Kapoor is considering taking legal action after border patrol agents posed for a photo in front of his Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago, saying the scene represented “fascist America”...

Kapoor took legal action against the National Rifle Association (NRA) after they used an image of Cloud Gate, which was installed in 2006 and is known locally as “the Bean”, in an advert.

He settled out of court with the NRA in 2018. “It’s a bit more complicated with this,” Kapoor said of the more recent incident, “because they’re a full, if you like, national army unit.”"

OpenAI used song lyrics in violation of copyright laws, German court says; Reuters, November 11, 2025

Jörn Poltz and Friederike Heine, Reuters ; OpenAI used song lyrics in violation of copyright laws, German court says

"OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT violated German copyright laws by reproducing lyrics from songs by best-selling musician Herbert Groenemeyer and others, a court ruled on Tuesday, in a closely watched case against the U.S. firm over its use of lyrics to train its language models.

The regional court in Munich found that the company trained its AI on protected content from nine German songs, including Groenemeyer's hits "Maenner" and "Bochum"."

Trump Ramps Up Pressure on G.O.P. to Thwart Epstein Vote; The New York Times, November 12, 2025

Annie Karni and Devlin Barrett, The New York Times ; Trump Ramps Up Pressure on G.O.P. to Thwart Epstein Vote

[Kip Currier: What and who is in the Epstein files that the Trump administration doesn't want us to see?

Why are Trump 2.0 and the GOP desperate to impede the release of the Epstein files?

What do they fear will be revealed?

What do they think the consequences may be if the American people finally know the contents of these documents?

Does this look like normal behavior if there really is "nothing to see" in these files?

If someone in your own personal or professional life were engaging in these kinds of tactics to hide records would it raise your suspicions?

What can and will be done to attain transparency of these records?]

[Excerpt]

"President Trump and his administration on Wednesday ramped up a pressure campaign on congressional Republicans who are pushing for a full release of the Justice Department’s files about the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, rushing to head off a House vote on the matter."

To Help SNAP Recipients, Bookstores Set Up as Food Banks; The New York Times, November 11, 2025

Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter, The New York Times ; To Help SNAP Recipients, Bookstores Set Up as Food Banks

"With federal funding for food stamps threatened, employees at a bookstore in Lincoln, Neb., went to their boss with an idea: If people were going hungry, maybe they could help.

Workers at the store, Sower Books, soon set up a food collection bin near the front door. Customers and neighbors brought in bags and boxes of groceries; others came to browse for books, saw the bin and returned later with their own donations. Within a week, the storage room was stuffed with close to 2,000 pounds of food.

Nearly out of storage space, the bookstore put out a call for drivers on social media, and earlier this month, customers volunteered their cars and pickup trucks to ferry boxed and canned goods to a food pantry across town. The store’s back room has since filled up again with donations. On Monday, staff members made another run to the pantry, delivering more than 830 pounds of food — enough for roughly 1,700 meals...

Tory Hall, Sower’s owner, said the food drive felt like a natural extension of the store’s role as a community gathering place, where people drop in to do puzzles, have coffee, attend a book club and snuggle with the store’s adoptable rescue cats. Many customers seemed grateful that Sower gave them an easy way to help, Hall said.

“We’re not sitting here sad that everything is burning,” Hall said. “We’re going to find a fire extinguisher.”"

The EU has let US tech giants run riot. Diluting our data law will only entrench their power; The Guardian, November 12, 2025

Johnny Ryan and Georg Riekeles, The Guardian ; The EU has let US tech giants run riot. Diluting our data law will only entrench their power

"Europe is hurtling toward digital vassalage. Under Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, EU laws to tackle tech giants have been either not applied or delayed, for fear of offending Donald Trump. Now leaked documents reveal that the European Commission plans to gut a central part of Europe’s digital rulebook. This will hurt Europe’s innovators and hand the future of Europe’s tech sovereignty to US firms.

Once Europe’s most hyped law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is now on the chopping block. Powerful forces within the European Commission, supported by the German government, hope that deregulation will boost Europe’s tech sector, particularly AI. This is a grave mistake."

You’re a Computer Science Major. Don’t Panic.; The New York Times, November 12, 2025

Mary Shaw and Michael Hilton, The New York Times ; You’re a Computer Science Major. Don’t Panic.

"The future of computer science education is to teach students how to master the indispensable skill of supervision.

Why? Because the speed and efficiency of using A.I. to write code is balanced by the reality that it often gets things wrong. These tools are designed to produce results that look convincing, but may still contain errors. A recent survey showed that over half of professional developers use A.I. tools daily, but only about one-third trust their accuracy. When asked what their greatest frustration is about using A.I. tools, two-thirds of respondents answered, “A.I. solutions that are almost right but not quite.”

There is still a need for humans to play a role in coding — a supervisory one, where programmers oversee the use of A.I. tools, determine if A.I.-generated code does what it is supposed to do and make essential repairs to defective code."

Federal Cuts, Immigration Raids and a Slowing Economy Hit Rural Libraries; The New York Times, November 12, 2025

Anna Griffin

Photographs by Jordan Gale

, The New York Times; Federal Cuts, Immigration Raids and a Slowing Economy Hit Rural Libraries

"“A library is in a lot of ways a kind of civic symbol, a demonstration of a community’s commitment to itself. So what does it mean if that goes away?”"

If Only More Americans Could See This Place; The New York Times, November 11, 2025

Jonathan Darman, The New York Times; If Only More Americans Could See This Place

[Kip Currier: On this Veterans Day -- and every day -- thank you to all those who have served, are serving, and have given their lives or been injured in service to our country and the ideals of peace and freedom for the world.

My Great-Uncle Paul Page Currier (1895-1940) served as a Corporal in the U.S. Army in Europe during World War I. One of my family archival treasures is a framed 1919 newspaper article about Paul in the long-defunct Mercer, Pennsylvania newspaper, The Western Press. The Friday, February 28, 1919 all-caps front-page top-of-the-fold article PAUL CURRIER IN FIERCE FIGHT: CLOTHES RIDDLED WITH SHOTS recounts his time in battle-torn northeastern France via a letter that he wrote to my Great-Grandmother, Nettie Nancy Page Currier (1864-1946). The article's sub-headline reads: 

Thrilling Story of an Encounter With Huns in Argonne Forest --- Only Two of Squad Left to Advance After Shell Struck Them

 

The article incorporates an entire letter (dated January 29, 1919, Villiers, France) from Paul to his mother, shedding light on the harrowing experiences of his unit. (I am working on a separate blog post that will include the full-text of the article.) An especially poignant part of Paul's letter provides a first-hand sense of the trials and tolls of military service, as he describes a November 1918 battle in the Argonne Forest, as a member of the U.S. Army's Eightieth Division, machine gunners, 319th Infantry, Company K:

When I got ready to advance again I only had two men in the squad who could follow me, the rest of the seven were badly wounded or killed. That was the last push I was in, and am glad of it, too, for have seen all I care to see of war.

Thankfully, unlike far too many service members, Paul Currier was able to come home from the war. Regrettably though, his health was impacted by exposure to mustard gas on the battlefront, which led to his untimely death in his mid-40's.

My late father, James Hughes Currier, served as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force and our family had the privilege of being stationed for several years on the now-decommissioned Niagara Falls, New York U.S. Air Force Base.]

[Excerpt]

"Eighty-one years ago this week, men from the advancing U.S. Army stood in a rain-soaked farm field in Margraten, the Netherlands, and established a cemetery. Over the winter and spring that followed, the bloody final months of World War II in Europe transformed that quiet stretch of land into a huge American cemetery, its soil turned over with thousands of fresh graves.

The fields at Margraten would become one of 14 permanent overseas military cemeteries set aside for America’s World War II dead that the U.S. government maintains in perpetuity. These beautiful, haunting places were dedicated by still-grieving Americans in the years that followed the war, remembering its awful costs and praying for a lasting peace.

There are fewer and fewer people still alive who lived through World War II. Margraten and the other cemeteries serve as reminders of the sacrifices that Americans made to free Europe. And, at a time when many Americans want to retreat from our responsibilities to the rest of the world, they offer us a warning.

The American service members buried in the soil of Europe grew up in a country where many respectable politicians claimed America had no business preserving peace on the European continent or promoting freedom in the world. There was no NATO, no United Nations, no American-led global order."

Pitt School of Medicine Student Innovator is Empowering People to Take Charge of Their Healthcare; University of Pittsburgh Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship, October 21, 2025

 KAREN WOOLSTRUM , University of Pittsburgh Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship; Pitt School of Medicine Student Innovator is Empowering People to Take Charge of Their Healthcare

"Inspiration Strikes in the ER

While her research focuses on cystic fibrosis, Li’s entrepreneurial journey began during a rotation in the emergency room. It dawned on her that many patients in the ER could be empowered to take control of their own health monitoring and potentially avoid traumatic and costly ER visits. She quickly devised an idea for an electronic stethoscope that people can use to measure vital signs of the heart and lungs from home.

In collaboration with a friend, Akshaya Anand, a machine-learning graduate student from the University of Maryland, she founded Korion Health and entered the 2022 Randall Family Big Idea Competition hosted by the Big Idea Center, Pitt’s hub for student innovation (part of the OIE).

They were awarded a modest $2,000 4th-place prize, but the value they received from the month-long competition and mentorship extended far beyond that. The experience of crafting her pitch and having her idea validated in the eyes of experienced entrepreneurs gave her the confidence to continue pursuing the device’s commercial potential.

Next up was a pitch competition hosted by the Product Development Managers Association (PDMA) in which she won free first place in the graduate-student category, with the award including consulting hours from local companies such as Bally Design and Lexicon Design that she said “helped me take my half-baked idea and turn it into a prototype to show to investors.”

“This was a high yield for the effort. If it’s something they can hold in their hands it really helps communicate the value proposition,” she added.

From there, things began to snowball. On the same day that she won the UpPrize Social Innovation Competition sponsored by Bank of New York in the racial equity category ($75k), she won the first place prize from the American Heart Association’s EmPOWERED to Serve Business Accelerator ($50k). The resulting publicity attracted the attention of organizers of the Hult Prize Competition, a global student startup competition that receives thousands of applicants each year, who invited her to apply.

“I didn’t know anything about the Hult Prize competition. At first, I thought it was spam,” she admitted.

She had no illusions of advancing to the finals near London, let alone winning the top prize of $1 million: until she did."

The Blue Wave Cometh?; The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times, November 7, 2025

Ezra Klein

Produced by Annie Galvin and Claire Gordon

, The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times; The Blue Wave Cometh?

"Klein: [Laughs.] So this Judith Shklar essay that you’re mentioning — I want to read another part that you had sent me because I think it gets at this conversation we’re having in an interesting way, as well as at something that I am trying to get at when I talk about love or respect or politics as a difficult but worthwhile act.

Virtues are hard to carry out. That is why they are virtues. If they were easy, they wouldn’t be virtues.

So Shklar writes:

Courage is to be prized since it both prevents us from being cruel, as cowards so often are, and fortifies us against fear from threats both physical and moral. This is to be sure not the courage of the armed, but that of their likely victims. This is a liberalism that was born out of the cruelties of the religious civil wars, which forever rendered the claims of Christian charity a rebuke to all religious institutions and parties. If the faith was to survive at all, it would do so privately. The alternative then set and still before us is not one between classical virtue and liberal self-indulgence but between cruel military and moral repression and violence and a self-restraining tolerance that fences in the powerful to protect the freedom and safety of every citizen, old or young, male or female, Black or white. Far from being an amoral free-for-all, liberalism is in fact extremely difficult and constraining. Far too much so for those of us who cannot endure contradiction, complexity, diversity and the risks of freedom.

I do find something very inspiring in that.

Retica: I hoped you would. [Laughs.]

Klein: Not just that liberalism should be about trying to protect against fear, about cruelty, but this idea that it actually takes tremendous courage, that it takes tremendous self-discipline, that it is a part of yourself that you are honing and working on and strengthening — a muscle you are strengthening.

There’s something Obama has been saying as he’s been back on the trail in the last couple of weeks that I found interesting. He said it, too, in his interview with Marc Maron: that for a lot of us, none of what we believed has been hard. We didn’t grow up at a time when it was hard to believe in political freedom, hard to speak our mind. There was no risk to any of it — not really. There have been at other times in our history — Jim Crow, the Red Scare, World War II.

He said: It has not asked that much of us to believe in political freedom, to believe in liberalism. And all of a sudden it does. And right now we’re seeing who is willing to have that asked of them — who’s willing to believe some of these things when it’s hard.

And his point was that a lot of the leaders in civil society, business leaders and so on, have performed very poorly in this era. They’ve bent the knee — particularly compared with the first era of Trumpism.

Now they go give Donald Trump golden gifts in the White House. They are very much willing to pay to play. And not just pay money, but pay out in terms of other people’s freedoms. Pay out in terms of other people’s safety. Pay out in the kind of society that, if you had explained it to them a couple of years ago, they would have told you they did not want to live in that."

Olympians call on Iran to halt execution of boxing champion; The Guardian, November 11, 2025

Sarah Johnson , The Guardian; Olympians call on Iran to halt execution of boxing champion

"More than 20 Olympic medallists, coaches and other international athletes, including the tennis player Martina Navratilova and the swimmer Sharron Davies, have signed a letter calling for a halt to the execution of a boxing champion and coach, who is on death row in Iran.

Amid growing international outrage over Iran’s escalating use of capital punishment as a tool of oppression, the strongly worded letter condemns the Iranian regime’s decision to uphold the death sentence of Mohammad Javad Vafaei Sani.

Vafaei Sani, 30, from Mashhad in north-east Iran, was arrested for taking part in nationwide protests in 2019 and accused of supporting an opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (MEK). He has spent five years in prison, where he has been tortured and kept in solitary confinement."

Newsom Rips New Catholic Vance for Denying Food to Poor; The Daily Beast, November 9, 2025

Katie Francis , The Daily Beast; Newsom Rips New Catholic Vance for Denying Food to Poor

"Gavin Newsom called out Catholic convert JD Vance for failing to uphold one of the major tenets of his adopted faith.

The California governor asked how the vice president could “square the circle” of being Catholic while resisting all efforts to restore Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, reminding the Vance that feeding the poor is “fundamental to advancing God’s will.”

Speaking to Jake Tapper on State of the Union Sunday, lifelong Irish Catholic Newsom, 58, lectured on Vance, 41, on the foundational lessons of their shared faith, suggesting that the latter’s religion and actions didn’t quite add up.

“I mean, Old Testament, New Testament,” Newsom said. “What‘s the fundamental thing that connects every—I mean, from John to Matthew to Proverbs? It‘s this notion of hunger, feeding the poor, the sick, the tired, this... it‘s not an option, it‘s central to advancing God‘s will.”"

Trump shares false claim Obama earned $40m in ‘royalties’ from Obamacare; The Guardian, November 9, 2025

Robert Mackey, The Guardian ; Trump shares false claim Obama earned $40m in ‘royalties’ from Obamacare

"Donald Trump promoted the false claim that Barack Obama has earned $40m in “royalties linked to Obamacare” in a post to his 11 million followers on Truth Social on Sunday.

The fictional claim that the former US president receives royalty payments for the use of his name to refer to the Affordable Care Act, which he signed into law in 2010, has been repeatedly debunked since at least 2017, when it was featured on America’s Last Line of Defense, a satirical website that produces fake news reports designed to generate engagement from outraged conservatives.

The updated version of the claim shared by Trump on Sunday fooled many of his supporters in February, when it was posted on Facebook by America’s Last Line of Defense, and on the Dunning-Kruger-Times, a satirical site run by the same man, Christopher Blair, the Maine-based “godfather of fake news”.

On Sunday morning, Trump posted a screenshot of an earlier post with an image of Obama and the text: “BREAKING: DOGE halted a yearly payment of $2.5 million to Barack Obama for ‘royalties linked to Obamacare.’ He’s been collecting it since 2010, for a total of $40 million in taxpayer dollars.”"

SNAP Benefits: Josh Shapiro’s Rebuke of JD Vance Goes Viral; Newsweek, November 8, 2025

Khaleda Rahman, Newsweek ; SNAP Benefits: Josh Shapiro’s Rebuke of JD Vance Goes Viral

"Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s scathing rebuke of Vice President JD Vance has gone viral on social media.

At a press conference on Friday, Shapiro was asked about Vance, who had called a court order that directed the Trump administration to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for November "absurd."

Shapiro, a Democrat, called Vance a “total phony” who “doesn’t give a damn about all Americans” and had turned his back on the Appalachian communities he once said he represented.

A clip of Shapiro’s comments garnered more than a million views after it was posted on X by the senior digital editor of the liberal Meidas Touch website...

Vance “rose to some prominence by writing a book about growing up in Appalachia, where there’s a whole lot of people who get SNAP," Shapiro said, referring to Vance's 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

"He made millions of dollars on the backs of telling their stories, and then he turned his damn back on those very people who he likes to write about and claim as his own.”

Shapiro also said Vance’s stance runs counter to his Christian faith.

“He claims to be a person of faith. I know my Bible. And my Bible teaches us that we are to love thy neighbor and we are to feed the hungry,” Shapiro said."

Trump Administration Demands States ‘Undo’ Work to Send Full Food Stamps; The New York Times, November 9, 2025

Tony Romm, The New York Times ; Trump Administration Demands States ‘Undo’ Work to Send Full Food Stamps

[Kip Currier: Where are the corporations that can provide at least some of the monies that could contribute to food assistance efforts for people in need, but instead will soon subject us to weeks of obscenely expensive holiday-themed self-congratulatory ads telling us how much they really care about people and all the wonderful charitable things they do for the world?

Where are the American tech billionaires who with a fragment of their wealth could even temporarily fund SNAP benefits for the 40 million Americans who depend upon food aid to survive? At least three of them (Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos) were at the November 8th James Bond-themed 70th birthday party for Kris Jenner hosted by Amazon's Bezos.

The individual and collective silence of American billionaires and companies speaks volumes about their priorities and allegiances.

That the nation with the highest GDP on the planet would subject its food insecure citizens to even one day without food aid is utter madness and indicative of the moral bankruptcy of those who have the most assets and the least to lose by sharing their good fortune with those who are less fortunate.]

[Excerpt]

"The Trump administration told states that they must “immediately undo” any actions to provide full food stamp benefits to low-income families, in a move that added to the chaos and uncertainty surrounding the nation’s largest anti-hunger program during the government shutdown.

The Agriculture Department issued the command late Saturday in a memo, which The New York Times later viewed. That guidance threatened to impose harsh financial penalties on states that did not “comply” quickly with the new federal orders.

The memo surprised, vexed and frustrated many state leaders, and by Sunday, some had begun to explore their legal options to prevent any further disruptions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. But the Trump administration held firm in its refusal to fund food stamps in full, telling a court in a strongly worded filing that states would be “responsible for the consequences” of their actions.

Caught in the middle were the roughly one in eight Americans who depend on monthly federal assistance to purchase groceries — aid that has been imperiled for days in a record-long shutdown. Multiple lawsuits to loosen that money remained unresolved, leaving many families at growing risk of hunger and financial hardship.

Some of the 42 million people enrolled in SNAP began to receive their full benefits on Friday, after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to fully fund the program this month amid the shutdown. New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were among states that raced to release the aid to residents, some of whom had been without nutrition assistance for days."