Patchen Mortimer

It's not every day The Onion makes fun of your work. I'm going to call that a win. theonion.com/city-of-baltim…

I coined the terms "surveillance wages" and "surveillance prices" a few years back to try to wake people up to how totally dystopian the price and wage world we are entering is. SO gratifying to see state AGs now seeking outright bans and incredible grateful to @EmeritaTorresNY leading the fight In New. York. I believe we are going to ban surveillance prices in New York. Wages next.

I have spent a good part of my career just getting people to believe this was actually happening. Now we are here. With 15 drones, you can lose roughly 1/4 of the B-52 force as it sits idle on the ground. This was always the most concerning scenario. Time to move to hardening. Just a matter of time now till we learn the hard way.

The ‘drain the swamp’ president has a lobbyist raking in so much corporate cash for making antitrust problems disappear that he tells @WSJ on the record he could “retire right now,” just one year into Trump’s term.

Jay Nordlinger saw it coming. His article laid out the architecture. Now comes the confirmation: JD Vance is flying to Budapest to campaign for Orbán. Washington and Moscow, same direction, same result. This is no longer subtext. It is policy. Which is exactly why European leaders and NATO allies need to stop whispering and start speaking on the record. Publicly. By name. The American vice president is actively working to keep a Kremlin-aligned government in power inside a NATO member state. That sentence should be causing emergency sessions, not diplomatic silence. Nordlinger wrote the diagnosis. Europe needs to find its voice before the patient is gone. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

More lawyers in trouble for AI misuse today: Attorney represented a criminal defendant and filed an application to reopen an appeal. The application alleged prosecutorial misconduct and cited quotes attributed to the prosecutor. Only problem was the quotes were completely made up. "The page Appellant cites to on page 4 for the 'legally inflammatory' statement by the prosecutor- is, in fact, the court reporter’s signature page, with no statements of any type by the prosecutor." The fake quotes came from ChatGPT. A paralegal uploaded case materials to ChatGPT and pasted the output into the application. The lawyer didn't catch it. But it gets worse: after the application was denied, the lawyer appealed the denial to the Ohio Supreme Court anyway. And when he submitted his firms "AI Policy" to show he was taking corrective action, the court determined that the policy itself was AI-generated and was incomplete. "The proffering of an AI-generated AI policy as a remedial measure in a case involving the submission of AI-generated fabrications to this court is, at best, ironic." And two months after the sanctions hearing in this case, the attorney did it again, in another case. He submitted a filing with the ChatGPT prompt embedded in the filing itself: "Would you like me to draft the next argument section (e.g., argument 1 – B on the 'nature of the charge' omission) in the same tone and format so your brief reads as a seamless multi-print memorandum?" Sanctions: -$2,000 fine -Referral to Ohio Office of Disciplinary Counsel -Must serve copy of judgment on judge of every court in which he makes an appearance, for 2 years -Must include certification that all cases are real and verified, for 2 years -6 hours mandatory CLE about AI ethics -Must write apology letters to prosecutor, trial judge, trial defense counsel, and prior appellate counsel who were defamed by fake quotes.

The phlebotomist yesterday was making small talk with me, and I said “it’s been unusually cold this week”. And she goes “yeah I asked ChatGPT when it’s going to start warming up and he said late March, so we’re almost there. I believe in chat”. And I asked her why she didn’t just check the weather app. And she just laughed. Like you have no idea how many people are just casually using AI for the most ridiculous things that they’ve neverrrrr needed to use AI for in the past. 🥴

Audible gasps from the crowd at Sen. Adam Schiff’s Hollywood hearing when he says that from 2022 to 2024 L.A. County lost 42,000 motion picture industry jobs.

Minneapolis was an existentially seismic repudiation of popularism. It dramatically reversed what was supposed to be a permanent right-wing consensus on immigration and did so by forcibly altering the narrative with extraordinary rage and effective, disciplined collective action.

Is it bad when the Vice Admiral who was *checks notes* in charge of naval planning for CENTCOM says that a ground operation into Iran is a horrendous idea?

Mr President, Do not! Please! Do not put a detachment ashore in Iran. Every wargame ends badly for the invasion force, Iran’s civilians, and the world's economy. It is a quagmire without end. Call victory and leave.

SHE HAS A NAME!!!!!!! Eva Ramón Gallegos successfully eliminates HPV

BREAKING: Governor JB Pritzker just took a stand and called for the undoing of the Citizens United ruling. This is spot on.

Every Ice agent and every male prison employee should be required to provide DNA so that they can be matched up to their kids for child support. And criminal prosecution

This is not incompetence. This is intentional. They don't want to fix the catastrophe they've created. They want chaos. They want crashes. They want unprecedented social unrest. The Epstein class has plans. Plans so horrific they use child rape and cannibalism as a cover story.

Pete Hegseth is an alcoholic Christian nationalist, with the IQ of Texas roadkill in August, that thinks he’s the head of some modern day Templar army in a new Christian Crusade. His impeachment needs to be televised. He will cry like a little bitch.

Murkowski said the structure of the ID requirements were too cumbersome and would restrict voting access - which is true. Rather than dig in and fight for a fair bill, she’s happy to have those requirements if you exempt voters 65+ Hey @lisamurkowski if you know something is wrong, then it’s absolute cowardice to carve out your base and screw over all other American’s. Try actually standing for something for once!

Here are good books that will not just teach you some of the history but also new ways to think about art

Update: Yesterday, we filed a lawsuit to block the biggest TV merger in history (Nexstar + Tegna). That sparked a sprint by Nexstar to try to close the deal before a court could stop them. Less than 24 hours after we filed, USDOJ reportedly dropped its investigation, the FCC waived the rules that would normally block a merger this big, and Nexstar announced the deal was closed. Their CEO thanked the FCC chairman by name. Not so fast. This morning, I joined a group of AGs and filed an emergency motion asking the court to freeze this merger to give it time to hear our case. This merger deserves a full hearing before Nexstar starts raising TV prices on almost half the families in North Carolina and laying off reporters at local news stations across the state. This isn't speculation. Nexstar told its investors it expects to make roughly $135 million a year from charging higher fees to your cable and satellite provider, and another $165 million from "synergies" - their word for laying people off. And the law is on our side. When a merger gives one company this much control over a market, federal antitrust law presumes it's illegal. In every single NC market affected by this deal, the concentration blows past the legal threshold. It's not a close call, and that's probably why they tried to skip the part where a judge weighs in. Our emergency motion was just filed. I'll keep you posted.

This morning @scratchyjohnson tweeted an important factoid. Squanto, the Indian who spoke English and helped the pilgrims survive, was sold by John Smith to a Spaniards and the deed exists in the city we're in for Excursion. Rather than rolling our eyes, Alan, Gavin & I went to the state archives in Málaga to see if we can find said recorded deed of 20 Indians sold by John Smith to Juan Bautista Reales. We get to the Archives (see Alan's picture below), and a small genial white lab coat wearing gentleman who speaks no English says this is impossible to find. His new boss, the head archivist, Carmen, comes in and says it certainly exists but may be difficult to find. If you only had the year. We tell her it was 1614. She pulls up a list of the books from 29 notaries whose work they have from 1614. She asks who the notary was. We have no idea. They say they can't go through 29 archives to look for it. Also it's all in old Spanish which nobody speaks and it'll be hard to locate even if they know the Notary. So Alan and Gavin get to work. Gavin finds an article in the internet archive that seems to have a partial picture of the document. Carmen and the other archivist decipher the name after 15 min. They find that name in their cross reference. Carmen goes to the vault to look while the lab coat gentleman asks for my life history, driver's licence number and a lien on my grandchildren. Totally worth it. Carmen comes back to say she found the volume. It is tremendously delicate. Opening it may break some pages. Does it have to be today because if so the answer will be no. We ask her if this is interesting to them. Both very seriously nod their heads. We tell them this is very important to the United States and many of our friends. Carmen tells us she will find it but that it takes time. White linen gloves and patience. We tell her to take her time. She says she will take a picture and email it to me. So here's why all this is important: after Squanto was sold by an Englishman to a Spaniard names Reales, said Spaniard brought Squanto and 19 other "inios" to Málaga. He recorded the deed in the state archives. Then a Franciscan priest ransomed Squanto. Squanto became Catholic. Was baptized and confirmed in Málaga. He then made his way to England where he worked and learned English. He paid his passage back across the ocean and found his Wampanoag tribesmen. Then when the Pilgrims landed they found a Catholic English-speaking native who helped them survive their first winter. It is entirely possible that but for a Franciscan priest who ransomed Squanto, the Pilgrims may not have survived their first winter in New England. That's history. American history. And the record of it is in Málaga. In a book. One of 29 books kept by notaries in Málaga in 1614. That are still searchable. This image, when it comes, belongs in the US National Archive. This is Cultural Debris. x.com/i/status/20349… cc: @alancornett @gwbled @Gonnassaurius_ @wrathofgnon

#BREAKING: Kevin Frey: “…in a new letter from a top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee and a top Democrat on the House Ovesight Committee, they are asking the White House to kind of clarify what this role is, that letter reading in part: ‘Mr Kushner is simultaneously being paid millions of dollars by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies while leading diplomatic negotiations with #Iran and Russia. This corrupt arrangement is not only criminal, but is endangering the lives of Americans and threatening our national security.’”😳