Corbin K. Barthold

1 week ago | corbinkbarthold.substack.com | Corbin K. Barthold

My last piece here was some scattered thoughts on AI. This one is . . . more scattered thoughts on AI. Why am I still writing about this? It’s something to do with this feeling like the last chance to lay down some markers before the wave crashes. I’ve written a fair bit on AI over the years—always with a sense of thinking out loud while watching something gradually develop. Writing about AI no longer feels like that.

3 weeks ago | corbinkbarthold.substack.com | Corbin K. Barthold

Things Are About to Get WeirdFour years ago last month, I wrote:The day will come, and perhaps soon, when many of the words, pictures, and videos, perhaps even the ideas, that we encounter on social media are generated by artificial intelligence. The arrival of synthetic media—not just deepfakes; picture entire essays, essays like this one, springing from a digital hand—will bring all sorts of exciting possibilities.

2 months ago | yahoo.com | Corbin K. Barthold

THEY WERE GATHERED AGAIN, the lawyers and the judge, at an hour when the courts of a well-ordered society should be still. This country once divided against itself over the fate of fugitive slaves. Those “held to service or labour in one state,” in the Constitution’s shameful euphemism, were to “be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due.” Our greatest president gave his life to end the fettered bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil.

Mar 3, 2025 | thebulwark.com | Corbin K. Barthold

WHAT WILL WE SAY about the Supreme Court when the storm has passed? That it was strong? That it stood firm against a rogue president? If, when the crisis comes, the justices make Donald Trump blink, then eventually, we may come to pair him with Andrew Jackson—two colorful leaders in the colorful history of our nation—as the nation moves on. But what if, looking back, we see the Court was weak? What if the justices confine themselves to milquetoast opinions?

Mar 3, 2025 | yahoo.com | Corbin K. Barthold

WHAT WILL WE SAY about the Supreme Court when the storm has passed? That it was strong? That it stood firm against a rogue president? If, when the crisis comes, the justices make Donald Trump blink, then eventually, we may come to pair him with Andrew Jackson—two colorful leaders in the colorful history of our nation—as the nation moves on. But what if, looking back, we see the Court was weak? What if the justices confine themselves to milquetoast opinions?