Daniel Hutchinson
@dhutchinson.bsky.social
Historian and digital humanist. Researches WWII, exploring historical applications of AI. http://danielhutchinson.org
Pinned
Mapping the Latent Past: Assessing Large Language Models as Digital Tools through Source Criticism
This article examines how digital historians can use large language models (LLMs) as research tools while critically assessing their limitations through source criticism of their underlying training d...
journalofdigitalhistory.org
Happy to share a recent publication in the @jdighist.bsky.social exploring how historians are applying generative AI. I argue that LLMs can be considered a new form of historical source, and source criticism can inform our critiques of these techs.
journalofdigitalhistory.org/en/article/J...
1/8
journalofdigitalhistory.org/en/article/J...
1/8
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
I've got a book coming out in April (available for preorder) on the civilizing mission of France in post-WWII Germany and its links to the emergence of European unity. Check it out!
lsupress.org/978080718678...
lsupress.org/978080718678...
November 26, 2025 at 10:23 PM
I've got a book coming out in April (available for preorder) on the civilizing mission of France in post-WWII Germany and its links to the emergence of European unity. Check it out!
lsupress.org/978080718678...
lsupress.org/978080718678...
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
What was ChatGPT? Now nearly three years old, we can look at OpenAI's LLM as a product of its time, optimized ever since to its earliest uses. While this period of deep disorientation and social isolation has been obscured from public memory, it remains embedded within the interface.
What Was ChatGPT?
A Chatbot Optimized for Social Distance
Three years after the launch of ChatGPT, we can finally speak in hindsight about what it was and how it came to be. Its meteoric rise shocked the world, gather...
mail.cyberneticforests.com
November 23, 2025 at 12:37 PM
What was ChatGPT? Now nearly three years old, we can look at OpenAI's LLM as a product of its time, optimized ever since to its earliest uses. While this period of deep disorientation and social isolation has been obscured from public memory, it remains embedded within the interface.
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
"There has been some talk recently that we aren’t and shouldn’t be a creedal nation.... I reject this position as passionately as I can."
Gordon Wood responds to JD Vance without mentioning him by name
gift link
Gordon Wood responds to JD Vance without mentioning him by name
gift link
Opinion | Why America Is a ‘Creedal Nation’
The distinguished historian says the U.S. isn’t like other nations and never has been. There is no American ethnicity to back up the state.
www.wsj.com
November 23, 2025 at 1:44 PM
"There has been some talk recently that we aren’t and shouldn’t be a creedal nation.... I reject this position as passionately as I can."
Gordon Wood responds to JD Vance without mentioning him by name
gift link
Gordon Wood responds to JD Vance without mentioning him by name
gift link
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
The November issue of the Journal of Southern History features a forum of 21 essays on "Teaching about the South" #openaccess
muse.jhu.edu/issue/55697
muse.jhu.edu/issue/55697
November 23, 2025 at 1:51 PM
The November issue of the Journal of Southern History features a forum of 21 essays on "Teaching about the South" #openaccess
muse.jhu.edu/issue/55697
muse.jhu.edu/issue/55697
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
New publication by IEHS member Samuel J. Klee:
“Drawing Barbed Wire: The Tule Lake Scrapbook of 1942,” Environmental History 30, no. 4 (October, 2025): 729-745.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
“Drawing Barbed Wire: The Tule Lake Scrapbook of 1942,” Environmental History 30, no. 4 (October, 2025): 729-745.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Drawing Barbed Wire: The Tule Lake Scrapbook of 1942 | Environmental History: Vol 30, No 4
Abstract In December 1942, teachers and Japanese Americans at the Tule Lake Relocation Center created a scrapbook for Elmer Shirrell, the camp’s outgoing director. The scrapbook reveals Tule Lake teac...
www.journals.uchicago.edu
November 21, 2025 at 3:46 PM
New publication by IEHS member Samuel J. Klee:
“Drawing Barbed Wire: The Tule Lake Scrapbook of 1942,” Environmental History 30, no. 4 (October, 2025): 729-745.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
“Drawing Barbed Wire: The Tule Lake Scrapbook of 1942,” Environmental History 30, no. 4 (October, 2025): 729-745.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
Good statement from the US conference of Catholic Bishops
November 14, 2025 at 2:17 AM
Good statement from the US conference of Catholic Bishops
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
“We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by…the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...
Catholic Bishops Rebuke U.S. ‘Mass Deportation’ of Immigrants
www.nytimes.com
November 13, 2025 at 1:10 AM
“We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by…the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
And we feature software papers! Check out @suttonkoeser.bsky.social
Julia Damerow, Robert Casties, Cole Crawford exciting work on working with dates in computational humanities!
Julia Damerow, Robert Casties, Cole Crawford exciting work on working with dates in computational humanities!
August 19, 2025 at 7:32 PM
And we feature software papers! Check out @suttonkoeser.bsky.social
Julia Damerow, Robert Casties, Cole Crawford exciting work on working with dates in computational humanities!
Julia Damerow, Robert Casties, Cole Crawford exciting work on working with dates in computational humanities!
Happy to share a recent publication in the @jdighist.bsky.social exploring how historians are applying generative AI. I argue that LLMs can be considered a new form of historical source, and source criticism can inform our critiques of these techs.
journalofdigitalhistory.org/en/article/J...
1/8
journalofdigitalhistory.org/en/article/J...
1/8
Mapping the Latent Past: Assessing Large Language Models as Digital Tools through Source Criticism
This article examines how digital historians can use large language models (LLMs) as research tools while critically assessing their limitations through source criticism of their underlying training d...
journalofdigitalhistory.org
November 11, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Happy to share a recent publication in the @jdighist.bsky.social exploring how historians are applying generative AI. I argue that LLMs can be considered a new form of historical source, and source criticism can inform our critiques of these techs.
journalofdigitalhistory.org/en/article/J...
1/8
journalofdigitalhistory.org/en/article/J...
1/8
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
This Veterans Day I want to acknowledge the Black veterans of WWII who fought fascism and nazism and came home to fight for civil rights and democracy here. New research shows Black veterans were critical in securing the voting rights currently under attack.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Homefront: Black Servicemembers and Black Voters in the Civil Rights Era
The role of Black World War II veterans in the Civil Rights Movement has been well documented, but the effect of Black military service on Black voting patterns remains unclear. Combining detailed in...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
November 11, 2025 at 12:10 PM
This Veterans Day I want to acknowledge the Black veterans of WWII who fought fascism and nazism and came home to fight for civil rights and democracy here. New research shows Black veterans were critical in securing the voting rights currently under attack.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
Out this month and a good line up of contributors
The Cambridge Companion to the Nazi-Soviet War | Cambridge University Press & Assessment
www.cambridge.org
November 10, 2025 at 7:57 PM
Out this month and a good line up of contributors
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
Breaking: we release a fully synthetic generalist dataset for pretraining, SYNTH and two new SOTA reasoning models exclusively trained on it. Despite having seen only 200 billion tokens, Baguettotron is currently best-in-class in its size range. pleias.fr/blog/blogsyn...
November 10, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Breaking: we release a fully synthetic generalist dataset for pretraining, SYNTH and two new SOTA reasoning models exclusively trained on it. Despite having seen only 200 billion tokens, Baguettotron is currently best-in-class in its size range. pleias.fr/blog/blogsyn...
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
The first photo of my new book, courtesy of my editor... "The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age" comes out in early December! Feel free to pre-order it today! www.harpercollins.com/products/the...
November 6, 2025 at 10:41 AM
The first photo of my new book, courtesy of my editor... "The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age" comes out in early December! Feel free to pre-order it today! www.harpercollins.com/products/the...
Enjoying a pleasant evening at NC State University after giving a history lecture. Travel, talking about my nerdy interests, and meeting interesting new people - some days this job is quite nice.
November 5, 2025 at 1:06 AM
Enjoying a pleasant evening at NC State University after giving a history lecture. Travel, talking about my nerdy interests, and meeting interesting new people - some days this job is quite nice.
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
“We are united in Christ. We will not stop denouncing the evil of detention and deportation. We cannot be silent in the face of oppression. We will persist until justice flows freely like a river.” - Fr. David Inczauskis, SJ
ICE again prevents Chicago Catholics from bringing Eucharist to immigrant detainees
More than 2,000 faithful gathered to pray outside the Broadview ICE Detention Center Nov. 1, but the group's main request — to bring Communion to detainees — was rejected by federal immigration offici...
www.ncronline.org
November 2, 2025 at 9:07 PM
“We are united in Christ. We will not stop denouncing the evil of detention and deportation. We cannot be silent in the face of oppression. We will persist until justice flows freely like a river.” - Fr. David Inczauskis, SJ
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
On All Saints' Day or All Hallows' Day a beautiful poem to remember our departed loved ones 🖤
November 1, 2025 at 11:29 AM
On All Saints' Day or All Hallows' Day a beautiful poem to remember our departed loved ones 🖤
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
🧵1/8
On April 18, 1861 Nicholas Biddle, an escaped enslaved resident of Pottsville, PA, marched through Baltimore with the Washington Artillerists on their way to defend the capital from a rumored rebel attack. While marching, they were attacked by rebel sympathizers.
On April 18, 1861 Nicholas Biddle, an escaped enslaved resident of Pottsville, PA, marched through Baltimore with the Washington Artillerists on their way to defend the capital from a rumored rebel attack. While marching, they were attacked by rebel sympathizers.
October 30, 2025 at 8:04 PM
🧵1/8
On April 18, 1861 Nicholas Biddle, an escaped enslaved resident of Pottsville, PA, marched through Baltimore with the Washington Artillerists on their way to defend the capital from a rumored rebel attack. While marching, they were attacked by rebel sympathizers.
On April 18, 1861 Nicholas Biddle, an escaped enslaved resident of Pottsville, PA, marched through Baltimore with the Washington Artillerists on their way to defend the capital from a rumored rebel attack. While marching, they were attacked by rebel sympathizers.
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
Went to a prayer service tonight at St. Mary of the Lake, where they have cardboard cutouts throughout the church representing parishioners afraid to come to Mass because of ICE.
October 25, 2025 at 1:57 AM
Went to a prayer service tonight at St. Mary of the Lake, where they have cardboard cutouts throughout the church representing parishioners afraid to come to Mass because of ICE.
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
Over the last 24 hours, I have finetuned three Qwen3-VL models (2B, 4B, and 8B) on the CATmuS dataset on @hf.co . The first version of the models are now available on the Small Models for GLAM organization with @danielvanstrien.bsky.social (Links below) Working on improving them further.
October 24, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Over the last 24 hours, I have finetuned three Qwen3-VL models (2B, 4B, and 8B) on the CATmuS dataset on @hf.co . The first version of the models are now available on the Small Models for GLAM organization with @danielvanstrien.bsky.social (Links below) Working on improving them further.
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
You will not be surprised to learn that the Society of Architectural Historians is not happy right now.
sah.org/2025/10/16/s...
sah.org/2025/10/16/s...
Statement on the Proposed Ballroom Addition at the White House - Society of Architectural Historians
The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) expresses great concern over the proposed ballroom addition to the White House. On July 31, 2025, the White House issued a statement that a 90,000 sq. ft....
sah.org
October 23, 2025 at 2:58 AM
You will not be surprised to learn that the Society of Architectural Historians is not happy right now.
sah.org/2025/10/16/s...
sah.org/2025/10/16/s...
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
Happy Internet Archive Day to all who celebrate.
The Internet Archive is hitting its trillionth webpage archived, and - as a long time collaborator and historian of both web archiving more generally as well as the Internet Archive specifically - am happy to join them for this milestone.
The Internet Archive is hitting its trillionth webpage archived, and - as a long time collaborator and historian of both web archiving more generally as well as the Internet Archive specifically - am happy to join them for this milestone.
October 21, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Happy Internet Archive Day to all who celebrate.
The Internet Archive is hitting its trillionth webpage archived, and - as a long time collaborator and historian of both web archiving more generally as well as the Internet Archive specifically - am happy to join them for this milestone.
The Internet Archive is hitting its trillionth webpage archived, and - as a long time collaborator and historian of both web archiving more generally as well as the Internet Archive specifically - am happy to join them for this milestone.
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
Want an easy way to edit the output from Dots.OCR? Introducing Dots.OCR editor, an easy way to edit outputs from the model.
Features:
1) Edit bounding boxes
2) Edit OCR
3) Edit reading order
4) Group sections (good for newspapers)
Vibe coded with Claude 4.5
github.com/wjbmattingly...
Features:
1) Edit bounding boxes
2) Edit OCR
3) Edit reading order
4) Group sections (good for newspapers)
Vibe coded with Claude 4.5
github.com/wjbmattingly...
GitHub - wjbmattingly/dots-ocr-editor
Contribute to wjbmattingly/dots-ocr-editor development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
October 21, 2025 at 4:21 PM
Want an easy way to edit the output from Dots.OCR? Introducing Dots.OCR editor, an easy way to edit outputs from the model.
Features:
1) Edit bounding boxes
2) Edit OCR
3) Edit reading order
4) Group sections (good for newspapers)
Vibe coded with Claude 4.5
github.com/wjbmattingly...
Features:
1) Edit bounding boxes
2) Edit OCR
3) Edit reading order
4) Group sections (good for newspapers)
Vibe coded with Claude 4.5
github.com/wjbmattingly...
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
Is anybody interested in alpha testing Nabi X? You can: (1) upload your own documents and interact with them; or (2) you can have conversations with existing digital humanities and premodern Korean history materials. Let me know via a reply or PM.
More on Nabi X: bigdatastudies.net/nabi-x/
More on Nabi X: bigdatastudies.net/nabi-x/
October 21, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Is anybody interested in alpha testing Nabi X? You can: (1) upload your own documents and interact with them; or (2) you can have conversations with existing digital humanities and premodern Korean history materials. Let me know via a reply or PM.
More on Nabi X: bigdatastudies.net/nabi-x/
More on Nabi X: bigdatastudies.net/nabi-x/
Reposted by Daniel Hutchinson
Folks interested in LLMs built keeping ethics at forefront, @huggingface “Omni Chat" gives access to over 100 open-source models. Some, like Apertus in it, are multilingual, trained on publicly available texts, & designed to minimize environmental impact: huggingface.co/chat/models/...
omni - HuggingChat
Use omni with HuggingChat
huggingface.co
October 19, 2025 at 10:01 PM
Folks interested in LLMs built keeping ethics at forefront, @huggingface “Omni Chat" gives access to over 100 open-source models. Some, like Apertus in it, are multilingual, trained on publicly available texts, & designed to minimize environmental impact: huggingface.co/chat/models/...