James Grimmelmann
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jtlg.bsky.social
James Grimmelmann
@jtlg.bsky.social
5.4K followers 39 following 1.3K posts
I’m a professor at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School.

One of "a number of very informative people." -WSJ
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jtlg.bsky.social
Today’s trade dress not-so-hypothetical
A stuffie labeled “chocolate” in the Nutella typeface
November 30, 2025 at 11:07 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
Private ordering embraces a particularly stringent version of the harm principle.
NOTICE: Any behavior that endangers or interferes with another patron's safety or pleasure is strictly forbidden.
November 30, 2025 at 4:51 AM
jtlg.bsky.social
This doesn’t make any sense, right? Reading this makes me worry that I have some kind of aphasia.
Clothing magazine page, with title Let’s Get a Little Fuzzy and text “We’re mean the fluffy boule and lofty fur of these coats. But maybe also have a few spritzes?”
November 12, 2025 at 5:55 AM
jtlg.bsky.social
November 10, 2025 at 6:38 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
It’s offprint day! It’s offprint day! It’s offprint day!
Law review article in printed form: Listeners’ Choices Online, by James Grimmelmann, in the Southern California Law Review
November 6, 2025 at 7:35 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
Try your hand at my IP midterm! There's something growing down on Skid Row, but is the secret ingredient (spoiler alert: it's blood) patentable?

james.grimmelmann.net/courses/ip20...
Still frame from LIttle Shop of Horrors (1986) showing Seymour and Mr. Muchnik talking next to a scarily large Audrey II, mouth wide open.
November 2, 2025 at 5:23 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
How many British shipbuilders did it take to change a light bulb in 1965?

Three. One to carry the ladder, one to set it up, and one to climb it and change the bulb.

www.construction-physics.com/p/how-the-uk...
The Geddes report also noted that labor relations were abysmal, and strict adherence to labor demarcation rules (which themselves varied extensively from yard to yard) greatly hampered productivity. The labor demarcation problem was so severe that in some yards it literally took three different workers to change a lightbulb: > …a laborer (member of the Transport and General Workers Union) [to] carry the ladder to site, a rigger (member of the Amalgamated Society of Boilermakers, Shipwrights, Blacksmiths and Structural Workers Union) [to] erect it and place it in the proper position, and an electrician (member of the Electrical Trades Union) [to] actually remove the old bulb and screw in the new one. Production was often halted while waiting for a member of the appropriate union to arrive to perform the job reserved by agreement for them. (sunset 96)
October 28, 2025 at 1:50 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
The Halo remake is missing the point. The Library was never meant as a boring slog through samey grey corridors. The original level design was mostly open to the central atrium, but having open sightlines to the whole level ended up being technically infeasible.

1/2

news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/1...
The Library is a perfect example to demonstrate how the team is thoughtfully enhancing existing spaces in an authentic way. Halo: Combat Evolved’s seventh campaign mission is a key example of where it felt right to make tweaks to several areas to create a new experience that balances nostalgia with the expectations of today’s gamers. “We learned from Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary that there was still an appetite for things like better wayfinding, navigation, and diversity in enemy encounters,” Szlagor says. “In The Library specifically, which features several Flood encounters, we wanted to reevaluate the pacing and enhance the environmental storytelling. We’ve added new lines to Guilty Spark, which guide players through the level, and there’s new dialogue that gives more insight into the narrative as it plays out.” “We’re not changing the stories, it’s about refining and adding context to this moment, and other levels like it, so players can stay on track.”
October 26, 2025 at 8:04 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
Oh, they got this all screwed up!

It should read, "A consitutional republic? No, kings!"
Lionel Hutz from The Simpsons
October 22, 2025 at 1:50 AM
jtlg.bsky.social
Image from a well-known viral video of a man in a "Police" T-shirt holding aloft a pistol, moments before he shoots himself in the foot.
October 21, 2025 at 10:08 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
Yes, you are.
Office building entrance with sign reading “transperfeft”.
October 19, 2025 at 3:40 AM
jtlg.bsky.social
No Kings New Haven
October 18, 2025 at 10:01 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
The Library of Congress's scans of the Arendt papers has her file on the revision, which includes several further drafts. You can see the final wording emerge, along with some fascnating alternatives she experimented with.

www.loc.gov/resource/mss...

5/
October 16, 2025 at 5:40 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
But this isn't the wording of Arendt's actual letter! Here's the version from the authoritative edition of the Arendt/Scholem correspondence:

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

3/
"The fact is that today I think that evil in every instance is only extreme, never radical: it has no depth, and therefore has nothing demonic about it. Evil can lay to waste the entire world, like a fungus growing rampant on the surface. Only the good is always deep and radical."
October 16, 2025 at 5:40 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
Google AI pretends to misunderstand my question so it can look smart correcting me.
October 15, 2025 at 10:33 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
October 8, 2025 at 1:12 AM
jtlg.bsky.social
Bad content drives out good.

kenliu.substack.com/p/please-don...
"There’s a special sort of pain that I experience when I read these spam messages: the AI-drafted glazing usually draws on my interviews or the blog posts I wrote to promote the books, turning my own words against me to create that illusion of someone who has read the book and connected with it."
October 1, 2025 at 4:36 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
He told the judge that fraudster Charlie Javice should get a reduced sentence because JP Morgan was dumb enough to believe her lies. (It didn't work; she got 7 years.)

3/4
“We would never ask you to punish JPMorgan Chase’s stupidity,” said Ronald Sullivan, one of Javice’s lead attorneys. “But we submit that it’s a relevant factor.”
September 30, 2025 at 7:37 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
Evergreen
End screen from The Secret of Monkey Island (1990): "Turn your computer off and go to sleep!"
September 10, 2025 at 7:47 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
September 3, 2025 at 3:38 AM
jtlg.bsky.social
September 1, 2025 at 7:37 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
August 30, 2025 at 5:41 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
Avatar meme: "There is no unemployment in Ba Sing Se"
August 1, 2025 at 7:55 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
Do I have any recourse if I’m getting political texts from a number that I already used “stop” to opt out of?
July 30, 2025 at 11:49 PM
jtlg.bsky.social
Ryan Broderick has been arguing that AI slop is to Trumpism as futurism was to fascism, and he just added that AI’s remixing of its training data is “an aspirational vision for the future that’s completely defined by nostalgia.”

(Just like fascism was!)

www.garbageday.email/p/trump-s-bi...
But it doesn't really matter what the original intent of @pro_ai_artist was. It seems clear that Al art's biggest utility right now is aspirationalism. The ability to quickly and cheaply generate a vision of the future for Trump supporters. And I've written before about how Al art is to modern fascism what futurism was to 20th-century fascism, but the Homeland Security X account posting a Thomas Kinkade painting - and a right-wing user getting mad at them and Al-generating a more “futuristic" version - unlocked something for me. Unlike 20th-century futurism, Al art is, by definition, cobbled together out of previous art styles. An Al model cannot create anything new, only remix what it's ingested. Which is an apt metaphor for the Trump administration. An aspirational vision of the future that's completely defined by nostalgia. A complete cultural dead end.
July 2, 2025 at 9:08 PM