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sawilliams.bsky.social
Reference and Instruction Librarian, assistant professor of law, Pokemon master, games enthusiast, certified film buff, and guinea pig wrangler.
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Every year my heart breaks as I choose between watching the Oscars and the On Cinema Oscar Special, so it was very nice of them to just let Gregg direct this year's ceremony. Seriously, how else do you explain this obsession with James Bond?!

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Lol at an Oscar quasi-industry party and someone thought there was a chance that I just was Jack Black. I guess thats my whole vibe now.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

What is the point of legal scholarship? Because it sure ain’t readership or novelty. Thomas Schultz’ Scholarship as Fun and @msmith750.bsky.social’s Generative AI and the Purpose of Legal Scholarship are two good answers, but here’s my less good one: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Two directions: Don't, make something new (saying this as an obvious fan of even some of the new stuff): or two, do something Funny Games-adjacent with the awful "dude with lightsaber murders everyone" hallway scenes that convinced people Rogue One was good.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

This is difficult and hugely important work on a topic that frequently feels like little more than empty buzzwords. I'm very excited to see this and more work considering what bar-tested legal research actually means and does!

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

I am very pleased to announce that Dissecting the Frog: How a Meme Explains the Westlaw/Lexis and Generational Divide has officially been published on SMU Law Review Forum! scholar.smu.edu/smulrforum/v... I want to thank my editors (who have been delightful) for getting this thing to its final form!

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

I don't want to name names, but one of the rejections that I received on Legal Wendigos (link: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....) is honestly iconic. "We would love to work with this but you don't make a legal argument, please make one and resubmit" was always a note I was going to get, but still...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

The time has come: Legal Wendigos discusses Idaho's (seemingly) unique cannibalism statute and its history, positioning its origins in the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and considering it in relation to the contemporary moral panic against LGBTQ+ groups. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

This movie, like almost everything in Raimi's filmography (including Crimewave) absolutely slaps and we should take every opportunity possible to talk about it. RIP Gene.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

This is fantastic- for those who are waiting for cannibalism, it's currently out for submission and PROBABLY has a home, but I need to support the non-cannibalism portion with a bit more information and this seems to be playing in a very similar space!

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

The worst part is that I do actually have a take on this that I think I get at in my own Lovecraft article (link: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....). Let's make the Lovecraft and Law discourse (symposium?) happen! There is no excuse for a search for "Cthulhu" in Westlaw to produce so few results.

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Hell yeah, let's keep this stuff coming. It's a weird time to be alive, why not embrace it?

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

I truly have no idea what to do with this one, so here goes. I keep on trying to convince myself that this is bad but I keep liking it. Have I accomplished my dream of creating The Room of legal scholarship? papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

I just put myself in a position where I needed to explain the phrase "Legal Tingler" to our dean of faculty. I really think I need to get Jokerfication away from me, so uh, keep your eyes open I guess.

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

I am so sorry, I swear I do not start from a position of wanting to do this, but what you need to understand is that your audience for the next several years is going to be a bunch of Elim Garaks. The good news is they're gettable, the bad news is they don't understand his character arc.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

I really need to give Boise a harder time about snow days. Boise sneaks its response under the radar because snow consistently melts quickly (because of weather, not preparation), but for a couple hours it's consistently at least as bad as cities like Portland and Seattle that famously struggle.

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

I think we underestimate how badly the shitty prose of Trump v. U.S. undermined the judiciary as much as the holding. Like I 100% expect Roberts to write a meandering 6-3 opinion upholding Trump's birthright citizenship EO misciting Alexander Hamilton while just ignoring that he was an immigrant.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

A few years ago for my end-of-year movie reviews I wrote a note in the voice of my guinea pigs reviewing Glass Onion by saying that "You shouldn't eat onions (they're very bad for guinea pigs!), but you should eat the rich." I feel like this will be my motto for the next decade.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Sams have been having a bad run of it lately. The worst is obviously Alito, but special shoutout to Altman and Bankman-Fried.

submitted 25 days ago • 1 comment

Might have to try to sneak this one into my syllabus since it fits very cleanly into how I’m teaching AI in Advanced Legal Research (basic skill refresher into AI database evaluation into form practice since the skills are broadly similar).

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

This was kind of a peak "post-tenure submission cycle" for me, with a short silly essay and a shorter article (hopefully) for my school's journal. The question is, do I complete the hat trick by getting the most self-indulgent thing I've ever done (The Jokerfication of Law) out there?

submitted 26 days ago • 2 comments

I hadn't really internalized this one either, but it makes sense and offers a pretty low-effort way to do something relevant. Calling IS better, but if you're like me you would rather pick up a live grenade then make a phone call and this is something I can work on in my sleep.

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

In a time when fighting is more important than ever before, it's great of Blumhouse to give us a vision of a future to fight for. (Yes I am talking about M3gan dancing to Chappell Roan, yes I am serious, this is now a M3gan hype channel) www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mhQ...

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

I've seen how you all research this stuff, and I would tell you outside of law professors this is kind of what we have anyway. The problem is that the flattening effect is due to our Lexis/Westlaw duopoly being the only way that people actually find these things outside of our narrow community.

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments