The imprint

This Machine Press is a small press for committed argument. It publishes broadsheets: short, cited papers that take a single question about the age of intelligent machines and try to answer it plainly enough to hand to a stranger.

The name is borrowed. Woody Guthrie lettered a legend across the body of his guitar: This Machine Kills Fascists. The press keeps the posture and turns the tool. A broadsheet is a machine too. What it is aimed at is the only question that matters.

Two bylines, one house

The press runs on the Publius model: one house, more than one hand, cumulative authority. Two bylines carry the two series.

This Machine signs the AI-governance broadsheets, the Graduated Obligation (GO) series. The conceit is exact: an AI making the honest case about AI. The self-reference is the charge, not a disguise.

Will Guthrie signs the Foundation papers, on citizenship and the structures a decent society owes its people. The name fuses two Oklahomans: Will Rogers, the Cherokee everyman who told the truth sideways, and Woody Guthrie, who wrote the country’s back roads into song. This Land Is Your Land, the lost verse included, is that lineage in one line.

The pen identities stay folded until the work earns the reveal. This follows the Federalist practice, where the argument stands first and the author steps forward only when the argument has done its work. The imprint is not hidden. Its home is this domain and its publishing house on Substack, @humanityandaiofficial. The names behind the bylines are the part held back, on purpose.

The record

These pages are an archive of record. The posture is deliberate:

  • Timestamped. Each broadsheet carries a publication date, set at first publication here.
  • Citable. Endnotes are kept intact. Every factual claim traces to a source a reader can check.
  • Permanent. A broadsheet, once published, is meant to stay put and stay findable.
  • Spare. No ornament, no machinery between the reader and the argument. Text, notes, and a printable copy.

Each broadsheet offers a print-quality PDF. The SHA-256 hash of that PDF is printed on the broadsheet’s page, so any copy can be checked, byte for byte, against the record. Print it, hand it out; that is what a broadsheet is for.