@pbs.org's various Youtube channels are well worth checking it. Here's one from PBS Terra: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hxp...

I would like Apple News better if I could follow the WSJ reporting and never have to see a WSJ opinion. Anyone know how to do this?

Loading a 482MB audiobook onto my phone, I thought to myself, "Well, that would have fit on a CD." And I realized I have a host of obsolete measurements in my head: 4.7GB on a DVD. 360k on a single-sided floppy. What measurements do others still carry around?

Well played, Best Choice. Well played.

I remember Henry Glassie once exclaiming that the phone book — remember those? — should include the times one was available to be phoned. I am reminded after a series of texts from an eager grad student starting at 10:30 last night. Different bio-clocks; different assumptions.

Yup.

Why oh why is it so hard to add an essay published in a collection (edited by someone other than the essay author) to @zotero.org? A "Book Section" does not have a separate field for author. What am I missing?

Helluva cover. I think I'm more interested in David Golumbia's book — because I think it offers greater insight — but that doesn't mean this book doesn't do some necessary work:

For those not familiar with Knowledge Commons, they offer an impressive array of features — digital repository, blogging, microblogging, and more — and at little to no cost. And they are building a foundation for the long haul.

Is it weird that I am regularly surprised that macOS can't remember where I prefer windows when I switch from the docked monitor to just the laptop. It's always just one screen, and I pretty much put my windows in the same place (and size). This is something the OS should just do. @sixcolors.com

I've always enjoyed teaching Dick's "A Maze of Death" in my course where we explore disembodied AI. The readings stretch from Forster's "The Machine Stops" to Leinster's "A Logic Named Joe" through Ellison's "I Have No Mouth" and, of course, "The Forbin Project" to whatever texts are current.

Nathan is trying to create a sputnik panic single-handedly, and I am here for it even if I'm actually more scared of most of these logos than of China

This may be the article I now forward to people when they ask about AI/LLMs. (I'm assuming the author adopts the metaphor "bag of words" with full awareness of the term's history.) www.experimental-history.com/p/bag-of-wor...

I'm just going to pin this here: Microsoft Office's so-called "safe links" are a real PITA, especially in the era of Zoom meetings, etc. They mess that up regularly. (Purposefully?)

There's a new, and very distinguished CTO for the Library of Virginia. Is it @scottbot.bsky.social you ask? Why, yes, yes it is. Congrats!

I'm a folklorist in a film, or symbologist if in a Dan Brown novel, and I can instantly decode obscure characters and cryptic passages. I'm especially fast when I have absolutely no idea of the context.

Conservatives can't decide: abolish the U.S. Department of Education or have it authorize the takeover of public higher education by the "right kind of people." Republicans used to be for what made the country economically strong. They appear willing to sacrifice strength for "correctness."

I'm really enjoying some of the interesting approaches to network analyses by @notdavidyt.bsky.social. This one on character appearances across a long-running series is very compelling: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIZn...

It's not a story line (narrative framework?) that I find particularly compelling, but damn do I dig the vibe this game has … www.backerkit.com/c/projects/j...

Must-watch: This admin is gutting everything good about America—our national parks, public lands, public trust. What we cherish most is under attack. 🎥 youtube.com/watch?v=b7Wv...

I'm exploring the idea that different kinds of discourse modes (narrative, informative, argumentative, etc.) create different kinds of text worlds. Spelunking in a new(ish) intellectual history is always fun, especially when it pulls up stuff from your domain that you already knew about … 1/2

A friend posited an experiment to me, where you train an LLM or other AI on physics or chemistry but ONLY up to a specific cutoff date. So no material beyond a specific point in time. Then see if the AI can infer what comes next. That is: can it remake the discoveries we know? (I'd guess not.)

When you catch the desktop animation at an awkward moment while logging in …

Without things like priority boarding or TSA Pre or travel card lounges, how can we as a classless society know we need to work harder and punish immigrants more? Asking for a friend.

Recently, @aaronrosspowell.com asked what people thought about LitRPGs, indicating he didn't get their appeal, especially in the face of the rise in narrativity in TTRPGs across many, many genres. I'm sympathetic to his question: I find the new breed of TTRPGs exciting ... (1/2)

This seems inevitable: human labor redirected to fix AI-generated products. In the case of code, it's about bugs and vulnerabilities, but in the case of prose, it's about making the prose seem like it was written by a human. #AI

When history marks the point where we lost the future to China, this will be it.

Society treats curiosity like a childhood phase you’re supposed to outgrow. Then wonders why everyone’s depressed at 35. The most interesting people I know never stopped asking “why” and “what if.”

The White House has ordered the US Dept. of Justice to prioritize denaturalization: voiding the citizenship of US citizens. Who will it denaturalize? "Any" case that it "determines to be sufficiently important". Point 10 leaves the criteria opaque and arbitrary. substack.com/redirect/169...

My wife is stuck in Houston because the flight crew for her first flight showed up late but @united-airlines.bsky.social won't do anything to help because they can wave in the direction of the weather. All gate and desk personnel have been rude and unforgiving.

The real problem with @dayoneapp.com is that, while you can use markdown to format text, you cannot edit the markdown. Unlike other apps which "hide" the markup once your cursor has moved on but make it re-appear when you move your cursor back, what's done is done in Day One. Frustrating.

I have to say that openrouter.ai is damn interesting. I don't know if it will be cost competitive for people who do intensive work, but for those who want to explore the different LLMs, it's pennies. And it's really cool to see a set of LLMs run simultaneously and to compare (& synthesize outputs).

Well this is an interesting development in the AI-suction-fest. It would crack me up if someone were to develop something similar for texts! www.cnbc.com/2023/10/27/n...

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho didn't hold back when expressing his anger and "contempt" after agents with Homeland Security attempted to gain access to two elementary schools earlier this week.

@tntsportsus.bsky.social … if the USMNT game is so boring to you that you have to paste over it with the awful AltCast please let someone else carry the game.

Suffering through the altcast during the USMNT game with Türkiye. Listening to Dempsey and Chris Paul reminisce is like listening to fingernails on chalk. #MIB

Not true for all English (and/or humanities) departments, but certainly the ones I know, and the one in which I work, seems to be stuck in a bubble of its own creation, refusing to admit that times have changed. I don't think such departments need be irrelevant but they can make themselves so.

"Crocodiles predate wildebeests" is true for both meanings of predate.

Nothing worse than disappearing content. With that in mind, free your audiobooks! blog.greggant.com/posts/2025/0...

So @linkedin.com now has games? I understand the, seeming, necessity, for audience capture, aka "stickiness," but I would never have imagined that a platform that wants to be serious and/or business-focused would think the solution is "I know, games!" I think the capture team needs a re-think.

Happy Pride Month 2025 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ Be gay do crow stuff #pridemonth #pridecrows

I was not aware of the range of things that happened in an LLM's scratch pad, and that it sometimes noted that it was cheating. Yikes. Well done, @computerphile.bsky.social.

I tell you @openbookpublish.bsky.social continues to impress. Folklorists who would like a digital version of Ruth Finegan's work on oral poetry, here it is: www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

@neelsmith.bsky.social ... how awesome to see you on here! I hope you are doing well, my friend!

TANK vs TESLA "We've crushed fascism before and we'll crush it again" - ⁠WW2 veteran Ken, 98, in the tank

As senior faculty, I reserve the right to be uninterested in the third iteration of an argument or revision that appears to come in 6-8 year cycles.

At the rate that I am blocking phone numbers from spam calls and messages, I worry that there will no numbers allowed through in 5 years.

On a long flight with a surprisingly deep movie catalog, I found myself watching “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” a strangely compelling somewhat impressionistic documentary that explores the nexus of events around the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. Spy masters, jazz musicians, all in the mix.

The surprises available to makers of narrative games, especially in terms of player investment, is just stunning.

As a long-time fan of @marthawells.com's MurderBot series — I remember posting on Twitter about her work and Ann Leckie's back when both were still working on the original trilogies — I'm delighted to see this adaptation come to fruition: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw7D...