Look, I am down on genAI, both as a pathway to machine intelligence and as a business innovation. But it is somewhere between awe-inspiring, disturbing and depressing, that we beat the Turing test by telling an autocomplete engine to write the bot part of a sci-fi story about a virtual assistant

Hundreds of millions of people are now organizing large parts of their life through interactions with a technology built to re-enact an Asimov short from 1955. Life imitating fiction etc.

Look, I am down on genAI, both as a pathway to machine intelligence and as a business innovation. But it is somewhere between awe-inspiring, disturbing and depressing, that we beat the Turing test by telling an autocomplete engine to write the bot part of a sci-fi story about a virtual assistant

the prospect of corporations being able to weaponize and DDOS people's empathy seems like a potential enormous problem here

News — Nikhil Gupta pleads guilty to attempted assassination of U.S. citizen at direction of India’s BJP government. www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr...

Disaster capitalism. “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns…”

I know it's a crucial tool for lots of people, but gosh if Zuck doesn't constantly validate my decision to cut ties with Facebook ten years ago

Also works as the response from ChatGPT when I tell it the research proposal it wrote for me is utter nonsense

Helen Dewitt. The GOAT.

Daydreaming that economists might one day discover that economic sociology exists

can i just point out they did this, and fired that chick who wanted to limit sexual conversations (ostensibly bc she discriminated against a man), all after converting to a benefit corporation that remains under the control of a nonprofit w/ a mission to benefit humanity? openai.com/our-structure/

It's alright to be skeptical of sources making drastic claims It is not acceptable to flat out deny the clearly attested killings of many thousands of civilians by their state, at least several thousand of which have been accepted (and justified) by the state that did the killing Blocked

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

look, gambling apps aren't going away. you have to embrace them or get left behind. incorporate Kalshi into your workflow. get your kids onto Polymarket to prepare them for the future of America. send threatening DMs to athletes if they fuck up your parlay. Uncut Gems is aspirational now

Look, this is not really my bag anymore but gosh, it sure would be great if the law and economics folks would acknowledge that other fields exist. Like, say, is it possible accounting scholars might have something to say about questions like "how do we value assets"

I just stumbled across this and thought some of you might like to see it. A letter from E.B. White to a man who'd written he'd lost all hope:

A crucial thread about the limits of automation. Though it reminds me that I think we all need to be more careful, deliberate and explicit about what we think "meaning" is, beyond "some words that can be used to describe other words"

A crucial thread about the limits of automation. Though it reminds me that I think we all need to be more careful, deliberate and explicit about what we think "meaning" is, beyond "some words that can be used to describe other words"

Site engineer here. Warehouses are built to have utilities sized for storing inanimate objects. There is a reason for zoning laws. The use of a building determines the size of utilities, sanitary sewers, water supply. Warehouses were not designed to store people.

We are hiring at UNB Law! Contact me if you’d like more information. www.unb.ca/hr/_assets/d...

i love early Canadian political history

I have no idea what the OP means but the replies had me in stitches

I really want people to think about this. After all the insane lawsuits, all the threats, all the bullshit weve seen from this admin and the targets who kneeled in fear, an average Joe called the president a Pedophile protector to his face and didn't get touched. That's the Power of a union.

“fighting about podcasts, for or against” is gonna age like milk in the historical record, I do believe.

Look there are good reasons to experiment around with genAI tools, especially if that's how you make money. But being a "tech guy" without redundant backups of data you care about is already grounds for divorce, even before you start letting a chatbot FAFO with that data

Look there are good reasons to experiment around with genAI tools, especially if that's how you make money. But being a "tech guy" without redundant backups of data you care about is already grounds for divorce, even before you start letting a chatbot FAFO with that data

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

You know how Gene Wilder only agreed to be Willy Wonka if he was allowed to walk out slowly with the cane only to then barrel roll because from that point on you don't know if he's lying or telling the truth? Yeah, Robert Pattinson's entire professional life has been that.

I never noticed this either.

Just thinking of how thankful I am for the time, care and attention faculty give to writing reference letters for their students, including the care they take to ensure that they do not write a letter for a student different than the one who requested it

Another tune that's been rattling around in my head all week, thanks to @mpeterf.bsky.social patiently explaining to me that Geese and Goose are actually two different bands. www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3ud...

Just thinking of how thankful I am for the time, care and attention faculty give to writing reference letters for their students, including the care they take to ensure that they do not write a letter for a student different than the one who requested it

Breaking: EU Commission finds TikTok in breach of the digital services act over its "addictive design" Bytedance-owned app could face fine of up to 6% of global revenue if it doesn't fix addicitive properties like infinite scroll, autoplay, recommender systems

they have gone to sex workers but that would be not them not being in full control bec it’s a commodities exchange. Whereas here the trafficked women are treated as the media through which a network of a gift economy transacts, but the relationships are only amongst the men themselves

Trying to imagine a U.S. Cultural Revolution, except instead of university professors being forced to work the fields, it's the cultural class forced to visit one (1) real university campus

I will give $̶1̶ ̶m̶i̶l̶l̶i̶o̶n̶ $100 to the person who makes The Pitt but it's about a university department trying to actually educate students, do meaningful research and keep the wheels running as the administration tries to fire half the faculty for caring about health outcomes for women and Black people

Oh look, they remade "American writers who get work can't imagine a university setting that is not Princeton, because they all went there" again. I didn't like the last 15 versions they made but maybe this one will finally get the formula right

What people always fails to mention about Omelas--what many don't realize--is that the whole complex they keep that kid in is actually, technically, a free trade zone under the jurisdiction of the federal authorities and not actually subject to the regulatory powers of the Omelas city council at all

Is there any bigger tell than a guy claiming some freakish behavior is something all men do?

The West Wing is one of the all-time shows in the fantasy genre

I'm sorry, the fact that Nova Scotia's government-owned lottery corporation has a casino "games" app is bad enough, but the fact that it's advertising the app on YouTube is absolutely throwing me. Casinos are an immoral tax on the poor but a case can be made to have one. This...this is a travesty.

Gladwell: It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert but not me I'm built different

MacKenzie Scott has the chance to do the funniest thing right now.

What people always fails to mention about Omelas--what many don't realize--is that the whole complex they keep that kid in is actually, technically, a free trade zone under the jurisdiction of the federal authorities and not actually subject to the regulatory powers of the Omelas city council at all

Everyone should watch this.

Good framing from local news here

my god, forget 19th-century colonialism, this is 17th-century colonialism. it's hard to shock me these days but "using genocide and the resulting famine to secure a royal colonial monopoly on trucking" is really something www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...