A Billboard top 100 list that's all just Milli Vanilli but worse

We're about 6 months out from a well respected artist who has one or two break out albums ending their career by releasing an album that's just one song they wrote plus 10 tracks that sound like them ginned up using GenAI

Do not cite an academic paper unless you’ve read it

Virginia Heffernan wrote this shortly after the 2016 election and it still holds true

1/ Hope this thread helps break through the mental logjam for normies. For anyone in the game of technology/ innovation/development this is just basic facts now. For the first time in 2 centuries, the West is no longer the leader in future technology,but the follower www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Social media polarization story is a story of elites! It’s the elites and para-elites driven insane by online, and it trickles down to the masses.

The sanctions that Trump has imposed on the ICC and UN rapporteurs have been deterring American human rights advocates and scholars from exercising their First Amendment rights. This letter--obtained by @mesa1966.bsky.social & @knightcolumbia.org--should help. knightcolumbia.org/content/trum...

Beautiful eulogy for Asad Haider from Jeffrey Weber.

Well here's some fantastic news!

I guess I do have one more thought on this, which is that we still really don't have a morally coherent way of thinking about what the ethics and obligations of 'poster' as a political category are.

Some days it actually is possible to be shocked by a reminder that one of the worst currently living persons holds the most powerful political offices in the world.

I imagine that parties and political scientists have done focus groups and A/B testing, and found that comms with an Urgent! Deadline! message leads to a bump in donations and engagement. But has anyone tested whether that works when a party's "Once in a Lifetime!" message comes every 4-5 days?

more power to any Dean who makes the case that their discipline-specific standard for AI is refusal, and AI refusal will be what they integrate into the curriculum

My most fundamental belief is that we do not have to live like this.

my cover letter opening line

apart from the sheer inconceivable horror of the El Fasher massacre and its attendant horrors itself, the thing I'm feeling depressed about is that it probably won't matter. these were people already on the utmost margins of the global system, who the world has already decided it doesn't care about

So, El Fasher looks like one of the worst single event atrocities to happen this century so far, but the evidence has come in such a trickle it seems to only now be getting verified

In late 2020 a Chinese man called Guan Heng travelled to Xinjiang with our BuzzFeed map of detention facilities to provide ground truth for our work - he provided the first corroborating evidence for many sites. He escaped to the US - then ICE detained him. www.wsj.com/world/china/...

Brb writing a 250 page review of the 200 page review of the 145 page book

I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork

Anarchist Advent*: 24 reasons to be an anarchist (*doesn't go until Xmas but until New Year as the latter at least formally acknowledges the arbitrariness of human time, and doesn't involve buying or trying to sell you anything) No. 1: See above

In the immediate term, it's fair to blame the US for the rise in global child mortality: by throwing USAID into the wood chipper, Musk, Rubio and Trump destroyed systems and processes that millions had come to rely on. But in the years to come when, all rich countries will bear that moral wound

“the task before us is to remake the very social relations from which these fundamental problems emerge“

elon musk being a gooner obsessed with anime waifus built to mimic his ex wife is a big part of why hundreds of thousands of people are now dead

Against all the horrors and downsides of the neoliberal age, one counterweight was the steady global fall in child mortality rates. But now, catalysed by the rapid, surprise and malicious removal of US support for medicines and food aid, that trend too is headed into reverse. A moral catastrophe

In the immediate term, it's fair to blame the US for the rise in global child mortality: by throwing USAID into the wood chipper, Musk, Rubio and Trump destroyed systems and processes that millions had come to rely on. But in the years to come when, all rich countries will bear that moral wound

Against all the horrors and downsides of the neoliberal age, one counterweight was the steady global fall in child mortality rates. But now, catalysed by the rapid, surprise and malicious removal of US support for medicines and food aid, that trend too is headed into reverse. A moral catastrophe

Look, I have a long list of criticisms of Canada's Carney government, but this program feels like they have seen a real opportunity and understood the game. These are awards designed not only to hire highly productive, impactful researchers but to bring whole research programs to Canada

LOL. No.

prospects do not appear favorable, it’s true. but I like to think about how much of actually existing America was built in a frenzy of work between 1933-45

cannot begin to tell you how happy I am to have stumbled upon the Paris building shared by metal music fans and the union for metal workers, what a delight

From the @wsj.com chief foreign correspondent

Trying and failing to imagine the UK being ruled by a left wing party

I've seen a few peoople mention that they've been moving to oral exams and I wonder--how do you manage this with blind grading? Is there any worry about bias, and how does that get handled? What about accommodations like those that give students more time? Seems like you'd know who they are?

The USPS posting a NINE BILLION DOLLAR LOSS!!! sounds terrible. Certainly worse than if you said "USPS costs thirty dollars per person per year" even though that means the same thing and more accurately describes a government service

Exactly. The new U.S. National Security Strategy is much worse for Europe than most people had imagined. Europe is described as a bigger threat than both China and Russia, and they outline the need for regime change in Western European countries as part of a civilizational struggle.

I don't know, man, I think if I cared at all about soccer, like even if one my kids played rec soccer, I would be driven to a roiling boil of rage by today's events to make it my life's work to destroy FIFA forever

Manager: You design that peace prize trophy for trump? Sculptor: Sure did boss, the demonic hands of hell grasping as if to drag the entire world down with them, just like you asked. Manager: Y'know what fine

this shit is just beyond parody, man

They want England to be the England of their expectations and they cannot forgive us for not also wanting this.

#BandcampFriday 🔥

Apropros of the news: there was a moment when the American establishment believed rough compliance with the prohibition against war crimes was, even if not always directly in the country's interest, nonetheless something like a Veblenian luxury good: a mark of the power and wealth of the country.

On a similar note, I think I am going to have to give some points to the Brits for ending their empire *without* using it as an excuse to stomp around the world smashing things like a excitable gorilla. The British Empire was evil in all sorts of ways but its end was by comparison pretty tame

Compliance with the most fundamental norms of the international order? In this economy?!

Apropros of the news: there was a moment when the American establishment believed rough compliance with the prohibition against war crimes was, even if not always directly in the country's interest, nonetheless something like a Veblenian luxury good: a mark of the power and wealth of the country.

Unironically, I think Snopes should become a non-profit and get the same kind of giving support that Wikipedia gets albeit not at the same scale

This is the Witch Trials theory of war: If they try not to drown at sea, they're terrorists.

Tag yourself, I’m the two bathtubs in the laundry room