What an amazing essay from the former chair of Africana Studies at Bowdoin. I'll share a few sections in the reply but seriously, read the whole thing. It's all insightful and beautifully written. lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

I'm super stoked that Colorado voted to fund free meals for kids for schools. (I've been saying lunches, but the program includes breakfasts, too.)

Too many people thinking about "AI threats" as "threats from AI agency" (which is science fiction) and not "threats from human agency used to productize LLMs in evil ways" which is in the news every day.

I’m just a small-town political scientist, & it’s still relatively early, but it appears that The Actual Democrats did not Need To Do any of the Things or Learn any of the Obvious Lessons that Ezra Douthglesias said they Must Do & Learn.

look colorado’s elections may pale in comparison to the big picture tonight, but early results suggest that we’ll pass permanent free breakfast and lunch for schoolkids and a raise for the cafeteria workers no matter what I’m calling the night a win

A dishwasher is already a robot that does your dishes

You want to democratize "going to therapy"? Make it "free" as in paid by socialized healthcare. You want to democratize "making art"? Give people money and free time to express themselves.

absolutely not, lol

"normies do not care about this thing and so it is no use raising a stink" is imho just an excuse for not doing politics, which is the job of making normies care about something

I love when you ask an autistic person for something and they're like STAND BY and you know you're about to get the absolute best resources available.

ah yes, the White Whale Way

the spammy PAC donation texts are bad enough, but even the semi-legitimate seeming ones are still so useless to me. who are you? what are you running for? why do you need the money? what will you do with it? why are you better than the next person?

I have been in san francisco for 24 hours and it has never been more clear that the purpose of most tech companies is to solve the problems incurred by tech people that is, the problem of living in sam francisco

I get the point that's trying to be made here, but it's actually inaccurate. The *MAJORITY* of actual practitioners in the tech industry have a position that is neither of these, it's merely getting drowned out by these two loud positions. The most common belief in the tech industry is simple:

I definitely thought this was exclusively a joke on arrested development.

OH LOOK WHAT I FOUND IN THE LIVING ROOM SHELVES

I was perusing the NYT’s robots.txt today as part of explaining to a friend where LLMs get all their data and discovered that NYT now has a license agreement in the comments of their robots file, that specifically disallows crawling from / by / for AI / LLMs

The word “autism” was first used to describe behavioral differences in children in 1911 but autism has been documented using available records going back to the 1700s (definitively) and further. Acetaminophen (Tylenol, paracetamol) was discovered in 1878 and first sold in the United States in 1950.

We have always been at war with Tylenol

lifting very heavy things on a regular basis is one of those things that make you feel capable of fighting fascism, and I just want everyone to know that (I owe this analysis to @caseyjohnston.bsky.social, whose book is very good and I rec it to someone at least weekly)

There goes the First Amendment.

I’ve said it before, but this was one of the lessons I learned very quickly in the wake of the wildfire that took our house. just because the world ends for you in one way doesn’t mean it ends altogether. there is comfort to be found in recognizing that fact, if you allow it.

meanwhile, 28% of the population trusts nothing beyond the end of their own nose

Earlier today, FCC Chair Brendan Carr said “we can do this the easy way or the hard way” about Disney/ABC “taking action on Kimmel.” Hours later, ABC pulled Kimmel off the air. It’s a blatant crackdown on free speech by an authoritarian administration. www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...

it’s very funny to make a distinction between cancel culture and what this is, which is clear government supression of speech. cancel culture isn’t anti first amendment, but this specifically is! which is worse!

I remind myself regularly that courage is something we admire not just because it is good, but because it is rare. I feel that way about a lot of virtues, these days.

lot of people been posting this one but here’s my post of it with my name correct. okie doke

I read another article about how eliminating ultra-processed foods changed someone’s life, even though we still don’t have a definition of what one is. it’s made me think that the right definition is simply - food made by a corporation, with food engineers and marketers to make you want it.

what we’ve seen from the right is the most insane case of cancel culture i’ve ever witnessed. the left has never even done close to a fraction of a fraction of what they want to do now

While we're talking about Albert Einstein and how people have tried to erase his 20+ year civil rights protest work from history: The FBI didn't like MLK jr. They called him "the most dangerous negro." Because he was influential, brought people together, and was vocally against anti-Black racism.

This is exactly the right way to think of this; precisely what I'm saying, yes

I keep seeing kids in their late teens and early 20s romanticize the year 2016. “It’s 2016 and you’re listening to this song…” Guys, nobody liked 2016. Until 2020, it was considered one of the worst years anyone had ever seen. Everyone cool died. It was fucking miserable. Stop it.

“What we have are approaches from the world of corporate crisis response, policing, and law enforcement being directed at disagreement and dissent as if they are problems to be solved rather than fundamental values to be cherished.” www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

this is the part that drives me nuts. a good quarter of my ancestry meets their “proper American” definition, but the other 3/4 is a hodgepodge of immigrants who have been here no more than about 130 years. all of whom were considered interlopers. yet they do not question my Americanness.

2/15/23, The Atlantic: 'What Not to Ask Me About My Long COVID' 'The fact is, no one—including doctors (especially doctors, dear God, these doctors)—knows the right things to say to those of us who have long COVID..' A brief guide By Jennifer Senior www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

I am tired of the circumstances of my life being determined by men on the brink of non-existence who think they’ll never die if they have enough power.

I am calm. I am breathing deeply through my nose. I am counting to ten. I… WHAT, ARE YOU AFRAID YOUR DOG WILL INFODUMP TO YOU ABOUT THE FUCKING BALL?!?

got the anxious dog a new toy, I think he has accepted it

what bugs me about this is that prayer is basically a form of meditation. quiet contemplation, to process and to rekindle hope, and steady your resolve. you can insert a deity or not. but when I meditate, I don’t expect that fact to be a comfort to anyone but myself.

This is bad. I do not need to say that. Bad is not the end. People want it to be the end, because this site has persuaded a lot of people that death is preferable to continuing to experience Trump. They are wrong. I will outlive Trump. *You* will outlive Trump, by all odds.

The problem isn’t Therapy Speak or self-obsession. It’s that so many people have no real understanding of the language or context used in therapeutic space. A person who wants to use that language for ill is rarely in danger of being called out for their twisted definitions and motivations.

I continue to miss tim walz

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

me irl

so if I don’t confirm my age, you’ll automatically give me privacy? hmmm hard deal I mean I don’t fully trust the SafeSearch filter not to be weirdly politicized, but otherwise - sign me up

may I recommend riding the Metro instead then?

Reskeeting with Alt Text so everyone can read this quote from Tressie McMillan Cottom in the NY Times

And to think: we could've instead used AI to locate people who qualify for Medicare but aren't currently signed up. Our society doesn't have to be exclusively punitive. We could like, give a fuck about each other.