French President walking to the UN but unable to get there because of Trump's motorcade seems like an apt metaphor for America's role now on the world stage

3/3 St Mary, Flowton, one of Suffolk's loveliest little churches, dressed for Autumn.

Postwar consumerism was customer-centric. The customer was always right. Now it's 'pay more or we'll bombard you with unwanted ads, spy on you, and sell your data'. It's a protection racket that exploits moribund ideas about brand prestige. Customers are just marks for big tech now. Data livestock.

She’s a smooth scrap of paper.

The perfect ‘thank you’ for that person who got you a big personalised Toblerone

1986. The Housemartins in their "Who you looking at?" phase...

What America is going through is not unusual in historical terms. Plenty of examples like it today elsewhere in the world. What makes it unusual is the rapid collapse from a set of widely espoused norms and values that centered on liberty. It is the sacking of the shining city on hill that shocks.

I learned the term "vulture capitalism" from this documentary on the destruction and buyout of local newspapers by a hedge fund. Also, seems to be the playbook DOGE is using for our federal agencies: gut them first, then privatize so your buddies can make some bucks. strippedforpartsfilm.com

Aw man I wish academics had headlines like this. “Stephen Aguilar (existential dread) is not expected to write today, per @mpolikoff.bsky.social”

the rain it raineth every day upon the just AND unjust fella BUT more upon the just, because the unjust hath the just's umbrella

I've been wondering about these outfits for years. So good to see it explained/exposed.

Book vouchers/book tokens are an underutilized vehicle in this country! This is lovely.

We're able to do this with our profits from the Hub City Bookshop and can operate without free book fairs or "gifted" books, which can be stigmatizing and othering. Learn more and support today: www.hubcity.org/zorabucks

Look after each other.

Good night

obsolete fiction E.F. Benson, from ‘The Witch-Ball’

settings > content & media > autoplay video & gifs = off

JUST IN: The DC Circuit has restored Shira Perlmutter as Register of Copyrights while she fights Trump’s effort to remove her from the legislative branch role in the Library of Congress. 2-1 ruling in her favor after a string of defeats in district court.

JUST IN: DC Circuit, 2-1, rejects Trump's attempt to fire Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter. Pan(Biden)/Childs(Biden) say her duties appear to be largely Congress-facing. Walker (Trump) dissents, says situation too close to firings #SCOTUS permitted www.politico.com/live-updates...

Invitation to friends in the arts. I'm part of a group organizing a project called Fall of Freedom. We want artists and orgs of all kinds (whether you're an Indie bookstore, a cinema, gallery, whatever) to come together to resist authoritarianism. Starting November 21st... www.falloffreedom.com

Simply loving this new feature in Word in which a selected font* spontaneously converts to wingdings or whatever, instantly rendering a working document into complete gibberish. ⭐⭐⭐ Great enhancement! *seems to affect whatever is set as default/body font for the doc

cluster

"For publishing professionals watching from the sidelines, this represents a masterclass in how AI companies are treating copyright disputes as manageable business costs rather than existential threats." www.linkedin.com/pulse/anthro...

This frontispiece in my book just made me laugh a lot. Is this Buddhist reincarnation, or some other form of afterlife?

At about 4.10pm on this day 54 years ago, something weird started happening on Scottish Television. There was no announcement, and no credit was given to the person who had created them, but strange short films suddenly started popping up in the schedules youtu.be/AA9IdHtHk_0?...

Good morning. ‘Call the police there’s a madman around’

Anthropic have said publicly that they use synthetic data, and have even said they think they can build an “infinite data generation engine”. The settlement gets some money to the authors of the pirated books (good), but fails to stop Anthropic benefiting from them via synthetic data (very bad).

Pause a while, and read...

The hits keep on coming… www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Perhaps still the best general purpose explainer of how an LLM works and the one I give to students. Here’s why I like it (short🧵): ig.ft.com/generative-ai/

If you're in or around San Francisco, there's a one-day menswear pop-up this Saturday, where lots of guys in the area are bringing their clothes for sale. There will be stuff from Peter Zottolo, George Wang (of BRIO), and some outerwear from me. Also drinks and a DJ. Suggested donation of $5.

Getting Your Copyrights Back: the Copyright Act allows artists and authors to "terminate" an assignment and get their rights back. But the statute is complicated. I wrote about in 5 Bridges Law's first blog post: 5bridgeslaw.com/5-bridges-la...

Bartz v. Anthropic, the class action copyright lawsuit over books pirated to train Anthropic's AI. The parties reached a settlement in principle. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

FYI www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

such fun chatting with @allysonnoman.bsky.social while she pulled some timely tarot cards!✨✨✨ check out our convo & follow her stack! open.substack.com/pub/allysonn...

If you really think works of literature are better when they're shortened, then I have abridge to sell you.

In a new blog, our CEO @keithkup.bsky.social writes, "Until the day comes when #AI companies choose to be respectful of #copyright, it’s up to creators to make the right call when entrusting a law firm to represent their copyright interests." Read his post here: copyrightalliance.org/how-to-choos...

“Andreessen Horowitz is warning that billions of dollars in AI investments could be worth a lot less if companies developing the technology are forced to pay for the copyrighted data that makes it work.” This is NOT from the @theonion.com www.businessinsider.com/marc-andrees...

Lewis Carroll's original sepia ink illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/carroll-illustrations-for-alice-undergound @britishlibrary

NEW: A major AI copyright legal showdown just took a huge twist today. Facing a class action on behalf of book authors that could've seen it pay over a TRILLION in damages for alleged piracy, Anthropic has agreed to settle instead: www.wired.com/story/anthro...

Calling all authors who were eligible to be part of the class action against Anthropic, I'm eager to hear your thoughts on the settlement. Happy to talk on background—Signal me at kateknibbs.09

The details of the settlement aren't public yet. Extremely curious to see how much per infringed work, and how many authors are ultimately involved. Also curious if there will be pushback from the class a la Google Books

Big news - Anthropic agrees to settle with authors in copyright lawsuit. As tech bros like to say, ‘we’re only just getting started’. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

I love the implication here that Simon Six will be twice as good as Twelve, because it can place "twice as much emphasis" on the six titles it publishes a year. Soon there will just be Simon One, producing just one title every twelve months (a 1,800 page Colleen Hoover novel)

'There is fascism, leading only into the blackness which it has chosen as its symbol, into smartness & yapping out of orders, & self-righteous brutality, into social as well as international war. It means change without hope. Our immediate duty...is to stop it' (EM Forster, 1934). 🔶️