Polanyi had our number.

This is correct

No science fiction could have prepared us for just how stupid the end of the world can be. "The environment was on the brink of collapse, and so, rather than deal with that, we burned what fuel we had left getting computers to scam each other for money."

Watch until 6:45 or so for a surprise

News organizations should periodically stop and look in the mirror and ask themselves “Have we internalized copspeak to the point that our headlines indistinguishable from police department email subject lines?”

The Amazing World of Tomorrow

today is sextidi 26 Messidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV, celebrating sage

for america's 2nd 250 years maybe we should change it up and try to be good

viewing Discourse and acquiring the sense that I must remember this painful lesson once more

The big literary discourse on twitter right now is whether The Hobbit—a children’s book that won children’s lit awards and was literally written for the author’s children—is appropriate reading for children or in fact such a difficult book most adults can’t “get their head around” it.

It feels good but quickly you find yourself wanting more.

As a professor, I once punished a kid who hadn't read the workshop submissions by making him do verbal critiques on them anyway. He absolutely nailed it. Unforgettably hilarious.

As getting in the car approaches I am feeling like maybe I’m missing a book or two.

All along I’ve been saying this is the problem: give the voters no alternative and you will be surprised the lengths they will go to avoid eating shit for you. The strategy of there is no alternative but you slowly sinking into the pit while a few get richer and richer, well see where it got us.

That said, not enough attention’s been paid to something damaging that the Dem establishment actually did do here. Hoping to stop Platner, Schumer worked to clear the field of everyone but his choice for the race against Collins. (Someone whose heart, reportedly, wasn’t really in it.) Most obliged.

Crazy how People is the remaining publication that just goes for the jugular.

Some of these books I am reading just to get mad at them, others I know will be a joy, and some are a complete mystery and I’m excited to discover; finally a few are just meant to be good and dry as dust.

The most important vacation packing is done. I guess I can start thinking about clothes now.

That? That’s my emotional-support photo of a young Brigitte Bardot.

Shoot it down

5 writers you've published 3+ books by 5 series for which you've acquired 5 books 5 series you've started 5 editors you've worked with 5x (as author, peer reviewer, series editor, etc) 5 therapists you've hired, 5 meds you've tried, and 5 shows you've binged to help you get through all of the above

anyway, I am once again calling for a ban on Elizabeths-whose-dads-are-evil-billionaires

That Pepys never got to see social media is one of humanity's great losses.

Yesterday I was reading Scholderer’s essays and learned about this 1473 Parma ed of the Achilleid, existing in only 2 copies, which has a colophon which states that the printer finished the book “faster than asparagus cooks” and I’m o b s e s s e d

Beginning to see a small change on LinkedIn toward AI skepticism from the same people who were ride or die champions just a few weeks ago. It is incredible to me how people are capable of surfing the trends with literally no thought or concern, then and now. Truly nothing matters but money.

The world is not postliterate. At times, & especially in the reception, a parochial story about US is masquerading as a story about humanity & civilization. Post-literacy might spread, but that would require it becoming part of a cultural imperialist project, which bring me to my main point. 5/

hahaha whacked-out daddy’s home! I loved the details of the games so much!

Why we are we talking about ‘securing our border’ when all the real threats are domestic?

Got my first beach read sorted

The ICE murder of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo deserves the same fury as Renee Good and Alex Pretti

Not beating the allegations: dumbest to ever do it.

telling an LLM to "just fix style and grammar" can change a lot more than just style and grammar

can't say i respect his takes, but after years of taking un-seatbelted low-speed test impacts in cars, i have to respect that sean davis reinvented himself as a conservative thinker

This point needs to be made over and again: The main purpose of wealth taxes should not be to raise revenue. That's a small and secondary benefit. The main purpose should be to *reduce the fortunes of the ultrarich*. Why? Because those fortunes present a massive threat to democracy and public life.

ChatGPT posters and flyers are polluting real life and driving me insane. Please respond to this with the worst ones you've seen irl. I'll post some in the thread www.404media.co/we-are-livin...

Regulating the AI industry can seem very complicated, but in fact we have a handy model: Do all the things that we failed to do to regulate the tech industry before it. www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/we-already...

Time kept on, piling up, like the layers of varnish on an old master.

Henry Darger - Cat Headed Blengiglomenean Gasook, or the Thunderer

I don’t think "Dem HR ladies" is labor coded or working class aligned. It comes from the same place everything that is terrible in the last two years has come from. The backlash to the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements.

Facebook’s own researchers found that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools”, an internal report in 2016 found. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

This is why I felt emboldened to run with a course the premise of which grounds, however hopefully, a different narrative. I’m tired of reading “AI has profoundly changed our world” as an on-ramp to criticism & want to teach students not manifest this as a fait accompli. bsky.app/profile/sonj...

Compounded by the fallacy in our culture that if you can afford to pay money to avoid having to do a tedious task yourself it is your moral obligation to avoid it when in fact it’s often the opposite.

My idea would be that the next time people want to support a working class candidate for public office, we look for someone like a nurse or a public school teacher or a home health aide or a nice HR lady. And ideally someone with a track record of commitment to organized left politics.

the thing that I find really vexing is how dramatic this swing is and what it means for how little people can retain the memory or even the feeling of how badly something sucked only 4 years prior.

Compounded by the fallacy in our culture that if you can afford to pay money to avoid having to do a tedious task yourself it is your moral obligation to avoid it when in fact it’s often the opposite.

This is all a problem of confusing signifier for signified.

OpenAI employee: "How did the obvious and inevitable result everyone predicted happen?!?!"

remember

I have been quoting this sentence from your paper, "When users treat LLM outputs as communications of “meaning” rather than calculations of form" to every poor soul that crosses my path. I found it really useful and illuminating.