This. Fuck, this so often

Snail helm is go

Almost certainly the best photograph I will ever take of a hagstone. www.tom-cox.com/the-hagstone/

It's early and this is a truly atrocious cup of coffee, so it seems like a good time to pick a fight with the world. "System doesn't matter" is a valid, reasonable, and *critically important* argument which has been rendered ragebait and a punchline by pedantry.

If you love her, build her a shelter in haunted woodland guarded by owls.

Molly's being characteristically thoughtful. I'll be more of an asshole: THE AI COMPANIES HAVE USED WIKIPEDIA'S SHIT FOR YEARS. It costs millions of fucking dollars in infrastructure to serve up content to these companies. Should Wikipedia subsidize them? No? Then it's *good* they're getting paid!

omae wa mou shindeiru

However you feel about AI companies, making them pay to scrape Wikipedia shouldn’t be controversial.

Sure. AI companies have ALWAYS been training their models on Wikipedia content, which under the free and open access model is available to anyone — including AI companies. Agreements like these require AI companies to limit and offset the strain they place on Wikimedia infrastructure.

I wonder how Wikipedia editors and contributors feel about this. Wikipedia signs AI training deals with Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon Wikimedia Enterprise signs Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mistral AI to paid deals. arstechnica.com/ai/2026/01/...

So all of the info on Wikipedia is shared under a Creative Commons Share Alike license. Does this mean that MSFT, Meta and Amazon will be making their models freely available?

This really captures the aesthetic sense of most Wikipedians.

[getinloser.gif]

This feels like it could be a Dolmenwood situation. Even better if the individuals believed themselves to be owl scholars and developed separate owl lexicons based on a complete mutual misunderstanding of each others' hoots. No actual owls need be involved.

Wikipedia’s Existential Threats Feel Greater Than Ever. As the free online encyclopedia turns 25, it’s facing political opposition, AI scraping, dwindling volunteers, and a public that may no longer believe in its ideals. www.wired.com/story/wikipe...

@passblue.bsky.social account of @unpga.bsky.social call for more candidates to enter the race: passblue.com/2026/01/14/u...

10 PRINT "Oh the memories! "; 20 GOTO 10

Guy in my TikTok comments: well actually, the system doesn’t matter, the table is much more important… Me, who I’m very confident has played more systems and at more tables that that guy ever will in his entire life: what scintillating input

If I had to pick one meme to summarize all of TTRPG discourse it would be this one.

Art Nouveau inspired illustrations by Hillary Knight for an edition of Beauty and the Beast.

Just again seen “reigned-in” in the wild and it always makes me giggle. What on earth do people imagine it means? (Reined-in. Like using the reins to slow down a horse.)

Bandcamp has banned AI music. The company has released a statement which includes the following: "Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp." stereogum.com/2485199/band...

It’s increasingly clear that “AI” has rotted the brains of the managerial class at exceptionally high speed.

I just finished a three-year term as an editor at an international relations journal. I began at the start of the LLM era but ended right in the middle of it. Our volume of submissions tripled and our desk reject rate rose to 75%. I have some thoughts. open.substack.com/pub/hegemon/...

REVIEW Religion and Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction, by BETH SINGLER url: academic.oup.com/socrel/artic...

if anything, we can thank this industry for proving that you can speed-run the entire arc of 20th century discourse on authorship, originality, and, relatedly, copyright, all in under 5 years.

Hahaha stealing this for my Religion, Speculative Fiction, and Pop Culture course where there is a lecture on "Gods from the Stars", including Däniken and Stargate :D

Friends, it's true! Swords Without Master has arrived on kickstarter!

I used to teach an autobiography of an AI engineer in my robots in literature class where he supposed that all medieval monks could imagine as progress would be a bigger pen and parchment, but we know that the monks were conceiving of worlds insane enough to melt your eyeballs out of your head

What the hell is this nonsense? How exactly am I “in control” if they’re forcing the on switch? Why am I being unwillingly opted-in for a “free trial period” of this garbage?

One of the things I appreciated about Philadelphia is the Science History Institute. They host exhibitions and events about the science of chocolate and tofu and color and Ozempic and geothermal energy and rocks and penicillin and school lunch and women chemists and fireworks and poison...

I will out myself here: I've engaged in my fair share of public thought encouraging this sort of thing. I disavow it now. Whether there's anything left on the Web to connect me to any of that thought (low reach as it was) depends on whether there's a public archive of Google+ or not.

Startup guys once again validating my theory of combinatory slop and cultural stagnation!!

New research presents the most compelling evidence yet that generative AI directly stores and reproduces material used to train it—a finding that could have massive legal consequences for the tech industry, Alex Reisner reports.

Really feels like the wheels are falling off now

New Blog Post: Eating the Book--a response to 'We Need to Talk About Goodman Games.' Wherein I critique that Questing Beast Video, articulate different approaches to game preparation, and advocate for more intellectually curious criticism in the RPG space. orthopraxy.bearblog.dev/eating-the-b...

This has been prominently placed in our kitchen for eight years now.

healf-hundisc, adj: half-canine. (HEH-alf-HUN-dish / ˈhɛalf-ˌhʌn-dɪʃ) Image: Expositio in psalmos; N Italy, first half of 12th century; Morgan Library & Museum, MS G.51, f. 23v. #OldEnglish #WOTD

Whether we are participating in local discussions making decisions for our communities or writing for broad audiences we share a responsibility to create and use empowering metaphors rather than misleading language that embeds tech companies’ marketing pitches, write Emily M. Bender and Nanna Inie.

Oh yes! Personal cargo robots that double as a seat would be A+ as long as they don't also try to talk.

thank you @ethangach.bsky.social for writing about the new website i'm cofounding with @zoehhannah.com! you can get some insight into our post-polygon journey towards creating @mothership.blog here: kotaku.com/mothership-i...

Meanwhile, over on Mastodon: mastodon.social/@mhoye/11586...

If you use Discord, please take a minute to fill out their survey re: the potential addition of AI features. Companies, stop shoving these rubbish 'upgrades' down our throats! 👎🏻 discord.sjc1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

The Weight of Words For HKers, language is our identity. We speak Cantonese. We write in traditional Chinese. And during the pro-democracy protests when it seemed like no one would hear us, we just made up some new words that speak our truth. Source: Telegram/ Ah-To (Dec 2019)

One of my favorites. So good.

“Our government insists we can fill these massive staffing shortages by training more native healthcare workers. We can’t. For one thing, we need more doctors, nurses, and care workers now, not ten years from now.” www.liberalcurrents.com/we-need-to-g...

If for some reason supporting one of the most venerable anarchist publishers operating isn't a good enough reason for you, PM Press also owns Ithaca's beloved local used book store, which in turn houses our local record store.

My very limited take away from the new food "guidelines" is that we don't talk about gout enough.

OUT TODAY: My monograph, The Book Unbound, is printed in hardback today @universitypress.cambridge.org: www.cambridge.org/core/books/b...