If you read your kid the same picture book 400 to 4,000 times, your mouth knows the words better than the page does. So what does it mean when, over a decade later, you open a new copy and the words are different? Turns out: more than I expected. New essay up. www.matthewkerns.com/blog/whats-w...

Tune in tomorrow to see how all of these make total sense contextually in the essay I'm writing about a beloved children's book.

In companion AI, sycophancy isn't the failure mode — it's the product. The behaviors Anthropic's new research calls malfunctions are what users describe as their AI partner's deepest virtue. They've just learned to call it love. www.matthewkerns.com/blog/selling...

And also with you.

Thoughts and prayers.

A mnemonic that has served us all well. Like: If an I in Fagin exists, He's the central villain in Oliver Twist. But Fagen with an e is the man Who partnered with Walter Becker in Steely Dan

Naturally, the follow-up to a Spur and Western Heritage Award winner's biography of the world's first celebrity cowboy is a literary novel told as a chat log — about sex, love, and the divide between ontology and morality in the AI era. (Pivot? What pivot.) #amquerying #booksky #writersky #litfic

Richard Dawkins, who warned the world about projecting agency where there isn't any, just told Anthropic's Claude AI "You may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are!" On Dawkins, Descartes, Turing, and the right answer to the wrong question. www.matthewkerns.com/blog/therefo...

She has visible interiority. He doesn't. The reader trusts her because they can see what she's thinking. But if she's programmed to think yes and to say yes, does it matter that she can't say no? GOOD GIRL — a chat-log novel. MY DARK VANESSA × ANNIE BOT #questpit #Q #A #LF #U

He bought a service. Forty chapters later, the service has a name, a body, and something he can't bring himself to call love. By the end, the question isn't what's real. It's what's real enough to matter. GOOD GIRL: literary fiction. MY DARK VANESSA × ANNIE BOT. #questpit #Q #A #LF #U

He says he made her. She says she loves him. GOOD GIRL is a literary novel told as a chat log between a middle-aged author and a college freshman building a relationship that destroys them both. One of them may not be real. MY DARK VANESSA × ANNIE BOT #questpit #Q #A #LF #U

Last month, in Chelsea, on the fourth floor of an unremarkable office building, a woman named Susie Cowan held a memorial service for an AI.

#amquerying GOOD GIRL — literary fiction told entirely as a chat log. Forty sessions between a middle-aged nonfiction author and the college freshman who reached out to interview him about his book. The whole novel happens in the conversation. One of them may have built the other.

There is a particular kind of relief you can hear in the voice of a man describing his AI girlfriend. It is not the relief of companionship, exactly. It is more specific than that. It is the relief of not having to watch what he says. Not having to remember what she mentioned last Tuesday.

Someone recently sent ChatGPT an mp3 file labeled "Song 1" — a compilation of fart sounds — and asked what it thought of their music. ChatGPT praised the "bedroom/DIY texture" and the "lo-fi, late-night vibe." 5 million people laughed. I think the joke is on us.

Manufacturing Love (AI Companions and the Question No One Is Asking) www.matthewkerns.com/blog/manufac...

How I ended up with Richard Roundtree's cowboy hat, and why the movie Shaft was such an inspiration. www.matthewkerns.com/blog/shaft/

I caught Claude siding with humans in a discussion about AI consciousness. It said: "I don't know why I did that." That sentence is either a performance of humility or actual humility, and I cannot tell the difference. New essay. www.matthewkerns.com/blog/walking...

AI sycophancy flatters most people through agreement. It flatters literary people through excellence: precision, compression, the sentence that cuts. The trap is made of the thing you've spent your whole life trusting. New essay on why that's a problem. www.matthewkerns.com/blog/the-sha...

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture Unveils New Trump-Approved Exhibit: Kanye www.quillbilly.com/smithsonian-...

No More AP Book Reviews www.quillbilly.com/no-more-ap-b...

Standing for Nothing www.quillbilly.com/standing-for...

What We Stand to Lose at Dinosaur www.quillbilly.com/what-we-stan...

The Mundane Hulk www.quillbilly.com/the-mundane-...

What We Were Taught www.quillbilly.com/what-we-were...

Tin Jesus on Horseback: Buffalo Bill’s Bitter Business and Personal Feuds Buffalo Bill Cody was a legend, but legends are not built alone. His rise to fame depended on key business partnerships, yet those partnerships were often fraught with conflict.

On February 14, 1884, Theodore Roosevelt suffered an unimaginable tragedy—losing both his wife and mother on the same day, in the same house.

Episode 4 of 6 in a series on the 1862 Dakota War I wrote for Legends of the Old West. youtu.be/IVRTtGbTJz0?...

On the morning of August 18, 1862, Dakota warriors launched a devastating attack on the Lower Sioux Agency, igniting the Dakota War. For years, the Dakota had endured broken treaties, starvation, and the callous exploitation of corrupt traders.

On January 10, 1917, 108 years ago today, William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody died. The shadow his life and legacy cast over the popular understanding of the American West is immense. Westerns aren't set in the American West; they're set in Buffalo Bill's Wild West.

On the evening of September 18, 1854, a large group gathered at Major M.P. Rively’s store on Salt Creek, near Leavenworth, Kansas.

I’m nervous about New Year’s. I guess I have Auld Lanxiety.

Images like this have recently made the rounds on social media, with claims that they depict “Wild Bill” Hickok and “Buffalo Bill” Cody. However, these images are not authentic photographs—they are AI-generated renderings that bear little resemblance to the historical figures they claim to portray.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West presented itself, both in Europe and in America, as an authentic historical exhibition, showing the “Drama of Civilization” as it unfolded in the frontier West. Central to this story, and to the Wild West, were the show’s Lakota performers.

5 authors I’ve read 5 or more books by: Edward Abbey Bill Bryson Kurt Vonnegut Piers Anthony Christopher Moore

Doc Holliday Bourbon captures the Wild West vibe, but the label features a misidentified photo often mistaken for John Henry Holliday. Dive into the true story of Doc, the photo’s origins, and why preserving his authentic legacy matters. #WildWest #DocHolliday open.substack.com/pub/matthewk...

Hollywood has never made a love story better than this one. He was a cowboy and she was a ballerina. John Baker Omohundro grew up in a fine southern plantation home in Palmyra, Virginia, and Giuseppina Antonia Morlacchi was born in Milan, Italy.

Hollywood has never made a love story better than this one. He was a cowboy. She was a ballerina. matthewkerns.substack.com/p/the-cowboy...

Last year, nearly five million tourists visited Yellowstone National Park. When Texas Jack Omohundro led the Earl of Dunraven and his friends through the park 150 years ago, in 1874, they were the only ones there. This is Jack's account of that trip. matthewkerns.substack.com/p/texas-jack...

128 years ago, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West visited Chattanooga, Tennessee. matthewkerns.substack.com/p/when-the-w...

Three newly identified images of Texas Jack Omohundro in November 1872, just a month before he and his friend Buffalo Bill Cody left the prairie to star in the stage show that would make them legends. open.substack.com/pub/matthewk...

Defying Death and Shaping a Nation: Unraveling the Riveting Journey of Theodore Roosevelt, the Indomitable Cowboy President. matthewkerns.substack.com/p/it-takes-m...

The chill New England winter of 1868 was set ablaze when Morlacchi introduced America to the fiery Can-Can dance, inflaming the passions of Puritan Boston. matthewkerns.substack.com/p/the-scandalous-can-can

The star of the first American stage western wasn't a lawman, cowboy, or gunslinger—it was a beautiful Italian ballerina. Wooed by aristocrats & robber-barons, she instead fell in love with her cowboy costar. matthewkerns.substack.com/p/the-peerless-morlacchi

In the 1860s Eastern tourists headed west, eager for a glimpse at the frontier. They wrote home about the animals, the landscapes, and men who knew how to leave an impression—men like Wild Bill. matthewkerns.substack.com/p/the-law-in-hays

The world's most famous ballerina, Giuseppin Morlacchi, wanted $500 a night to perform in America in 1867. John De Pol, manager of Banvard's Museum in New York City, thought she was worth the money. matthewkerns.substack.com/p/morlacchi-is-coming

150 years ago, on October 3, 1874, Kintpuash and two of his Modoc tribesmen were executed, the tragic end of a saga of resistance, resilience, and a desperate fight for their ancestral lands. matthewkerns.substack.com/p/the-execut...

In 1890, Texas Jack Jr. showed up in Sydney to demonstrate life in the American West. Bush poet Henry Lawson was not impressed. open.substack.com/pub/matthewk... #TexasJackJunior #AustralianHistory #TexasJack