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Diogenes fucking with terfs

I agree with *all* of this, and would add only this: While there are shortcuts for making a piece of writing, there are no shortcuts for making a writer.

Same book, new title! Out January 2027

I occasionally use ChatGPT to see how many prompts it takes for it to come out with obviously wrong information. As far as using it in my actual work:

I really do not care if the guy who has raped kids is from my political party. My moral philosophy is that you don't rape kids, and there is nothing you can do that earns you a get-out-of-raping-kids-free card.

The Trump administration’s release of the Epstein grand jury documents are entirely redacted. It’s 119 pages of just black rectangles.

We've been talking about this a *lot* around the kitchen table at Chez Abraham. It's critically important to understand whether your ambition is to make art or make an artist. I find the first one less interesting.

The Mismeasure of Man was a good book. Stephen Jay Gould was an important writer for me.

@nytopinion.nytimes.com Consider that David Brooks opinion on things may not be as valuable as you assume.

I don’t know why, but somehow the appearance of David Brooks in the Epstein files leaves me incandescently angry. I’m not a big fan of Brooks’ work, but if that motherfucker ever publishes another word suggesting that liberals have deficient personal character, I have something to remind him of.

David Brooks, who wrote in the NYT last month, "The Epstein Story? Count Me Out" is... in the latest Epstein photo dump published by @oversightdemocrats.house.gov. He should absolutely be fired by NYT for this. Major conflict of interest that he didn't disclose.

yes! i am a bit of a broken record on this but among elite male commentators there is such obvious gender anxiety

“Her full legal name — the one that appeared on her birth certificate— was Sweet Mary Vivisect, which should give you a sense of her childhood. On the bus, we called her Alice.”

It's a shocking amount of unpaid labor that we've put into making a handful of tech bros very rich

My investigators are back with more on our follow the money investigation into Epstein. Here’s a thread for anyone interested in learning about another major Epstein mystery:

Candidate for personal favorite sentence I ever wrote: "Too late came early."

Despite of everything, reporters at the Washington Post continue to do very good work. Two examples today (gift links): wapo.st/4j7DwKQ

"Hmm," he said. "What's this?" [reads description of book] [smashes preorder] us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

Speaking of which open.substack.com/pub/sophieca...

"It sucks and doesn't work but AT SCALE, so you can fire a bunch of people or pay then a sub-living wage." "I'LL TAKE IT!"

I still "worry AI will replace us all" because I know the billionaires will keep pushing it on us -- or rather on our employers, who will be compelled by the "business logic" to accept total horseshit as The Future. Humanity's in for a rough ride.

This is the sort of contract that if you were entertaining signing it, your friends should smash through a window, do roll on the floor, leap up in a feral pounce and slap it out of your hands

OK hive mind. Does a thoughtful, non-sensationalist account of the state of play with UAP phenomena exist? Not looking to confirm any biases so much as to understand how to separate the data from the interpretation.

I keep saying fucks are like ova. You're born with so many and then when they're gone they're gone.

I can see AI being good at making dirty pictures. Porn without the performers, automated brute-force hacking, and psychosis-inducing cold reading. Behold "general intelligence." 🙄

This. Social media is a Fisher Price Toy Steering Wheel. Sure, the wheel turns and the horn works — but it’s not actually hooked up to anything important.

I would very much appreciate it if my AGI proponent friends could clearly and rigorously define general intelligence, just so we'd all understand in a specific, concrete way what it is we're supposed to be reproducing.

i have said this before but if you are actually interested in influencing people beyond a narrow circle of too-online journalists you will be making direct to camera videos on tiktok, instagram and youtube. if you primarily post on text-based social media then you're just dicking around.

One thing's for sure: Nobody is going to get fired or accused of celebrating Rob Reiner's death for simply quoting his own words.

As an addendum, after a whole day of this article being online (i.e., more than enough time for "AI" which can check the Web to be able to find it), here is Gemini once again getting the answer wrong, and fabricating a quote:

Re-upping for the people who quite sensibly stay off social media during the weekend: Watch as multiple "AI" fail a simple factual query!

You know it’s bad when even Fox News is reporting it

Them: We are on the verge of a breakthrough. Me: I’m not sure that’s how breakthroughs wor.

Every now and then, I have a conversation in real life so stilted and awkward, I think maybe I'll just never leave the house again.

Johnson has such a brilliant understanding of the genre he's working in, the serial detective fiction. The fact that he's resisted making these heroic movies ABOUT Blanc is practically miraculous

Today in "Don't Trust AI to Tell You Facts": How several different "AI" programs messed up the simple fact of to whom I dedicated a book, and what that means for how much you should trust "AI" to tell you the truth about things (spoiler: not much at all): whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/13/a...

Wake Up Dead Man worked for me. Benoit Blanc may be my fandom.

Crime, pornography, gambling, constant distraction, violence, and fear. We moved fast. We broke things.

AI is an inappropriate tool for any application where you want the output to be true.

“When they say he has everything, they mean it’s transmissible.”

I truly don’t think Disney has realized they just lit the beacons. The raptors have been testing the fences since the get go. The safeguards are gonna be non-existent. The first Elsa-teaches-you-about-choking will show up picoseconds after launch.

This is going to go so amazingly wrong so quickly and I can’t wait

Slogged through this paragraph from a craft book about dialogue that reminded me there was, of course, plenty of bad writing that strung together many sentences that said nothing BEFORE LLMs 😆

This is beautiful

I think an important thing to understand about brofluencer ideology is that they do not just deny that being toxic and shitty makes you a less appealing partner, they insist that women are only genuinely attracted to toxic and shitty men and being kind will instead make women lose respect for you.

Seems to me there's a publishing niche open for "How to woo women" guides that are open and honest about how much it sucks to feel vulnerable and rejected. So much of the pick-up artist schtick seems to be about how to "be in control" so you won't get embarrassed and sad. It's just unrealistic.

Seems to me like men need to grapple with the idea that there are a lot of different ways to be a man, a lot of different ways to be a woman, worry less about being manly and be more curious about the specific girl they’re talking to. Next career: men’s movement luminary, me.

Part of the reason traditional entertainment media are struggling is that they are in competition with platforms where content is generated by users for free. And a *lot* of people are broke enough that a night spooling through TikTok is better in balance than an Oscar-level movie in a theater.

Hakeem Jeffries Calls For Execution Of Central Park Five