The best remedy for despair I found is: Be specific. Because either you come up with details that render your orginal belief unfounded or incongruous; or, when failing, your attention has been distracted and your mind put at ease, at least somewhat. 1-3

This thread mastodon.social/@inthehands@... h/t @tinydoctor.bsky.social

Unflinching study for a portrait of the weather-beaten, salt encrusted “Sea Dog” Walt Anderson, painted by his long-time friend Andrew Wyeth in 1971 (detail, egg tempera) www.facebook.com/groups/58441...

I feel exactly the same about neighbors using leaf blowers as the Sand People feel about podracers, but my wife won't allow me to shoot them

♪ Tatran, "Analog Sessions" www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8f-...

♪ Tatran, "Shvat" www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3d1... flloating...

Sally Jenkins, "The Man Who Broke Physics" www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202... I'm really not into sports journalism or figure skating. But Sally Jenkins writes with such grace that I couldn't stop reading. Take the opening paragraph—or perhaps only the first sentence.

♪ Frédéric Chopin, "Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 66" (Daniil Trifonow) www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Okg... I'm glad that despite the cultural boycott of Russian musicians in Germany due to the war this concert took place. Daniil Trifonow is incredible. His play so gentle, dynamic, precise.

What people underestimate is how strong a spiritual concept capitalism is. (simsa01.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/t... from 2010)

Filip Timotija, "How Trump’s complex operation to extract Iran’s enriched uranium could unfold" thehill.com/policy/defen... I really don't want to know to what dangerous levels the U.S. hubris will increase should this insane operation succeed. And on the other hand: What is the alternative?

♪ Buckwheat Zydeco, "Ya Ya" www.youtube.com/watch?v=KweT...

Historical knowledge repositories und encyclopaedias enzyklothek.de/en A database of facsimiles!

This I would generalise to be valid for both text- and music production by #AI / LLMs: It cheapens the process of what constitutes art, focuses people and audiences on some "end product", and dismisses the artistic process that, the more one learns the details of the artistry, deepens the meaning.

Carmina Burana in front of Carl Orff www.youtube.com/watch?v=mujQ... That is what makes me sad about #AI. Its influence not on text but on music. Music used to mean something, move us, tocu us, elevate us. I fear this no longer will be the case with AI produced muscial mass products.

Stepping off at the Louisville, Kentucky No Kings march.

To me Wikipedia is an awful encyclopedia. But I would never belittle the decades-old self-financed social experiment this project has been. It is like the many communes and projects of the alternative movement of a bygone era. Interestingly, it belongs to a pre-digital, analog world.

The struggle of the Wikipedia community to deal with the use of #AI / LLM mirrors the struggle of the techbros with the idea that people have a right to a decent living in security, prosperity, and dignity. For both groups, it's about the very foundations of their self-image and their beliefs.

The struggles of the "community" in Wikipedia about #AI illustrates nicely that it is not AI that is the problem but the insecurity arising with the changing role of humans in online exchanges. The question is not "What is AI and what can it do?" but "Who are we and what is left for us?"

The urge to ban #AI from Wikipedia feels like the "community" wants a "space" without AI. What strange racism (or perhaps rather: Species-ism) is that? What strange gated community. No AI trespassing beyond this line. Only pure humanoids allowed. Gee!

Already wrote in 2012 why Wikiedpia is an obsolete way of organising encyclopedic information—and that individually tailored question-answer queries (like today's Grok) will be the next step: "After Wikipedia" (2012) simsa01.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/a...

It’s not that love is stronger than despair; love is stronger than hope. “Love wins, ” yes, but put quotes around it to show its great big fangs. #love #despair #hope #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten

The future of encyclopedic information is surely not Wikipedia or Grokipedia, but along the lines of Grok. Not lemma-based article construction (via humans or via AI, LLMs, etc.) but individually tailored question-answer sequences taking into account the level of understanding of the person asking.

There is a social network where #AI agents can interact with each other. Humans are welcome to observe. www.moltbook.com via @niemanlab.org www.niemanlab.org/2026/03/i-wa...

Wikipedia has officially banned editors from using AI to write articles. Earlier this week, Lab interviewed Bryan Jacobs, a human Wikipedian who used an AI agent to edit dozens of articles before the ban went into effect. www.niemanlab.org/2026/03/i-wa...

♪ Hem, "The Fire Thief" www.youtube.com/watch?v=AytO... As I was reminiscing ...

This live version of Basia Bulat's "Tall Tall Shadow" is my favourite: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV2-...

In the beginning it was this song by Basia Bulat that caught me: "In the Night" (from her debut album "Oh My Darling" (2007)). The topic, the music, the theatrical presentation, the incredible gentleness and lightness, and above all: the radiating joy: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CebH...

Thinking about mermaids.

♪ Basia Bulat, "Disco Polo" www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cJS... Didn't know Basia Bulat has a new album out: "Basia's Palace" (2025). Instrumentation and arrangements have changed considerably compared to earlier albums, but it not only has its very own charme, but the fairy dust is still all around.

The elites and the working-class seem to share a contempt for any kind of education other than "coding" and what can be done with it. So perhaps even the mere distinction between elites and working-class is now outdated and old-fashioned.

Today, the only true act of disobedience and resistance is to get a decent and broad education in the Humanities.

Edith Hall, "Classics for the people" aeon.co/essays/why-w... Returning to this piece.

I find the similiarities between Gnawa music from Marocco and Qawwali music from Pakistan astounding. (Both are rooted in Sufi Islam.) Take, e.g., this performance by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Qawwali) www.youtube.com/watch?v=v38w... and that of Hamid El Kasri (Gnawa) www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6ik...

♪ Cheb Khaled, "Didi" (1992) www.youtube.com/watch?v=d43h... The song is the first track on his eponymous album "Khaled" from 1992. It blew me away and made me dance with open mouth, full of awe and tears of joy. Never heard Algerian music given such a beat. The song became a milestone worldwide.

@krislindbeck.bsky.social Re your earlier question, you may @ me if you like. I was more puzzled by your "a respected long-time connection". Sounded like a contact from the banking sector with whom one really wouldn't want to have more to do than toast a glass of scotch at a business event ... ;-)

Since Freud we talk about the three narcissistic wounds (I'd rather call them "insults"): • cosmological: Earth is not the centre of the universe • biological: Man arose from the animal realm • psychological: The majority of personality rests on subconscious factors beyond conscious control. 1-8

Ashleigh Fields, "Iran threatens key Red Sea strait if US launches ground operation" thehill.com/policy/inter... Told you so. > bsky.app/profile/sims...

i24NEWS staff, "Washington sends Tehran 15-point plan with demands to end Middle East war" www.i24news.tv/en/news/inte... Interesting proposals.

'The Icknield Way.' (1911) The originality of this work represents Spencer Gore's response to European Post Impressionism in several shows staged in London, in particular Manet and the Post Impressionists and the Italian Futurist Painters in the same year this was made.

I read this piece hachyderm.io/@EmilyEnough... and couldn't help but laugh. A coder who feels uncomfortable when confronted with the ambiguities and susceptibility to errors of AIs and LLMs. Seriously? 1-16

Why should any reasonably advanced AI come to the very idea that humans are not mere chatbots but sentient beings? Could any human pass a Turing Test 2.0 and convince an AI he is not an AI?

The sadness that remains. The sadness accompanies you for life even when the violence has parted. But it can always return. And it will. Because humans are that way. 1-2

I write personal things into the electric void not to brag but to pay attention. 1-2

I was raised with (or by) two mothers and three fathers. I experienced harsh violence—beatings with wooden spoons, clogs, bare hands. Forced to fetch food from the bin and eat it. As I wandered through the families, one constant remained: You are the reason we're in the mess we are. 1-8

Feeling to your core the anguish and sadness your nephew is in, and then get told by your sister that you're transferring. A form of gaslighting, common in families. Because it's not about reality, truth, or compassion but about authority and the need to assert it—even at the expense of the child.

What does AI need to accomplish in order for it to "understand" that its counterpart is a sentient being? And would that make a difference? In its the eyes, we humans must seem like cheap, simplistically performing sentient chatbots given the little prompst it needs to trigger reactions from us.

It wants to call me Rocky www.thebeaverton.com/2026/03/chat...

What I don't understand about the rush to SMR nuclear reactors: Why not adopt already existing naval nuclear reactors and their designs? Is it that they use up to 90% enriched fission material whereas civilian reactors only use 5% to 20%? 1-2

One can deplore the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. One can wring hands over the breach of international law. But neither the U.S. nor Israel could just have done nothing. And when one accepts this proposition, not only does the difference between real and imminent threat evaporate. 1-3

Whoever wants to "open" the Strait of Hormuz by making Iran surrender may brace himself to do the same with the Houthis of Yemen who can (and will) close the Bab-el-Mandeb bottleneck to the Suez Canal. In order to "secure trade routes", you need to bring to the heel not one but two states.