We made a tile bed for Talbot years ago and placed it right in front of the A/C ducts so that he can cool down after summer walks. And boy does he love it.

Clicked on an email from a clothing brand with the subject line "Back to School Collection" only to discover that they were advertising children's clothes—something a regular adult who is not approaching 39th grade this September would expect.

It's important to understand MAHA, like MAGA, not as a proposal to improve make your life better but to make you feel like it's better. Pure aesthetics. You can feel better because your cultural signifiers (raw milk, red dye) are recognized while you're physically dying from lettuce-born diarrhea.

B. F. Skinner tried to test his teaching machines on Black children in Harlem to prove the product's profitability. Now this: "The school district serves roughly 1,300 students, including 32 percent who identify as American Indian or Alaska Native and 79 percent who are economically disadvantaged."

I found my HEAVILY annotated 10th-grade copy of the Odyssey and it is full of wisdom.

My other tablet is talking-to-a-real-person.

This is the single item I found in the bathroom left behind by my parents after their last visit, and I have two questions about this Extremely Dad item: 1) did they make a single batch in 1962 that they just continue to sell? 2) what is country club size?

We have an update. Chucho is ready for the craps table or at the very least the slots.

I was looking at the AHA's book prizes, and if you work on Europe between 1000 and 1500, you're SoL. What's especially fascinating is that British History starts in 1485 and European Cultural History starts in 1500.

Filling out a marketing questionnaire for a book I spent over a decade researching and writing is the hardest part.

An extraordinary piece worth reading, along with the thread here.

Hell yes that one copy of Flowers in the Attic that circulated among my bunk mates at camp when we were eleven.

For those interested in a bit of the back story of the book’s production… the cover and layout means a lot to me because my dad got to help pick them out bsky.app/profile/cnyg...

My co-conspirator, comrade, and collaborator, the brilliant @cnygren.bsky.social has written a lapidary book, it just landed on my doorstep, and after sneak previews of it I’m delighted to get to finally read it in full. And you should too! yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Salty, zingy, spicy, and above all, an excellent read on the evacuation of history from art to make way for surface analogies that impersonate depth. Welcome to the Condé Nast galleries’ inaugural show, sponsored by Bezos. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Had a blast orienteering for the first time today. I nevertheless remain firm in my conviction that compasses are a scam.

Talbot insisted that we stop in our neighbor’s stunning garden on our evening walk.

The NYMag piece on Alpha School's summer camp in the Hamptons is pitch perfect in managing to satirize w an absolutely straight face. My second favorite part is this list of rebranded *things you do at sleepaway camp.* Survivor = color war Dinner service = campout cooking "Stage & Screen" = a play

deskilling in professional school, you can ban it www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

Because I have some new followers I thought I’d give this piece a bump. More stuff in this vein coming from me and @cnygren.bsky.social , but in the meantime we hope folks find this useful.

“Just like most international and local experts, the Global Dialogue sounded the alarm bells of humanitarian impacts and risks of AI but the actual AI for Good Summit spent the week listening to what the industry say 'good' means,” — Giulio Coppi, quoted in this piece

Look I’m as excited as anyone for this new book to arrive in the mail but I rue the day I possibly maybe forgot to check a button that opts out of ceaseless emails and text messages updating me on the precise stages of this book’s journey to my home.

I am once again tapping the sign of this book, which makes the trenchant argument that sleep is the last bulwark against capitalism’s total domination of human activity. Be a radical, do napping. www.versobooks.com/products/231...

My best-friend-colleague was away for the year and now she’s back and we just met up and we were GIDDY like children, and it was the best, and I want all grownups to get to feel this.

Everybody, this is Chucho. Chucho's humans are out of town for the week, so my parents are taking care of him, which means spoiling him AS HE DESERVES.

The thing that infuriates me about GPS is how it tricks us into doubting the validity of real world signposting. Every time I drive south to NJ or Philly, the GPS will direct me to the lane that goes to the 9A north, rather than over the GWB to i95 south. I have to ignore it & pay attn to the signs.

As the one responsible for all tech in a state library/archive that's about the size & with the same remit as some national libraries, let me amplify: libraries need more funding. Tell your politicians & administrators. We are getting crushed by the fact that "digital" is more expensive than books.

Remember, everyone. It is perfectly acceptable to fixate exclusively on the quantity and relative size of horse penises on display in the Bayeux Tapestry. The motif is, one could argue, the linchpin to its political argument.

This was a killer episode. Strong recommend!

In my experience, scholars of a particular historical period are the LEAST uptight about "accuracy" in fictional representations of their period, which is why, as a medievalist, I can assure you that A Knight's Tale is the greatest movie set in medieval England that has ever been made.

PSA If you suddenly have to get up from an armchair to interrupt your reading, don’t leave the sharp pencil you were using to annotate it stuck, sharp side up, between the cushion and the arm. I’m ok. But the back of my right thigh has been better.

The buzzy Atlantic article about the decline of reading is a chaotic, pointless, cliché-ridden farrago that relies on what appears to be a Wikipedia-level understanding of Ong, McLuhan, & the history of reading in general. So I am posting to exorcize my response rather than waste time red-inking it.

I agree with this post about the paired reading. AND. I’ve been thinking about this story since I read it last week. The banner issue gets lost in the AI as cheating narrative. Serrano switched to take-home exams in the wake of a fatal campus shooting he attributed in part to excessive stress. 1/n

Yes, we have a few in the sections "A Broken Metaphor Is Right Twice a Day" and "(Un)licensed Analogies" in the paper above. And also some more here in this paper: bsky.app/profile/oliv...

While I don't disagree obviously that we need to learn from this, the fact we've done it before within AI & related fields & generally with tobacco / petroleum means we have to start planning how we will shift the material conditions to make learning possible now. We must start excavation now. 1/

I’ve been hinting about my current project for a while, and am so excited to (finally) announce it! I’m writing FALSE IDOLS: HOW GREAT MAN HISTORY LEFT OUR PAST IN RUINS with @basicbooksgroup.bsky.social. Truly a dream come true, and I can’t wait for you all to read it.

Hand to God I’m gonna bring a charge under the Assize of Nuisance against the city itself for starting street works at 7am on the dot.

Reducing this to a matter of “data” & privacy means that Palantir can make this claim and most readers are none-the-wiser about how this very “making sense of data” is what affects them. The modeling and analysis is pernicious to people in aggregate if not, personally, to the individual.

The emails I get from the College Arms are so formal that I have to put on a suit just to get in the correct mental posture to respond.

Doin’ a big weird help while I cook.

Just found out that when I look up Jenny Holzer's iconic "Truisms" text works on MoMA's collections website, I now get an ad for a Bodum® programmable 12-cup coffee maker. Everything sucks now

Apropos utterly nothing: are there others out there for whom Charles Grodin's balancing of the federal budget proved an indelible and thrilling or cinematic moment? Because, apparently, it was for 11-year-old me.

On the one hand it's taken a whole month for my postcards from Australia to reach my friends and family. On the other hand, I've been getting lots of lovely and unexpected messages, so the delay kind of paid off!

Totalitarianism, fascism—choose whatever antidemocratic political system you like—emerge when trust is displaced by paranoia & suspicion. AI as a set of tools that simplifies the messy data of life to offer predictions, recommendations, & confabulations is the perfect vehicle for achieving this end.

It took me an hour but I made gobi Manchurian and it was so good I feel like congratulating myself.

Get ready for the Palantir Endowed Chair in Ethics

Broke: lol Woke: HAHAHAHA Bespoke: were we to convene in unmediated discourse you would hear the peal of my laughter and bask in the glow of our communion

I've been vegan for almost 20 years, and sometimes I will look at a recipe* and think: we deserve to be derided, what are doing here? *watermelon "tuna"

This made me irrationally angry.