Some phrases I'm starting to use: "Hm, it's personally really hard for me to support using LLMs for anything because these companies used my work to built their data sets, without my consent and without compensating me. There are multiple lawsuits"

"The Government cannot escape liability for DOGE’s work by scapegoating ChatGPT." A US judge slammed DOGE's use of AI in a decision today blocking the termination of $100M in humanities grants, finding DOGE lacked authority and unlawfully based decisions on race and viewpoint buff.ly/Qw0qcDH

If farmers are so poor, why do they have millions of dollars to spend on environmental lawyers to block passenger rail, wind power, and bike lanes

And it controls trillions of dollars of real estate, your daily bread, a meaningful majority of US senators, our immigration system, & apparently most news outlets- judging by how the news just spits out farm lobby talking points with 0 fact-checks ever. You know, just to name a few things.

When I was in high school, the farmers' kids had the best and newest cars. 🤷‍♂️

Axios has reported that there is a WOLF OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE! We need to do something! There's a wolf! WOLF!!!

Actual “AI” literacy would involve explaining why it's not and never will be a reliable source of information nor will it ever be a replacement for research or creativity.

That’s the wild thing about AI. There’s never really a sales pitch. It’s just, “It’s here, don’t get left behind.” Every other innovation sells itself — we want them, thus they happen. Here? Not so much. The dangers are high, the value unclear, but rich people want more, so away we go?

The connective tissue here is that both offer people way of ennobling individualistic preferences. "I just don't like you" becomes "I think you're an evil threat to The Cause." "I disagree" becomes "I am nobly defending my mental health from your abuse." It has moral weight, it attracts allies.

Banning gAI will (very slowly, unfortunately) become the norm, that is and always was the one true "adapt or die". Given enough time, an "infinite content machine" is not desirable anywhere and is bad for everyone, it's just Spam 2.0.

my formative yimby experience was being priced out of the neighborhood i wished to live in, and realizing that this meant i in turn would price someone else out of the neighborhood i settled for my conclusion was not that any renter involved was evil, but that we should stop playing musical chairs

I'm so tired. #a11y #Accessibility

Generational tweet that might even spawn a school of architecture.

when we mourn le guin, we mourn one of our greatest writers & thinkers. but we also mourn one of our all-time greatest haters

i’ve worked in tech more than 20 years. it has never been more ridiculous.

This Is Just To Say I have turned off the AI features that were in the update and which you were probably hoping to monetize Fuck you they were stupid so unnecessary and so annoying

As a happy addendum to this week's scintillating anecdotes, my dear friend and GeoBee buddy @possumrabbi.bsky.social has created a cake named for me, featuring my famous nocino liqueur. Many thanks, Jonathan!!!! Check out his fun, thought-provoking blog, y'all! flavorsofdiaspora.com/2026/04/16/t...

My painting COASTAL POPPIES

a magical realism novel about academia where it’s imbued with intellectualism and meritocracy

In a first last month, renewables supplied more power to the U.S. than natural gas, a milestone in the shift to clean energy.

It’s almost like WE ALL SAID THIS WOULD HAPPEN fortune.com/2026/04/10/a...

This is the culmination of SIXTEEN YEARS of dogged work by everyday Hungarians. You think that felt hopeless sometimes? I'm sure it did. 👏 Don't 👏 give 👏 up 👏

Am I going to have to repost this thread every day now? Please be a little bit more sceptical about claims long the lines of “the secret thingy I’m trying to turn into a billion dollar payday is super powerful and almost magical, be afraid, but also give me money”

The one iron rule of late-stage financial bubbles is that with massive amounts of money at stake, a lot of people will be lying a lot of the time and many of lying liars will be people you’d trust in normal times, because the first person they fooled is themselves Be extra sceptical.

If you see this I implore you to quote skeet with an unusual image from your posting device without explanation. Still definitely use alt text, though.

Join @emilymbender.bsky.social and I in New York for Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000’s first LIVE show! We’re doing a live taping at the Starr Bar in Brooklyn on Thursday, April 30. Space is limited, so get your tickets. All profit goes to @dairinstitute.bsky.social. www.eventbrite.com/e/mystery-ai...

if this montgomery county news release is indeed a time machine to 2006, by all means take me back: big pants, third wave emo, the sense of wonder and optimism i had at 18. i'm ready

Btw, all this while, Isfahan, beautiful and incomparable Isfahan, keeps on getting pounded every day and night. That city is like an open air museum. Like Venice. Every inch of it is historical. I cannot even imagine what has already been destroyed and pummeled.

Thank you for making my heart lift as I open the blinds.

random close-of-weekend thoughts

Not even “ignore local zoning rules”, it is even more interesting! Squamish as a nation is the approval authority for Nch'ḵay̓ Development Corporation There’s nothing to ignore as the lands never were, and never will be, subject to City of Vancouver policy

The backstory here is that the Squamish people of what is now Vancouver were illegally dispossessed of this land a century ago. They sued, got their land back, and are using their sovereignty to ignore local zoning rules and build 6,000 new homes over the objections of nearby wealthy NIMBYs.

I care less than Taylor is using Claude Code and more that she thinks that she can avoid having her brain cooked by being online 17 hours a day

Post something random or y'all will have a crappy April

Me when there is a plate of carrots at the function

This bird is about to melt down at a huckster in a sales conference and I'm here to support him

idk if Matt is reading the site plan correctly. his article is grumbling that this townhouse development is all cul-de-sacs, but in reality, it’s a city block with some internal alleys and footpaths. the Google streetview shows a decent, if not perfect urban street.

It's clearly going to take the tech industry a while to understand that the "AI" brand is well and truly toxic If you have a software or feature, sell it on what it does for people. If it's actually useful, then calling it "AI" will just make people assume it's yet another money-grabbing con.

The Enshittification “framing assumes a prior state of genuine service, a golden age of the open internet, that was for many people never particularly golden. The early internet was structured around the assumptions of its architects: predominantly white, male, Western, educated, & abled.” 🙏🏼🔥🙏🏼🔥🙏🏼

The thing about AI enthusiasts in the arts is that they think they're unique for having *ideas*, that their ideas are what make them artists. They don't understand that EVERYONE has ideas. Having ideas isn't special. It's not a skill. It's just part of having a human brain.

You cannot be saying this kind of thing when your primary job is podcaster.

Sorry for the shouting (and to be fair, the person who wrote the thing I'm reacting to didn't say that editors *should* do this), but come on people: Do you not remember that you had the ability to do such simple tasks a mere 3.5 years ago? >>

🙏🏾🙏🏾 bsky.app/profile/emil...

Do genAI boosters come to treat human interlocutors like chatbots, or does genAI appeal to those who need others to echo their feelings?

The septic truck had this lovely emblem

Abraham Angel, Landscape (The Little Mule), 1923.

Poppy bloom Organ mountains ⛰️ New Mexico

“We’re trying to get a child out of a jail to do a spelling bee,” Ms. Rachel told me. “I just never thought those words would go together.” Read my story on Ms. Rachel’s new mission to help shut down Dilley and free kids trapped there — starting with two she met over Zoom last week.

There's a learned helplessness here that feels a lot like obeying in advance. Use your brain, don't let anyone tell you you can't, and definitely don't tell others they can't.