“This article urges a fresh view on [AI large language model] hallucinations by arguing that, rather than being errors in any conventional sense, they are evidence of a probabilistic system incapable of dealing with questions of knowledge.”

Ruin two bands by combining them: The Grateful Dead Kennedys

Excited to announce GOLLUM, an app that helps you focus on your most precious possession!

Early in 2025, @SawLady.bsky.social helped us celebrate “Happy Days Are Here Again” joining the public domain 🎶🪚 On January 1, 2026, another full year of media & culture becomes free to share, remix & reimagine 🎉 Join our Public Domain events ⤵️ blog.archive.org/public-domai... #PublicDomainDay

Here’s to 2026

"Chomsky can no longer offer apologies or consolation to the survivors. But that does not relieve us of the responsibility to do so, part of which is acknowledging that someone who had such a huge impact on so many of us made such profoundly disturbing moral choices."

Definitely the most cyberpunk dystopian article I've recently read.

Welcome to SURREAL WEEK, where calories don't count, drinking is governed by airport rules, no one cares how you're dressed, and marathoning old movies is the norm. You have until January 5th when doing absolutely fucking nothing becomes embarrassing again. Do nothing with it wisely.

The guitarist of hardcore band Coalesce was fired from his philosophy teaching job for inappropriate relations with a student and his band rallied to defend him. Based on the student's writings, he and they suck.

You can tell that LotR was written by an academic because Gandalf disappears for like 20 years doing research to answer a single question.

A few excerpts from Darmok's Christmas Story: Ralphie and Flick, at the flagpole. Randy, his arms down. The Old Man, when the lamp broke. Santa and Ralphie, on the mountain.

Prepared

Alright then, keep the spirit in your heart and try to keep it all the year.

Treason for the Season

Merry Christmas. You will log.

A Christmas Carol (1951)

Folks, I lived it

One of the key concepts I teach to students in library workshops is that manipulating evidence from sources to fit their conclusions is unethical and an academic integrity violation.

Christmas Eve at the Bodleian ✨ "The rooms were very still while the pages were softly turned and the winter sunshine crept in to touch the bright heads and serious faces with a Christmas greeting." 📚 | Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

Trans Mountain is making big profits now, right? Actually, no. Thanks to accounting wizardry and a shell company, the pipeline has transformed Canadians' losses into gains on its balance sheets. My deep dive on this for @thetyee.ca: thetyee.ca/Analysis/202...

New on Sartre Studies International (paywalled), two Jeanson essays (translations that I have worked on) and three commentaries: www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journal...

I need you all to look at the systemic bullshit that drives people to offload cognition onto AI instead of reducing this conversation to individuals please thanks

Before I sign off for the rest of the year, I am pleased to present the complete and 100% correct BLOOD IN THE MACHINE guide to the best books, TV and film about AI and tech in 2025 (that I managed to read/watch). Enjoy, and happy holidays everyone www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-best-b...

Just added an out-of-office reply to the library's chatbot

The beacons are lit!

i had to drop what i was doing to make this

It was only a matter of time before they came knocking here in #Maine "The proliferation of AI is, at its core, an anti-democratic process to create a deeply authoritarian world. The lack of public input to this process is a feature of this technology, not a bug." Article by @cascobay.bsky.social

💻 How far can we push small language models? This summer, our Project t0 team showed that small, open-weight language models can achieve near-frontier reasoning performance when applied to focused, domain-specific tasks. http://bit.ly/4fu00E1

Bringing back Limewire to illegally rip copies of reporting suppressed by the government is definitely some cyberpunk shit

"As with streaming, or TikTok, or next-day delivery, luxuries we’ve had access to for only a few years can seem indispensable when there’s actually evidence to suggest the world functioned a whole lot better before we had all these things."

“Thirty-seven MEPs now sitting in the European Parliament were elected from parties identified as having used AI-generated or manipulated content during the campaign: 29 from Rassemblement National, eight from Lega and one from Reconquête.”

In case anyone has to be at a desk over the next couple of days but has wrapped up their work for 2025

2011: roblox is the website where you can play a knock-off version of halo if your parents won't buy you an xbox 2025: roblox, the child predator app, has donated money to the president's new ballroom

Wildly different things, tasks, techniques, subspecialties being lumped into "AI" and then being conflated with each other, doesn't help. Different types of models vs the techniques to train them vs the tasks they are supposed to accomplish, all under "AI".

The only real takeaway: "[s]peaking to Business Insider senior health reporter Julia Pugachevsky in March 2025, two therapists said that relying on AI chatbots for emotional support could exacerbate loneliness and make people dependent on seeking reassurance."

In case anyone has to be at a desk over the next couple of days but has wrapped up their work for 2025

Simply Having A wonderful

grinch planet of origin

"Much like catching plagiarism, unfortunately, I now cannot be sure that something I love was not pumped out as slurry and painted over with a human touch." This is *exactly* how I feel: the encounter with great art that I believed was made entirely by artists has been tarnished.

you wanna see a dead body

It's the date when I remember the great Joe Strummer and the incredible D Boon- both passed on this day in 2002 and 1985 respectively. Strummer's quote 'Punk means exemplary manners to your fellow human beings" is my mantra.

Refused are fucking dead.

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

Parisot (the Director) tells a story about how Tim Allen just started crying after a scene one day "I don't like these feelings i'm having." Says Tim. "I'm going back to my trailor" and walks off. There's silence for a second. "Oh my god." Says Rickman. "I think Tim just experienced acting."

Strummer and his work have only become greater in my eyes as I age. Punk rock socialist kindness and joy forever.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas is about a group of humanoid creatures summoning their god through chanting eldritch words of power, said god then breaking the will of another humanoid creature in order to carry out their infernal bidding, in this essay I will