Sonny Burton is set to be executed by the state of Alabama on Thursday. There is a direct line between a government that murders its own citizens and the devaluing of life abroad. The sin has always started at home.

Overheard at coffee shop: “This is now the fourth time I’m writing this text, and I’ll probably write it two more times.” Apparently some people in this city are still doing things right.

I'm here to shut up and calculate. And I'm all out of calculate. 😎

As a matter of fact, I *would* like junior academics who use ai to keep their mouths shut!

Saw a bus stop ad advertising some ai for business thing, and the scenario was a guy with an ice cream store asking “what were our most popular flavors this month?” Have these people not heard of excel?

my first book (2020) was about online neonazis and my second book (2024) was about christian theocrats. they gained strength, voltronned and became a government. my third book (2027) is going to be a history of notable sandwiches so i hope this means we will be governed by sandwichocracy

as a member of the canadian diaspora what aspect of canadian identity should I get weird about

"I use sonnet" "I use haiku" name one poet bro

Got it. I'm sorry for your loss. To clarify: You want a eulogy for your father that's 𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗲, sounds 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁, and captures the 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗵𝗶𝗺. I get it. He wasn't just your father — he was your Dad. Here a few options I came up with:

The way sitting politicians can say this stuff about Muslims while facing zero consequences is an indication of just how entrenched Islamophobia still is in our institutions and culture.

Too many “middle ground” AI arguments—“I have concerns, too, but we have to adapt”—proceed from what is to me a peculiar embrace of “inevitability” which seems to be magical thinking, a way of depoliticizing the political, of self-soothing in the face of an overwhelming challenge.

We killed 85 schoolgirls. We are not the good guys.

It’s been really disappointing to me to realize, maybe belatedly, that a lot of people just do not see the point of not doing something you think is bad if other people are probably going to do that bad thing either way.

Writing "literally fucking anything you can imagine" in my list of future predictions so everyone praises my insight when it becomes true.

Imagine waking up and your government ID has been declared invalid. It’s now illegal for you to drive, or do anything else that requires government ID. You had no warning. You can be arrested if found driving. That’s life for trans people in Kansas now.

I don’t think most academics realise that we’re way past the ‘AI concerns me’ phase and in the middle of a full scale apocalyptic war waged by tech corporations. We must fight for our lives and for everything we hold dear. AI should be exposed, shamed, and rejected in every facet of our profession.

I think another important aspect of this is that when you engage with a text written by another human, you can rely on there being a thought process more or less like your own behind it, which is often critical for interpretation.

First they came with the snowballs, and I said nothing, because I'm not a crybaby

This is pretty wild!

you don't understand. that cop's former partner was one day away from retirement when he got hit by a snowball. he held his partner as he lay on the ground with a runny nose and waited with him for an ambulance. he never caught the sons of bitches who threw it

This is a really interesting discussion if you think (as I do) that the question of what we're even trying to do when we think about the measurement problem/quantum interpretations is as interesting as the problem itself.

Can confirm this is true (I know physics)

I don't think so, Kevin

Gathering the world's most insecure and neurotic people, telling them that 1 in 3 of them can have a job doing what they love, and whether you are in that blesséd third depends on whether you have an ill defined underlying property of merit. Then giving them all Twitter accounts.

Sounds compelling!

So "bots are doing harassment!" kind of feels like "AI is taking my job!" which attributes agency to AI in a way that is letting actual humans off the hook. Like... why take that very real decision making agency away from THE HUMAN THAT FIRED YOU?

Nick is right that if they feel they don't know, why are they doing what they're doing? I suspect it might be because they do actually know: No, the models are absolutely not conscious FFS. But it's edgy to say otherwise.

The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering The concentration of AI wealth into the hands of a few tech barons + plutocratic capture ==> unchartered territory

quantum mechanics people are like 'here is my beautiful perfect equation that explains everything that happens in the universe. i love it so much. and here's a completely different equation that sucks and i hate it. anyway, that's the one that predicts the observations'

As the last several decades of the scientific realism/antirealism debate have taught us, nothing is more clear and determinate than what counts as an observation.

Very interesting! I was assured by the cofounder and CEO of this organization that he would never sell exactly what he is selling!

Oh god a kid with an accordion just got on the train

I'm going to my first straight bachelor party in a month, what should I do to prepare myself before cultural immersion?

So uh Ring just up and said they've got a huge centralized private surveillance network they can leverage all at once huh

just accidentally said "awesome" on a phone call with a British person

one imaginary swing voter pennsylvania is FIRED UP right now

We gotta come up with a better system than “everything rests on whether these twelve billionnaires are nice”

What the hell is going on this week? Some guy just came into this cafe from outside to say “you did a great job on that type a 101 dude”. Googled and I guess he was probably saying Taipei 101 and I guess the implication is I look like Alex Honnold who climbed it I guess? Kind of offended tbh.

Oh no I asked one of my coworkers (who knows a lot more about condensed matter stuff than I do) a question about the motivation for some simulation and he's been typing for a looooong time.

Wait hold on

You walk into this bar and show your ICE mugshot, you don't pay a dime.

Very annoying when someone stands directly in front of the only open seat on the subway. I get it you’re a big strong man who doesn’t need to sit but you’re taking up two spots now.

Horrible feeling when you have to use something from a paper written by someone you can't stand

1. The thing about science that these jokers don't understand is that science cannot be vibe-coded. Whatever its flaws, the point with vibe coding is that you're trying to quickly make something that sorta works, where you can immediately sorta see if it sorta works and then sorta use it.

Video from this morning shows ICE agents deploying tear gas outside a Minneapolis preschool as parents shout, “This is a preschool! There’s kids here!”

Some dumbass just called me from an unknown number to ask if he could go to my island. I don't know where he found my number, but I'm a bit surprised at how disconcerted I am. Also a good reminder that nothing good ever comes from picking up when there's no caller ID...

It's worth noting that ICE and CBP shot more of those vulnerable neighbors *in-between* Good and Pretti. And yet... You know what nevermind. bsky.app/profile/atru...

This looks fascinating

incredible work by the Forward who found the one Jew in Greenland so they could work the Jewish angle on the Greenland story (spoiler alert: he does not want Trump to take over Greenland)