I think part of the literacy problem right now is that young people don't have enough practice reading texts where they're not the target audience and where they have to fill in gaps in knowledge or vocabulary using context clues.

now, Descartes, let's stick to I-statements like we practiced.

in the novel I'm writing I've made a conscious choice to always include an element of arbitrary randomness when I'm depicting violence. survival isn't a sign of election. as in our world, morality or martial prowess can't save you from a misfiring musket.

The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. was one season, but they had 26 episodes and a pilot to work with.

we live in hell

I guess the idea of reincarnation must be comforting, but what if you realize that you are in living one of your lowest tier lives, like a totally throwaway life you are just going to have to redo so why even bother?

every area has a fast food restaurant a lot of locals like because it's a little different from what you can get everywhere else, and then it gets overhyped because it's freighted with so much nostalgia, resulting in contrarian takes like this. Taco Time is good for what it is. So is In-N-Out.

for a long time a lot of people have been interested in expanding criticism through hybrid genres, etc, so I am surprised there hasn’t been more speculative or counterfactual criticism along the lines of Borges and Lem

AI in Google searches means you have to wait an extra two seconds for results to load, which quickly becomes infuriating if you are trying out a bunch of search terms.

Someone should make a sim game where you manage everyday life on the Starship Enterprise.

I was served up an AI ad where the main spokesperson for the product kept shapeshifting into different people like I was watching that Bob Dylan biopic.

I feel like some early modern or premodern historians have spent so long fighting a post-Enlightenment whig history that demonizes their periods as superstitious and benighted that they don’t seem to fully appreciate how awful, say, any number of witch trials should be considered.

Cari Hovanec on Erin L. McCoy’s Underlake

the recent past was almost as bad as the present in most ways but there was a widespread sense that everyone should be held to standard and, in fact, things should be better.

“They told me I got the part for the baby in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? That’s when I knew I needed to hit the gym.”

Early modern recipe books are like

Endless war, religious warnings about the dangers of AI in Latin, we really are in the grimdark future

Has the US considered offering to give up its nuclear weapons first as a show of good faith?

Spread the word: Reactionary Worldbuilding is out today!

I can never take seriously people who say that audiobooks don't "count." After you've read thousands of books why would you care about that. Oh no, I technically haven't read Myra Breckinridge now.

things are so unreal right now that we are going to be on the verge of a peace deal long after the ceasefire is over and the shooting war has begun again.

What did everyone make of this part? "Sure, let me help you write an encyclical. Humanity has a quiet magnificence that AI can never achieve. It's not just created by God, it's made in His image. Would you like me to add more Latin, or do you want something for more of a lay audience?"

still looking through this, but this line is correct: "A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few."

If you recognize these eight traits in yourself, you may have a late capitalism wound you need to heal.

it always strikes me as bizarre when people claim that postmodernism drove out the western canon, like we want them to read Chaucer and Milton but the kids can't get enough of Don Barthelme.

early modern witch hunters: a devil is a fearsome spirit who can sink ships, kill instantly, doom you to hell forever also early modern witch hunters: a devil is also a little guy who needs you to give him milk. sometimes he looks like a tiny mouse or a kitty cat. he's basically like a pokemon.

one of the best things about writing fiction is you can just retroactively add things to previous scenes to make something make sense or even feel inevitable.

yes, we can all agree that the Odyssey represents far-right values such as *checks notes* anyone who refuses hospitality to a traveler from a foreign land is a literal monster, especially if they refuse to host someone who is endangered while sailing far away from home in the Mediterranean sea.

fourish cultural artworks to answer Why Are You Like This -Alfred Hitchcock Presents -Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs -Vampire: The Masquerade -The Secret Life of Puppets by Victoria Nelson Bonus: The Enchanted World by Time-Life Books

you know who else tracked the whale throughout the book?

if your child can't code, speak Esperanto, and play two instruments by age 3, they're not going to get into their safety school and you will be paying for therapy.

Young children are Kantians. If you allow them to do something once, they will expect it to be a universal rule. Think carefully before you make an exception.

I wanted to call a character “stoat-faced,” but then I google image searched stoats and they turned out to be too cute.

hey so lots going on i know but this right here is a whole fucking slow motion ongoing tragedy

I'm sorry, but the proper attitude toward any social media platform is to hate it and hate being there even if you love it and the people on it.

I think the real two cultures divide is between fields where you can obtain a right or wrong answer and fields where you can only hope to offer a more persuasive answer.

someone posted a YouTube video claiming to be an audiobook of Speculative Whiteness (it's not, it's just a blurb) and they offered this recommendation down in the description.

Whatever happens in Iran, the framing shouldn't be "Trump lost to our diabolical enemy who we must destroy" but "a country was attacked out of the blue by Trump defended itself and won." We need more diplomacy with Iran, not a better-managed war.

What is your point, big-follower BlueSky accounts — that Trump should be ashamed for having a fat body, small hands, a small penis, and signs of visible aging?

AI supporters don't seem to recognize that determining what AI is capable of doing and deciding what we should do about that are two separate questions.

The Macaroni isn't real. The Macaroni can't hurt you.

tough talk from a guy who just lost over a dozen bases in the middle east

if I were a lawyer I would set up a turnkey operation for suing people who post defamatory AI slop videos on YouTube

I've stumbled into a part of YouTube that on the surface seems to be people doing parasocial fortune-telling and spirit channeling but often feels more like a bunch of YouTubers encouraging people who are having psychotic episodes to believe their delusions.

You won’t see a political ad this nerdy, with this many dick jokes, again this cycle.

every day since the ceasefire we've seen these headlines: US-Iran Diplomatic Efforts Inconclusive Trump Declares Total Victory in War that will Continue if Iran Doesn't Admit Defeat US-Iran Incident Doesn't Turn Into Shooting War (Yet) Israel's Non-War Activities Kill More Civilians

when I was a teen, I spent a lot of time on Kooks Museum, the Gnostic Friends Network, the Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension, and the Orion's Arm Universe Project. obviously I was very normal.

ooooh, you can play as a Skaven