As Hannah Arendt put it: "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists." Undermining that distinction will be a lasting legacy of generative AI.

I’ve said it and I believe it is true There is a willful forgetting and suppression of the memory of the hundreds of protests that shook this nation for the past decade and a half. So while Canadians and European laypeople whine “Americans don’t do anything,” the Americans are actively suppressed

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐌

[extremely Suzanne Vega voice] I am sitting in the morning in a lone and level desert there are two legs vast and trunkless and a visage shattered half-sunk and the pedestal beside it reads “my name is Ozymandias I’m the king of kings and you shall look on my works and despair”

You don’t think comics are cool? Well, choke on this bad boy.

I have just read this and it was superb. Sex cults (complimentary), future museums, America, strange carnivorous beasts, Pan-like dream creatures, visions, and evil, evil mayors.

somewhere soon

I’m going to be so fucking annoying about this book I can already tell. I might do a thread of commentary as I read through because every couple pages I have a million thoughts I want to scream about

"The color of an email from an exec proposing a live-action remake. The color of the popcorn ceiling in the hotel room of said exec’s extramarital affair. It is the color of the word “exec.” ... When the decision was revealed, I knew I would never own a house."

Essentially, I think that LLM-generated dialogue only makes sense if you believe that the product of writing is words. But the product of writing isn't words, any more than the product of justice is prisoners, or the product of love is weddings. The product of writing is meaning.

I've been thinking about this sign for 6 months. a phrase I'll treasure forever. a metaphor with boundless potential

I know it doesn’t matter individually anyway but I’m officially unfollowing people if they cross post on twitter. I feel bad about some of them genuinely, but like damn guys. It’s time to move on. It just is. It’s literally owned and run by one of the evilest, most dangerous people alive.

"I dont care HOW toxic and predatory it gets I will NEVER stop pumping my data into Elon's data exploitation swamp" People can be so fkin dumb sometimes i swear

This is kind of what it’s all about, isn’t it? Hayao Miyazaki, 1979

A frustrated Pedro Pascal asking Neil Druckmann, who was directing Pascal in a Last of Us episode, “do you like art?”

Whenever I see someone say things to the effect of “at least billionaires do things” I’m just like ??? Lots of people do lots of things, man. Ted Bundy was a busy guy. Forgive me if I think it’s actually good and okay to be a normal, harmless person. Better in fact, than someone who “does things”.

A thread worth reading 🧵

You know, some days I sit and think about how absolutely wild it is that we've built a society where we don't provide a place for people to even sleep at night without having to pay for it, and that we've somehow made it seem like that's normal.

im sure there's a ton of interesting analysis on how much putting the provision of health insurance on to private employers actually costs us collectively. wages depressed, jobs not created etc. the system we have is ruinously expensive for employers. how does anyone defend it

I got the Hayao Miyazaki book as a gift, and I’ve only read the first chapter but it’s WILD that anyone would ever believe this man is okay with AI in art. I’m not 20 pages in and he’s talked about how machines control us and how important freely learning and studying broadly and deeply is for art…

I made a new sticker

🦋 Welcome to Buesky! 🦋 It's long past time to leave the Nazi bar, and you'll have a much better time here. I updated this guide due to the influx of users fleeing Grok's new AI bullshit. Share widely for all the newcomers!

For all the newcomers here: please post regularly. I'm tired of dudes migrating here, posting once every other month, and then going back to Twitter complaining that Bluesky is dead. Please repost your friends' stuff too.

For those that don't know: bsky does have an "algorithm" but it's primarily for the Discovery feed. Grab some user created Feeds to mix it up, but be aware that a lot of posts outside Discovery tend to be shown primarily based on time of post. So both liking and reposting will help artists.

The surrounding issue- managing the recovery of a threatened species in a way that minimizes impacts on a resource humans use- is tricky. But “sea lions belong in the sea” as a reason to kill sea lions in adjacent-to-the-sea rivers? My god.

7/86 sopranos episodes painted!! lol here are 4 of the better ones

Unspeakably bad, evil, disgusting www.chron.com/life/wildlif...

I wish there was a way to tell young beginner cartoonists looking for promotional advice that they need to stop putting all their energy into marketing & work on their comic instead without sounding like a total bitch. my love, there is nothing to market

“Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.”

“Write to the market.” You’ll never catch the market. By the time you’ve written it, the market is gone. Write what you’re on fire to write, and sometimes the market shows up.

This is a model for what actual masculinity should be. Men don’t need to spend more time in caves beating their chests with other men; they need to take their daughters to a meaningful thing and talk to them about it. Relatedly I think the biggest cure for toxic masculinity is platonic women friends

bro (1/2)

In the past week, I've seen stories of AI: - being used by middle schoolers to make porn of other students - calling innocent people sex offenders - shutting down highways with busted-ass self-driving cars - emitting more CO2 than New York City What the fuck are we even doing?

Every artist, get more self indulgent NOW! Draw your ships kissing, draw your blorbos, draw that idea you’ve been putting off (you’re good enough to do it!!!), redraw that old art, draw yourself wearing a cool outfit, draw a better world- just draw!!!

Benoit Blanc's Bible Bonkers

Does anyone else feel like we’re already armpit deep in a soft culture war of billionaires installing themselves and loyal yesmen into positions of power across all industries and we should probably be having a stronger reaction to this instead of waiting until it feels appropriately sci fi enough…

It's important to note for the consultant people: Kat is tied for first place, she's raised more money in this race than anyone else, and she hasn't used Twitter in months. It's a website filled with racist AI snuff films and it's rigged against you specifically. There's no good reason to use it.

Grinch

57 years ago tomorrow (December 21, 1968) the Apollo 8 crew embarked on its historic lunar orbit mission. As I do every year as a Christmas treat, I’ll share some of my favourite discoveries and observations about the Greatest Space Adventure Ever. 1/n

Your annual reminder that Satoshi Kon’s Tokyo Godfathers, a near as dammit perfect seasonal movie (with great queer/trans rep), is free to stream on Tubi: tubitv.com/movies/10001...

Say it with me now- placeholder assets are supposed to be bright and obvious so you DON’T ship with them. Also it doesn’t matter if no ai-generated assets are in the final executable?? The rising sea levels aren’t gonna be like “oh well no one saw that so the climate change doesn’t count”

A little tribute to the Akira Toriyama publication ‘Bird Land Press’ - a short run of fan made zines created in the 80s.

“‘My most daring idea is to refuse,’ she said to applause.”

This Yglesias piece in the NYT is horrifically bad. Almost every "fact" it cites is provably false. At best it is cocktail party banter from a pundit who knows nothing of energy. At worst, it was cut/paste from oil industry talking points. So, a rebuttal: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/o...

People hear this once and think it’s endemic. In 2020/2021 while still presenting as a white dude, I was told occasionally for certain jobs that they just weren’t gonna hire white men right now. But also I was getting interviews, plugged into opportunities, everyone would take my call. /1

Sometimes it makes me really sad how completely unlivable we have made and continue, faster than ever, to make the world for pretty much every animal besides ourselves. We aren’t really making it very great for ourselves either, but you know

genuinely believe Escaflowne's peerlessness is a double-edged sword, in that it being peerless is the reason why it's impossible to recognise as such

What do we all like for newsletters these days? I’m looking into Buttondown as a top contender right now