to me, the “column” is less a form than an opportunity (and a challenge). you’re telling me i have as much space as i’d like to make an argument about anything i’d like to an audience inclined to pay close attention? well let’s see if they’ll read 2000 words on democratic legitimacy. (gift link)

A compelling argument for the value of shame by my colleague @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social

The Springer Nature Proof Editor is unbelievably terrible. I’m seriously considering just pulling the article, despite having gone through 2 rounds of revision to get it accepted.

Trump admin: [flagrantly violates constitution] NYT analysis: The Trump admin *may* have crossed a constitutional line by [flagrantly violating the constitution]. Who are we to come down one way or the other?

One point Montesquieu makes that I find pretty insightful is that despotism er fuckin sucks and we definitely should not do that. I feel we have a lot to learn from this.

"Humanity is now obsolete. To quote the fifty-third president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln: 'Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.'"

This slayed me.

My morning did not need opening the NYT to find Kevin Roose with a softball interview of Yudkowsky. We need a new “paper of record”.

Very important work being done here.

"If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say 'this was a crime, see,' so now I can't claim 100%..." not that there's any additional context needed to make this sound bad, but Donald Trump's first wife is among those who have accused him of rape abcnews.go.com/Politics/tru...

I rarely find myself in such full agreement with Ezra Klein. But this is a forceful statement of some very important points.

So the sandwich guy ... beat the wrap

Pros And Cons Of Using AI For Schoolwork  — theonion.com/pros-and-con...

Louisiana has to build three new natural gas power plants to accommodate the "AI" data center that Meta just crammed through because said center will use *Three Times* as much electricity (and, thus, attendant resources) as the *Entire City Of New Orleans*, every year. Y'all this isn't sustainable.

We are excited to announce the 4th Annual Penn-Georgetown Digital Ethics Workshop, organized by Brian Berkey and myself. The conference will take place April 3-4, 2026, at Penn. If you work on digital technology ethics, broadly construed, please consider submitting an abstract.

Every time ICE arrests someone, it’s a more serious moral outrage than this. But it strikes me as especially alarming that armed federal agents are showing up to publicly try to intimidate the governor of California. Another brazenly authoritarian move, admittedly among many others.

Excited for this!

AI Boosters: All of this talk of AI energy use is overblown, LLM requests use less power than a toaster. Also AI Boosters: We need to radically increase the energy grid's capacity and supply. And you have to pay for it. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/b...

“We are seeing every region of the country experience really significant data center load growth,” said Abe Silverman, a nonresident research scholar focused on energy markets at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s putting enormous upward pressure on prices, both for transmission and for generation.”

Firing Colbert contributes materially to rising authoritarianism. Even if CBS didn’t intend this as a way of appeasing Trump (which, tbh, I find hard to believe), announcing the cancellation right now gives the appearance of appeasing Trump. And this was totally predictable.

I'm old enough to remember when the prevailing argument against affirmative action was that it failed to consider the "real" form of unfairness, which was income disparity

This feels kind of impossible to narrow down to me, but: my 3-5 key metal bands Opeth Baroness YOB Wayfarer Allegaeon

Studying Philosophy Does Make People Better Thinkers | This study “offers the strongest evidence to date that studying philosophy does indeed make people better thinkers.” www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

"Jonathan Caravello...was reportedly “piled on by multiple agents all at once” as “he tried to help a man in a wheelchair” who was having difficulty moving after...[ICE] agents threw canisters of tear gas" our colleague is still missing as of the last info I got dailynous.com/2025/07/12/p...

This seems spot on to me.

This is very funny. And despite the optimistic tone, it provides strong evidence that LLMs aren’t really ready to replace human management.

there's a whole cottage industry of fear cultivation around AI risk - but more of it centered around "what AI could do if it becomes advanced enough" rather than "what specific oligarchs could do if their AI is even marginally cheaper than their current imperialist tactics"

Evening conference activity: Opeth show in Athens.

Our #FAccT2025 proceedings are out!! 🎉 Read all of the published papers here: dl.acm.org/doi/proceedi...

Think Tank Called ‘The Himmler Institute’ Assures Nation This All Legal theonion.com/think-t...

I’m heartbroken and furious that the US is dropping more bombs and joining another unjust war.

Look, I would hate to rush to judgment here, but I’m beginning to wonder if maybe Donald Trump is a racist. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/u...

I’m looking forward to presenting this paper with Sina Fazelpour at FAccT next week. It will be published in the proceedings. Hope to see some of you in Athens! philpapers.org/rec/FAZTVO

This reads like an infomercial. I really hope that Roose is actually being payed by OpenAI or Anthropic, otherwise it’s really pretty sad that he’s always doing product placement for them. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/m...

"Any form of protest that appears the slightest bit emphatic, aggressive, valiant, or physical will completely erase any support from the dozens of Americans still on the fence about the whole 'Elder God Apocalypse' thing."

"Hundreds gathered outside the Butler County Jail in Hamilton on Sunday to protest the recent wave of arrests..." if you'd told kid me that Butler County Ohio would get in the news for this I would not have believed you. beautiful to see www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/p...

Having a blast so far at Maryland Deathfest with @neuroyogacara.bsky.social . Saw awesome sets by Mournful Congregation, Blood Spore, Chepang, and Lik, among a bunch of others. It was fun to see Obituary.

I’m excited that this paper with Sina Fazelpour is coming out in FAccT! We worked on this for a long time, and I think it offers some valuable contributions. #FAccT2025

This article is really insightful. (I might quibble with some of the premises being accepted about the technology, but accepting them makes the author's argument stronger.)

gotta respect Stephen Hawking's Black Sabbath number of 0 (according to AI Overview)