Greg M. Epstein

So many good people, absolutely exhausted right now. The way I like to think about it is, if you hold a contest between people who love building sandcastles and people who love kicking over sandcastles, it'll be very difficult for the builders to feel they're making progress. But they are. You are.

My dear late dad, Cy Epstein (no fucking relation to JE, as I always tell my editors is a requirement to write if I'm covering The Ghoul) always wanted to see our name in lights. This is SO not what he had in mind.

A vibrant, wide-angle photo of a colorful outdoor mural promoting the "Super Bowl LX Apple Music Halftime Show." The mural is painted on a long blue wall in a sunlit, tropical setting with real palm trees and bright pink bougainvillea flowers cascading over the top. The artwork features a playful, surreal collage of cultural and football-themed elements: Central Text: The Apple Music logo in bold yellow and red 3D lettering is flanked by "SUPER BOWL LX" above and "HALFTIME SHOW" below. Iconic Imagery: Large illustrations of a golden trumpet, pink sunglasses, maracas, dominoes, and a cup of coffee with a musical note in the foam. Football Elements: Brown footballs are depicted growing on palm trees like coconuts and resting on the ground. Foreground: A young girl in a yellow dress walks along the sidewalk in front of the mural, passing a small goalpost illustration where a green parrot is perched. The overall aesthetic is warm, festive, and celebrates a fusion of Latin-inspired culture and American football.

I'm going to do a thread of all the references and context behind Bad Bunny's performance and what it means for Puerto Ricans to see this on the biggest stage.

The opening title screen is a street mural in Puerto Rico that comes to life with footballs as coconuts.

Follow along!

Flying during the Super Bowl! Important request: if any tech company commercial seems to state or imply that the tech Co is creating its own religion, please tag me and my book #TechAgnostic! Thank you and may the AI Gods bless you and make you immortal, with or without 200 immortality pills a day

But but some white collar workers get to make a power point quicker

Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.

Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

So how do we feel about that book The Let Them Theory? Because I just found out early about something someone is planning to do, that if they do it you will be reading about it in the news, and let's just say it made me want to read the book.

😱🙀😱🙀

Not our go-to place at all (the newish Kokoro Don Café is lovely and seemingly unaffiliated with any massive criminals) but... didn't they get a huge contract for expansion into that huge new building? They should probably lose that contract over this...

This would be the first ICE detention center in New England afaik

I'm late on this but, I mean, it's right there. No vampire. Just someone who could turn back time. She found a way

I hadn’t known this. Two men who were accused of sexual abuse on the Shitty Media Men document that I created back in 2017 reached out to Michael Wolff for help as they looked to sue me, and Wolf forwarded their concerns to Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein offered to help. www.jmail.world/thread/EFTA0...

He certainly stimulated their need to feel important and connected and to get funding for their pet projects

Yes exactly. They were people who so desperately wanted to BE a big deal that they convinced themselves IT wasn't a big deal, because maybe he could help them

And people's sense of what and whom is admirable, in and around the higher education institutions that pride themselves on shaping all of the above

Insert comment here about how my post above is incredibly unfair to peanuts and people with peanut allergies. Do they really need to be grouped in with AI founders? No they do not. Deep apologies, people with actual allergies.

Could use my usual religious metaphor here ("cultish"=in no way hyperbolic) but also, Silicon Valley treats investing in actual humans and human connection the way daycares and most schools treat peanuts, these days. Just absolute allergic terror of even getting near such a thing, for fear of death

Rural Mississippi, 2029: But who could possibly have predicted they would train the AIs on authors who said religion is the only cure for disease, and that the AIs would then therefore custom create new religions for each patient, and that the religions would then advise each patient/follower to...

"Greetings, PATIENT — it looks like you have influenzedde. I have contacted CBS to submit a prescription for Tim-Tams."

Broader context:
bsky.app/profile/paul...

Like all of us I've seen a lot lately but this thread may be the most shocking, disgusting thing yet.

Anne Frank died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen

“The witches and the atheists and the sluts and the strippers and the sex workers are the ones that are stepping up, bringing together community,” says Fox, “and making sure everyone’s involved, not just people who look like them.”

You all know I'm like the resident atheist/Humanist clergy person here, right?

But for *this,* I can say: "God bless"

Slopagandist is a brilliant term. Btw Slop "Evangelist" would be pretty decent too, if it weren't for the fact that so many tech bros have already used that religious terminology to describe themselves.

Just realized that after basically taking a whole year off the socials, I now have 3 consecutive days of actually posting here. I'm skeeting a blue streak! Sharing till I'm blue in the face! The sky's the limit! Etc.

"Singing from the same hymnal"

The only thing I enjoy more than a good @emilymbender.bsky.social takedown of AI hype is when she inserts the religious metaphor herself so I don't even have to. The film looks really terrible btw

Disruptive innovation, they said

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.

Thanks so much Ben. For this and for keeping everyone a lot saner than we otherwise would be.

(Never shared that some months ago I opened the print edition and saw the full page ad on the back, for a vacation on the island of the 👹 with my last name, and I nearly died on that spot. But happily.)

Also, do we happen to know anything about the religious beliefs or affiliations (or lack thereof) of either Renee or Alex? To be clear on a political or social level it does not matter, at all. But as a nonreligious chaplain wanting to offer proper respect either/any way, it would be helpful to know