Kadri Smith

Soviet economic and political history is enormously fascinating. It is unfortunately shaped by campists and anti-communists, both of whom don't actually seem to care about the reality of the Soviet system

I grew up in a very small town and when the mentality there crushed me I held on to hope in a better stock of people I would meet along the way someday.
Not anymore.
Sanctimonious and nasty down to the marrow,most of you...

According to medieval astrology, Scorpio season is a bad time for planting trees, bathing, bloodletting, buying gold or silver, buying horses, and making new clothes.

@schumisnoopy.bsky.social

"Total interconnection and total communication by digital means does not facilitate encounters with Others. Rather, it serves to pass over those who are unfamiliar and other, and instead find those who are the same or like-minded, ensuring that our horizon of experience becomes ever narrower."

Robin Williams' daughter has some quality thoughts on AI slop

This is such a clear-eyed and straightforward explanation of both the root cultural logic of our times, and of the systemic role that social media platforms play in reproducing it.

I find it terrifying that people (men) think they are falling in love with AI chat bots.

The desire for a romantic object that does not exist outside of your interactions with you and has no purpose other than to secure and maintain your attention is the purest distillation of misogyny.

Many reasons to be terrified of people lately,as always. But man,those videos of rapture-is-coming nuts giggling and kicking their feet really freak me out...

#HappyBirthday #BlueVelvet

Lovers with 3D Glasses at the Palace Theater, 1943 by Weegee

I think one of the better, more subtle tributes to Robert Redford's life is the string of utterly iconic female co-stars who've come forward to eulogize him; each of them take-no-shit types like Fonda and Streisand, and every one of them without a single bad thing to say. A model for male behavior

There's like 10 types of psychosis going around right now,all oppositional to each other.

Maurice Chevalier (with Ernst Lubitsch) - BOTD

We built a calculator that doesn't work, but don't worry, it's also a plagiarism machine that will tell you to kill yourself. It runs on the world's oceans and costs 10 trillion dollars.

I love you all but I refuse to get my hopes up, the universe is simply not that nice to us

“I don’t want to hear these people talk. Spin the wheel.” - my 5 yo daughter watching the first few minutes of Wheel of Fortune

I cannot think of a better way to mark National Daffodil Day! (but shouldn't Daff day be in the spring when they're blooming??)

Least on anyone's worries really,but... pumpkin spice everything already? Why bury summer before it's over?

Plainly, the people mad about the work required to write well and make great art who are justifying various artificial intelligence tools as shortcuts to that creative process don't value the labor inherent to it.

This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.

Not saying I am any good but it certainly has helped with sanity to be occupied with this hobby...

Four months ago I was using my phone only and hadn't touched my digital camera since 2016/35mm camera since 2007. I had never loaded film myself. Now I use various cameras including a dslr with multiple lenses and have branched out to not only point and shoots (film)but vintage slrs.

I couldn’t eat at my favorite restaurant for three months without getting a shot, the scariest thing possible someone can go through. And then when I got into the restaurant by lying, there was no buffet anymore. When are these scientists going to be arrested?

Like, it's not the technology that's bad, it's the lack of appreciation for the unique value of human spirit and intelligence. I'm not afraid of probabilistic inference, but I'm terrified that we're spending $300 billion this year alone on the theory that machines could possibly make humans obsolete

There is a widespread culture of make-believe, wherein people engage in a practice of choosing their own reality, with emerging social, cultural political infrastructures that enable some people’s make believe realities to be forced onto other people

People think they have amazing stories about ChatGPT. And they tell them all the time. You just don’t register them as amazing if you are a normal ish adult human being because it’s mid shit like, “it told me to eat brisket!” or “it wrote twenty emails no one wants!”

Photograph of Tom Lehrer

Oh no. Tom Lehrer gone. At his great age, it’s not a tragedy, I know, but it just does feel bad not having his genius in the world.

Disrespectfully, I need anyone who has not looked for a job within the past year to shut up because shit has changed. Your advice and experience doing this in the past means nothing. You have not job hunted like people are job hunting right now, don’t give people false hope with your outdated ideas

Throwback to the girl that was such a germophobe she would make dinner in her own house with gloves and then ran several party apartments during covid. It's almost impressive how irrational human insanity is.