Shirley Siluk

The Trump administration is on board with nuclear, too. In an executive order last May, Trump vowed to have three test reactors up and running by July 4th of this year. In a recent interview with podcaster Shawn Ryan, Taylor called that goal “unbelievably exciting.” Last fall, the Trump administration quietly pushed through a suite of major changes to the laws that govern US nuclear facilities. The new rules, which weren’t made public but were only shared with companies with government contracts, dramatically loosened requirements around safety, accidents, and environmental protections, according to reporting by NPR.

There's a reason for the saying that every regulation is "written in blood." The Trump administration, DOE Secretary Wright, and tech bros/wannabes like Valar's Taylor are clearly hellbent on us relearning this lesson the hard way again.

Great article, and very heartening to see that a variety of Luddite-themed organizations are springing up in response to the AI hype.

Imagine you have two machines. One you can open up and examine all of its workings, and if you give it every picture of a cat on the whole internet, it can reliably distinguish cats from non-cats. The other is a black box and it can also reliably distinguish cats from non-cats if you give it half a dozen pictures of cats, some apple sauce, and a hug. These machines sort of do the same thing, but even without knowing how the second one works I am extremely confident in saying it doesn’t work the same way as the first one.

Great post (and lovely song choice!). This was my favorite part:

Fantastic article. Really good to hear that some people and groups are starting to chip away at unreasonable and anti-consumer restrictions on the right to repair.

Holy sh.. - the most powerful piece of writing I've read in a long time.

💯

Perhaps the ideology of “superhuman” AI, in which humans appear merely as slow and inefficient pattern matchers, could spark an even more expansive and politically significant revival of humane meaning and values. Maybe the moral and experiential poverty of AI will bring the most vitally human dimensions of our native intelligence back to the center of our attention and foster a cultural reclamation and restoration of their long-depreciated value. What might that look like? Imagine any sector of society where the machine ideology now dominates and consider how it would look if the goal of mechanical optimization became secondary to enabling humane capabilities.

What a great piece. I love this section in particular.

I'm a huge fan of the movie, and this video immediately made me think of it.

Digital Media is Broken, So We’re Turning Our Company Into a Feudal State Face it: digital media is broken. Advertising revenues are dropping, employee turnover is skyrocketing, and publications are making ends meet with ...

"No experience? No problem. Gone are the days of unpaid internships. We’ll train any motivated individuals with the skills they need to succeed: writing, editing, and plowing the fields."

"But [writers] are not in a position to fix the problems with machine learning; we can only recuse ourselves from its support."

I see the same dynamics at play daily re: GenAI and writing. Writers are told that the technology isn't perfect, so it's their job to review and analyze its outputs. But, to borrow Drimmer's wording...

"... learning; we can only recuse ourselves from its support."

"... that the authors know precisely what they are not endorsing. Here, self-awareness displaces action. The solution, of course, is to do something about it rather than retconning its deficiencies as failing forward. But art historians are not in a position to fix the problems with machine...

Such a great piece of writing. And much of it also applies to the proposed (and, unfortunately, existing) uses of AI in writing. This section in particular stood out for me: "We are shown an example of all the harms that can occur through the deployments of this technology, so as to assure us..."

The First Time ‘SNL’ Apologized for a Joke During a Live Show What’s so funny about cease-and-desist letters?

Saturday Night Live did a sketch along those lines a very long time ago, which later resulted in one of the few apologies the show ever had to make: www.cracked.com/article_4103....

Ars Technica Pulls Article With AI Fabricated Quotes About AI Generated Article A story about an AI generated article contained fabricated, AI generated quotes.

Some interesting additional context on that story, from 404 Media - about Ars Technica's coverage with a fabricated quote attributed to Shambaugh: www.404media.co/ars-technica...

"Citation inertia" is such a great phrase (and great description of the problem). Definitely adding that to my vocabulary.

That was my immediate reaction too - "false herring??!!"

a man wearing an orange hat with the word talladega on it Alt: Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights saying, "I'm not sure what to do with my hands."

Makes me think of this:

"By removing writing from reporters’ workloads, we’ve effectively freed up an extra workday for them each week." This is utterly dystopian. What reporter enters the profession to NOT write? Writing is thinking - stories evolve not out of "facts gathered" but by thinking about what those facts mean.

I always enjoy your work, Tom. Happy to not be counted among the fuckwits!

"... is keeping up the pretence that fuckwits don’t walk among us in the world, but sometimes you just have to face up to the reality of the situation: Fuckwits do walk among us in the world, and they are not thin on the ground."

This piece was so much fun, and overflowing with some brilliantly memorable observations to boot. To wit: "Part of trying to get on quietly and diplomatically in life and not clash with people..."

Or the pizza restaurant from the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise, minus the murderous animatronics that come to life.

Yes, this. It makes me laugh bitterly, given how many, many stories we've seen for years about the "productivity crisis" and how few have focused on the idea that there's a "labor compensation crisis."

American Authors' Best Day of My Life

What vibrant and wonderful language.

What a great - and important - piece: thanks for the gift link. And wishing the best to all the WaPo journalists who contributed to this piece only to lose their jobs in Bezos' act of vandalism a few days ago. Reporting like this is vital to provide a record of disappeared art and knowledge.

"Oxford comma, em dash, % - or not?"