John West

Here's one of them...

Watching The Grinch (2018), a cutting piece of commentary on neoliberal governance, in which the daughter of a struggling single parent in Whoville appeals to Santa for help for her family, all while the mayor drains the city coffers in order to make the Christmas “three times bigger.”

They sponsor the local pickleball team.

A quote from Bouie's column: > For some observers, the 2024 election seemed to show a shift of young people and Latinos to the Republican Party. This was said to herald a “vibe shift” in American politics and perhaps a durable turn to the political right. But the truth of the matter is that voters, and especially those who are new and infrequent participants in the political process, are as driven by events and circumstances as anything else. And the key factor last year was voters’ reaction to the inflation that plagued Biden’s term in office.

More evidence for the argument that, as @jamellebouie.net wrote in his recent column, the "vibe shift" did not mark "a durable turn to the political right" for many of the voters who swung toward Trump in 2024. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/o...

In New Jersey, for example, heavily Hispanic neighborhoods with a majority of Spanish-speaking households boomeranged back toward the Democrats by almost 20 points.

Here’s Where Trump’s Multiracial, Working-Class Coalition Is Fraying A visual look at how Republicans lost support in two closely watched races for governor.

Trump came back to power after knitting together a multiracial, working-class coalition. Now, it's fraying.

For @wsj.com, @jackgillum.bsky.social, Peter Champelli, and I took a look at exactly where—merging precinct-level election results and tract-level demographics.

🎁 www.wsj.com/politics/ele...

I couldn't stop thinking about this perfect Borges idea from @marcusjmerritt.com. So I made it: internaut.club.

(N.B., if you want write access, you'll have to DM me.)

A screenshot of HOMER, the social media app.

I made an "AI-powered social media app" that's really ~digital performance art~. It's called HOMER.

Every hour, everything that's been posted gets summarized by AI, including all the summaries that came before it. Eventually, everything you write there turns to meaningless nothing.

internaut.club

A higher compliment has never been paid to an app imo

A screenshot of HOMER, the social media app.

I made an "AI-powered social media app" that's really ~digital performance art~. It's called HOMER.

Every hour, everything that's been posted gets summarized by AI, including all the summaries that came before it. Eventually, everything you write there turns to meaningless nothing.

internaut.club

8.
Ideas are cheap. So, too, is content. Value rests in my dwindling days, in my choice of how to spend them. Will I drown in the lethean pleasures of the feed, or will I attend to something else. Time, as always, is running out.

7.
Instagram, my carefully curated followings have been overrun by content algorithmically decided for me, often videos of still images of text from X or Tumblr, and I gag on it, half-remembering that there are other ways to spend the 1,200 or so weeks I have left to me (if I'm lucky).

6.
When I fire up the internet these days, I am reminded that I will die. The slop shoved down our gullets—meant to anesthetize us—tastes so revolting, it startles me out of complacency.

5.
A fading body and limited time with which we can bear witness: "Attention is biological curation," Alioto says.

4.
Alioto points back to the only human place left to us, which, conveniently, is the truest, oldest human place. Things have meaning, Alioto argues, because we die. "Attention is what makes us human," she writes. "But death is the only reason attention matters—and by extension, art."

3.
Everything must go. Kierkegaard's clearance sale has reached its endpoint now, with the rise of generative artificial intelligence. And a cottage industry has risen alongside the technology: what does anything even mean anymore?

2.
"Not merely in the realm of commerce but in the world of ideas as well our age is organizing a regular clearance sale," Søren Kierkegaard wrote in FEAR AND TREMBLING. "It is questionable whether, in the end, there is anybody who will want to bid." Ideas, in other words, are cheap.

1.
Here's a link from today's edition: dirt.fyi/article/2024.... "Attention is what makes us human" by Daisy Alioto at DIRT.

(I stumbled on this after reading @caitlindewey.bsky.social's incredible Substack, "Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends.")

Here's a thread with some ~feelings~.

3.
I've recreated a blog, but since I send this to just a couple of friends, it's a blog with a limited audience. I love it. "Social" media has devolved, it seems to me, into a lot of content I didn't ask for from people I don't know.

I can't recommend this enough: A purposeful group blog.

2.
I've found this process meaningful, almost meditative, especially the *finding* of articles that mean something to me and that I want to share. I added the ability to put in a "note": an explanation for why I'm including something, and I've started to treat these like mini-essays.

1.
I've got a friend who, for personal reasons, can't read the news on their websites, but still wants to read from time to time. So I coded a little CMS that produces "editions" of a daily magazine just for him. I copy–paste articles, pick an open-source image, and text him a mobile-friendly PDF.

I wrote this essay, which is, in part, about the time I tried to turn a language model into Bartleby the Scrivener.

Essay | I’ve Seen How AI ‘Thinks.’ I Wish Everyone Could. Experimenting with the math and data behind large language models can be exhilarating—and revealing.

I know AI is a polarizing topic, but I created a very-little-language model using Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener." I asked it to finish my sentence: "I would..." and it responded "...prefer to, yes."

My AI never quite got it right—the most human thing about it.

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ive-...?

Miles Davis, upon being asked to tailor his own pants, “You want me to sew what?!”

The highest compliment!

How the Journal Analyzed More Than One Million FAA Reports Reporters used machine learning algorithms and large-language models to perform the first analysis of fume-event reports at this scale

For the nerds, here's how we did it: www.wsj.com/business/air...

Text of the article, reading: > The Journal’s reporting—based on a review of more than one million FAA and National Aeronautics and Space Administration reports, thousands of pages of documents and research papers and more than 100 interviews—shows that aircraft manufacturers and their airline customers have played down health risks, successfully lobbied against safety measures, and made cost-saving changes that increased the risks to crew and passengers. > The fumes—sometimes described as smelling of “wet dog,” “Cheetos” or “nail polish”—have led to emergency landings, sickened passengers and affected pilots’ vision and reaction times midflight, according to official reports. > Most odors in aircraft aren’t toxic, and neither are all vapors. The effects are often fleeting, mild or present no symptoms. > But they can also be longer-lasting and severe, according to doctors, medical records and affected crew members.

Toxic fumes are leaking Into airplanes, sickening crews and passengers. The problem is getting worse and not much is being done about it.

From Ben Katz, me, and @andrewtangel.bsky.social for @wsj.com.

🔓 www.wsj.com/business/air...

Kantians must be stopped.

Every year!

Elvia, Incorporated - Cleveland Review of Books I left the bank fully and completely realized as ELVIA INC, annual projected revenue: one million dollars.

I really loved this new Elvia Wilk essay: clereviewofbooks.com/elvia-incorp...

(If you haven't read her book, DEATH BY LANDSCAPE, you should.)