Matthew Kirschenbaum

Benjamin and I have had a solid backchannel exchange in which we’ve acknowledged we probably agree on a lot more than not, including the toxicity of certain strands of critical AI discourse.

Reader, he blocked me.

You’re not going to follow me anymore?! That goes hard bro.

You’re still misreading my point willfully or otherwise, so have a nice day and Wahoowa?

Have you been following what’s been happening in Iran in recent months/yrs? Obviously what comes after is a big unknown and not necessarily to the good, on the other hand I’ve seen enough reasonably well informed Iran watchers, some of them actually Iranian, who might agree w/ the “on balance” part.

Right, good chat, thank you.

(Helpful readers’ note: everything here from “when Iraq fell” on forward is the “actually terrible and dangerous” part of what I wrote.)

Sorry, can you repeat that, I think there was a sonic boom from my point so completely whizzing by your head.

My positions on AI are fairly dire as you know, but I’m increasingly exhausted by the spiteful little nastiness that comes out of some corners of the “critical AI” community and if one’s rejoinder to *that* is sorry for being nasty while the bullshit machines destroy the planet, well I swear to god.

Also, no one has an obligation to predictability. I hope this does not require further explanation.

I’ve been here for a while, but thank you. And in my experience (here), “pointed”questions are rarely as interesting as their posers probably think.

One wonders if any good faith exchange ever begins with “Do you really think.”

I am blind with rage. How DARE these people yell “election interference” & “disinformation” when they made the lives of the researchers studying mis/disinfo HELL, to say nothing of the coordinated harassment of @ninajankowicz.com who warned all these fuckers about this very thing for years.

Woke breeding grounds for me and not for thee

Hegseth says Pentagon cutting ties with top universities, calling them "woke breeding grounds" Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the Pentagon would be canceling troops' attendance at some of the nation's top universities.

Hegseth has degrees from <checks notes> Princeton and Harvard. www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth...

This is Trump's former AI adviser

So look, a “tasting menu” is not a starter, an entree, and a dessert. That’s the early bird pre-fixe your Uncle Louis eats (he always goes for the skirt steak). A tasting menu should be like a tour of the kitchen, or ABBA’s greatest hits, or that movie on the island with the cheeseburger. Amirite

Do I have to choose one?

There was an opportunity to force Hegseth out after Signalgate. It was squandered.

There was an opportunity to force RFK Jr. out after his catastrophic mishandling of the CDC. It was squandered.

There was an opportunity to force Noem out after Minneapolis. It was squandered.

See the pattern?

Look at this beauty! Francis Tresham's 1829, first and greatest of the 18XX railway games, first edition (third printing), from 1974. This is one of the 'proto-Euros', games that anticipate elements of the German game renaissance of the 1980s despite being released years, sometimes decades earlier.

Screenshot of a Dan Moynihan post: “We've got beyond the practice of agents wearing masks to outright deception and abuses of trust. The lesson they are teaching the public is to not trust their government.”

Not until perhaps the last sentence is it entirely clear that this is about federal agents and not software agents.

🎙️ 🎉 Excited to announce that my book PREDICTED: How AI Is Restructuring Social Life is available for pre-order with UC Press: lnkd.in/evTZVN4b. MASSIVE THANKS to Michelle Lipinski and Julian Nowogrodzki as well as Eric Klinenberg, Lucy Suchman, Allison Pugh, and Craig Calhoun for their reviews 🙏

Update: They passed it. We witnessed and walked out.

Are yonks from Yonkers?

I will!

Why: They’re epistemological traps. They set the terms of the debate in binary, zero-sum, and absolutist terms. They’re also rooted in economic and transactive frames. Finally, they are localized and reactive forms of address, not structural and systemic.

Thesis: lots of things are frauds, cons, hoaxes, and fake, but calling things we don’t like fraud, cons, hoaxes, and fake is part of the problem, not the solution.

Was in to talk to them just the other day. They’re amazing.

Student-run bookstore adds new chapter to the Corner Nonprofit Ginkgo Bookshop on Elliewood Avenue gives new life to a decades-old business, Heartwood Books, that had planned to close.

What can you do with an English major? How about taking ownership of a beloved independent bookstore and ensuring it continues serving the community. Power to these UVA students! news.virginia.edu/content/stud...