Nils Gilman

One of the best things I've read on AI and art

The fourth biggest city in France (after Paris, Marseilles, and Lyon) is Toulouse, which has a population of ~511,000.

For perspective, that’s equivalent to the ~110th biggest city in the United States, e.g. Lexington KY, Pensacola FL, Killeen TX, or Huntsville AL

On one level: yes. And so: mea culpa.

But it’s also a methodological erasure: I was mainly thinking of intellectual (vice political) contributions to “the Enlightenment project” — and even as politics, the 3rd May Constitution political moment… did not end well.

The cinematograph, the "noematograph," and the future of AI art From the cinematograph to the "noematograph," the Hugh-winning author explores how technology has, and may still, breed new artistic forms.

ChatGPT conjures a bunch of translations of a Chinese poem.

Ken Liu asks: “The question that matters here isn’t ‘Which translation is most accurate?’ but ‘Taken together, do these translations make the poem more interesting?’ The answer to that is a resounding yes.”
bigthink.com/high-culture...

Thesis: the Enlightenment basically happened within 500km of Paris. This radius encompasses everything from Edinburgh and London, to Barcelona and Venice, to Vienna and Prague, to Berlin to Copenhagen. (The most important sites outside this circle are Königsberg and Philadelphia.)

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

“History is best told as a story of organised crime… It is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population.”

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A Halt to the Left’s Long March | National Review From Harvard to the Los Angeles Times, the old quid pro quo is falling through.

Yet more evidence that the Right was never against cancel culture per se, only cancel culture directed against them www.nationalreview.com/2025/08/a-ha...

The innumeracy on display in the comments is really something

Welcome to Trump's 'controlled disintegration' of America Look for the rebuilders.

“Donald Trump is charging us into a ‘controlled disintegration’ of everything that made America the envy of the world — that includes any appeal to equality under the law, rules-based order, and evidence-based science and economics.” www.thefarce.org/welcome-to-t...

There is never a direct line from “is” to “ought” — and science as such is only about “is.”

Trump’s Domestic Use of Military Set to Get Worse, Leaked Memo Shows A Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by TNR signals top-level discussions about a potential escalation of the Pentagon’s domestic anti-immigration role, and lays out new details.

NEWS --> An internal Homeland Security memo suggests Trump's use of military for domestic enforcement is about to get worse. It details top-level talks between Defense Department and DHS on what this should look like. Experts say it's alarming.

We obtained the memo:
newrepublic.com/article/1987...

Serious question: once democracy properly understood is restored, what’s supposed to be done with people like this?

In the West, prayer was the traditional technique for entering altered states of consciousness conducive to meditation & receiving spiritual grace.

“Mind-altering” substances emerged as an alternative for expanding subjectivity, enhancing the imagination & opening the mind to immaterial influences.

The decline of traditional religious observance is among the most conspicuous social changes of the last century and a half, but one of its less examined consequences is how drug experiences took on dimensions of the sacred previously part of the religious domain

Trump Fired the Person in Charge of the Job Numbers. It Brings Him Closer to a Sinister Goal. Yes, Trump firing the BLS commissioner is bad. Really bad.

More info on the destruction of federal data collection and dissemination as a way to undermine shared consensual reality slate.com/business/202...

Trump Fired the Person in Charge of the Job Numbers. It Brings Him Closer to a Sinister Goal. Yes, Trump firing the BLS commissioner is bad. Really bad.

More information on the destruction of federal data as a way of undermining shared consensual reality slate.com/business/202...

anyway, I wrote about this disaster at length slate.com/business/202...

Trump Fired the Person in Charge of the Job Numbers. It Brings Him Closer to a Sinister Goal. Yes, Trump firing the BLS commissioner is bad. Really bad.

More on how the Trump is deliberately destroying federal data collection and publishing as part of its push for epistemic authoritarianism slate.com/business/202...

They’re paving paradise to put up a parking lot…

9th Circuit keeps freeze on Southern California ICE patrols The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dealt a stinging blow to the Trump administration's mass deportation project Friday night, upholding a lower court's block on "roving patrols" across much of Southern ...

“If, as [ICE] suggest, they are not conducting stops that lack reasonable suspicion, they can hardly claim to be irreparably harmed by an injunction aimed at preventing a subset of stops not supported by reasonable suspicion.” www.latimes.com/california/s...

GOP Rep. Bryan Steil holds an in-person town hall event and is greeted with boos over Trump bill Bryan Steil's town hall was the first for a Wisconsin Republican since House GOP leadership in March advised members to avoid the in-person events.

“The difference between a prison or a detention center and a concentration camp is due process.” eu.jsonline.com/story/news/p...

As I said... bsky.app/profile/poli...

Dictatorships & Data Standards, Revisited Corrupting government data is the most basic form of epistemic assault on rational and democratic governance — and that's clearly Trump's plan

The #EpistemicCrisis reaches its materialist phase: nilsgilman.substack.com/p/dictatorsh...

“The floggings will continue until morale improves.”

Dictatorships & Data Standards, Revisited Corrupting government data is the most basic form of epistemic assault on rational and democratic governance — and that's clearly Trump's plan

Fridays are the day Trump chooses to fire people who are doing good work. Yesterday it was the head of the Bureau Labor Statistics.

I explain here why this is part of a larger pattern of "epistemic authoritarianism" that I warned about 7 years ago: nilsgilman.substack.com/p/dictatorsh...

Dictatorships and Data Standards - The American Interest Since the 19th century, government statistics have been central to our sense of shared social reality. Is that going away?

7 years ago I wrote that, "the most lasting long-term consequence of the Trump Administration," could be "the disruption of the belief in neutral gov't statistics that form the epistemological foundation of shared social, economic & political reality." www.the-american-interest.com/2018/04/17/d...

Montana shooting kills 4 at Anaconda bar as search for suspect underway A manhunt is underway for a man suspected of killing four people at The Owl Bar in Anaconda, Montana, on Friday morning.

Anaconda, Montana, was the first city west of the Mississippi where the Socialist Party of America took power, when in 1903 voters elected a socialist mayor, treasurer, police judge, and three councilmen.

See what happens when you elect socialists?! www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

Israel’s Squandered Victory Gains against Iran won’t translate into regional peace.

"Netanyahu has tried to demonstrate that it is possible to marginalize the Palestinians and emasculate their national aspirations without sacrificing Israel’s ultimate acceptance into the region or its own security." Good luck with that! www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israe...

The United States Should Act Now to Mitigate Conflict Escalation on the Moon - War on the Rocks On June 25, 2024, China’s Chang’e 6 mission safely returned to Earth, becoming the first mission in the world to retrieve lunar samples from the far side

Today in lunatic governance warontherocks.com/2025/07/what...