Christina Wodtke

a photo of JG Ballard

“I think we are moving into extremely volatile and dangerous times, as modern electronic technologies give mankind almost unlimited powers to play with its own psychopathology as a game.”
—JG Ballard

💔

Anthropic’s Claude rises to No. 1 in the App Store following Pentagon dispute | TechCrunch Anthropic’s chatbot Claude seems to have benefited from the attention around the company’s fraught negotiations with the Pentagon.

Resistance? On Saturday night, Claude overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT to claim the number one spot in the App store, a position it still held as of this morning.

techcrunch.com/2026/03/01/a...

To: Jeffrey epstein[jeevacation©gmail.com] From: roger schank Sent: Mon 1/4/2010 12:15:13 PM Subject: there is a simpler explanation about women and intelligence intelligence comes about in part from real focus (goal-directed (this is why you have the absent minded professor caricature) it is a rare woman who is not first and foremost focussed on what thinking and feeling about her hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why hates you or why you dont own a kelly bag roger schank http://www.rogerschank.com/

Relevant to today's conversation about AI's inherent sexism, here's an email from cognitive psychologist and early AI theorist Roger Schank, arguing to Epstein that women can't be truly intelligent, because they care too much about what other people think.

these people treat being called racist like it is a slur, and treat slurs like they're mere differences of opinion

Parenting Blizzard Bingo Parenting Blizzard Bingo

"Pantry is empty of the four kinds of food your kid will eat."
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/par...

Can we talk a bit about the terms “First Amendment absolutist” and “free speech absolutist,” and whether they have any agreed-upon meaning?

I promise to try, to the utmost of my ability, to Be Respectful Of Other Opinions.

/1

I’ll Know It When I Build It Last week I found myself vibe coding a personal OKR app. I’d start with a rough idea, look at what Claude Code produced, tweak it, add functionality, rearrange the layout—and then do it all a…

I think this is case where AI is enabling a new kind of working. I wrote about it eleganthack.com/ill-know-it-...
Fast prototyping is a good use case.
But AI is so problematic, it's painful. It's such a cool new technology and it's built on other people's labor and it's eating the world's resources.

Byhalia ICE Facility Plans Ditched Amid Mississippi Opposition, Wicker Says A proposed ICE detention facility that would have held 8,500 immigrants in a warehouse in Byhalia, Mississippi, won’t happen, Sen. Roger Wicker says.

HELL yea

that makes me smile

If you (whoever you are) give a few dollars away a month, you're beating Elon Musk in relative donations.

Vibe-Coding Is Not Need-Finding Last month a product designer showed me her new prototype. She’d spent two weeks vibe-coding a tool for tracking “gratitude journaling streaks.” The interface was beautiful. Confe…

"Showing someone a finished prototype and watching them shrug isn’t research. It’s a slow, expensive way to discover you guessed wrong."

Vibe-Coding Is Not Need-Finding, by @cwodtke.bsky.social

eleganthack.com/vibe-coding-...

I hope you will never have to do anything more than imagine.

I feel so angry and so helpless.

This Is Cute (10 Photos) Sometimes art doesn't have to be big or serious. It just has to be cute! Here are 10 tiny, fluffy, and adorable pieces of street art that will definitely make your day a little sweeter. More: Almost Too Cute (9 Photos) 🦇 1. Shhh, He’s Sleeping — Calgary, Canada 🇨🇦 A bookstore in Canada found the cutest little visitor. A tiny bat decided to take a nap right on their door frame.

This Is Cute (10 Photos)

Sometimes art doesn't have to be big or serious. It just has to be cute! Here are 10 tiny, fluffy, and adorable pieces of street art that will definitely make your day a little sweeter. More: Almost Too Cute (9 Photos) 🦇 1. Shhh, He’s Sleeping — Calgary, Canada 🇨🇦 A…

Add the private army he's building and things are only getting grimmer and grimmer.

of course we don't. but we still have to keep our eyes open.

Have any of you been to Threads? It’s like Bluesky but even more embarrassing. The best way I can describe it is: A fictional Twitter made for Grand Theft Auto.

the fuck you say?

Kristina is family. Trust that if she is asking it’s both needed AND going to where it should go.

Roses are red
Love is a gamble
Obey us or else
You get the mop handle

Kellan wrote another good blog post so I am having thinky newsletter thoughts laughingmeme.org/2026/02/09/c...

Vibe-Coding Is Not Need-Finding Last month a product designer showed me her new prototype. She’d spent two weeks vibe-coding a tool for tracking “gratitude journaling streaks.” The interface was beautiful. Confe…

"Need-finding happens before you have a solution. You’re listening to people describe their lives, their frustrations, their workarounds. You’re hunting for problems that actually exist..."

Worth reading the whole post from @cwodtke.bsky.social: eleganthack.com/vibe-coding-...

Following the killing of AFGE Member Alex Pretti and the subsequent slanderous rhetoric that followed from top Trump administration officials, AFGE National President Everett Kelley issued the following statement: “Yesterday, AFGE brought together labor and faith leaders from Minneapolis and across the nation to mourn our fallen brother from Local 3669, Alex Pretti. We honored his life and legacy and lifted up his family, his friends, his union, Minneapolis, and our nation in prayer. “Today, we demand accountability. “In the immediate aftermath of Alex’s killing, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem betrayed the public trust by slandering the good name of our union brother and calling him a “domestic terrorist.” Alex Pretti was a patriotic ICU nurse at a VA hospital who devoted his life to serving America’s veterans. That claim was reckless, defamatory, and unsupported by the facts. Noem was preceded in this false statement by Stephen Miller, Deputy White House Chief of Staff, who is also the architect of the chaotic and failed immigration policy in Minnesota. “Our demand is clear: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was responsible for carrying out the policy that led to Alex’s needless killing, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of that policy, must resign immediately. If they refuse, President Trump must dismiss them.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents border patrol officers at the National Border Patrol Council, calls on Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller to resign or be fired

Videos Contradict U.S. Account of Minneapolis Shooting by Federal Agents See how immigration officers escalated a fatal confrontation on Saturday.

Yup here’s the gift link for everyone www.wsj.com/us-news/vide...

Read Bondi’s Letter to Minnesota’s Governor Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota on Saturday that blamed him and other Democratic officials for allowing “lawlessness” in the state. It was not immediately clear ...

If I sent a letter saying I would continue to inflict violence and murder on a community unless that community made legal concessions to me, I would go to prison.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

ICE guys: so yeah you're pretty much going to abolish us now, huh

CHARLES RAFFERTY The Problem with Early Warnings People don't like to leave a party unless the house is actually on fire. Even then, if the flames are far enough away to be pretty, they'll finish their drink, take one more pass at the hors d'oeuvres. How things happen has always been unclear. Hurricanes begin in a place where no one lives. Agents of the government start to wear masks. Fascism is a word my neighbors won't use yet. They are following the law, they say, and the sirens are coming for someone else.

This hit so fucking hard today.

From a stitching mistake to viral hit: Meet the ‘Cry-Cry Horse’ With the Year of the Horse approaching, a netizen in Hangzhou recently shared photos of a stuffed horse toy that came with an unexpected flaw – its mouth had been stitched upside down.

A Chinese factory mistakenly stitched a frown on a Year of the Horse plush toy and it became a surprise hit. Meet the ‘Cry-Cry Horse’, the perfect mascot for 2026. [news.cgtn.com]

I watched the new Starfleet Academy and I liked it. People who don't like it are those purists that think that we should just keep making the old Star Trek or Star Trek: The Next Generation over and over again.