Cosmo Houck

@aelkus.bsky.social it’s Baudrillard and Verhoeven’s world, we just live in it.

"where is liberalism's Riefenstahl"
1. it's okay for liberalism not to have equivalents to all the famous nazis
2. it's George Lucas

i‘m using it for a column but i want to share here this line from lincoln on jefferson because it is applies to our situation as well. you can find it in his april 6, 1859 letter to henry l. pierce.

I was doubtful of the philosophical implication of first-generation LLMs, but I think if you are not at least grappling with the fact that "reasoning models" which do not actually reason are nonetheless capable of reasoning-like behavior just by talking to themselves you aren't a serious commentator

Leo Strauss in the corner?

Always a good time to rewatch The Insider

Agreed!

bsky.app/profile/cosm...

from Cover’s “Nomos and Narrative”

Reading Blindsight a couple years ago really pushed me in this direction

The reality of academic jobs, jobs in the entertainment industry, jobs in news, etc. is that they are scarce. Lots of people want those jobs, and there are plenty of people who can succeed in them, and on some level whatever criteria are used to narrow applicant pools are going to be arbitrary.

I loved assigning this piece when I taught jurisprudence

It is admittedly not my area!

There seems like a clear analogy in terms of skill attrition, no? Using e.g. generative AI that is often but not always correct seems like a similar monitoring problem — I don’t mean to be dense.

“Ironies of Automation” undefeated

www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/IroniesOfAut...

more of a tangent than another example but I was just rewatching Citizen Kane the other night, and the shots of all of Kane's stuff being catgalogued at Xanadu at the end have a very similar vibe -- enough that I wonder if Spielberg had it in mind.

Run perpendicularly away from the giant rolling disc! Covenant rules

Anyway the strength of the reaction I always think was fascinating. Why shouldn’t an adult be mildly embarrassed to spend time on childish things?

It doesn’t stop me! Sometimes I need a break! But sometimes I think — man, I need to spend some time on something more challenging, too.

Many years ago Ruth Graham published this piece in Slate. The reaction was pretty wild — lots of responses, incredibly defensive. I talk about it with my students. The “it doesn’t matter what you read, as long as you read” attitude is one I want them to lose — of course it matters what you consume!

Heat, Bringing Up Baby, The Apartment, In Bruges, Whit Stillman and the Coens all come to mind too

A lot of Linklater movies in the conversation for me, but it’s Before Sunrise

Probably some conflation with “mink” too

Cormac McCarthy

Agree with all of this! I rewatched The Insider a few months ago and have been reflecting upon it a lot, and trying to puzzle out what is a kind of slow degradation of our institutions and what is specific to the current moment. It’s a good movie, and it has aged well.

TMS is on a short list of the best books I read in grad school

You read Wealth of Nations and you think, wow, Adam Smith — what a writer! Really lives up to the hype, huh. And then you read Theory of Moral Sentiments (or excerpts of it) and you realize he is one of the seers of liberal modernity.

a man who listens; he’s concerned about you

Women may not want Hugh Jackman *as Wolverine* but many women certainly want Hugh Jackman! He’s a handsome man! And he’s got an accent. Like c’mon.

Fabulated jabbering babblings

Liberalism Needs Liberals It is precisely because liberalism cannot take sides that liberals must.

"It is precisely because liberalism cannot take sides that liberals must. Liberalism defends individuals, and it depends upon them." www.liberalcurrents.com/liberalism-n...