No Citizens!

wait this was 6 months ago and I basically only did #2, fuck

if I get through my reading list for this fall it's going to basically give me superpowers

sanora babb was robbed, her book rules, fuck steinbeck etc

The Shanghai leisure class all got dogs and so the coffee shops are now dog friendly. Result is that they’re insufferable if you’re not there for like dog park reasons

OK OK OK I get it I should write a book... I'll do it... You can make me.

man whatever i'm back in shanghai and it's still just better

honestly being in the US with a working phone plan + wifi and not having to use a vpn feels like taking the weights off my ankles or whatever

Oh wait its 2025 whatever

I'm not sure if this is good on the whole (probably not) but there are a lot of trans people here and that rules at least

minneapolis in 2024 is basically an actually-real version of Toronto as filmed in Scott Pilgrim

getting ready for the "will I ever live in the US again or not" test-trip

These people are all universally so so stupid

Listened to ~4 hrs of AI booster shit (thiel-douthat interview, douthat interviewing the ai 2027 guy, some sequoia capital people bootlicking an OpenAI bigwig, a couple others) and I’ve never been more convinced that it’s a giant fraud bubble

xiaohongshu ad for an English Language textbook that has a nice gimmick for teaching you multiple uses of similar-sounding words. The ad is done up with the clickbait title "if they ever stop printing this edition I will Kill America"

last few years have primarily been in asian cities where you just show up and then you can take public transit wherever. shocked to discover you can't do this in.... indianapolis indiana

I mean I knew this I guess

like how much does anything cost how do I get from place to place wait uhaul costs what now?

preparing to go back to the US to deal with some stuff this summer & it feels like a very weird version of long distance travel

I still believe the main idea in this post, but after grading this semester: It's clear that some students are paying Way More for access to better models, a situation exacerbated by the fact that some students have vpns & some don't.

gonna get in my Maoist Standard English era b/c for real Amerikkka can, must, and will fall

vibe looked something like the time I was with friends by the vegan place in Hong Kong & then suddenly there were dozens of skinny kids in black with face masks sprinting down the street - some kind of bravado & joy you don't get anywhere else

got on a livestream in a relatively chill part of LA & saw a gaggle of young people just geared up w/ respirators & bloc casually walking across the street like waiting for shit to pop off

I want to spend more time online making fun of He Jiankui but I think he's a real invulnerable teflon poster. He'd demolish me, probably

Guy walking through the park in Shanghai with Mises Hayek Rothbard Munger tshirt...

the thing is, these things are trash in the first place (as collections of bureaucratic verbiage), so they're well-positioned to be transitioned to AI-for-AI slop, but...

I'm in a workshop on program design and senior leadership are telling us "just let Gemini draft your program specification"

we're cooked

nobody told me there's a band called "Sister Wife Sex Strike" wtf this rules

Other side of this are well-meaning people saying any use of AI stuff is unethical & if we disbelieve hard enough it will go away. Again, no! Unis have been like this since long before chatgpt. Layering another scam on doesn't change the institution you work for. We so clearly need something better.

I've seen shit like this from my own uni, insane biz profs in Chronicle of Higher Ed, big lib podcasters, and others. They're all trying to sell us bullshit.

IMO one of the worst things about AI discourse are the many charlatans saying that elite institutions will do "AI transitions" first, there will be an "AI access gap." No. What are you fucking talking about. This is going to be used to defund teaching in low-tier institutions from K-12 to college.

What frustrates me is how far we've slipped from a real, viable movement to end deportation in the United States (and globally). I'm not even that old and I can remember things like Day Without an Immigrant in 2006, and the horrified reactions to the Postville raid under Bush