Jonathan Strassfeld

Particularly ironic is that the article attempted to use topic modeling algorithms to show changes in discourse over time and came to the conclusion 'Yeah, they help make nice visualizations but don't really tell you anything you didn't know already.'

Philosophy is like a box of slop chocolates

I'm ready for apologies from pundits and politicians who showed their bigoted asses and suggested we needed to abandon trans people in order to win.

looks like "fairness in girls' sports" wasn't the unbeatable wedge issue you thought it was, was it? kinda makes you look like a dumbass, huh?

Always a good day when I can post the Hopkins monkey story
(Washington Post, 10/6/1913)

(Washington Post, 10/6/1913)

Meanwhile

Wake up, babe, the least subtle visual metaphor in history just dropped

I declare this post off the record

This is awesome. I need an excuse to go to LA between now and May

monoskop.org/images/c/ce/...

(we are spiking your electric bills to find taller mountains that folks think will take them to the moon)

I'm just a man, standing in front of the AI discourse, begging it to read Hubert Dreyfus

Very cool! I'm not surprised he anticipated that (much of the criticism is GOFAI specific) - but I imagine he still suspected that embodiment (and its irreducible ambiguity) would be a necessary foundation for AI to replicate our original mode of experience (in a situation/world) and consciousness

(while simultaneously an incredibly touching portrait of a people and time)

Excuse you. Middlemarch is one of the funniest novels ever written, and it holds up incredibly well. Stuff like this slaps:

I would contend that "require more effort" is a better frame than "boring as fuck"

I've been waiting to see real engagement with Dreyfus. While we are no longer in the world of heuristic algorithms, much of the critique in What Computers Can't Do still applies (e.g. the difference between unformatted sensory experience and the data inputs read by machines)

I've been waiting to see real engagement with Dreyfus. While we are no longer in the world of heuristic algorithms, much of the critique in What Computers Can't Do still applies (e.g. the difference between unformatted sensory experience and the data inputs read by machines)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems... SIMON: What? SHAPIRO: ...Or saying... SIMON: You imagine that? SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over. SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level. SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this. SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

Hey - the world is dark, but here's a white-headed woodpecker!

I regret to inform you that Gwar has pushed the boundaries of good taste.

“woke right” comes from this incredibly stupid meta idea that “wokeness” is a discrete tendency in american politics whose style has been imbibed by the political right. note: believing this requires you to be almost totally ignorant of the shape of american politics going back to the 1930s.

Unusual hybrid bird found in Texas for the first time It may be the first climate-driven bird hybrid found in nature.

It may be the first climate-driven bird hybrid found in nature.

My condolences. May her memory be a blessing

The White House Peace Vigil, after standing for decades, is dismantled Parts of the vigil were removed earlier this month after Trump ordered, “Take it down.” On Thursday night, only the vigil volunteers and some signs remained.

www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

Opinion | My U.N. Commission’s Finding: Israel Is Committing Genocide

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/o...

I had a professor of Jewish Studies at UChicago who made the administration very angry because every year he made a proposal for the university to create an on-campus memorial to the worldwide victims of the UChicago economics department.

Earstercatcher

Ok, you have me stumped on the fourth. Mottled, Stygian, Oriental-Scops, and.... what else?

agrowingculture 3 hours ago 2/5 This morning, Israeli forces raided and demolished the Seed Multiplication Unit of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees' (UAWC) national seed bank in Hebron. Using bulldozers and heavy machinery, the Israeli army destroyed the storage warehouses and infrastructure where essential equipment, seed materials, and tools for indigenous seed reproduction were kept. This is not just an attack on a building-its an attack on Palestinian food sovereignty, biodiversity and cultural memory.

Israel destroyed a Palestinian seed bank today. This is such a specific kind of evil, targeting literal hope for the future. Attempting to further alienate Palestinians from their home and land. So much destroyed just for the sake of destroying. It's awful.