Sam Tobin-Hochstadt

The ACM does take money from conferences but the actual answer is the cost of giving everyone lots of coffee.

The point is that she rejected skepticism about something unique for humans generally as insulting to her specifically; the host did not say anything about her in particular.

I think what happened is that Bender ten years ago had views about language and meaning that were not consensus but were still mainstream. But the existence of current LLMs either falsifies those views or means that LLMs are conscious. And since she doesn't like either option she's gone for yelling.

I think the AI community making a concerted effort to post more here despite the hostility has helped a lot.

Yeah although again they could have more. Unfortunately there's not anything that seriously ranks public universities past about #25 to get a more accurate judgment here (US News ranks Rutgers-Camden ahead of Colorado).

Poverty in the Pale of Settlement/the Nazi Anschluss/the potato famine/something lost in the mists of the 17th century

I don't think you can read Computing Machinery and Intelligence and think anything other than that he was looking forward exactly to this.

UIC has done a lot in the past 20 years but Illinois could absolutely support another state university of the prestige of Purdue/Michigan State/Iowa State, which UIC is not at currently.

California is the one place that has meaningfully created new universities in the post war era.

In general, "why can't we make new prestigious universities" is an under-explored question.

Illinois and Ohio should have a second flagship-level university the way Indiana and Michigan and Iowa do.

Insufficient investment by northeastern states in public universities between 1800 and 1950.

He actually said subsequently that he cooks a lot -- I think he has ideologically-driven sympathy for people who complain about affordability and thus assumes they must be on to something.

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The problem is the voters! MGP and other people like her with terrible analysis of our current situation do well in swing districts because the voters in those districts also have ridiculous views on our situation.

Large sign held above the heads of a big crowd This is Not The Way Life Should Be Abolish ICE

Maine Knows How to Clear ICE seen on sign near Monument Square

Huge crowd of people standing outside in the cold carrying signs.

Portland Maine 01/30/2026

i wish people would stop talking about AI being built on "theft".
that's not what theft is.
if someone steals your car, the problem isn't that they now also have a car that looks like yours, it's that you don't have one anymore.

I was just telling Carlo Angiuli that "type safety" is a bad term and we shouldn't use it.

I feel like moltbook is by far the least interesting thing about clawdbot and mostly demonstrates that people have no intuition about what recursive processes can do.

I'm not 100% convinced of that -- I don't think you can understand Harry's attitude towards his enemies without seeing him as a Christ figure.

It's not the incomes of the college students that's relevant, it's the job density ("job" for the students). It's totally infeasible to have convenient single-car commuting to a large university campus no matter anyone's land use decisions.

My most charitable interpretation is that you can't understand the books without understanding Christianity and that understanding has diminished among the left wing online commentator set.

How could you read the books and think that government corruption and racism are not major themes?!?

I think this is like the Harry/Hermione shippers who were shocked that a relationship telegraphed in the first book happened--they haven't read any other books and don't know how to understand them.

I think "we're going to violently overthrow the fascists and then I'm going to lead the defense of our new state" is a pretty common trajectory for radicals.

The actual plot of the books is that the do nothing government fails to recognize the threat of the fascists and students and intellectuals have to form a violent underground resistance movement!

Someone in a colourful shirt looking at a red film poster 'IL GRANDE RACKET'

Happy Birthday Racket
28 Jan 1995
racket-lang.org

youtu.be/JnczIyPXGfc

Weird to have a farmers market sponsored by Sysco

A birthday for Frances

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Right lots of people who didn't have particularly strong views have shifted, which makes a real difference.

Similarly, the people who were the main believers in "woke" in 2018 all have exactly the same beliefs today; the vibe shift is just about who is featured in the discourse.