William B.

Lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?

How long shall they utter and speak hard things? and all the workers of iniquity boast themselves?

no wonder the public is nihilistic. empirical experience suggests the only choice they face is between the frying pan and the fire. /fin

[Bites own tongue, draws blood.]

Tech, TV, Movies and News: Ellisons on Brink of Colossal Empire

I think the Ellisons watched "Succession" together and thought, "Looks fun, let's do it."

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/b...

William Byrd, the greatest of the William B.'s.

William Carlos Williams parodies 5 short poems with short lines

poking a ghost with short sticks markleidner.substack.com/p/william-ca...

Oh interesting. I've been dancing back and forth across the evangelical/mainline divide for enough of my life that I haven't accumulated much trauma, but the cultural differences are real. And sometimes mainliners have their own overly broad assumptions about what Evangelicals are like.

Great news.

The rule I would propose is, if what the chatbot comes up with is actually interesting, you should be able to put it into your own words. One should only link to a transcript if it's egregiously or humorously wrong.

If you're Simon, and you say "Simon says 'Simon says touch your head'", what's the status of the nested instruction? Do I have to touch my head?

I wouldn't say I believe that alchemy is literally true, but a strong culture of alchemy is really important for keeping society on the rails.

You forgot those who habitually seek a third way.

Or rather: to me, the frightening and destructive but not world-ending downsides of the chatbots have been in the foreground for a few years, but very recently the professional upside has appeared. I don't like the trade but it's not really up to me.

This was good. I like the advice to try new things and see if they work, rather than trying the same things over and over and making ever-finer-grained interpretations of the results.

I suppose there's still a chance the economics fundamentally don't work without the hype cycle, and there's also a chance that the LLMs start recursively self-improving and all bets are off, but I assume a middle path.

Haven't read anything by Freddie deBoer in a while but his AI-skeptical takedowns passed across my desk. Not very helpful... I don't think LLMs will change the fundamental human condition, but they have changed my job and I don't see any reason to think their capabilities have peaked.

Another thing that countries have trouble surviving is when the fantastically wealthy simultaneously stone ethnic resentment and try to destroy everyone's jobs, just saying.

Five years ago I caught my dumbest ban

Bitcoin’s Long Slide Explained by ‘Number Go Down’ A rising price requires ever-more buyers, and it’s unclear where they’ll come from next.

In today's Businessweek Daily, @zekefaux.bsky.social took my prompt of "number go down?" and writes an actual explanation of Bitcoin's drop-off from the fall.

As an amateur purveyor of boring takes, it gives me endless opportunities for "yes, it's very bad, but in a slightly different way than you think, which doesn't really change anything in the end." (I try not to post these anymore.)

The cold-war era and conservative fusionism are surely a big chapter in the story.

My guess would be that it comes from opposition to the New Deal and how fundamentalism shaped itself in opposition to the Social Gospel, so, more like the 1930s.

I was looking forward to Tom Hardy as Helen.

Thanks, genuinely, for explaining your take on this side of the Abundance thing. I'm not as plugged in to this stuff as I used to be.

(Also getting tech money for Harris is plausible to me. Still think blue states should be more competent and building out rail, wind, and solar.)

Well there may be a day when we need to have a drag out fight over whether jailing Musk or jailing Thiel will be a higher priority in 2029, but I don't think today is the day.

Enlighten me?

News to me. I only keep up with Ezra Klein via his podcast.

I don't think the material world is the most real thing, so its consistency is a bit of a puzzle.

I don't understand why "Abundance" is a punchline... what I understand of the project sounds like something I'd want to vote for, and support for some public-private partnerships doesn't mean automatic support for terrible ones.