A classic example of being too close to the source! But I always look forward extended family dinners where I can listen to buccaneering tales of outwitting the French on sandwich bread. Needs to hold a soggy prawn cocktail and also ham/cheese. This is the classic www.theguardian.com/news/2017/no...

I was in high school at the time and saw it in the theater with my dad, plus one of my teachers happened to be there too. Could not cringe into my seat and any harder than I did. None of us spoke of that line afterwards...

Union forces had suffered some 5,800 casualties but inflicted twice that on the rebels. When a chaplain asked General Thomas whether the dead should be sorted and buried by state in the new military cemetery, the Virginian who stayed loyal replied "Mix 'em up. I'm tired of states' rights.” (21

He’s compelling to some people because he notices genuine failures. But in my framework these failures come from the collapse of the verification–deliberation–accountability cycle. Fix that and the system can work, ignore it and nothing will.

LLMs give people with delusional belief systems a way to organise those beliefs. The model fills in gaps, supplies connective tissue, and wraps the madness in formal language.
It doesn't make the claims more credible to us, it just tidies them up.

5/Its easy (or difficult to swallow) this as corruption/crony capitalism. But in a new paper w/ @segoddard.bsky.social in IO, we argue these interactions suggest something much more fundamental -- a shift in the international order which we call neo-royalism.
www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mxthh...

Dream job. Though for safety, the best job approaches this but gives you maybe one quick task per day to do, so you can say you "worked" and have a record of efforts. Prevents anyone from discovering you're being paid for nothing and getting fired.

I started grad school when I was 26 and did some tutoring on campus. The undergrads I tutored were basically children. I'd finished undergrad, had a "real" job for a few years, and was engaged to be married, and these 18-20 year olds just clocked as kids to me. Any older man pursuing them is a creep

Goddamn so much of the system relied on high integrity and professional shame and once that was stripped away by lack of consequence it was just a ticking bomb right.

We thought the system was protecting us and we could fuck around electing anyone.

But we were supposed to be the system.

The window reflecting the interior ceiling at top makes this look like the largest (and only) indoor airport in the world.

but it’d also be a mistake to credit that vanguardist as having done most of the work. all the geese do the work. in intellectual life, successful reinvention, resurrection, reintegration require a great deal of creativity. /fin

it’s great that the growing frontier of firsts paves the way for somewhat — only somewhat — easier reinvention and transformation down the line. it’s like how the goose at the apex of the migration wedge does experience a bit more air resistance. 2/

cumulation is a bad model of intellectual life. every idea has to be constantly reinvented, remade as something fresh and real and relevant, live in contemporary minds. that is most of the work. 1/