heresiarch

The left argument against immigration as solution to birthrate decline is: if future children come from outside the “developed” word, you haven’t solved the underlying issues of misogyny and capitalist exploitation, you’ve just outsourced them to poor women in the global south (again).

Why is this? Why is it a comfort when the simple machine fails? I realized: it's because knowing why things fail and how they fail is a crucial part of using a tool safely.

LLMs deprive users of that: we never know why or how they fail. They just...fail. And therefore, they cannot be used safely.

Why is this? Why is it a comfort when the simple machine fails? I realized: it's because knowing why things fail and how they fail is a crucial part of using a tool safely.

LLMs deprive users of that: we never know why or how they fail. They just...fail. And therefore, they cannot be used safely.

down by the Gaaaate
where the c-beams glooow
back to my hooome
i dare not go
for if i dooo
blade runner will say:
did you ever see a tortoise
wondering about its purpose
like tears in the rain

Photographs of a dinosaur-looking bird, the shoebill, and popstar Sabrina Carpenter, overlaid with a height comparison showing both are 152 cm, with visual graphics saying the magazine's name SSWAGGER and some Chinese characters

Photographs of a shoebill and popstar Sabrina Carpenter overlaid with a height comparison showing that, yes indeed, both are just 152 cm

I can't even begin to describe this photograph. I think that might be Taylor Swift on a night out with Sabrina Carpenter. But Sabrina is photoshopped to have a shoebill face and talons, with wing-tips coming out her coat but still Sabrina's hair

Just incredible shoebill awareness-raising from this Hong Kong teens' magazine

this is incredible. Google Flights seems to have broken itself with bad LLM implementation? You enter the flight details, and...nothing happens. Click "Explore" and you get taken to some tourist front end. The enshittification is real

a related hot take: saying macroeconomic numbers are moving in a good direction is not the same thing as saying “the economy is objectively good now”. The economy can improve while still sucking overall!

the absolutely most generous take is they thought they had an Iranian Delcy and then accidentally killed them. Which is. Insanely stupid

it’s a qualitative study. it is not attempting to draw statistical inferences to a population via random sampling, “sample size” is not a meaningful measure

Tweet from the Prime Minister of Israel: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Antisemitism knows no limits or boundaries. Israel is attacked because it is the Jewish state. Temple Israel in Detroit was attacked today because it is a Jewish house of worship."

Speaking as a Jew living in Diaspora, who needs to exist as a minority at a time of rising antisemitism, I would really appreciate it if the Prime Minister of a country where I do not live would not say that attacks on a sovereign country are analogous to attacks on a synagogue.

the greatest threat to Jewish people around the world is Netanyahu saying that what he’s doing is for the Jews.

I keep typing and deleting things about Netanyahu directly getting the Michigan shul attacked by literally killing a dude's family, and then turning around and saying it's exactly the same as attacks on Israel, but the truth is I can't figure out what to say that will not immediately get me banned

every single time this reminder is in error (ie i wrote “i am very attached to this cat” or something), i feel a warm glow, comforted by the machine’s comprehensible stupidity.

The most helpful any everyday technology has ever been is GMail's "You wrote 'Attached is' but no files are attached." reminder and I don't need any tech to be more intelligent than that.

yes they do, and also this assertion is about as rigorous most “AI will” claims which is to say pure wish-casting

A woman in a mask Headline: Why Do Some People Still Wear Masks In 2026 And On A Completely Unrelated Note Why Is Everyone In The Office Sick Right Now Apart From The Guy In The Mask? Story from Jerk Wingley and Terramin Defishunsee Photo from Adobe

Why Do Some People Still Wear Masks In 2026 And On A Completely Unrelated Note Why Is Everyone In The Office Sick Right Now Apart From The Guy In The Mask?

in fairness to discourse theory analyst types, they *are* experts on words. it’s the “so what?” part they struggle with

so discourse analysis is this persuasive and easy way of attacking (one aspect of) power, so everyone piles in.

…which then leaves all the other aspects of power largely untouched.

the best reason is because language *is* a kind of power. decarbonization is, actually, in the material interests of most people on earth—they don’t believe it because they’ve been convinced otherwise by the discourse power of the fossil fuel lobby, in service of their material interests.

i’ve thought about why this is a ton, and it’s complicated. the most pragmatic reason is because analysing language linguistically is easy: you read stuff. you quote stuff. boom. studying material power, you gotta figure out a way of getting a analytical grip on it, which is 1) hard and 2) debatable

Malacca

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. Written by a human From "Blood Meridian" (1985) by Cormac McCarthy

i am not a McCarthy fan—never read him. but that sentence, especially in the passage, is incredible.

that sentence, in particular, slaps

You preferred human writing. You're either sharply attuned to the qualities that make for great writing, or a lucky guesser. Maybe you also noticed that human writing often includes some clunky phrases, like this passage from Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian, caused by the author's aversion to punctuation: "As well ask men what they think of stone." A.I. used to make mistakes like these. But today's systems are much more fluid than their predecessors - so fluid, in fact, that finding grammatical errors or nonstandard syntax is often a hint that you're looking at a human's prose, not a machine's.

You preferred A.I.-generated writing. This doesn't mean that A.I. is "better" at writing than humans, but it does suggest that the gap is closing. Since A.I. is trained on essentially the sum of all human knowledge — and many of humanity's greatest books - it may be particularly well equipped to produce writing with broad appeal.

oh this motherfucking push poll bullshit has got me riled: the “hm guess you got lucky” negging?? the “here’s a human clunker” passive aggression??? the “oh well some say AI is just inherently better” false modesty????

"Human writing often includes some clunky phrases, like this passage from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, caused by the author's aversion to punctuation: 'As well ask men what they think of stone.'"

This is the stupidest g.d. thing I have read all day.

Markets In Turmoil As Price Of Money Skyrockets To $90 A Dollar

Markets In Turmoil As Price Of Money Skyrockets To $90 A Dollar http://theonion.com/markets-in-turmoil-as-price-of-money-skyrockets-to-90-1819575197/

fangks

it is how i learned about (the artist formerly known as) Prince, the Godfather, Abbot and Costello, the guy who says “freunlaven!”,

incomprehensible references in animaniacs is how i acquired most of my pop culture knowledge.