Luke O'Neil

Here’s @jaketapper.bsky.social having American-Israeli *journalist* Emily Schrader on to tell CNN’s audience most Iranians inside Iran actually support Trump & Bibi’s war on Iran🤔, and claim Iran is moving weapons into mosques and schools (to justify bombing them… the Gaza playbook)

I wrote about teaching writing and how AI can make us doubt each other’s humanity

In writing about (and railing against) artificial intelligence, the art historian Sonja Drimmer has returned again and again to the phrase “permission structure.” The phrase was popularized in the early 2010s by the Obama crew, and it referred to the rhetorical strategy of giving an opponent enough reasons to change their mind while also allowing them to save face. In Drimmer’s usage, the meaning seems to slide into giving someone an excuse to do what they already wanted to do, and I like that connotation. If a newspaper publisher wants to lower headcount, they can now use AI to replace reporters while telling themselves they’re riding the wave of the future. No matter that the product will suffer. No matter that other humans will suffer too. If some DOGE shitheads want to hurt people just because, the “because” can be justified by AI; computer says no. This is the kind of ethical slippage that’s easy to spot in others, but I can feel it happening to me too.

Shoutouts to @lukeoneil47.bsky.social for editing the story (and thinking along with me) and to @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social for her insights on AI and permission structures

For example this band I have been loving this year. You could plug these data points into the computer and it might make something but you’re not daydreaming about what it’s like being a young The Sundays fan in Santiago in 2026. A human. bsky.app/profile/luke...

Think about how powerful an engine of imagination hearing a band that you love and learning they are from some far off place can be. A young person from Japan imagining what New York City is like, or someone from fuckin... Florida hearing music from Manchester England. It's magical.

Same with music. You can hear a song you like and appreciate it knowing nothing. But there's a reason the first question people always ask when you play them a good song by a new band is "where are they from?"

"Baltimore? Oh ok."

Art is conversation with the particulars of the world.

So too with a painting. The little fucking information plaque in the museum is an extraordinarily powerful tool.

"No one wrote this." "No one painted this."

Ok then it is nothing.

There are pieces of writing that stand on their own without any external information, but there's a reason when we read poetry, for example, we want to know when it was written and by whom? Where was it written? What were the circumstances of their life at time? And their country or city?

Oof - this writing hits like a punch to your stomach.

Libraries Kept Me Safe When the World Did Not “Where do you find a place where books and culture are prioritized, but you have no money and smell like Alabama roadkill? The public library.”

good morning viet nam!!!

here is a piece i wrote for The Small Bow
www.thesmallbow.com/p/libraries-...

I'm sure it's plausible that an "AI" could write something that would trick me. The answer to this going forward is to immediately blacklist any writer who admits to using "AI" upon first mention of it. Like a plagiarist. They will of course admit this because people who use "AI" cannot do otherwise

I’m going to _i__ ____l_

Fucking moron

Of course no public transit for them to take home

I simply do not think an American life is more precious than any other person this is what I’m talking about.

[A liberal dreaming of the world they want]

Well of course we’ll need a prison. Put that over there. And somewhere for the cops to work from.

I’m not even asking for your policy paper on how to get there I’m just asking people to imagine it with their minds and want it. It’s free to do!

Looks like we can just give in on sports then. Surely that will be the end of it.

Looks like we can just give in on sports then. Surely that will be the end of it.

No I didn't know about that. He'll have to teach me.

You literally cannot get these people to imagine a better world! Merely one that fucking sucks a little less. Cannot imagine life on the other side of the prison walls just another hour of rec time for the prisoners.

Those of us who have Palestinians & Lebanese in our lives have been trying to make the supposed good party see this for years with no avail.

My friends' loved ones in Palestine are not less dead, tortured, detained, & homeless because the US president who helped Israel was a Democrat.

Thank you buddy but this is all exactly what the title is about! Seems apropos

Wow that’s crazy did we have offshore torture prisons under Obama? Can’t remember. Did democrats codify Roe? Did we just start deporting people and ripping families apart this term?

Greatest romance on television

Which elected Democrats are introducing legislation to reverse this, going on TV shows and saying it's bad, things like that? I'd like to support them.

haha pinned me again!