Henry Farrell

Still have fond memories of David Bernstein getting so so angry at Antonin Scalia School Of Law jokes

Thomas M. Disch - Wikipedia

If you've read any of the other work of the original author of The Brave Little Toaster, it is not that far from form
Bleaked himself into derangement post September 2001 and personal tragedy but one of the truly great authors of dark futures. And a fine poet too en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_...

The obvious example here is Elon Musk. Musk is an explicitly white nationalist political force now, aligned with Republicans, but implementing his politics by supporting the far right in at least 18 countries around the world. Within the US, he was Trump’s largest donor during the 2024 campaign, and used his position in government to dismantle parts of government that progressives have championed, often in legally questionable ways. The U.S. government has developed a multi-layered dependence on Musk’s companies, particularly in aerospace, national security, and digital infrastructure. If it wants to send astronauts to space, or bring them home, it increasingly must turn to Musk. The DOD depends upon Musk for both Starlink for internet service, and for military-use satellites. Grok has been embedded into government, including the Pentagon. Most recently, HHS is sending users to Grok as part of its Make America Healthy Again campaign.

A third sovereignty concern: your contractor is your ideological enemy, deeply embedded in government, with more resources than many nation states, and willing to use his power to undermine your policy goals. I don't think Dems have thought through if and how they would dislodge such contractors.

I, Ludicrous - Carter - They're Unstoppable YouTube video by Jon B

you should be deeply ashamed of yourself. Nevertheless www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxTp...

me too!

Nikkei opens down 3000

every word of this.

Greens holding on to first place in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Disastrous result for Merz’s conservatives and their SPD coalition partners which could trigger changes in Berlin

Seems particularly dodgy when a lot of legal scholarship now consists of JDs cosplaying as historians. And, as the birthright citizenship business shows, often in ways actual historians find laughably inept.

I'd have thought Daryl Issa had more fire in his belly.

One thing I have been wondering is if people overindex on Orban's control of media and undervalue his provision of handouts to unhappy rural voters who felt left behind. That has not been Trump's priority and it is harder anyways to carry off in the US system.

The Political Economy of AI: A Syllabus As I’ve noted occasionally before, one of the most potentially useful things that academics do is preparing syllabi, and hence organizing information about the world.

thank you for the recommendation. For the theory that I do, my recent review article www.annualreviews.org/content/jour..., and for the theory that I read, the most recent version of the syllabus that I teach on the political economy of AI www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-politi...

Two weeks until Trump claims the Iran war would never have happened if he’d been president.

if we're on classic British comedies with extended jokes about not mentioning the war www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tms0...

The Village and the Sewer Behind the "Blueskyism" debate

www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-villag...

bactra.org/weblog/918.h...

An official declaration that I am doing oral exams with students (one of the downsides of GenAI!) and then getting on a plane to Europe, and so won't be able to respond to any more of the comments/queries/questions that are proliferating (and are now too many for any human to respond to anyways).

Apple + Microsoft + Eli Lilly paid 46% of all corporate tax to Ireland in 2024
See note from the Ireland's Fiscal Advisory Council.
- www.fiscalcouncil.ie/new-council-...
- www.irishtimes.com/business/eco...

After Software Eats the World, What Comes Out the Other End?

Yes that is exactly the point that the thread is trying to wave its hand towards.

Also I should make it clear that I am _all over_ people disagreeing with me! I have plenty of strongly held opinions, a substantial number of which are likely to be wrong, given the odds. So the underlying loose-ish claim is that we should be disagreeing on different topics in more useful ways.

this is the category error all the AI maximalists make

if I had to break down what I think the impact of AI would be by field, I'd have to first talk about which *subtasks* it's helping people with

the amount of variability by field and task is MASSIVE, ranges from 90% takeover to 0%

I think that’s fair, though I think part of people’s frustration is when it feels like the combativeness isn’t intellectually honest. The level of anger at the Altmans of the world is justified; it doesn’t _need_ inaccuracy to prop it up.

Baa! Baa! All we sheep have gone astray, and I am humbly grateful to you for volunteering to shepherd me back to the fold.

Mind you, in all of what I say (as opposed to Louis) I should stress that I am a non-historian commenting from outside, and what I say should be taken with appropriately sized dollops of salt.

Which on the one hand could be valuable - you _can_ use these technologies to capture large scale cultural phenomena that would otherwise escape, but on the other might end up speedrunning the histoire des mentalites intellectual collapse model if not done with appropriate caution/skepticism.

In other words, I think that similar tradeoffs apply (and obviously, the power critique has its own totalizing tendencies). I do think that there are obvious failure modes - e.g. the 'now we can reconstruct how people thought back then from models trained only on contemporary sources' approach.

So Louis would disagree. His project is about digitizing, but poorly organized 19th century sources with variable and often terrible handwriting. You could mount a Foucauldian critique of the power relations involved, but that is less 'this is useless' than 'maybe useful to the wrong people'

AI’s big rift is like a religious schism, says Henry Farrell In this doctrinal dust-up, very smart people are saying very strange things

yep www.economist.com/by-invitatio...

The Uses of AI for Writing Economic History, Louis Hyman & Matt Jones YouTube video by JRCPPF

If it's me you're disagreeing with, I will enthusiastically stipulate to the 'people who think that code is everything overestimate its general efficacy,' while pushing back some on the suggestion that it is useless for history www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQga...