Had no idea this book was going viral, and I was just gushing about it last week. One of my favorite pieces of fiction ever, and it deserves all the accolades.

Important update on Grok nonsense.

Pretty compelling example of digital labor issues (both subtle and explicit) related to AI. Surely letting Google shape our questions and provide all the answers won’t be an issue?

Cette série continue à faire des bêtises que je trouve gênantes: Il n’y a que quelques personnages « importants » qui doivent vivre toutes les expériences d’un.e Français.e de cette époque, et il y a plein de choses qui se passent pour des raisons dramatiques et non logiques.

Pourtant, cette saison en particulier montre la saleté de la guerre, et je suis impressionné par combien on ose critiquer les Français.e.s même au lieu de croire que tout le monde a été des héros pendant la guerre.

Walking disaster.

I concede that appeals to the environmental costs of AI sometimes feel knee-jerk and lacking nuance. However, you can always count on Musk to provide a clear example of the harms of AI, and this is a particularly compelling one.

20,000 accounts is a hell of a “bug.”

One of the best things I did for my future self when I was in high school was to follow a friend’s advice to join our school’s forensics (speech and debate) team. Joining the team let me discover something I was good at, and I developed some skills that are tremendously useful to me personally and professionally, not least when teaching or presenting my research.

Lately, as I’ve been putting together some sermons for my local Community of Christ congregation and the Beyond the Walls ministry in Toronto, I’ve thought about another way that competing in forensics decades ago has shaped me. One of my particular strengths was competitive extemporaneous speaking, which involved having half an hour to write and memorize a seven-minute speech on a semi-randomly chosen topic related to domestic and foreign affairs. (I also did fairly well in impromptu speaking, which involved slightly shorter speeches with drastically shorter prep time).

After watching several seasons of Un village français, it was inevitable that I would want to learn more about De Gaulle, someone I certainly already knew about, if not at the level I would have liked. At some point, I remembered that I had bought this biography about 15 years ago but never read it, so I pulled the forgotten ebook up on my phone and made my way through.

Pretty disappointing.

This was fine? I really enjoyed the introduction and conclusion: They got at what I find interesting about appeals for anarchism. The rest of the book got at what I find tedious about (some) appeals for anarchism, though: A lot of anecdotalism, seemingly speaking to the already converted (or at least the already insider), and big claims without walking me through them. I’m glad I bought it, and I’m glad I read it, but it wasn’t as amazing as I’d hoped.

“Scale” and efficiency aren’t always good, and digital blackface is a good example.

I don’t mind being a broken record when pointing out Ellulian vibes. Check this paragraph out:

These are unfortunate examples of how AI can lead to mistreatment of people because of technical flaws as well as misplaced human faith in the technology’s supposed objectivity. These cases involve different tools, but the underlying issue is the same. AI systems produce probabilities, and people treat them as certainties.

Very gross stuff here. I remember downplaying the connection between “alien” as an immigration term and “extraterrestrial” in a conversation in college, chalking it up to etymology and dismissing the idea of ill intent. This is definitely ill intent, and it’s all kind of dumb and gross,

Digital labor is, imo, the fundamental problem with AI, and I think this story shows why: It’s not just the AI use here that’s exploitative, it’s kind of everything.

Look, I enjoy that I get to study the weirdness of online Mormonism in all its breadth, but I was still not expecting a genAI Ghibli rendition of the Short Creek raid as a thumbnail for a Warren Jeffs recording on a fundamentalist Rumble channel.

Uh, no.

Don’t love this.

Do Lexington next! Also, Flock’s statement is so gross.

I hate that I get this joke, but it’s also very funny.

One of the things I’ve had to wrestle with while engaging more and more with Jacques Ellul is that Ted Kaczynski thought he was pretty cool, too.

This Mauro Lubrano quote in the piece sums up a lot of my same feelings:

While anti-technology violence is unacceptable, it should not be used as an excuse to securitize AI and emerging technologies, thereby silencing those who are critical of the current trajectory.

This piece hits hard.

Another good take on Leo and Tolkien.

What wild times we live in that it sounds plausible that the pope might me throwing shade at a billionnaire with LotR references.

Necessary reading.