A few thoughts:

First, it is almost comically mean to use the results of a project collecting AI tells to get LLMs to not sound like that. Like, of all the digital labor exploitations of AI, this might be the pettiest.

Second, AI detection is hard, and for all my concerns with AI, I think this is another good example of why policing its use can do more harm than good. I don’t blame the Wikipedia community for doing this project, but I would never recommend this approach in a classroom.

Another story that speaks to the power of Ellul’s “image vs. word” distinction. It must be trustworthy because it comes from a machine…

The whole post is good, but the first two paragraphs hit on something particularly important.

He is the shallowest man on earth.

Good read this morning.

Good overview of an enraging story.

Non, mais franchement : Quelle honte, ce pays dont je suis citoyen.

Some very important reminders in here.

Depressing read, but makes me glad I’m renewing my WIRED subscription.

The Onion is what’s going to get us through this.

This book is the perfect kind of unexpected blend. It never hides that it’s an alternate history novel, but what begins as a relatively cozy mystery story gradually becomes more and more of a reflection on unsufficiently resisting Nazis and slow decline into fascism.

It will be 20 years old this year, but it feels written for this time.

Chef’s kiss.

It’s a sign of how crazy everything is right now that this is just one of sevral political developments contributing to my current anxiety.

This is such a perfectly dumb oversight.

This book is great! I have some quibbles—I found Brueggemann a bit more literal in his exegesis than I would have expected—but I get why this is a classic, and I’ll have to buy a print copy to reference in the future.

As I noted yesterday, I think there’s a lot in here that also appears in the anarchist writing that’s appealed to me lately: refusal of the status quo, skepticism of power, and the audacity to imagine a better world. It’s good stuff.

One of the most interesting recurring themes in Jacques Ellul’s writing is one that contrasts reality (or facts) with truth. As Ellul distinguishes them, facts are what are and—implicitly—what must be conformed to, whereas truth is what ought to be. Ellul’s The Humiliation of the Word explores this distinction at length, but it crops up in plenty of his other writing. In fact, I’m currently reading his Présence au monde moderne (or rereading it, depending on what one considers reading the original French after reading the English translation last year), and I’m delighted to see that he makes this distinction as early as this 1948 book.

What an embarassment.

I did not expect Walter Brueggemann’s writing to remind me of anarchism, but I think what has appealed to me in anarchist writing is what I would eventually find in Brueggemann.

I don’t remember liking the first Knives Out all that much, but the second and third felt like they were made just for me. It’s religious, it doesn’t pull any punches against toxic religion, it’s funny, and it has interesting characters. So glad I watched.

Grok continues to disgust.

This is a very cathartic read.

Glad to see that pure xenophobia is alive and well here in the Commonwealth

Glad a family member gifted me another year of The Onion in print, because it sure sounds like I’m going to need it to get through 2026.

Depressing read with interesting details about why Grok is bad at this.

This shooting is making me panicky, and I’m honestly trying to not read any more about it, but this is important.