Good interview, and yet another thing reminding me that I need to read my copy of the book!

No surprises here but still worth bookmarking.

Honest question: Is Grokipedia a wiki? Or just Grok output?

Easy to dunk on Grokipedia, but this article gets at some ideas that I think are particularly important. If I had more time for blogging this semester, I’d write something up on Ellul’s image vs. word dichotomy and how it aligns with Koebler’s thoughts here.

Some good observations worth bookmarking.

Technology, efficiency, and growing public and private power—this has Ellul written all over it. Gift link.

Who could possibly have anticipated this?

Finally got this book, so I guess I need to read it now.

Not sure if I agree with everything here, but it’s important reflection.

Booooooo. That Wikipedia is being mined by AI scrapers and negatively affected by AI search is such a perfect encapsulation of my concerns about generative AI.

I probably ought to rate this book higher. Even if I’m not terribly interested in psalmic structure and how it applies to the Book of Alma, there are some fascinating readings of familiar characters and stories in this book. In particular, Turley’s reading of Ammonihah and “fire and brimstone” has really impacted me, and I want to spend more time with it.

In fact, that’s ultimately what keeps me from rating the book higher. I’m powering through this series and more often skimming than reading. I don’t regret that if it’s the price I pay for finally making my way through all twelve volumes, but it does mean it’s hard to truly evaluate some of these books.

The Onion is truly one of the media outlets we need most during these times.

Some good (scary) observations in here—not least speculation on what xAI’s version of Sora would look like.

Look, maybe this is a genuine misstep on OpenAI’s part, but it still feels to me like the company started with the guardrails off so that it could use this kind of user backlash to push the Overton Window in conversations with rightsholders.

Also, remember that we small potatoes rightsholders will never be able to have our voices heard like Disney or Nintendo.

Something feels off here. An AI CEO who claims they genuinely didn’t anticipate copyright and deepfake concerns is either dumb or playing dumb. I can’t help but suspect the latter, which is arguably worse, since it suggests an effort to shift the discourse before complaints come in.

Oh là là, comme il a beaucoup exigé ce livre ! Ça fait des mois que j’essaie de le lire, et les écrits d’Ellul ont souvent dépassé ma capacité de comprendre le français philosophique.

Je pardonne beaucoup à ce livre pour trois raisons. D’abord, c’est surtout un brouillon, n’ayant jamais été publié, et ce qui était surtout pénible aurait sans doute été corrigé lors d’une vraie édition du livre. Deuxièmement, il y a beaucoup de pépites d’or là-dedans, même s’il faut beaucoup creuser pour les atteindre. Enfin, malgré mes plaintes, j’aime beaucoup la façon dont ce livre joint les deux grands thèmes de l’écriture d’Ellul lors de son vivant.

This is a good article; it would be easy to just roll eyes at Cruz, but this goes further in explaining how Wikipedia actually works.

Just bookmarking everything I read on Sora for future grumpiness.

Wish I’d made more of a stink about Lexington adopting Flock cameras. It’s a creepy-as-hell technology, and we need to get rid of them.

Platformizing AI video generation in the way OpenAI is doing right now just makes me grumpier than I already am.

As a member of Community of Christ, I’m supposed to be a Trinitarian, but if I’ve learned one thing in recent years, it’s that I have very little patience for insistence on Trinitarianism. It doesn’t make much more sense to me now than it did when I was a practicing Latter-day Saint, and if I can recognize value in the theological reflections that emerge from an assumption of Trinitarianism, I am just not sold that it’s the only (or even best) way of understanding God.

Good connection of the worrying story about removing anti-ICE apps to bigger problems in tech.

Fun profile on Doctorow; I’m excited for my preorder of his book to arrive this week!(?). Gift link.

Ellul can be hard to review, and especially in this book! The core metaphor here is interesting and useful—I plan to draw from it personally and professionally. It’s also combined, though, with wild assertions, exegesis and theology that don’t land (for me), and moral panic that might be intentional hyperbole or might just be off base.

So, there are some parts of this that are excellent and some parts that don’t really work. That makes it hard to evaluate as a whole!

Look, I know I’m predisposed to not like any new AI product, but this seems horrifying. Gift link.

Truly, we live in the dumbest (and pettiest) timeline.