Needless to say, the Nobel Prizes are utterly meaningless, but Anne Carson is one of the greatest to ever do it. I read Autobiography of Red when I was 14 and it’s one book I live with and never get over. Words bounce, luckily. How the fash influencers wish there was nothing where they see nothing.

I’m in DC scheduled to give this talk today. But the organizers flagged slides in my deck that mention racism, structural gaslighting, New Jim Code and other themes that are off limits in the Land of the Free.

oh i’m at the 4S conference in Toronto. See me at the Making & Doing session from 12:30-3 tomorrow (Oct 8) to chat about a poem in Javascript “Properties and Methods”, or the day after (Oct 9) at the Society for Literature Science and Art panel at 8 am (sorry!) on War. (my talk isn’t really on War)

TBH it’s cool they had to let Du Bois, Beauvoir, Marx, and Morrison slip through. It’s censorious, but i could work with that

What can stop beef, bibles, and bullets?

Either Americans, yes you Americans, regulate corporate social media out of existence or the possibility of any kind of democracy existing anywhere will constantly be under threat and the only viable non-fascist governance will be the Chinese model.

The interest of Shopify + Build Canada in the Toronto election is something to watch v closely.

Biography of X - Catherine Lacey. Or Saint of Bright Doors - Vajra Chandrashekara. You did just say book!

The combined undergraduate and graduate student populations of all Ivy League schools is about 140,000 students. The CUNY system alone is 250,000.

I'm coining a piece of AI safety terminology that I'd like to refer to as the Bond Villain problem. As a field, AI safety heavily leverages sci-fi pretty heavily, so I figure this should be fine.

reading this, it does seem as if “rationalism” is an elaborate intellectual architecture designed primarily to support the idea that if you were born white, male and clever then you are the genetic elite and entitled to rule.

Microsoft's data center subcontractor in New Jersey illegally runs a bunch of gas "backup" generators on site, figuring they won't get caught or will just eat the wrist-slap fines if they do. Regulatory enforcement is so bad that a third party had to take drone images to get the state to act.

Media always can, and probably will, get much worse.

there is the story of “lol all these dudes are internet nerds who read a 600k fanfic” but then you peel back the absurdity and it’s “also the community that many are funneled into via this fanfic is one with many allegations of sexual violence from community members that we should take seriously”

I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility