John West
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johnwest.bsky.social
John West
@johnwest.bsky.social
1.7K followers 320 following 270 posts
I report the news with code at the Wall Street Journal. I wrote a book, LESSONS AND CAROLS, and won a Pulitzer prize for investigative reporting and national reporting. New book, WE USE THE WEB TO PRACTICE DYING, out next year.
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johnwest.bsky.social
Trump came back to power after knitting together a multiracial, working-class coalition. Now, it's fraying.

For @wsj.com, @jackgillum.bsky.social, Peter Champelli, and I took a look at exactly where—merging precinct-level election results and tract-level demographics.

🎁 www.wsj.com/politics/ele...
Here’s Where Trump’s Multiracial, Working-Class Coalition Is Fraying
A visual look at how Republicans lost support in two closely watched races for governor.
www.wsj.com
November 7, 2025 at 3:49 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
I couldn't stop thinking about this perfect Borges idea from @marcusjmerritt.com. So I made it: internaut.club.

(N.B., if you want write access, you'll have to DM me.)
Over on Bluesky, Marcus Merritt, an artist and poet (who I don’t know), proposed a fake Borges story—one he might have written had he seen the Lovecraftian face of the AI-supercharged attention economy rise out of Silicon Valley. It goes like this: A man asks AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything Like so many of the Argentine writers’ actual stories, I couldn’t get this one out of my head. A parable about compression, it plays on Borges’s map—his story about the useless horror of a map with perfect fidelity to reality. It touches on the Borges’s Library or Babel—his story about every book that could ever exist, which drives its librarians mad. It’s also just funny. And like the best Borges conceits, it has the ring of prophecy. The man at the desk is all of us now: scrolling, summarizing, consuming endless “content” whose abundance is only a disguise for its emptiness. AI slop, despite its volume, turns out to be rather thin gruel. I had a question—a bad question given that Merritt was making a pretty good joke. Why not actually make it? Enter HOMER, my piece of digital performance art masquerading as a social media platform, a microblogging platform where every hour, every post is run through AI summarization, until it can’t really be summarized much more, until all we have left to do is repeat a single word again and again, certain we finally understand. If you want access, reach out to me on Bluesky, I'm @johnwest.bsky.social.
October 25, 2025 at 7:54 PM
Reposted by John West
johnwest.bsky.social
I made an "AI-powered social media app" that's really ~digital performance art~. It's called HOMER.

Every hour, everything that's been posted gets summarized by AI, including all the summaries that came before it. Eventually, everything you write there turns to meaningless nothing.

internaut.club
A screenshot of HOMER, the social media app.
October 25, 2025 at 2:28 AM
johnwest.bsky.social
I made an "AI-powered social media app" that's really ~digital performance art~. It's called HOMER.

Every hour, everything that's been posted gets summarized by AI, including all the summaries that came before it. Eventually, everything you write there turns to meaningless nothing.

internaut.club
A screenshot of HOMER, the social media app.
October 25, 2025 at 2:28 AM
johnwest.bsky.social
1.
Here's a link from today's edition: dirt.fyi/article/2024.... "Attention is what makes us human" by Daisy Alioto at DIRT.

(I stumbled on this after reading @caitlindewey.bsky.social's incredible Substack, "Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends.")

Here's a thread with some ~feelings~.
October 12, 2025 at 12:13 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
1.
I've got a friend who, for personal reasons, can't read the news on their websites, but still wants to read from time to time. So I coded a little CMS that produces "editions" of a daily magazine just for him. I copy–paste articles, pick an open-source image, and text him a mobile-friendly PDF.
October 12, 2025 at 12:05 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
I wrote this essay, which is, in part, about the time I tried to turn a language model into Bartleby the Scrivener.
wsj.com The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · Oct 9
Experimenting with the math and data behind large language models helped me understand how AI “thinks.” I wish everyone had the chance to do the same, writes WSJ software engineer John West.
Essay | I’ve Seen How AI ‘Thinks.’ I Wish Everyone Could.
Experimenting with the math and data behind large language models can be exhilarating—and revealing.
on.wsj.com
October 9, 2025 at 9:24 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
I know AI is a polarizing topic, but I created a very-little-language model using Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener." I asked it to finish my sentence: "I would..." and it responded "...prefer to, yes."

My AI never quite got it right—the most human thing about it.

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ive-...?
Essay | I’ve Seen How AI ‘Thinks.’ I Wish Everyone Could.
Experimenting with the math and data behind large language models can be exhilarating—and revealing.
www.wsj.com
October 9, 2025 at 7:39 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
Miles Davis, upon being asked to tailor his own pants, “You want me to sew what?!”
September 20, 2025 at 12:00 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
Toxic fumes are leaking Into airplanes, sickening crews and passengers. The problem is getting worse and not much is being done about it.

From Ben Katz, me, and @andrewtangel.bsky.social for @wsj.com.

🔓 www.wsj.com/business/air...
Text of the article, reading: > The Journal’s reporting—based on a review of more than one million FAA and National Aeronautics and Space Administration reports, thousands of pages of documents and research papers and more than 100 interviews—shows that aircraft manufacturers and their airline customers have played down health risks, successfully lobbied against safety measures, and made cost-saving changes that increased the risks to crew and passengers. > The fumes—sometimes described as smelling of “wet dog,” “Cheetos” or “nail polish”—have led to emergency landings, sickened passengers and affected pilots’ vision and reaction times midflight, according to official reports. > Most odors in aircraft aren’t toxic, and neither are all vapors. The effects are often fleeting, mild or present no symptoms. > But they can also be longer-lasting and severe, according to doctors, medical records and affected crew members.
September 14, 2025 at 1:15 AM
Reposted by John West
shengokai.blacksky.app
Kantians must be stopped.
piss.beauty stellz @piss.beauty · Aug 31
The Kant Car
black toyota RAV4 rear saying "The Kant Car" with a message about being nice to LLMs because of Kant
August 31, 2025 at 6:00 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
Every year!
September 1, 2025 at 9:59 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
I really loved this new Elvia Wilk essay: clereviewofbooks.com/elvia-incorp...

(If you haven't read her book, DEATH BY LANDSCAPE, you should.)
Elvia, Incorporated - Cleveland Review of Books
I left the bank fully and completely realized as ELVIA INC, annual projected revenue: one million dollars.
clereviewofbooks.com
September 1, 2025 at 3:56 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
Over @wsj.com, my colleagues Sara Randazzo, @ceostroff.bsky.social, and Shane Shifflett have a deep, fascinating look at how researchers are amending grant language to keep federal funding and avoid getting flagged in the Trump administration’s push against "DEI." www.wsj.com/health/scien...
An excerpt from the article: Scientists are removing words like “diverse” and “disparities” from hundreds of federal grant renewals to avoid getting flagged in the Trump administration’s focus on eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. At least 600 research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health have been modified in the fiscal year starting in October to remove terms associated with diversity, equity and inclusion, the Journal analysis found. Nearly all of those projects were multiyear grants that had already been approved but were up for routine annual reviews. The modified grants were worth $480 million this cycle. The most frequently deleted term was “diverse,” removed in 300 instances, followed by “underrepresented.” In some cases, scientists are yanking words that aren’t DEI-related at all, but could be flagged as such, including references to “discrimination” of antibodies in transplant patients. Other changes researchers are making are more substantive, shifting the scope of projects. Scientists caution that research on medical issues affecting minority communities is being de-emphasized. Some grants up for routine yearly renewals sat in limbo until scientists submitted the revisions. Funding delays at times led to layoffs and disrupted ongoing research.
August 23, 2025 at 6:45 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
I studied Baroque music, and Beethoven is definitely *not* Baroque, but I did have some fun with this Sonatina of his. And, yes, I know my interpretation is pretty far off, but I was, as they say, ~vibing~.
August 23, 2025 at 5:20 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
I absolutely loved this essay by Patrick Nathan. patricknathan.substack.com/p/soul-searc...
A quote from the essay: > A genre that used to annoy me but that I now find somewhat charming is the why-I-left-New-York essay. As with most annoying essays, this is all Joan Didion’s fault.1 And as usual, Didion nailed it: Yes, New York is tiring — because people get tired. People get old. The habits we don’t change as we change start to burden us, not support us. One day, it’s unbearable to look around and find your youth — the bars you went to, the lights that dazzled you, the food you relished — not only harder to recognize, but worse: unwilling to delight you, console you, or even welcome you. Unwilling to want you. Going on unchangedly in a city that’s changed, trying to live as you once did with a body that’s changed, is to set yourself up for rejection. That city, that past, that youth — none of it can be recaptured, at least not in life, not in the things you do from day to day. Either you contend with that, consciously, or you leave. Most people leave. > Nostalgia isn’t homesickness, in this understanding — not quite. With its overtone of loss, of irrevocability, and of yearning for the impossible, it’s something closer to time sickness: one can feel, one can see, that youth is gone.
August 14, 2025 at 5:39 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
New Sumerian myth just dropped. archaeology.org/news/2025/07...

(How rad is it that we're still deciphering these things!)
News - Newly Deciphered Cuneiform Tablet Contains Unknown Sumerian Myth - Archaeology Magazine
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS—A riveting lost Sumerian myth was recently rediscovered thanks to University of Chicago Sumerologist […]
archaeology.org
August 3, 2025 at 3:31 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
no one asked for this, but
A venn diagram: - Fisher - Phisher - Fissure - Fisher / Phisher: They want to catch you. - Fisher / Fissure: They want to go deep. - Phisher / Fissure: The allow backdoor access. - Fisher / Phisher / Fissure: The go before "of men".
July 26, 2025 at 10:59 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
Turned away from the pearly gates, the hacker mutters, "Jesus' disciples get to be 'fishers of men,' but when I do it, it's a federal crime."
July 25, 2025 at 8:48 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
Brb just sending copies of Barthes “The Death of the Author” to Nintendo execs.
mynintendonews.com My Nintendo News @mynintendonews.com · Jul 25
Nintendo says Princess Peach and Mario are just good friends

Nintendo has clarified on the Nintendo Today app that the lovable Princess Peach and Mario are just good friends putting to bed fan theories that they are in a relationship or have had a relationship. This comes despite the kisses over…
Nintendo says Princess Peach and Mario are just good friends
Nintendo has clarified on the Nintendo Today app that the lovable Princess Peach and Mario are just good friends putting to bed fan theories that they are in a relationship or have had a relationship. This comes despite the kisses over the years and the closeness of the two characters. Nintendo also said that the two characters help each other out whenever they can, just like good friends. "Princess Peach and Mario are good friends and help each other out whenever they can."
mynintendonews.com
July 25, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Reposted by John West
coelliptic.bsky.social
mike's hard problem of consciousness
July 25, 2025 at 2:59 AM
Reposted by John West
alannamode.bsky.social
Maybe the real Ship of Theseus was the Ship of Theseus we made along the way
July 21, 2025 at 9:35 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
I'm burning through an absolutely incredible podcast, Threshold. The most recent season, Hark, is all about the history of sound across human history. It's hands down some of the best science journalism I've even encountered. www.thresholdpodcast.org
July 22, 2025 at 7:44 PM
johnwest.bsky.social
@willoremus.com's piece and @jeffjarvis.bsky.social's response circle an important question: How capacious should fair use be? I sure don't know, but multi-billion dollar companies scraping millions of maybe-pirated books certainly *feels* a bit different than a reporter subscribing to the news.
July 22, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by John West
marcusjmerritt.com
A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything
July 14, 2025 at 3:02 PM