M. D. Silverman
mdsilverman.bsky.social
M. D. Silverman
@mdsilverman.bsky.social
Reposted by M. D. Silverman
there’s this weird idea a lot of people seem to have about how all of us writers and artists must secretly want to use AI and are merely resisting temptation for ethical reasons, and like, no, it’s not hard for me to resist drinking the bowl of Piss With Glass In It actually
October 9, 2025 at 9:24 PM
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News: Bari Weiss just sent a memo to staffers at CBS News asking them to produce a memo explaining "how you spend your working hours—and ideally, what you've made (or are making) that you're most proud of."

One CBS News staffer puts it like this to me: "We just got Elon Musked."
October 10, 2025 at 2:13 PM
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I am begging everyone with my heart and soul to read a fucking book. If you haven’t done it in a long time, you can still do it. A lot of people are investing in illiteracy futures right now, and they’re playing in your face trying to get you to pay for your own ignorance.
The imagined consumer on the landing page for Google's NotebookLM is a student in an upper-division literature course who has been assigned James Joyce's "Ulysses," and asks the software to summarize the novel and identify its themes.

Who is this advertising for?
September 12, 2025 at 6:12 PM
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as always: they're not stupid, they're bought and paid for

(from Here Comes The Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization by bill mckibben)
September 7, 2025 at 3:26 PM
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September 7, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Reposted by M. D. Silverman
Yes. Collapsing all fed law enforcement into one undifferentiated, untrained, masked force.

"Agents said they worried the changes would transform the FBI from an investigative agency focused on national security into something more akin to a federal police force..."

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/u...
F.B.I. Plans to Lower Recruiting Standards, Alarming Agents
www.nytimes.com
August 22, 2025 at 5:03 PM
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Tel Aviv, Israel, tonight. Demonstration of thousands calling for an end to the war and a hostage deal.

📸 Aviv Atlas
August 9, 2025 at 11:23 PM
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no more educational material for your children. just poisonous right wing slop.
The White House has a preferred alternative to PBS: PragerU, a nonprofit organization that specializes in creating right-leaning educational short videos for adults and children. . It may already be in countless classrooms. www.vox.com/today-explai...
The White House has a preferred alternative to PBS. It may already be in countless classrooms.
How the right-wing network PragerU could fill the void left by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s defunding.
www.vox.com
August 8, 2025 at 1:57 PM
Reposted by M. D. Silverman
I was just in the protest against the genocide in Tel Aviv ✊✊

It was so emotional I cried and many others did as well 🥹

Signs about the Holocaust, starving babies, but also thousands of people and a strong speech of hope

I’m so proud of this growing Jewish faction 💗
July 31, 2025 at 6:11 PM
Reposted by M. D. Silverman
woooooooow
I was just in the protest against the genocide in Tel Aviv ✊✊

It was so emotional I cried and many others did as well 🥹

Signs about the Holocaust, starving babies, but also thousands of people and a strong speech of hope

I’m so proud of this growing Jewish faction 💗
July 31, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Reposted by M. D. Silverman
This is so depressing. Childhood should be about drawing and imagining and playing, not plugging shit into AI to make it "real"
July 25, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by M. D. Silverman
And I want to be really, really, really clear:

I AM AMERICAN-ISRAELI. I AM **BEGGING** THE WORLD TO MAKE ISRAEL STOP.
July 25, 2025 at 12:42 AM
Reposted by M. D. Silverman
🧵I wrote this for the Daily Beast in 2012, noting that "Israel calculated just how many calories Gazans need in order not to starve" aka: how much food to let in.

Everything abt this war is turbo-charged old news, including controlling Gazans' caloric intake.

Click my old blog or read in thread ⬇️
July 25, 2025 at 12:45 AM
Reposted by M. D. Silverman
I have been so grateful to @chrislhayes.bsky.social for continuing to foreground the horrors in Gaza and I don't begin to know what to do with the fact that watching those horrors unfold has not been enough to move the world to stop Israel from carrying them out.
“This is madness. We are running out of words to describe it. And the people of Gaza are running out of time,” says Chris Hayes on the dire aid situation amid Israel’s war on Gaza.
‘Madness’: Hayes says ‘the people of Gaza are running out of time’
YouTube video by MSNBC
www.youtube.com
July 25, 2025 at 12:33 AM
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July 21, 2025 at 2:12 AM
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In a stunning moment of self-delusion, the Wall Street Journal headline writers admitted that they don't know how LLM chatbots work.
July 21, 2025 at 1:48 AM
Reposted by M. D. Silverman
Fascinating. Microsoft emailed me to say it was raising the price of Microsoft 365, but when i went to cancel it offered me me the old price — without all the AI bullshit.

It’s forcing AI on everyone and making them pay more for it, then only telling them they don’t have to if they try to cancel.
July 19, 2025 at 3:11 AM
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Rümeysa Öztürk describes the library in the prison where she was held for 45 days for co-authoring an op-ed
July 17, 2025 at 1:44 PM
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ProPublica has obtained the blueprint for the Trump administration’s unprecedented plan to turn over IRS records to Homeland Security in order to speed up the agency’s mass deportation efforts.
The IRS Is Building a Vast System to Share Millions of Taxpayers’ Data With ICE
ProPublica has obtained the blueprint for the Trump administration’s unprecedented plan to turn over IRS records to Homeland Security in order to speed up the agency’s mass deportation efforts.
www.propublica.org
July 15, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Reposted by M. D. Silverman
"“The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported. Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city."

Yeah, this is how to do it.
Sharp new response from Zohran Mamdani, hitting back at Trump's threats:

"His statements...attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadows: if you speak up, they will come for you. We will not accept this intimidation."
July 2, 2025 at 3:46 PM
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We were told digital media would replace books and we were told video games would replace books and we were told streaming video would replace books and people are still buying and reading books.
Will reading become obsolete? How A.I. could transform our relationship to the written word.
What’s Happening to Reading?
For many people, A.I. may be bringing the age of traditional text to an end.
www.newyorker.com
June 22, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by M. D. Silverman
We refuse to watch quietly while Trump marches us into yet another war in the Middle East, this time following Israel on their genocidal mission. No war with Iran! Free Palestine!
June 22, 2025 at 1:11 AM