john
@curiousjohn.bsky.social
outlier, not always in the direction I want
superforecaster, techie, expat
@john_henry elsewhere
generally delighted to receive correspondence at curiousjohn@letterboxes.org
superforecaster, techie, expat
@john_henry elsewhere
generally delighted to receive correspondence at curiousjohn@letterboxes.org
Reposted by john
one reason the framing as "AI" is so bad is that it makes people think "interact with this like a person" when in fact the only way to make it remotely useful is "interact with it like an extremely powerful but extremely weird user interface"
This is really a huge part of why upper management is so in on AI. They think it will let them manage computers the way they currently manage the people who make the computer work. It will not.
I'm just saying I had someone tell me I had to hold the AI accountable and and no no I don't. That was not the effective way to coax it into doing the thing I wanted
December 9, 2025 at 1:49 PM
one reason the framing as "AI" is so bad is that it makes people think "interact with this like a person" when in fact the only way to make it remotely useful is "interact with it like an extremely powerful but extremely weird user interface"
Reposted by john
In the campaign the pattern was that there was a fake, imaginary Trump the media created, and the more the real incompetent Trump faltered the more the fake competent Trump was inserted into stories, analysis etc bsky.app/profile/lilb...
Is, "Too big to ignore," possible at this point? His senility got too big to ignore when he had a mental breakdown during his 2024 campaign. Most media outlets ignored it.
July 10, 2025 at 5:54 PM
In the campaign the pattern was that there was a fake, imaginary Trump the media created, and the more the real incompetent Trump faltered the more the fake competent Trump was inserted into stories, analysis etc bsky.app/profile/lilb...
Reposted by john
Nothing prevents a Dem Congress from line-item invalidating every single Oracle Corporation owned patent.
It'd destroy both one of Trump's biggest bribers, and one of the most abusive patent troll corporations in all of history.
It'd destroy both one of Trump's biggest bribers, and one of the most abusive patent troll corporations in all of history.
a lot of this shit might make more sense if trump were going to live another decade or two in power, but he isn't going to. these people are all behaving as if trump at 79 years old is putin when he was 48 years old, and that there'll never be any negative consequences.
New WSJ reporting: "During a December visit to Washington, David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner, he'd make sweeping changes to CNN, a common target of President Trump's ire, people familiar with the matter said..."
December 9, 2025 at 2:31 PM
Nothing prevents a Dem Congress from line-item invalidating every single Oracle Corporation owned patent.
It'd destroy both one of Trump's biggest bribers, and one of the most abusive patent troll corporations in all of history.
It'd destroy both one of Trump's biggest bribers, and one of the most abusive patent troll corporations in all of history.
Reposted by john
a lot of this shit might make more sense if trump were going to live another decade or two in power, but he isn't going to. these people are all behaving as if trump at 79 years old is putin when he was 48 years old, and that there'll never be any negative consequences.
New WSJ reporting: "During a December visit to Washington, David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner, he'd make sweeping changes to CNN, a common target of President Trump's ire, people familiar with the matter said..."
Behind Paramount’s Relentless Campaign to Woo Warner Discovery and President Trump
David Ellison has launched a hostile takeover bid for Warner Discovery, taking his case directly to shareholders after Netflix clinched a deal.
www.wsj.com
December 9, 2025 at 7:43 AM
a lot of this shit might make more sense if trump were going to live another decade or two in power, but he isn't going to. these people are all behaving as if trump at 79 years old is putin when he was 48 years old, and that there'll never be any negative consequences.
Reposted by john
there is no available evidence that donald trump understands what a tariff is, what a trade deficit is, and what the national debt is.
The way Trump talks about the problems he caused by unilaterally imposing tariffs is fairly insane, even by his standards.
www.politico.com/news/2025/12...
www.politico.com/news/2025/12...
December 9, 2025 at 6:09 PM
there is no available evidence that donald trump understands what a tariff is, what a trade deficit is, and what the national debt is.
Reposted by john
WHICH MESSAGE WILL RESONATE WITH DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTERS?
"Better angels of our nature"
OR
"Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger... I will punish the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pomp of the ruthless."
"Better angels of our nature"
OR
"Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger... I will punish the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pomp of the ruthless."
Once again, for 2028 I'm a single issue voter and that issue is post-Trump lustration. GTFO with "better angels of our nature" for once.
They're using the confinement box, one of the most horrific methods of CIA torture in the post-9/11 black sites, against migrants now. This is the direct result of the lack of consequences for the architects of the torture program. Either there will be criminal penalties for this or it will expand.
December 9, 2025 at 2:58 PM
WHICH MESSAGE WILL RESONATE WITH DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTERS?
"Better angels of our nature"
OR
"Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger... I will punish the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pomp of the ruthless."
"Better angels of our nature"
OR
"Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger... I will punish the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pomp of the ruthless."
Reposted by john
it is incredible that legalizing watergate has been the overriding ideological project of the american right for fifty years
December 8, 2025 at 8:39 PM
it is incredible that legalizing watergate has been the overriding ideological project of the american right for fifty years
Reposted by john
Let's build hyper-personalized AI-powered software that avoids the attention hijacking anti-patterns that defined so much of the last decade of software design - here's our manifesto with principles on how we can do that - more thoughts on my blog: simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/5/r...
December 5, 2025 at 4:13 PM
Let's build hyper-personalized AI-powered software that avoids the attention hijacking anti-patterns that defined so much of the last decade of software design - here's our manifesto with principles on how we can do that - more thoughts on my blog: simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/5/r...
Reposted by john
"the government should try, convict and then kill the secretary of defense for the crime he very obviously seems to have committed" seems like a radical thing to say, but -- no, it's not. it's the actual penalty for what pete hegseth, a man who ordered death squads to murder civilians, has done.
December 5, 2025 at 7:24 AM
"the government should try, convict and then kill the secretary of defense for the crime he very obviously seems to have committed" seems like a radical thing to say, but -- no, it's not. it's the actual penalty for what pete hegseth, a man who ordered death squads to murder civilians, has done.
Reposted by john
look i just love learning about new-to-me heresies
Why is nobody discussing that the anti-trans student in Oklahoma spends much of her essay promulgating the Pneumatomachian heresy and will thus spend an age in Hell?
December 3, 2025 at 8:10 PM
look i just love learning about new-to-me heresies
Reposted by john
like, just, by the odds, any social justice movement large enough to be useful will offgas irritating shit like this purely as a consequence of its existence
December 3, 2025 at 4:36 AM
like, just, by the odds, any social justice movement large enough to be useful will offgas irritating shit like this purely as a consequence of its existence
Reposted by john
it is crazy that the president is essentially just the project manager for a medium-sized hotel ballroom who tweets things which would yet someone with that actual job fired instantaneously
December 3, 2025 at 7:04 AM
it is crazy that the president is essentially just the project manager for a medium-sized hotel ballroom who tweets things which would yet someone with that actual job fired instantaneously
Reposted by john
yes, of course international law is massively imperfect and flawed: it is still a hell of a lot better than the prior situation, which was “you can do literally anything you want in warfare and nobody can really say boo about it beyond evoking religion”
December 3, 2025 at 12:57 AM
yes, of course international law is massively imperfect and flawed: it is still a hell of a lot better than the prior situation, which was “you can do literally anything you want in warfare and nobody can really say boo about it beyond evoking religion”
Reposted by john
I’m convinced this nightmarish episode is happening because Hegseth is essentially cosplaying the TV version of a national security official. In that vein wanted his very own Situation Room scenario, like the Bin Laden strike, and so they cast dozens of poor dudes in unarmed boats as the terrorists.
Pete Hegseth on Sept 3 talking about the strike on boats where 2 survivors were later killed in a second strike: “I watched it live.”
December 2, 2025 at 11:34 AM
I’m convinced this nightmarish episode is happening because Hegseth is essentially cosplaying the TV version of a national security official. In that vein wanted his very own Situation Room scenario, like the Bin Laden strike, and so they cast dozens of poor dudes in unarmed boats as the terrorists.
Reposted by john
"we found a Type Of Guy who represents a particularly helpful corner of the latent space" is easily my favorite type of positive LLM posting.
Our Discord support agent was kind of annoying, so I asked it to pretend to be a 58-year old systems administrator from Ohio that wrote on forums a lot.
Turns out -- this makes your support bot extremely competent. The quality of its support responses are now far better.
Turns out -- this makes your support bot extremely competent. The quality of its support responses are now far better.
December 1, 2025 at 8:10 PM
"we found a Type Of Guy who represents a particularly helpful corner of the latent space" is easily my favorite type of positive LLM posting.
Reposted by john
“everyone is twelve” theory has reached Senator Kelly
Kelly: He runs around on stage talking about lethality and the warrior ethos.. That’s not the message that should be coming from the Secretary of Defense… He runs around on a stage like he’s a 12 year old playing army. It’s embarrassing.
December 1, 2025 at 10:26 PM
“everyone is twelve” theory has reached Senator Kelly
Reposted by john
may I humbly suggest that Woke 2 has a hermeneutics of…generosity?
The web is thoroughly coated in a “hermeneutics of suspicion” (from folks like Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, etc), but imo the superior choice in a LOT of situations is a “hermeneutics of generosity”
December 1, 2025 at 2:12 AM
may I humbly suggest that Woke 2 has a hermeneutics of…generosity?
Reposted by john
okay, it looks like the prompt itself got caught by the much simpler, for various well-justified technical reasons, red-text filter rather than the model's own safety training. this is the right behavior even if it's annoying.
November 30, 2025 at 8:22 PM
okay, it looks like the prompt itself got caught by the much simpler, for various well-justified technical reasons, red-text filter rather than the model's own safety training. this is the right behavior even if it's annoying.
Reposted by john
I'm trying so hard not to say that "This too, is a recession indicator" but... yeah...
November 30, 2025 at 8:28 PM
I'm trying so hard not to say that "This too, is a recession indicator" but... yeah...
Reposted by john
One thing I learned over the weekend from talking to finance people is that they assume the AI bubble is going to burst and their issue is figuring out when so they can time their trades right.
November 30, 2025 at 8:23 PM
One thing I learned over the weekend from talking to finance people is that they assume the AI bubble is going to burst and their issue is figuring out when so they can time their trades right.
Reposted by john
this guy is betting on a future with accountability for today’s crimes, so we should too
Dimon on why JPMorgan Chase is not funding WH Ballroom:
We have an issue, which is anything we do, since we do a lot of contracts with governments here and around the world, we have to be very careful how anything is perceived, and also how the next DOJ is going to deal with it.
We have an issue, which is anything we do, since we do a lot of contracts with governments here and around the world, we have to be very careful how anything is perceived, and also how the next DOJ is going to deal with it.
November 29, 2025 at 7:56 PM
this guy is betting on a future with accountability for today’s crimes, so we should too
Reposted by john
Reposted by john
periodically I am googling a specific Discworld quote for my QOTD and one of those AI summaries pops up trying to analyze the quote and it makes me so fucking twitchy
usually I can ignore this stuff but leave Terry Pratchett alone
usually I can ignore this stuff but leave Terry Pratchett alone
November 29, 2025 at 8:07 PM
periodically I am googling a specific Discworld quote for my QOTD and one of those AI summaries pops up trying to analyze the quote and it makes me so fucking twitchy
usually I can ignore this stuff but leave Terry Pratchett alone
usually I can ignore this stuff but leave Terry Pratchett alone
Reposted by john
The fact doomers have gone from "America is over" to "Dems won't hold anyone responsible when this is over" can actually be read as an optimistic signal imo.
November 28, 2025 at 7:28 PM
The fact doomers have gone from "America is over" to "Dems won't hold anyone responsible when this is over" can actually be read as an optimistic signal imo.
Reposted by john
yeah Thanksgiving should be understood as a Civil War holiday more than anything about colonial America
This is my yearly reminder that
A) The Pilgrims never turned on the Wampanoags. The Puritans who did were a whole different group of people.
B) Thanksgiving became a holiday to celebrate whooping the Confederates.
Sometimes we can just enjoy traditions without guilt!
A) The Pilgrims never turned on the Wampanoags. The Puritans who did were a whole different group of people.
B) Thanksgiving became a holiday to celebrate whooping the Confederates.
Sometimes we can just enjoy traditions without guilt!
Thanksgiving is problematic. Giving thanks is not. As someone who wants to remember the attempted genocide of indigenous people but also likes a reminder to practice gratitude, I like to use Indigenous People's Month to support (and be grateful for) indigenous creators. A partial list! /1
November 27, 2025 at 8:45 PM
yeah Thanksgiving should be understood as a Civil War holiday more than anything about colonial America