Elaine Atwell
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elaineatwell.bsky.social
Elaine Atwell
@elaineatwell.bsky.social
450 followers 300 following 1.1K posts
i believe that i am the biggest bonnie raitt fan of my generation.
she/her
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elaineatwell.bsky.social
literally just yesterday!
Text that says AI and fascism are two strands of the same proudly ignorant nihilism. In many ways, they are both reactions to humanity’s terror in the phase of climate change. In the United States individualist denial has been more appealing than collectivist reality.
November 21, 2025 at 1:23 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
at this point, most people are familiar with the “paperclip problem” of AI, but something about it always bothered me, and it’s the main thing i hope people take away from this essay.

www.thedart.co/2025/11/19/w...
Text that says: There’s a famous thought experiment in the world of AI safety called the paperclip problem. In this exercise, an AI exists whose only directive is to maximize the number of paperclips in the world. It excels at this. But in the absence of other values coded into its programming, the AI creates paper clips at the expense of every other goal. Every forest, every city, every person can either be reduced to the raw materials with which to create more paper clips, or an obstacle standing in the way. At the end of the story, all life on earth has been extinguished and replaced by endless rows of gleaming paper clips, and one lonely robot feeling vaguely as though it missed a step somewhere. This story is supposed to illustrate the supposedly existential threat of a rogue AI but it has a rather because the thing is: we already have the paper clip producing machine. It’s just called capitalism, and instead of paper clips the thing it produces at the expense of all else is profit.
November 19, 2025 at 7:01 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
i must insist on reading all excerpts of olivia nuzzi’s book in her voice.
Renee Zelwegger’s character addressing reporters in the movie Chicago
November 18, 2025 at 1:39 AM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
i was reading reviews of marie callender’s pot pies (which apparently are terrible now) and i found the smallest, saddest review of anything on the internet.
A five star review that says “I love your pot pies, regardless of what I am about to say. One is always depressed and cracked. I always give my aunt the best one and I eat the one that leaked that beautiful sauce all over the bottom of the pan. I just want a good one for myself someday. Why is there always a crappy one? Why can’t I ever have a good one like she does? Maybe it’s just bad luck on my part. I do love your pies. They are delicious!”
November 11, 2025 at 1:53 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
so much to be infuriated at in this paragraph and yet the thing that really gets my blood boiling is the new yorker’s insistence on using an umlaut on the word reelection.
August 24, 2025 at 1:35 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
unbeknownst to me, there was a hole in the garbage bag of cat litter when I took it outside, and the resulting trail offers a brutally revealing look at the ADHD mind.
A trail of cat litter on a walkway that zigzags as though it was made by a drunken toddler
August 18, 2025 at 1:14 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
well kid, i’ve got some good news
NYT headline: “MGK doesn’t want to be cool anymore”
August 13, 2025 at 12:47 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
executive: you write that product description for the paddleboard air pump yet?
copywriter: sure did boss, real fuckin sexy just like you asked.
an astonishingly erotic description of a paddleboard air pump, that feature the line “the journey begins long before the first stroke.”
July 21, 2025 at 1:04 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
i don’t know that it would be “astounding,” he is 82 years old after all.
NYT headline saying “Joe Biden has the chance to do something astounding”
May 20, 2025 at 2:41 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
please. my me.
raccoon holding kitten meme but jair Bolsonaro is playing both parts
April 17, 2025 at 3:06 AM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
just thinking about how laura loomer is 31 but has had plastic surgery to look like MAGA women two decades older, and how in that circle, surgery is less about age and more about signifying your infinite malleability to the tastes of the crudest men alive, whose only aesthetic preference is “more.”
finge conservative activist laura loomer, who looks, charitably, 50
April 16, 2025 at 5:36 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
lmao at wapo and nyt SPRINTING to take advantage of the brief upward swing spawned by a false rumor to describe this as anything other than a “crash.”
Washington post headline: “markets swing over Trump tariffs” NYT headline: “wall street fluctuates as Trump digs in on tariffs”
April 7, 2025 at 3:10 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
the most adorable niece at the protest (biased) says #handsoff
an adorable little girl in a stroller with a sign that says “hands off my rights”
April 5, 2025 at 5:10 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
Durham #indivisible March is JUMPING
April 5, 2025 at 3:52 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
something has got to give here and i can’t wait to see which happens first:
1. fox news withdraws support for the president for crashing the economy.
2. one single fox news viewer walks by a TV playing any other channel and says “huh.”
homepage of Fox News, headline reads “trump’s tariffs already have some countries crawling back to negotiate, while others make threats”
April 3, 2025 at 4:37 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
this was the first time i’ve found one of these egregious AI summaries myself in the wild.
thank god i’m a certified sound-head and caught it.

(and then my buddy tried to show that the original answer was just a fluke, but his version had *even more mistakes.*)
AI search results for “sound of music kids names” which incorrectly states that Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer played two of the children, and also incorrectly names, the actress who played Gretl AI search results for the names of the sound of music, kids and their actors, which gets four of them incorrect
March 26, 2025 at 3:12 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
you know, i think i see the problem here
A CNN graphic showing various financial moods, which are labeled extreme fear, fear, neutral, greed, extreme greed. We are currently on extreme fear.
March 3, 2025 at 8:24 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
if anyone needs me for the remainder of february, I’ll be trying to shove my body into a crack in the wall with oil painting kate berlant
an oil painting wall calendar in which a woman who looks remarkably like actress and comedian Kaye Berlant leans disconsolately against the wall of a villa, thus capturing the despair of late february
February 21, 2025 at 8:32 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
holy fuck i just tried to buy taylor tomlinson tickets and the “service fee” was $50 PER PERSON.

have i just not bought tickets in a while or have prices suddenly
POLE VAULTED into horseshit?
screenshot of a stubhub purchase screen in which the fulfillment and service fee costs $49 per person
February 13, 2025 at 2:57 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
not even four hours later:
A screenshot of a skeet announcing the AP has been banned from White House briefings for refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico and the gulf of America
February 11, 2025 at 9:56 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
to be fair, this has always been her brand
hawk tuah girl is accused of a “pump and dump” scheme
December 6, 2024 at 4:07 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
this is just laughable. even a used car salesman doesn’t give you a Nissan’s mileage in inches.
What openAI leaders used to say would be AGI now seems to be called “superintelligence” which Altman has recently said could arrive “in a few thousand days.”
December 5, 2024 at 8:42 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
the last stand of the silicon valley sniveler: “my product WOULD do everything i said it would do, if people weren’t such LOSERS.”
At the DealBook Summit, Altman made it sound like OpenAI’s definition of AGI is now less grand than it used to be. “I expect the economic disruption to take a little longer than people think because there’s a lot of inertia in society,” he said. “So, in the first couple of years, maybe not that much changes. And then maybe a lot changes.”
December 5, 2024 at 8:37 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
i refuse to be ashamed of this. all this tells me is that the rest of you need to listen to it a lot more.
Spotify wrapped top song, red wine supernova. Apparently I’m in the top 0.5% of listeners
December 4, 2024 at 5:18 PM
elaineatwell.bsky.social
god i love myself and i am truly the best
Spotify wrapped top podcasts, basically all history Spotify wrapped top artists, all women
December 4, 2024 at 5:17 PM