I have been on Twitter's "for you" feed recently and discovered that just about every post can best be responded to with this
October 26, 2025 at 9:30 PM
I have been on Twitter's "for you" feed recently and discovered that just about every post can best be responded to with this
The problem with these AI plans is that they all rely on "what if *thing I remember* met *other thing I remember*" which basically means all culture just becomes those terrible Scary Movie knockoffs from the 00s
David and Larry Ellisons’ sloptastic vision for Hollywood is coming into focus:
“Paramount has reportedly signed a $200M+ multiyear deal for Higgsfield AI to use mass-use Popcorn AI model that ingests dailies and script notes, then outputs regional cuts: new leads, alternate jokes, revised endings”
“Paramount has reportedly signed a $200M+ multiyear deal for Higgsfield AI to use mass-use Popcorn AI model that ingests dailies and script notes, then outputs regional cuts: new leads, alternate jokes, revised endings”
October 23, 2025 at 6:47 PM
The problem with these AI plans is that they all rely on "what if *thing I remember* met *other thing I remember*" which basically means all culture just becomes those terrible Scary Movie knockoffs from the 00s
Reposted by Fred Maynard
Alternatively: one person does not have a class. A million people do.
Seeing talk on here about class makes me wish people could at least acknowledge the Marxian point that class is not just another form of identity politics, but is about one's relationship to the means of production - eg I'm now bourgeois whatever my upbringing, prejudices etc.
October 2, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Alternatively: one person does not have a class. A million people do.
The debates also bring home what an achievement the emancipation proclamation was. The fact that only five years after the caution Lincoln expresses here the same guy would enact a step even his radical fringe would not have dreamed of is, I think, instructive.
it may feel a little like homework, but i genuinely think people should read the lincoln-douglas debates to see what the practical politics of anti-slavery looked like in an environment where the public was neutral to hostile to the question of emancipation
September 28, 2025 at 4:35 PM
The debates also bring home what an achievement the emancipation proclamation was. The fact that only five years after the caution Lincoln expresses here the same guy would enact a step even his radical fringe would not have dreamed of is, I think, instructive.
Isaac Chotiner: it's interesting you don't use wireless earphones
Me: I actually save a lot of money this way.
IC: Because wired headphones are cheaper.
Me: Right.
IC: how much have you spent replacing cheap broken headphones?
Me: *laughs* I mean a lot right, probably a lot but -
Me: I actually save a lot of money this way.
IC: Because wired headphones are cheaper.
Me: Right.
IC: how much have you spent replacing cheap broken headphones?
Me: *laughs* I mean a lot right, probably a lot but -
September 24, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Isaac Chotiner: it's interesting you don't use wireless earphones
Me: I actually save a lot of money this way.
IC: Because wired headphones are cheaper.
Me: Right.
IC: how much have you spent replacing cheap broken headphones?
Me: *laughs* I mean a lot right, probably a lot but -
Me: I actually save a lot of money this way.
IC: Because wired headphones are cheaper.
Me: Right.
IC: how much have you spent replacing cheap broken headphones?
Me: *laughs* I mean a lot right, probably a lot but -
Next time, we absolutely promise, we won't devolve into factional bickering
Presumably someone at these things always says "let's not what we always do and what everyone expects us to do and collapse into factional bickering" and everyone in the room agrees and then they just immediately do so anyway
Here’s a characteristically well sourced @siennarodgers.bsky.social feature on the founding of Corbyn’s new party www.politicshome.com/news/article...
September 18, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Next time, we absolutely promise, we won't devolve into factional bickering
Increasingly convinced that the conversation in the USA about whether you can ever again get a civil political discourse is just a proxy for "can the USA ever get proportional representation"
September 18, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Increasingly convinced that the conversation in the USA about whether you can ever again get a civil political discourse is just a proxy for "can the USA ever get proportional representation"
"It's the institutions stupid" can replace most political commentary, most of the the time
September 12, 2025 at 6:49 PM
"It's the institutions stupid" can replace most political commentary, most of the the time
Bayrou's short tenure reminds me just how impossible it must have been in the Third Republic to remember who was French PM.
50 years of saying "I thought it was Ribot, no, Herriot, no that was in October" etc
50 years of saying "I thought it was Ribot, no, Herriot, no that was in October" etc
September 8, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Bayrou's short tenure reminds me just how impossible it must have been in the Third Republic to remember who was French PM.
50 years of saying "I thought it was Ribot, no, Herriot, no that was in October" etc
50 years of saying "I thought it was Ribot, no, Herriot, no that was in October" etc
I feel like people online have a very different idea of Ezra Klein to the one that actually exists
*ezra klein guy voice* The problem with the left is that they've lost the willingness to speak reasonably with their opponents, such as this guy I interviewed recently who easily conned me into supporting eugenics
September 6, 2025 at 2:16 PM
I feel like people online have a very different idea of Ezra Klein to the one that actually exists
Presumably someone at these things always says "let's not what we always do and what everyone expects us to do and collapse into factional bickering" and everyone in the room agrees and then they just immediately do so anyway
Here’s a characteristically well sourced @siennarodgers.bsky.social feature on the founding of Corbyn’s new party www.politicshome.com/news/article...
Inside The Founding Of Jeremy Corbyn's New Party: 'End This Horrible Power Struggle'
The trials and tribulations of founding a new party on the left. Can they unite? What challenges lie ahead? Sienna Rodgers reports
www.politicshome.com
September 6, 2025 at 11:16 AM
Presumably someone at these things always says "let's not what we always do and what everyone expects us to do and collapse into factional bickering" and everyone in the room agrees and then they just immediately do so anyway
It is crazy to me that in one lifetime you could plausibly have seen Shakespeare perform, Rembrandt and Velazquez paint, read a first edition Paradise Lost and Don Quixote, heard Allegri's Miserere, and met Spinoza, Descartes and Galileo.
August 24, 2025 at 1:12 PM
It is crazy to me that in one lifetime you could plausibly have seen Shakespeare perform, Rembrandt and Velazquez paint, read a first edition Paradise Lost and Don Quixote, heard Allegri's Miserere, and met Spinoza, Descartes and Galileo.
The sheer number of gambling ads I am seeing right now either says something very worrying about the country or very worrying about me
August 15, 2025 at 8:06 PM
The sheer number of gambling ads I am seeing right now either says something very worrying about the country or very worrying about me
The connecting thread of my political beliefs is increasingly that life should be harder: children should learn poetry, voting should be compulsory, takeaway food should be restricted to a luxury, tiktok should be banned. A kind of puritan/high Tory virtue leftism with absolutely zero constituency.
One direction in which I am travelling politically rn is that I think I have determined there is, actually, a social cost to decadence, defined here, in a nutshell, as the desire to force someone or something else to do all your work for you.
I think this is especially pertinent if you cant conceptualise sympathising with the labour side of the worker/consumer dichotomy.
August 14, 2025 at 4:52 PM
The connecting thread of my political beliefs is increasingly that life should be harder: children should learn poetry, voting should be compulsory, takeaway food should be restricted to a luxury, tiktok should be banned. A kind of puritan/high Tory virtue leftism with absolutely zero constituency.
- Richard Dawkins, first draft of the God Delusion
August 8, 2025 at 12:26 PM
- Richard Dawkins, first draft of the God Delusion
It's a simple line but I think back to Steve Carrell in the Big Short saying that for 15,000 years, fraud and short sighted thinking have never worked
Sorry to pollute the feed with technical financial terms, but this is all fxcking nuts
www.ft.com/content/8a16...
www.ft.com/content/8a16...
August 8, 2025 at 9:17 AM
It's a simple line but I think back to Steve Carrell in the Big Short saying that for 15,000 years, fraud and short sighted thinking have never worked
I get very annoyed by this because Christianity is not a culture, it is a very specific claim about the divinity of Christ. You may as well claim to be "culturally" a tuna sandwich.
Saying, as Badenoch does, that you don’t believe in God but you’re a “cultural Christian” is the creepiest shit
August 7, 2025 at 11:52 AM
I get very annoyed by this because Christianity is not a culture, it is a very specific claim about the divinity of Christ. You may as well claim to be "culturally" a tuna sandwich.
Tom Lehrer could as a throwaway gag write a Gilbert and Sullivan parody of "Clementine" with better lyrics than all of actual G&S
The mister resisted/The sister persisted/I kissed her, all loyalty slipped/When she said I could have her/Her sister's cadaver/Must surely have turned in its crypt
The mister resisted/The sister persisted/I kissed her, all loyalty slipped/When she said I could have her/Her sister's cadaver/Must surely have turned in its crypt
July 27, 2025 at 8:22 PM
Tom Lehrer could as a throwaway gag write a Gilbert and Sullivan parody of "Clementine" with better lyrics than all of actual G&S
The mister resisted/The sister persisted/I kissed her, all loyalty slipped/When she said I could have her/Her sister's cadaver/Must surely have turned in its crypt
The mister resisted/The sister persisted/I kissed her, all loyalty slipped/When she said I could have her/Her sister's cadaver/Must surely have turned in its crypt
Both Change UK and this new left party seem to originate in a laudable impulse: that one should stop sitting around complaining and Do Something. Until you actually Do Something and realise oh god this is what Something is going to be
It is actually in retrospect funny how similar the situations are, in that both groups of people Doing Whatever This Is just don't understand what a party is or does.
I'm old enough to remember centrists getting very upset when it was pointed out that ChUK/TIG was a complete mess that wasn't thought through or planned well enough and insisted they'd reshape British politics
July 4, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Both Change UK and this new left party seem to originate in a laudable impulse: that one should stop sitting around complaining and Do Something. Until you actually Do Something and realise oh god this is what Something is going to be
I love reviews of Nile Rogers at Glastonbury which are like "yeah of course it was great, what do you expect, the man has written 50% of all good music ever, which is somehow Cheating"
June 30, 2025 at 10:20 AM
I love reviews of Nile Rogers at Glastonbury which are like "yeah of course it was great, what do you expect, the man has written 50% of all good music ever, which is somehow Cheating"
Reading this piece you get the sense Starmer must be furious with whoever sold him a career in politics by telling him he wouldn't need to be political observer.co.uk/news/politic...
The private trials of Keir Starmer | The Observer
The prime minister reveals the quiet grief and inner determination of his first year in office – and why he ‘deeply regrets’ his ‘island of strangers’ sp...
observer.co.uk
June 27, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Reading this piece you get the sense Starmer must be furious with whoever sold him a career in politics by telling him he wouldn't need to be political observer.co.uk/news/politic...
Sometimes I think the best thing a UK gvt could do is just dig a really big hole somewhere. Put out breathless press releases about how big the hole was getting. People would be pro and anti the hole, but overall it would be a big morale boost by showing we could still do something as a country.
Lack of agency - people feeling the government isn’t in control drives the sense of malaise and desire for something different - HS2, or lack of, typifies it for lots of people. “We can’t even finish a train line” comes up often in groups as eg of what’s wrong with Britain
June 18, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Sometimes I think the best thing a UK gvt could do is just dig a really big hole somewhere. Put out breathless press releases about how big the hole was getting. People would be pro and anti the hole, but overall it would be a big morale boost by showing we could still do something as a country.