Ronny Chieng had one message for Harvard grads during his commencement speech: destroy AI.
"Look, a lot of other respected graduation speakers in colleges around America are talking about you guys needing to master AI for the future. I'm here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI...
"And I know, I know there's someone sitting out here right now who’s just like, 'Well, you know, what about the use of AI to pioneer breakthroughs in medicine and physics?' Well, first of all, shut up, nerd. I'm not talking about that. Obviously, if you're using it for that purpose, you're not the problem.
"I'm talking about the accumulation of cognitive debt due to excessive use of large language models according to a study by MIT published in 2025. That's right, MIT. MIT did that study. I guess you guys were too busy giving each other A's. Feel free to boo MIT, by the way, and AI, and yourselves, I guess.
"Look, this is actually good news, okay? This is why you guys shouldn't be scared of AI, because I think AI is just going to end up making mediocre people dumber. Have you heard how dumb people brag about how they use AI? They're always like, 'Hey, did you know that AI can now read my email, summarize it, and drop a response?' Yeah, you know who else can do that? Me. I can do that. You can't do that? How useless are you? You need artificial intelligence just to match me? I'm a dumb*ss who couldn't get into Harvard.
"From what I can see, getting an actual advantage from AI in the future will require a minimum escape velocity of intelligence that I'm assuming you guys from Harvard have. Everyone else who can't match that is just going to get dumber, and that's when you run up the score on them, assuming we still have a functioning society, of course.
"But to run up the score, you’re going to have to master your craft. And AI can be the fuel, but fuel is useless if you can't kindle the fire. For example, I recently used AI to use regression analysis to prove that a certain race of people are mathematically terrible at sports. I won't say which race, but thank you for not inviting Hasan Minhaj to Harvard. My point is, learning the fundamentals still matter. If I didn't know what a regression analysis was, and if I wasn't fundamentally racist, would I have been able to do any of that? No.
"Untalented people love bragging about using AI to help them draft their speeches and their scripts and their podcasts and their promo videos for UFC fights at the White House, which to be fair, even if they had filmed that for real, it would still have looked like AI. But what they're missing is this: the creating is the fun part. The best part of comedy writing is figuring out the puzzle pieces of a joke and getting the self-regard from having accomplished a difficult thing. Why would I want AI to take that away from me?
"You know what problem I want AI to solve? I want the problem of AI making everything look like sh*t. I want AI to solve that problem. How about that?
"Or how about, can AI take away the part of comedy writing where my TV pilot gets passed on and when I ask if I can pitch it to someone else, the network says, 'We don't want it, but we also don't want anyone else to have it. We just want you to be sad.' Can AI solve that?
"I recently tried to introduce my friend to Buddhism through a book called Buddhism Made Simple. It was literally a book about Buddhism made simple. And instead of reading it, he used AI to summarize it in 10 seconds. Believe it or not, he didn't reach enlightenment. It turns out speed running Buddhism is completely missing the point.
"And I know this platitude is almost worthy of AI, but the reason shortcuts to skip to the end aren't always good is because the journey isn't just how we acquire skills. The journey is the point of all this. It is! It turns out maybe the real Harvard was the friends we made along the way.
"Look, I know this won't apply to everyone's industry, but I'm just saying whatever your chosen profession is, please don't let AI rob you of the fun part of it.
"I think your generation's upcoming battle won't be humans against AI. That's at least two months away. It's going to be people with substance versus people with shallow knowledge. It’s going to be mastery versus faking it. It's going to be people with good taste versus tacky. I trust you will put in the work necessary to be on the right side of those battles."
@SlenderSherbet@CFHeather I had to leave a Dinosaur Jr. concert because all I could hear was feedback. Every time I've seen them since I've had earplugs!
@SlenderSherbet James Brown
Bee Gees
Radiohead
Elvis Costello & the Attractions
Bob Dylan
Jeff Mangum
Morphine
Sigur Ros
Lyle Lovett & His Large Band
Yo La Tengo
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has always been a strange proposition. The idea of a committee deciding what qualifies as “rock and roll” feels fundamentally at odds with the spirit of the thing itself. And yet, every year, it’s hard not to get pulled in, if only to have a wee moan when The Replacements are overlooked once again. Getting upset about who is in and out is all part of the game. The HoF thrives on it.
But every so often, a decision stands out not as provocative, but as baffling. This year, it’s the decision to induct Joy Division and New Order as a single entity, a move that suggests not just contrarianism, but a fundamental misunderstanding of the music itself.
Joy Division are one of the most singular bands in modern music. They are one of those “music as a complete world”bands. You know the ones? You put an album on, it pulls you under, and when it finishes you think “right, where do I go from here? What else is there to listen to but stark soundscapes as backdrop to an enigmatic punk poet’s visions of urban decay?” So you listen to them again, and again, till sleep takes you and you’ve escaped their world. Until next time.
Not all bands do that, construct something so self-contained it resists anything that comes after it. And it’s a big part of why this decision feels so wrong. If you’re looking for a trapdoor to escape the world of Joy Division, New Order is not it. One does not lead to the other.
Their debut album, Movement, serves as a mournful bridge between two worlds, but it is a New Order album. And very quickly, even that connection fades. What follows is something entirely different: a sound that fuses dance, indie and pop into a language of its own, a schizophrenic hybrid of euphoria and melancholy, like coming up and down simultaneously.
To fold these two bands into a single induction is to miss what makes them so special. Joy Division represent one of rock’s most complete and self-contained statements; New Order, one of its most extraordinary acts of rebirth. Joy Division’s story ended, abruptly and tragically, but it did end. There is no mistaking that. What followed was a reset not a continuation. Where most bands absorb loss and carry on, New Order did something far rarer: they started again. A new identity. A new sound. The past set aside rather than built upon. A shy guitarist stepping forward to become a singular frontman.
They share a history, but they are not the same band. To treat them as one is not to honour each group, but to overlook what makes them so remarkable.
Boston Dynamics has shared a new video of its humanoid robot, Atlas.
"Our engineers made one final push to test the limits of full-body control and mobility, with help from the RAI Institute."