MJ

libraries & anti-surveillance
#NotOnHerb

[Di (Yee) - Currently not here @nguyenhdi]

Flannery O'Connor on the teaching of literature in school:
"And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed."

[Michael Socolow @MichaelSocolow]

I never would’ve guessed the complete functional collapse of Google search would’ve arrived so quickly.

But it’s here.

[Grady Booch @Grady_Booch]

And I am a realist who understands computing and AI deeply, having worked in the field for over five decades - where I continue to work - both witnessing the changes as well as inventing things that made those changes possible.

AI is useful.

But I’m certain AI will not do 80% of the economically valuable work humans do today, for 80% of all jobs.

[🎃✨America Is Musty✨🎃 @DragonflyJonez]

“Wemby is just a bully. I dont want to see any crying from him when the Knicks give him a taste of his own medicine”

Wemby after getting a taste of his own medicine:

[varun shetty @Varun]

hey do you want to watch the knicks game at the palantir popup in the west village. heard about it via a substack i follow by someone in the new media cohort from a top vc. david protein bars is catering. there will be lots of microinfluencers talking about their daily routines.

[Josh Hart @joshhart]

To the women in this country….I’m Sorry

[bald ann dowd @ali_sivi]

i'm lowkey not surviving modelland

[Roy Wood Jr- Ex Jedi @roywoodjr]

“The vibes are off in here, what do you say we book Wu-Tang Clan for Game 4?”

[Sam Amick @sam_amick]

Glad I got here early… 😳

Wu-Tang Clan rehearsal for tonight’s MSG halftime show. 🔥🔥

More here, on the Game 4 Finals live blog, at @TheAthletic

https://t.co/xZZqJW9nNz

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

Yesterday someone tried to tell me we're better off without literacy because writing is a means of control. My friend, those who seek your oppression don't want you literate. The ability to read & communicate is our best defense against tyranny. And they're taking it from us.

[Matthew Sitman @MatthewSitman]

TLDR: No one blamed the Iraq War on Quentin Skinner or his students

[Democracy Now! @democracynow]

Ahead of Game 4 of the NBA Finals, journalist @NoahShachtman details the intrusive surveillance machine that billionaire Knicks owner James Dolan has built at Madison Square Garden.

"Every sports venue is going to have security measures, of course, and many of those may involve facial recognition. But no venue in the country deploys facial recognition so widely and weaponizes it in the way that James Dolan does.

"He uses facial recognition not just to suspected troublemakers out, but more importantly he has all sorts of enemies lists, and those enemies include people that he might be in legal disputes with, people that might have tweeted mean stuff at him.

"And in our story for Wired, maybe the most shocking thing was there was a trans woman who — for the crime of being trans — was surveilled by James Dolan's spy machine second by second, minute by minute, even when she went into the bathroom, when she came out, because James Dolan didn't want her close to the team."

[ArtButMakeItSports @ArtButSports]

Hercules and Nessus, by Giambologna, 1599

[kit 🍋 @sourkrowt]

so my best friend sent me this song that Tyra Banks made herself for a dystopian young adult book she wrote over a decade ago and i'm being so serious i think she officially made the worst song of all time

[Jason Blakely @jasonwblakely]

This little intellectual revenge fantasy is a product of what Dosteovsky calls "underground syndrome" where someone waits in the shadows, fearing and loathing, and then suffers the illusion that by a single act they can invalidate an entire person's thought—let alone their life!

[Josh Hochschild @JoshHochschild]

Heard about a recently published article, lets say generally in the area of Thomism, filled with hallucinated quotations. Easy to identify for someone who knew the scholarly territory.
The journal editor, when offered clear documentation and some standard options for correcting the scholarly record, refused to address it.
I expect something will be published about this eventually, but it is bad enough that "scholars" are polluting the discourse with AI slop. Fabricated quotations in scholarship about the history of ideas are especially insidious. It's somewhat disturbing that the problem wasn't caught during peer review. But since the corrupt article was published, it is much more scandalous that an editor wouldn't take easy and reasonable steps to safeguard the integrity of a journal.

[Matthew Sitman @MatthewSitman]

There should be a Letterboxd but for Great Courses lecture series

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

This has quietly been a miracle month in medicine.

In the last 5 weeks we’ve got news on:

- retatrutide, the triple agonist GLP-1 from Lilly, basically melting fat and body-wide inflammation at record levels
- RevMed’s new pancreatic cancer drug showing unprecedented abilities to extend life
- small trial of a one-and-done PCSK9 gene editing therapy for slashing LDL cholesterol
- Mayo’s AI-assisted radiology showing vastly improved cancer detection
- this new therapy for metastatic solid tumors

This stuff is at varying levels of evidence. Retatrutide is ~100% on its way, other stuff needs more clinical trial data. But put it together and we’re maybe on the verge of majorly reducing the mortality of heart disease and cancer, the two leading causes of death in America.

[Lauren Granite @granitelb]

@deadwronghist Dworkin was amazing. May her memory be for a blessing.

[Matthew Sitman @MatthewSitman]

My new thing is emailing professors whose Great Courses lectures I especially liked. My favorite reply was the historian I told about listening to his series on Charlemagne during my morning walks along the Tiber. He said, "Yes, I suspect that would make for pleasant listening"