Hey Restaurants! If you use AI images of food instead of actual pictures of your actual food in menus and promotions, I will not be eating there. Period.
Dhananjay Jagannathan
@dhananjayj.bsky.social
academic, essayist Substack (on culture and identity): https://culturedopinion.substack.com/ Writing portfolio: https://dhananjayj.com/ Books: ARISTOTLE'S PRACTICAL EPISTEMOLOGY (OUP 2024); CULTURE AS CONVERSATION (PENGUIN forthcoming 2026)
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Parker Molloy@parkermolloy.com · yesterdayLol, this story is kind of amazing. This is supposed to be this like... story set about the Peasants' Revolt of 1381... but because they're afraid people won't go see it, the US distributor changed the title to add "The Rise of Robin Hood" at the end. www.theguardian.com/film/2026/au...
A good chance to ask: what's the most absurd thing you've seen someone do on a group trip? My high school made it to the National Science Bowl in DC and we were flying out of our tiny local airport. We got held up at security because one kid had a huge pair of *gardening shears* in his backpack.
Jane Coaston@janecoaston.bsky.social · yesterdayevery single international group trip with more than 10 people somehow features someone who has never seen a plane before, every single time
This is the letter kids got at the end of Dolly’s Imagination Library. I defy you to read this and not cry.
Sometimes, when someone dies, what helps me is thinking about how wonderful it is that they were even alive in the first place. Dolly was the closest you could get to an American saint. We all loved her.
An underrated virtue — and one I struggle with! For as long as I can remember I’ve had Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 as my alarm clock in the morning. I’ll listen to it tomorrow with some extra fondness. A great singer and a magnificent person.
Teddy Focaccia@kmaustinyoung.bsky.social · 4d agoI’m so sad that we’ve lost Dolly Parton, and for all the things to admire about her, I loved that she had a sense of humor about herself. Not taking yourself too seriously is such a gift.
If you live in New York for long enough, no matter your background, you absorb a fair amount of Jewish and Italian culture, and this is an excellent thing.
Wonkish@wonkish.bsky.social · 6d agoI mean..
This trend makes zero sense to me. The point of food illustrations in a restaurant no matter how humble is to make the food seem appetizing. These pictures are self-evidently revolting. They are worse than having no pictures at all. Why??
Sam Biddle@sambiddle.com · 6d agoThe death of folk graphic design in favor of AI slop across our country's delis is leading to some incredibly Lovecraftian food horrors
I think the class of school administrators (not just in higher ed) who act fast to insulate core pedagogical functions from AI will reap major rewards for their trouble. In a few years, there will be an extremely stark difference between people who used AI in school and people who are competent
Anna Kornbluh@annakornbluh.bsky.social · 6d agocognitive sabotage, you can ban it extra credit to U Chicago for bans on professional AND undergrad programs; smart SLACs are going to market AI free campuses soon chicagomaroon.com/53262/news/s...
How the academics in your life feel when they realize it’s one week until classes start
Chris Paxton@cpaxton.bsky.social · 7d agoIncredible stuff
I'm baffled by the ratio'ing of this thread, which seems quite reasonable to me. There's a reason that the required reading list in Columbia's Core Curriculum includes Genesis, Exodus, The Gospels of Luke, Matthew, and John, Romans, and Galatians (not to mention Inferno, City of God, Luther, etc.).
Jonathan Ladd@jonathanmladd.com · 2w agoWhat's Moby Dick all about? And The Scarlet Letter? And Huckleberry Finn? And on and on... (I'm not a scholar of literature, so only a few examples here.)
In the Renaissance people theorized, since the Aeneid is great, if you wrote poems made only of words & phrases from the Aeneid rearranged they should be great too, since a great source regurgitated should yield greatness. They produced NOTHING we still read. Thinking about that a lot lately.
I have a mental high street of restaurants with punny names and the newest one just popped into my head, serving piquant offal dishes from around the world: HARUSPICY
I’ve mostly arrived in Paris by train (via the Eurostar) over the years, and the first thing I do is buy a baguette and a round of the real Président Brie, which is not technically single-serving but which I serve singly.
Kara N. Slade@karanslade.bsky.social · 3w agoNormalize single serving cheese. This is my train station breakfast.
Writing an “I’m sick and tired of X” column would be somewhat understandable if you have to write two columns a week, but Bruni doesn’t. He can write what he wants when he wants! A very odd complaint.
The New York Times@nytimes.com · 3w agoIn @nytopinion.nytimes.com “If I see or hear one more word about Christopher Nolan’s new version of ‘The Odyssey,’ I’m going to hurl myself into the nearest Charybdis,” writes Frank Bruni.
Yes. For example, the 2017 Olathe, Kansas shooting involved a drunkard gunning down two Indians who worked for Garmin and thinking he had shot 'Iranians'. Trump and MAGA offer a permission structure for the stupidest and most violent people to engage in racially-motivated stochastic domestic terror.
Kevin@reginageorgebush.bsky.social · 4w ago*using "Islamophobia" as a catch-all for "the weird racialized set of prejudices many Americans hold against Arabs, Muslims, Middle Easterners more generally, and South Asians a lot of the time too"
More cynically, at least some of the people who dispense the "don't bother" advice are extremely financially comfortable themselves but wish they made even more money – something that becomes visible in mid-career academia when your 'peers' in other fields leave you in the dust salary-wise.
Dhananjay Jagannathan@dhananjayj.bsky.social · 3w agoI was fully funded for seven years of graduate school, and while my life was hardly luxurious, I was also grateful for the opportunity to think, to read, to learn, and to teach. A lot of people who dispense the "don't bother" advice have bourgeois values (retirement funds and picket fences) in mind.
I was fully funded for seven years of graduate school, and while my life was hardly luxurious, I was also grateful for the opportunity to think, to read, to learn, and to teach. A lot of people who dispense the "don't bother" advice have bourgeois values (retirement funds and picket fences) in mind.
David M. Perry@lollardfish.bsky.social · 3w agoSince we are doing this discourse again: I probably talked to more undergraduates about grad school in the humanities than most people, as it’s part of my job as an advisor. My message: people do all kinds of shit in their 20s, and going to grad school aint the worst if you’re funded for it.
live in: 🇺🇸 (have lived in: 🇮🇳 🇯🇲 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 ) born in: 🇮🇳 parents: 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 grandparents: 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 (technically 🇬🇧 under the Raj, but the Viceroy’s standard isn’t an available flag) great-grandparents: 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 (same caveat as above) been to: 🇮🇳 🇯🇲 🇨🇦 🇲🇽 🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇦🇹 🇳🇴 🇮🇹 🇨🇿 🇸🇮 🇭🇷 🇬🇷 🇹🇷 🇬🇪 🇦🇪
Joshua Eaton@joshuaeaton.bsky.social · 3w agolive in: 🇺🇸 born in: 🇺🇸 parents: 🇺🇸 🇺🇸/🇨🇦 grandparents: 🇺🇸 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸/🇨🇦 great-grandparents: 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 been to: 🇨🇦🇧🇭🇬🇧🇲🇽🇮🇱🇵🇸
Somehow I hadn’t encountered @stephencollins.bsky.social’s cartoons before, but this is absolutely brilliant. (As are the British politics ones in the thread below the bleat quoted.)
John C@badsocialism.bsky.social · 3w ago"are there any bad @stephencollins.bsky.social cartoons?" No, of course not, I've been laughing at this one for three minutes
I found what I was looking for: ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AI... the authors: Borhane Blili-Hamelin, Leif Hancox-Li, Andrew Smart
View of Unsocial Intelligence: An Investigation of the Assumptions of AGI Discourse
ojs.aaai.org
Dhananjay Jagannathan@dhananjayj.bsky.social · 3w agoHas anyone written a good essay about race science, psychometrics, and Silicon Valley? Underneath the fanaticism of the AI boosters, it seems to me, is a conviction about “AGI”, and conceptually presupposed by that notion are empirically dubious and theoretically shallow conceptions of IQ, “g”, etc.
Has anyone written a good essay about race science, psychometrics, and Silicon Valley? Underneath the fanaticism of the AI boosters, it seems to me, is a conviction about “AGI”, and conceptually presupposed by that notion are empirically dubious and theoretically shallow conceptions of IQ, “g”, etc.
These people haven’t sent an email in 18 months and love to talk about how their “agents” are doing their job for them. The logic is pretty much the same as that of addiction. I’d pity them if it weren’t so contemptible.
Alexander Glass@alexanderglass.bsky.social · 4w agoI have one answer.
My jaw dropped when I learned that none other than the grandson of Oswald Mosley — founder of the British Union of Fascists, Holocaust denier, unrepentant antisemite — is in charge of Palantir’s UK operations. This piece is very much worth reading and rather damning for the Labour technocrats.
London Review of Books@lrb.co.uk · 4w ago‘Palantir’s market capitalisation has risen to $320 billion, 150 times earnings. The 𝘌𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘵 has speculated that “Palantir might be the most overvalued firm of all time.”’ @petergeoghegan.bsky.social and @lucasamin.bsky.social on Palantir’s NHS contract. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
