Lex Joy
@aeneas-nin.bsky.social
Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. Occasional game dev. Author of LEGEND OF THE RIVER KING (Boss Fight Books) and editor of FLAXMAN LOW: OCCULT DETECTIVE (MIT Press). He/him. alexanderbjoy.com
I spent the last couple of days reading this early work of cosmic horror. William Hope Hodgson had the knack, for sure.
The House On The Borderland
gutenberg.org
This is the tragic yet logical result of a decades-long project—undertaken by rightwing politicians and “business-minded” administrators alike—to distort the meaning of higher education, to deny the intrinsic value of the pursuit of knowledge, to deprive us all of richer, more purposeful lives.
The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d agoPresident Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v
Just so everyone knows, this is a tried-and-true mainstream media tactic. For progressives/leftist candidates, every election is a “crucial test” and any loss would serve as proof to the media that the latest left-side moment is at its end. Any win, though, just means it’s time to find a new test.
Politico@politico.com · 2d agoMichigan will provide another crucial test of whether progressives can not only keep up their winning streak in safe-blue seats but also break through in battlegrounds crucial for control of Congress. The stakes for the Democratic Party are huge.
This Sox season makes not a goddamn bit of sense.
MLB Daily News@insidemlbnews.bsky.social · 2d agoBREAKING NEWS Passan: Adley Rutschman to be traded to the Red Sox.
Hank Green should not use LLMs in his work. Working scientists have specific use cases for LLMs, but science communicators like Hank and I do not. They add more vulnerability than value in our field. I laid out some history and background to walk you through the reasons why.
Hank Green, Science, History, and Misinformation — aeta
aeta.mataroa.blog
Archive.org has the original pet rock instruction manual. It's magnificent.
The care and training of your pet rock
Pet Rock is a collectible toy made in 1975 by advertising executive Gary Dahl. Pet Rocks are smooth stones from Mexico's Rosarito Beach. They were marketed like live pets, in custom cardboard boxes, c...
archive.org
Finally! One that's kind of hazardous!
Tiny Petting Zoo@tinypettingzoo.bsky.social · 3d ago╪═╪═╪═╪═╪═╪═╪═╪ 🐖 🍄 🐏 🐍 🐂 ╪═╪═╪═╪═╪═╪═╪═╪
Don't quote me on this in like 10 years but I think one of the defining issues of the 2020s is "a better world is actually very easy to achieve, the powers that be are just not interested in achieving it."
wishda@wishda.bsky.social · 5d agoThe DSA in Wilmingotn, N.C. has created a "crisis" by putting benches at city bus stops, after literal decades of the city promising and failing to do so.
It's harder to outline a mystery story than I would have thought.
I agree strongly with this -- in that difficult moment, the possibility of collective effort was conceivable. Not everybody felt it, but many did. I think the political class did not like this one bit.
Dave Andress@davidandress.bsky.social · 4d agoCovid lockdowns demonstrated, in a deeply imperfect way, the possibility of large-scale social solidarity for a higher cause. That is a prime reason why so many powerful people want us to run screaming away from them into the comforting arms of selfish individualist competition.
looking at the headlines and reflecting once again on how all the smart, hard-working, honest people I know feel like they’re going at least a little insane in our era of total Stupid Immoral Asshole ascendancy
The next essay will be on the Final Destination series. No timetable as of yet.
Mistigram: this charming #emoji-based #ASCIIart suite of vignettes imagining how nice it would be to own various kinds of domestic pets is the unmistakable handiwork of Kurogao. They were included in the unthemed MIST0721 artpack collection released five years ago this month.
"Those who treat Omelas as a utilitarian allegory wish to view the child as a concession, a 'gotcha' moment illustrating the ethical quandary alleged to inhere in all joys and comforts. But such a reading is erroneous."
Three Walks Back to Omelas: On Suffering and Happiness
"Meaningless" cruelty implies the possibility of meaningful cruelty.
typebarmagazine.com
anyway let's talk about something fun if you want. in "jurassic park," it seems quite trivial to keep making new dinosaurs -- they have a bunch and are hatching new ones all the time. so why didn't they eat any of the dinosaurs? why wasn't dinosaur steak on the menu
I’m just basing this on what other species do when one of their own goes rogue but I feel like if a guy’s business model involves making everybody stupid & gatekeeping the collectively earned knowledge of humankind in order to charge people for it we kind of have to rip apart & eat that guy.
Dylan Roth@dylanroth.bsky.social · 7d ago“We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.” - Sam Altman. I will never stop thinking about how nakedly evil this is, and it has framed every single AI headline I’ve read since.
with the steam release approaching, thecatamites is giving away his 10 Beautiful Postcards post-mortem for free this month. the best commentator on the ungodly process of game making thecatamites.itch.io/postcard-wri...
StoryPeer is wild, man. 90% of the time you receive excellent, thoughtful feedback. And the other 10%, you'll hear from someone who didn't read your first page (?) and then dropped your script because it contained a semicolon. #scriptsky
Israel is giving Trump's former campaign manager millions of dollars to fill the internet with pro-Israel articles written by AI, not so that anyone will actually read them, but so that *LLMs will train on them* & regurgitate their perspective. This is the future of the information environment.
Israel Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk About Gaza. It's Working.
Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is overseeing an operation posting hundreds of blog posts on behalf of Israel, with the goal of infiltrating artificial intelligence.
dropsitenews.com
This piece generated a lot of interest! Traffic on it tripled since Monday, with 2/3rds of it coming right here from Bluesky! If you haven't followed the writer @aeneas-nin.bsky.social already, please do so!
Typebar Magazine (Issue 10 Out Now!!)@typebarmagazine.bsky.social · last wk."Those who treat Omelas as a utilitarian allegory wish to view the child as a concession, a 'gotcha' moment illustrating the ethical quandary alleged to inhere in all joys and comforts. But such a reading is erroneous."