"In that way, they are not really as similar to ancient Egyptian mummies as, in the heat of the moment, on social media, I may have suggested them to be." ok I like (am terrified by) where this is going

amy brown@amybrown.xyz · 54m ago

it's heeeeeere, you may now read my essay about how i achieved the millennial dream of home ownership and immediately lost my mind on nextdoor. thanks to the @oaklandreviewofbooks.org crew for their ongoing support of me being Like This

It's Wednesday, & you're wondering: "What were the smallest, & the largest, annual eel-rent in 12th C. England?" Well, I'm here to help! The smallest was 22 eels, from Hoddeston, for Sir Geoffrey Mandeville. The largest was 75,000 eels, from Harmston, for Earl Hugh of Chester. 🗃️🧪

Agreed, It does help reinforce good behavior. We had a rescue politician once and his behavior just didn’t change, even with treats and positive reinforcement, kept humping everything.

sorry folks but one of the many awful, terrible things about politics is that you do sometimes have to reward politicians, even those you don’t like much, with high-value liver treats for actually doing what you want them to do

Your little oopsie "mistakes" had me worrying for a year of my life about my partner going to jail for up to a decade based on lies likely fed to you by the top of the federal government. Show everyone what you're covering up in these emails and texts. There's a reason you don't want them released.

Boutros acknowledges 'mistakes' in 'Broadview 6' case but says sanctions, special counsel aren't needed

Chicago's top federal prosecutor noted in a court filing that his office has already dropped charges in the case, implemented “robust root-cause changes” and started the process of reviewing over 1,00...

chicago.suntimes.com

Granted I'm not smart enough to be a SpaceX investor but if I was, I think I would have questions about why you need humanoid robots working in factories on the moon, presumably making things that would need to get shipped back to earth

But this is what happened a month ago, and the hawks in the GOP went ballistic on him so he launched new attacks. We're just in that part of the cycle again.

Josh Marshall@joshtpm.bsky.social · 2h ago

as noted yesterday, Trump has now come around to treating an Iranian toll system covering the Strait of Hormuz as a given. Hard to overstate the level of strategic failure. US started the war purely as a war of choice and ends up dramatically empowering Iran and given the Iranian govt big wins.

I don't actually see any evidence of this? As far as I can tell most academics response to the Wilson piece (those who have seen it at all) was "huh, fair enough - I liked the film tho". I'm guessing this isn't registering because low key calm responses aren't flashy or memorable.

Robert Borden Stan Account@bordenstan.bsky.social · 20h ago

If the academy gets pulled into coming out swinging against the biggest adaptation of Homer in probably a couple generations off the back of one prominent scholar deciding to be Reviewer 2 to Nolan's work, it will say, IMO, pretty damning things about academia's ability to foster public engagement.

deleted a post about my kid because while it’s funny, it’s probably not a story he’ll want on the internet when he’s a teenager so i thought better of telling it

At some point we are going to have to reckon with what percentage of the Thought Leadership we get from this class of people is just drug addiction. Either a lot of credulous reporters have never listened to someone tooted out of their mind go on a monologue or they're afraid to call it out.

Richard Kadrey@richardkadrey.bsky.social · 4w ago

This from the guy who has to hire people to play his video games for him.

This must hit different if you no longer believe in material reality

FinTwitter@fintwitter.bsky.social · 5h ago

$SPCX - SPACEX PLANS MOON FACTORIES POWERED BY HUMANOID ROBOTS

VIZ's Davy Jones addressed a lot of these issues decades ago. (He's on bluesky, by the way.)

Chipotle isolated a single source of Jalapeno peppers contaminated with Salmonella. They figured it out. RFK Jr. can’t

As one does, with a tweet sent out at 3:32 am

Politico@politico.com · 6h ago

Chuck Edwards says he will end reelection bid after censure recommendation

My answer is LOL ROFL (dickbrain) The terminally AI-pilled can't even *imagine* some people have *never* asked stochastic parrots to cheat at their job for them.

Yes. And yes. Look. I was doing this shit for 20 years before AI was invented.

Charlie Stross@cstross.bsky.social · 8h ago

My answer is LOL ROFL (dickbrain) The terminally AI-pilled can't even *imagine* some people have *never* asked stochastic parrots to cheat at their job for them.

So in the last two weeks EIC of Science and a famous science communicator have lost massive amounts of credibility because of their reliance on LLMs... Some examples of how to lose trust with your audience to share with my students I guess.

There’s no way to spin this. “Big yech”—actually a nice typo (slip?) in the article—was able to buy off the leadership of the nation’s second largest teacher’s union for a paltry $12.5 million.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 6h ago

“Teaching educators about AI is a ‘moral imperative’, said Randi Weingarten, the AFT president.” “And without outside funding, it was a choice between taking big tech’s money or doing nothing, she said.”

get so used to hearing this place called a weird bubble that when you encounter the mind of someone who actually lives in one, it is genuinely startling

Cuddles_the_destroyer@cuddlessmash.bsky.social · 18h ago

what the fuck am I reading lmao

History is fact jenga and AI is glue forklift. game changer

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · yesterday

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

This Rod Liddle? Credit for image and alt text: @snig.bsky.social

Ben Goldacre@bengoldacre.bsky.social · 2d ago

Sad to see people posting on social media negatively about Rod Liddle, who died yesterday. If I have disagreed with you very strongly in life - and you die - I hope I'll be either silent, or kind.

The next blockbuster: The Sea People Heroes: Rameses the Great & Ammurapi of Ugarit Villain: Odysseus Plot twist: climate change caused mass migration Final scene: Phoenician makes it out of Ugarit with an iron sword Film-making twist: archaeologists consulted Chris Nolan: call me Visuals:

it's pretty difficult to study the capital / imperialism intersection without this in mind, for what it's worth

Amanda Mull@amandamull.bsky.social · 2d ago

there is a strain of lefty discourse where you can’t come to any unflattering conclusions about the populace—those must be explained away by how they are being acted upon by capital—but I think you’ll understand things better if you understand capital can also exploit weaknesses it didn’t create

International relations are tough, how could he have known that in their culture its considered a faux pa to kill children during their school day? In American culture that kind of thing happens all the time

Foreign leaders can be so difficult when you kill their families and launch surprise attacks on their countries. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/u...

An Angry Trump Struggles to Understand Iran’s Defiant Leaders

Iran’s leaders have perplexed several American presidents, perhaps none more than President Trump.

nytimes.com

I’m telling you this as a political scientist. The person who is electable is the one who is elected. This can and does change over time. Any and all speculation about “electability” is either puffery or anxiety and is often both.

Julia Azari@juliaazari.bsky.social · 15h ago

One way to be safe is to never write an electability take

It remains illegal to discriminate against trans people or anyone you think might be trans. Inter alia, we retain the human rights to privacy.

I am actually infuriated by this assumption, as writers and artists of all kinds, that if our work runs up against the audience’s ignorance (vocabulary, intertexuality, &c.) this is somehow a failing, our fault and something it is our responsibility to avoid.

Kate Watson@loreandordure.com · 7h ago

Obviously. And the world is in any case full of references to unfamiliar things, if people are perplexed surely they can look it up?

Much as I respect your work, Richard, this is a mess. You don't need AI to spell check. The graphics add little or nothing. How did you cope before AI? Do *that* instead. The ALT text is utterly useless. I hope you can take some of the feedback on board.

Richard Murphy@richardjmurphy.bsky.social · yesterday

Much of what is said about economics is little better than gaslighting.... I used AI tools when writing this post, including a spell checker. I also used 50 years of experience writing about these issues. The drawing was the smallest part of all that, and I had no budget to do it any other way.

just got interviewed by a foreign outlet about a Westminster thing and I always enjoy it so much when someone goes "so, the British [pause] please explain"