Anyway, I like this framing (lore vs gossip) bc it doesn’t feel inherently hierarchical the way emphasis on crafts and canon does, and it does feel true. Think about it: Henry James? Gossip! Dante? Soooo much gossip. Shakespeare? GOSSIP.

What if the difference between genre and lit-fic is the difference between a taste for lore and a taste for gossip?

it cannot be overstated how much medinat yisrael despises the diaspora jews who refuse to make aliyah the calculation a lot of these orgs make is that the christian nationalists will slaughter diaspora jews only. the association of german national jews made the exact same mistake in the 1930s.

Joel S.@joelhs.bsky.social · yesterday

Not only does the Israeli government not care about the safety of the Diaspora, they are actively willing to cultivate ties to figures who make antisemitism worse around the world, if it enables them to steal more land in the West Bank with global impunity. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I’m realistic enough to know that we’re not going to fix the campus rape problem overnight, because patriarchy is multifaceted and cockroach-like in its survival abilities, but something I think we could get in place fast is a program for letting victims transfer without penalties.

@sherrodbrownoh.bsky.social I’m not from Ohio but I feel deep contempt for your campaign for this creepy cutesy begging. In what universe should voters feel confident you will tackle the serious problems we face when this is how you fundraise? Will you say pretty please to stop fascism?

The defining quality of so many tech guys is completely missing the point of nearly every social or leisure activity

Mike Drucker@mikedrucker.bsky.social · 2d ago

Just saw someone say their AI runs their fantasy football team and I can’t stop laughing. Like, I’m sure everyone’s doing it or something but it’s very funny to me that pretending to be a team manager was so hard that you needed to pretend to pretend to be a team manager

never the wrong time for this classic

Science Magazine@science.org · 2d ago

Exclusive: A new analysis refutes James Watson’s claim that he was the first to recognize the significance of the famed photograph 51. https://scim.ag/4rTKck8

This is your occasional reminder that generative "AI" in particular could have been developed on public domain materials and/or licensed and compensated works but the major players intentionally, methodically and systemically chose to steal labor from working creative folks instead

Here’s the English National Ballet’s performance of Giselle which is definitely a Mood for this week.

I don’t care where you started out on the political spectrum If your kid comes out as trans & you don’t become a rainbow-clad, parade-cheering ally & rock-solid supportive girl/boy/enby dad/mom? You were never a parent at all You were a doll collector furious they didn’t stay in their packaging.

my best friend worked at University of Mississippi at the time when nearly the entire faculty and student body was demanding the Confederate statue at the entrance be taken down but it wasn’t, because apparently the answer to Mike’s question is “a handful of very rich football families”

Mike Boylan-Kolchin@mbkplus.bsky.social · 3d ago

As I’ve asked many times now, what constituencies does a university president represent? Because too often, the answer seems to not include anyone who works or studies at the university, and that seems like a problem.

This is also why the fact that most US academics vote Democratic leads people to conclude, “Academics all agree and are in an ideological monoculture,” and not, “Academics have serious ideological differences but all have no choice to vote for the party that doesn’t openly want to destroy us.”

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 3d ago

Justin's getting a lot of shit for this and I get why people are mad about it, but I think part of what's going on here is the distorting effects of the background context of two-party politics as the default way we sort people into "sides" and the downstream effects of how we interpret disagreement

People are reacting to Gellar getting caught and admitting to it as if that is accountability. No. Accountability is he gives up power, takes risks to be an ally, uses his power in service of survivors rather than himself.

I once heard someone ask a queer Catholic why he kept attending Church, when they denied the beauty of his relationship. He said, “As hard as it is that my family can’t see all of me, leaving them entirely would be worse.” This is a post about Jews repulsed by the actions of modern state of Israel.

Scientists observing animals: They may seem to mourn their dead but we must be never allow ourselves to anthropomorphize these creatures. Scientists observing software programmed to shit out bad country songs & undress pictures of random women: We have created God

I love that every man on Fox News is saying “New York is so terrifying that the thought of taking the subway makes me piss myself” and meanwhile Mamdani is setting up adorable trick or treat stations so families can have more fun on Halloween

Costa Samaras@costasamaras.com · 4d ago

This will make kids a lot safer on Halloween. Other cities should do this!

AI stole my hard work. It stole my writing, my art, and now makes getting jobs doing either of those as a human almost impossible. In what universe could I define that as anything less than bad? I don’t actually care about the minutiae—I care that it’s a plagiarism machine, I care about the planet.

Will Oremus@willoremus.com · 5d ago

feels like there is a group of smart and well-intentioned people who long ago made up their minds that AI Is Bad, swore off using it, and now get all their info about AI from each other. not saying they're wrong that ai is bad! but i think they're gradually losing touch with what it is and does

Ironically, my original interview with the journalist I spoke with was primarily about how "inconsistencies" can come from gender bias in investigatory processes and then be blamed on survivors. It was the inspiration for this thread--but none of these points made it into any USA Today article:

Nicole Bedera@nbedera.bsky.social · 6d ago

All of this. I also want to add that, in my research, I found that a lot of “inconsistencies” in a victim’s story actually came from gender bias affecting investigators’ record keeping and interview methods.

workers haven't reaped the benefits of that. Wages are stagnant while we generate more and more and more wealth for corporations and the elite who own them. AI will not change that, it is owned by the same people already exploiting workers. What will change that is WORKERS UNITING.

Productivity gains do NOT reduce working hours. If they did the last 30 years would have seen hours cut in half (without a change in compensation) but that's the opposite of what has happened. Labor protections have eroded, unions have eroded, while workers' productivity has SKY ROCKETED. But ...

Gentle reminder because AI bullshit is going around: Remember, technology has made us (workers) more *productive* it was labor unions and labor reformers that reduced our *working hours.* Without them we would STILL be working 6 days a week 12 hour days. Tech didn't change that, PEOPLE did.

also, doing that work is fucking hard. My body is irreparably damaged. I suffer from mild to severe chronic pain problems because of it. There are few safety nets for manual labourers, and if we want more of them how do we change the environment for workers so many deem as less than?

there's more than a hint of 'noble savage' in the way people outside the trades talk about those jobs and especially those workers. there's a reason people leave those jobs for less physically demanding ones if the option becomes available! enough salt-of-the-earth rhapsodizing!

3rd circuit rules AI training on copyrighted material is NOT fair use. Wow! chatgptiseatingtheworld.substack.com/p/breaking-n...

BREAKING News: Third Circuit affirms summary judgment rejection of fair use defense by ROSS Intelligence in AI training

Opinion under seal for now.

chatgptiseatingtheworld.substack.com

The "all anti-Zionism is always and forever antisemitism" people and the "all antisemitism becomes fine if we just say it's anti-Zionism, even if we're ranting about the Talmud" people reinforce one another, even if both sides utterly fail to see it.

keep thinking about "personalised" books/art made by AI and remembering James Baldwin's quote "you think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read" these AI bros are deliberately doing a psyop on themselves to cauterise their capacity for empathy

Even the boomers are suffering here, much as it can grate to admit it because many of them do own property and are smug. But now they need to sell and find single-floor, accessible housing, and not only is that basically a unicorn, no one can afford to buy big houses or sell small ones.

I Scare You Like Sound Dog@chadstanton.blacksky.app · 6d ago

We tried the ownership society where everyone is a little capitalist because they own their home, and that will provide their nest egg. It’s led to record homelessness and profound dissatisfaction with life in the US.

People often miss this. Antisemitism may not be structural in the US today in the way anti-Blackness is, but overcoming the legalism of Judaism for the spirit of love of Christianity is the ur-narrative for so much left politics in the culturally Christian world. We need to guard against it.

Sam Brody@samuelhayimbrody.bsky.social · last wk.

Overcoming Judaism is the foundation of the “progressive” narrative that later pits civilization against the savage, positioning Christianity and whiteness as the apex of history. You don’t get that without antisemitism as the foundation

I know a lot of us have already clocked the victim blaming—but it’s about to get much worse #cornell