MrBarrington
@mrbarrington.bsky.social
Stockholm-based, London-born book/language nerd 🤓
Getting real sick of slop midwives pleading for a 'respectful discussion' of AI as relates to the arts. Your use of AI to 'make art' is not respectful. It benefits from stolen art, destroys the planet, and does not make you an artist any more than someone driving 26.2 miles is a marathoner.
New on the blog today, WOMEN WRITERS IN TRANSLATION - some book recommendations for #WITMonth. Featuring books by Mariana Enriquez (tr. Megan McDowell), Irmgard Keun (tr. Michael Hofmann), Claudia Piñeiro (tr. Frances Riddle) and more! #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/07/29/w...
Women Writers in Translation – some book recommendations for #WITMonth
As many of you know, August is #WITMonth (Women in Translation), a celebration of books by women writers, initially written in languages other than English and then translated for English-speaking …
jacquiwine.wordpress.com
Gonna wait to watch Nolan’s Odyssey on my phone whole listening to Wilson’s Odyssey on audiobook to teach them both a lesson
My close reading of Andy Burnham's letter to the Guardian in 1991, defending Philip Larkin as a great poet
this hotel: take free candy this hotel: have this on the house this hotel: want a complimentary side this hotel: for toothpaste you must defeat our strongest employee in single combat
New article on how many of Nick Bostrom's "best" ideas actually came from other people. I also discuss how Bostrom lied on his official CV by claiming that his undergrad performance set a "national record" in Sweden. If you think Bostrom is an original thinker, read this:
Nick Bostrom Took Many of His "Best" Ideas from Other People
An investigation with examples so you can decide for yourself. (7,100 words)
realtimetechpocalypse.com
I also think a lot of people genuinely don’t know what a significant percentage of book sales *tend to be from libraries* Libraries PAY MONEY FOR BOOKS
Tom Cox@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 2w agoSomeone said to me, "I'm sorry but I got your book from a library." Nobody should ever apologise for that. You read my book! That's brilliant! I grew up hanging out in libraries and the idea of a world without them fills me with dread. Without libraries, authors, like readers, will only suffer.
11. I don't think I have to help anyone read between the lines here. AI: good. Universities: bad. Trades: good. Academics: bad. It's a straightforward continuation of the Vought/Vance "the universities are the enemy" program.
Elon will post things like “buy this cardboard box full of urine, it will achieve nuclear epic anti-woke self-driving AI sentience by next Thursday” and people are perpetually shocked when the urine leaks out of the box
Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social · 2w agook
yeah, a lot of publishers have spotty presences online anyway, but bluesky remains particularly ignored by them, i think. especially in regards to poetry & the spec/sff, but bsky is built to thrive with those readers IF only the presses would engage & promote here better.
Joshua J. Friedman@joshuajfriedman.com · 3mo agoAuthor, bookseller, and publisher friends: Please keep posting your positive stories about selling books through Bluesky, and I'll package them up and show them to publishers so that we can get more book publishers and even more authors and book conversation here!
Hey, local pharmacy, maybe don’t put the back pain heating pads on the bottom shelf, you sadists
Weirdly I have come to suspect that the biggest victims of cognitive surrender right now are some people who work in the AI industry
Aurelien Mondon@aurelmondon.com · 2w ago"Cognitive surrender" is a fascinating concept to think about the impact of AI as it exists under reactionary tech Preventing people from thinking for themselves and imagining different worlds is a godsend for authoritarians thenextweb.com/news/wharton...
This is a very good thread and it will help you to think about HOW to think about the increasing bullshit we're going to have thrown at us.
Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 2w agoHow about a jet-lagged live posting while I read? Trying to read this because I keep getting tagged in posts about it, but the first paragraph already contains synthetic text (a quote from Claude). I will skip that bit and persevere... www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
oh "despite also marketing AI in his day job does a very good job" you say? *taps sign*
Entryism
AI entryism subverts anti AI critique.
olivia.science
Our workshop created the fountain pen presented as the official prize for a literary award organized by our local newspaper, the Iwate Nippo. It was awarded to the recipient yesterday.
Youtube shorts are truly a window into the human condition that I had simply never imagined could exist, without them would never have guessed how many supposedly educated adults are genuinely shocked to hear that the moon is always in the sky instead of at home sleeping all day in its moon house
How many AI models does it take to change a lightbulb? That's a great question, which shows that you care about illumination! You don't just want to see - you want to be seen. Unfortunately no such thing as a lightbulb has ever existed or will ever exist.
Microsoft emissions up 25% in a single year Google emissions up 25% Amazon emissions up 16% Big tech's climate pledges are being swept away in the insatiable race for AI profits.
Microsoft’s carbon emissions went up 25 percent last year
Microsoft says data centers were “primarily” responsible for higher emissions.
theverge.com
GOLDMAN: “.. Memory Costs Have Surged, Directly Boosting Inflation.”
Nothing says “this insurance company knows my country” than using an AI generated map of Belgium that puts Ghent in Wallonie, gives us two Namurs and a south coast on the Med.
I just spent an hour trying to fix my dad’s year-old HP printer so it can AirPrint and I am once again struck by how disinterested the AI people are in improving our lives by using their little models to fix things and not just destroy learning, art, and work
‘“We cannot afford to have a society in which a significant fraction of our best young minds think that cheating is OK,” [Serrano] said. “That leads to a declining society, to a failed society … We cannot choose to become idiots.”’
Jacob T. Levy@jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 4w ago
I actually think smart glasses have a different problem than the fact that they're 1) expensive and 2) perv glasses, and that problem is that the purpose of social media is to show people videos of *me*.
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 4w agoToday in luxury surveillance.
Everyone says social media needs to be regulated There's just one problem - it *already is* I've had a look at why regulation is failing, what we might do about it, and what the risks are - because nothing is ever as simple as it seems New post: chamindajayanetti.substack.com/p/how-do-you...
How do you solve a problem like social media? Part I
It's all well and good saying we should regulate social media. But social media is already regulated. So why is it failing? And what could we do in response?
chamindajayanetti.substack.com
For the first time in my life, I downloaded a ride-hailing app in May. It didn’t take long to see how they’re designed to give users a false sense of control that makes it easy to overlook their flaws and be discouraged from using taxis. How else have tech services changed how we see the world?
The seductive nature of ride-hailing apps
How apps like Uber make taxis seem unappealing
disconnect.blog
I was in two intensive week-long workshops this year with neuroscientists, philosophers and computer scientists and not *one* thought LLMs are conscious, or that anything is ‘mysterious’ in a model trained on scifi and Internet chat doing woo-woo musing about self-consciousness. And do you know why?
Drew Harwell@drewharwell.com · last mo.Claude's ‘spiritual bliss’ attractor state features a lot of woo woo talk and blue spiral 🌀 emojis @nitasha.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
