Attention Span. ‘My daughter was reading Plato yesterday. But I looked and it’s a new word every few centimeters. Just a dopamine dispenser. No more. Now she just reads one long word for hours. For instance: Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd.’

‘Allow me to shoot my fish in a barrel,’ does something ‘constructing a straw man’ does not. ‘Let me shoot my fish,’ means ‘many people do believe this easily defeated position; I haven’t invented it in order to win.’ It’s intellectually silly but politically bad to do this: they’re all dummies.

1) AI is brilliant and 2) it’s costing us jobs and doing other unlikeable things. Surely AI, brilliant, is doing what’s best.

Consider rule candidate-nominationalism. For you the benefit is that you’ll have a good place to stand on when the other party nominates a charismatic jerk. For us the benefit is that we might bootstrap ourselves out of ‘it’s fine to run on insults and beloved conspiracy tales.’

I wish someone would describe like, folding the laundry with the horror and precision they use to describe social media addiction. ‘The dopamine hit of the seam pulling in leads us to fold once more…The washing *machine* literally addicts us to…’

Soccer: each match is nearly a coin flip, but everyone act as if heads was excellent when it showed over tails. Hockey: each match is slightly less of a coin flip and everyone acts like we’ll need to perform the flip many more times before declaring heads better than tails. Each is good.

"It really has come to this in America. Censorship is real," said Kelly. "America needs to stand up. Scientists, stand up. Physicians, stand up."

Scott Horton@robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The New Lysenkoism: police state tactics deployed against diabetes experts at an ADA conference in New Orleans because they spoke critically about RFKJr healthcare policies. This is what fascism looks like.

Like, I kinda know these people.

Sarah Karlin-Smith@sarahkarlin-smith.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"Members of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) were escorted by police out of the convention center in New Orleans during the organization's annual meeting on Friday as they handed out copies of an editorial criticizing Trump administration changes to U.S. biomedical research."

One of my girls is Canadian and the other is Canadian and American. This is…the non-American. A goddamned Alex Colville painting.

The problem with AI replacing the university is that powerful people could just unplug it.

Read a profound paper on AI and consciousness etc. it was written by an AI thing. The whole paper was just this: ‘I refute it thus: I think.’

Guy walks into his Marxist and his Hegelian psychologists’ office says ‘docs, I think I’m a wolf’. Hegelian Doc says ‘you’re not a wolf.’ Marx doc says ‘what’s the problem?’ Guy says ‘people tell me that I’m not a wolf, I’m crazy.’ Marx Doc says ‘you’ll be a wolf soon.’ Working on it.

Rain on pajama day. The allusion to Alannis memes is ironic (I think).

Welfare fraud is so vast and so annoying that taking steps to end it could glorify and enrich me and my friends enormously. If you wish to join the fight against fraud you must apply to get a Fraud Fighter license from Me University.

I haven’t travelled. I don’t ski (haha, imagine skiing). I’m nursing a sunburn on my chest underneath the winter coat i’m wearing today.

(Perhaps this performs a joke on me, but) I’ve never hear it put that way. It is design with a designer i just spell designer etc

Keith Frankish@keithfrankish.com · 3mo ago

Of course! Darwin didn't deny design; he naturalized it.

Human pleasure derived from direct evil is worthless…pleasure derived from indirect not-niceness is worth something…Flora and Fauna don’t do evil, but do experience pleasure. W/o humans the earth would be… Therefore, stop being directly evil and everything is fine.

If this right, then to save the earth we should make smartphones super cheap and addictive. Reduce, reuse, recycle and rivet your iPhone to your mind in the smithy of your soul. (Habs game nerves making me think loopily)

Young people: ‘omg (they still say this), when you get what you want you want more. That’s so bad.’ Old people: ‘True, but it’s great.’

Something (I don’t know what exactly) deeply bugs me and prompts me to say this: ‘that depends what you mean by X’ is vastly more helpful/worth saying than is generally believed. It’s annoying, sure, but even when it’s merely dilatory it’s useful for putting everyone on the hook.

I’m ignorant of much about this phrase, but ‘God is no respecter of persons,’ seems to me to capture a lot about liberal neutrality. Why? Bc obviously ‘God,’ and God’s impartiality, is an ideal, not everyone’s, and so ‘God must be defended,’ period, and defended as valuable, period.

Aaron Ross Powell@aaronrosspowell.com · 3mo ago

We've been publishing a ton of great stuff at @liberalism.org. The latest is from @jacobtlevy.bsky.social on why defending liberal institutions of neutrality and impartiality means playing political hardball and punishing norm violators, rather than surrendering in the name of bipartisan niceness.

An ‘allonge’ in Montréal is translated as ‘long espresso,’ but I believe it to be different from a long espresso—it’s longer. It’s also, definitively, not an Americano. I like them. What are they? How are they made?

If you come visit me, then you’ll see a clean house. I’m not tidy, but wanted you to think I was. It’s super ordinary to seek to appear approvable, take steps to seem that way, and yet be not so hot in reality. Honesty is either rare, or is super common but less than ‘pure.’

Ok, an unusual, not ordinary, uncommon event happens, like someone does something rarely done, ok, don’t expect much of the explanation to be ordinary, common, least of all curiosity-satisfying. Also, expect explanations of it to occasionally be fully curiosity-satisfying.

My first ever podcast interview, where I discuss how liberalism should be understood as a practice, and the way that television shows help us in this task. Give it a listen! open.spotify.com/episode/5u30...

Sitcoms: A Defense with Shal Marriott

open.spotify.com

A year ago I became conscious of what I had been only semi conscious of for 40 years. S’like this: I had, s’pose, arachnophobe behavior w/o being conscious that fear of spiders generated it. Brought root fear to consciousness and my (weak) rational thought vaporized it. Was good and lasting.

@hasanasharp.bsky.social Hello! (Saw you this morning but recognized you a second after passing you.)

We say 18th cent (e.g.) writers were polymaths: strong across subjects known in their time and across more of them in ours. Gotta be. And yet, i’m reading a contemporary ‘polymath’ and it’s like, just write about singing. Don’t do the metaphysics of natural voices.

Pay me and I promise I will not promote your band. Your artistry is safe with me.

I like this band, but I didn’t realise this band was leading some double life in which it was promoting its music. David Bowie famously paid to have his music suppressed but its quality brought it to light.