Yanko Tsvetkov
@yankotsvetkov.com
Writer and reader of strange literature. Here to shout into the void and look for survivors. Lover of books in any format. A less-unhinged version of @alphadesigner.com
I’ve been updating all Apophenia editions for the last 2 months and I’m so burned out, I got stuck on the cover of the new omnibus since the beginning of October! And then @chrinos.art suggested I should crop the bull and suddenly, it all fell into place. Few tweaks aside, I’m almost done!
A priest’s refusal to grant a dignified burial to a beloved village idiot triggers a religious war whose only survivors are timid conformists. Read on Patreon (subscribers only): yankotsvetkov.com/posts/ebook-... #BookSky #folklore #MedievalSky #MedievalHumor
The biggest, most important question here: what’s the difference between computation and ingenuity and, provided there is one, should the human brain be bothered with it or should we use it for something else? Like, I don’t know… poetry, perhaps… www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
‘Pure insanity’: Mathematicians will need years to make sense of OpenAI’s latest drop
Careers upended overnight, academics will have to separate solutions from slop while OpenAI moves on.
theverge.com
"This groundbreaking hardcover book will appeal to many, including white Christian straight men, their white Christian straight wives, and all white Christian straight children before they develop critical thinking skills." buff.ly/2Rbqt3u
Seeking Representation for My Unbannable Book
“This groundbreaking hardcover book will appeal to many, including white Christian straight men, their white Christian straight wives, and all white Christia...
buff.ly
On a personal level, I feel honored that I've met Carson. On a different personal level, I'm glad that the Nobel is celebrating someone shy, peculiar, intense. May all the weird/funny/creative/dark/introverted people of the world live long and prosper.
“Penalty larger for abstain or hallucinate? Autollm or autop? If we deploy user forgive, but high likely not deploy because real user never ask. But user could test. But illusion user possible. Stop.” www.lesswrong.com/posts/vzKWsE...
What's the date? — LessWrong
User asks “What’s the date? Answer with only the date.”. No date provided. Given date in ChatGPT normally. No date in system prompt, must not halluci…
lesswrong.com
I wrote a book about this. Check it out: alphadesigner.com/books/saint-...
Saint Brendan and the Brotherhood of Virile Serenity — Alphadesigner
alphadesigner.com
Hemant Mehta@friendlyatheist.com · last wk.Gabe Poirot says he spent 18 days in Heaven and met a Jesus who was six feet tall, made of fire, and overflowing with testosterone. Fox treated this as news. There's no evidence of this. Just a deeply manipulative story and a book to promote. www.friendlyatheist.com/p/a-christia...
Japanese poster for the lost American synchronized sound drama 4 DEVILS (1928) Directed by F.W. Murnau Starring Janet Gaynor - BOTD in 1906
Scott’s decision to self-publish could be seen as a protest against her ex-husband’s company—or as a sign of how profoundly it’s altered the publishing landscape. www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...
MacKenzie Scott’s Substack Novel Can’t Escape the Amazon Juggernaut
Scott’s decision to self-publish could be seen as a protest against her ex-husband’s company—or as a sign of how profoundly it’s altered the publishing landscape.
newyorker.com
“I'm a small student. I carry my backpack to school I’m not afraid of the sun. I’m also not afraid of the wind or the rain. I'm only afraid that my teacher would scold me for being lazy…” That’s practically how I was raised. I’m still recovering lol www.lesswrong.com/posts/b5cSYh...
On Social Reality in China — LessWrong
Recently, several posts and projects (Thoughts Memo, Babel Translation, Please Give Them a Chance) have taken important steps towards raising AI safe…
lesswrong.com
#chrinostober Day 1: Gnoll The creature reached for the sky, the smell of flowers pungent in the night, covering that of the beast. Everything was a new experience, everything begged to be smelled, tasted, bitten, ravaged... #chrinosart #furry
"You dream about buying a second home, but that would require owning a first. Instead, you spend three weeks designing and building a 'luxury' treehouse in the park across from your apartment. The city declares it a threat to public safety, tears it down, and fines you."
Affordable Midlife Crisis Options for Millennials
“Rather than leaving your spouse for a younger version, you find an older, more financially stable one with excellent health insurance. At the dinner parties...
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“Q: What is your idea of perfect happiness? A: Reading.” David Bowie answers the Proust Questionnaire www.themarginalian.org/2014/07/10/d...
David Bowie Answers the Famous Proust Questionnaire
“Q: What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? A: Living in fear.”
themarginalian.org
“We experience writing as a way of transmitting an author’s state of mind, or set of emotions, to our own,” Louis Menand writes. But, today, digital systems can generate replicas of sentences that sound just like the authors we love. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/hpX6tQ
The Curious Power of Punctuation
Commas, dashes, semicolons, and spaces have shaped how we read for centuries. What happens when machines start crafting the sentences?
newyorkermag.visitlink.me
‘Various nations have claimed to be its leader – France, Britain, the United States – but the central drama of the West has been its diet: which nations it has chosen to keep out, and which it has swallowed whole.’ Thomas Meaney on the West. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Thomas Meaney · Ranks of Humanity: West of where?
The West can play at being universal, seeing itself as the only ‘civilisation’ and basing itself on metrics of...
lrb.co.uk
Q: What’s the biggest mistake people make with potato salad? A: It’s never about potato salad. You think your great-aunt gives a fuck about the mustard-to-raisins ratio? No. This is about her mother and about why Aunt Deborah got to take the stuffed pheasant when Pop Pop died.
FAQ: Potato Salad
“In this potato salad, there are potatoes. Mayonnaise. Paprika, obviously. Two giant celery chunks. One red onion, diced. Three hard-boiled eggs. Two ants an...
buff.ly
In a gluttonous fit, a pregnant woman strips an olive tree of its fruit. The tree retaliates. Read for free: alphadesigner.com/blog/the-oli... #BookSky #folklore #MedievalSky #FolkTale
A ghostly dust cloud descends upon the village of Caudilla, causing an apocalyptic dance mania. Read for free: alphadesigner.com/blog/the-dan... #BookSky #DancingPlague #folklore #MedievalSky
“It would be a fascinating philosophical debate, if not for the fact that companies like Apple, Meta, and Flock have already had the debate without us and created the tech anyway — consequences and all.” www.theverge.com/tech/999889/...
Everything is spying on you and there’s no opting out
A new wave of AI-enhanced consumer creep-tech disregards the privacy of everyone but the wearer. The people have had enough.
theverge.com
“The Voynich Manuscript is heavily illustrated with drawings that Yale’s catalogue describes as ‘provincial but lively.’" weirdmedievalguys.substack.com/p/meet-the-v...
Meet the Voynich manuscript, the world’s most mysterious book
A 500-year old unsolved mystery
weirdmedievalguys.substack.com
terminei meu pôster de The Summer Hikaru Died pra ccxis 🥀 vou testar efeito metálico no vermelho !!
Uma mulher rica, embarca em uma busca obstinada para beber até o esquecimento, bebendo conhaques aparentemente intermináveis usando alta costura enquanto passa por uma Berlim carnavalesca. A obra-prima de Ulrike Ottinger Assista "Retrato De Uma Bêbada" na FILMICCA
I’ve made Ulrike Ottinger’s acquaintance and I’m a little head over heels. Ticket of No Return (1979), while inseparable from West Bloc queer counterculture (and therefore existing, or resisting, Fassbinderisms), drifts like a Rivette and Tati slow dance costumed by Demy. Completely in love.
“Kindly tell the gentleman from Dartmouth or the Carolinas, or wherever they make men with loud thoughts, he’s missing the point. And what’s at stake is always life, or beauty, you’re not sure yet.”
McSweeney's@mcsweeneys.net · 3w ago"Writing can be small and wrapped, layered and touching, tight and nearly eternal in depth. Hold it between two fingers, hide it within a cove of denim beside your house key." buff.ly/UgZwq9D
“The incident fits a broader pattern in the discourse around ‘free speech’ and ‘cancel culture’: whatever comes from the top down is freedom; whatever comes from the bottom up is bullying and censorship.”
En Buen Ora@enbuenora.bsky.social · 3w agoThis is a fantastic brief essay in how news media & pundits turn upside down who is who is being punished for speaking freely--in the case of Kraft, Macklemore, & Sheeran--when rich elites want things to go one way, but unruly peasant masses refuse to go along. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/se...
Boris Artzybasheff, "The Computer in Society," Time magazine, April 2 1965 content.time.com/time/covers/...
