It is the celebration of what PEOPLE can do through persistence, practice, innovation, the honing of technique. It is the fact that it was made by a person - and that person could be ME! - that inspires awe.
Isn't awe the fundamental pleasure of art? It’s the reason a postcard of a Van Gogh is not as valuable as the original, capitalist frameworks aside. To see a work that takes your breath away because of the detail, or originality, or scope, is to experience awe BECAUSE it was created by a human.
AI embodies these values by placing its emphasis on the product, erasing the sources on which it is based & trained, obscuring technique, the human hand, the imagination that gave rise to the images it produces. It is incapable of encoding meaning, of gestalt, of wonder.
AI is a contribution to the declining search for awe, or at least a symptom of the late capitalist moment we live in that places human value only in relationship to productivity or GDP - we value the product, irrespective of the process of its creation, or of its creator.
Indeed, as much as our scientific achievements inspire awe, the humanities are where we make sense of that wonder, where we situate its importance in our lives, where we ask what role awe plays in our constitution as humans - it’s part of the question about the meaning of life.
I've been thinking exactly this for some time now. With the recent focus on space - Artemis II, Project Hail Mary, etc. - I've been thinking a lot about the experience of wonder and how we seem to have lost wonder as a driving force of our humanity.
BREAKING NEWS: Incoming University of Michigan president Kent Syverud has a form of brain cancer and will not take up the presidency, he and the university announced Wednesday morning. www.chronicle.com/article/u-of...
My surfers?
Butthole.
It's a multi-person cast, and every one was delightful. You can see all the names at the bottom of this page libro.fm/audiobooks/9...
Right now, Wild Dark Shore, before that Parable of the Sower, before that, The Correspondent which was WONDERFUL (esp. the audiobook) but all these books are about death or apocalypse. What am I doing to myself??
The group bike ride for Alex Pretti is about to depart in Minneapolis, stopping at his memorial, then Renee Good’s, and finishing at the VFW. If you can join, hop on anywhere. It’s a warm 17° & sunny!
I’ve never seen this many cyclists for a group ride. ⚡️✊🏽⚡️🚲⚡️✊🏽⚡️ #RIPPretti
🤮
It's obviously good that citizens with smartphones can create multiple records of these shootings and undercut propaganda and government lies about them. But I find it a little deranging that being an informed news consumer in 2026 requires watching what are essentially snuff videos in slow-mo.
Poem written on Google sheets by Isabelle Correa
I Wrote This Poem on Company Time
by @isabellewrites.bsky.social
#smallpoemsunday
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social
with thanks to @katierpoet.bsky.social for introducing me to her work on her substack. #poetry
My dad turns 79 tomorrow and his birthday wish is to see Anaconda
The Cane Toad New Years Eve spa party was in full swing when Security spotted the camera. He then put a stop to the filming...
#NaturePhotography #toads #AustralianWildlife #wildoz
Ooh, this looks fun. Kodak going back to its roots, yesss
OK, update. Is this correct? Is there any plan to add a sensor? Otherwise OOF... seeclickfix.com/issues/20572...
Yassss
Oooooh, I didn't know this was going to be a thing. Awesome!
Horrific story, but note that the cyclist did not die. Instead, he will need significant, costly medical care for the rest of his life thanks to the officer's actions
Fellow elder millennials, this is the "Auto-Tune the News" dude, how's that for a blast from the past
Mirroring police tactics for humor. Sound on!
I’m happy that the big kooky liberated Portland frogs have emerged as an aesthetic backlash to the dank Pepes
Sora is not the real problem here. The real problem is that in 12, at most 24 months, there will be a Sora clone from Tencent or Alibaba that is just as good and can be run by anybody with a 5099, at which point everyone in society needs to rapidly agree to treat all digital video as fake, period.
If *your department head and your dean* can be removed for supporting your colleague in teaching in their area of expertise, then you have no academic freedom. In a functional sense, you don't work at a university at all.
