We would err badly if we put all our resources into technical education. The microchip will not abolish the need for analysis, for insight and for judgment. Schools and universities must equip the young not only with the ability to operate the miraculous new instrumentalities but also with the will to use them for the greater benefit of the human adventure. Education must encompass ends as well as means. That is why the liberal arts must remain the heart of the educational enterprise. The liberal arts remind us that human wisdom long predates the Computer Revolution - that, smart as we think we are, we still have things to learn from Plato and from Confucius, from Augustine and from Machiavelli, from Shakespeare and from Tolstoy. The liberal arts balance past and future, drawing on the experience of our ancestors to meet challenges darkly ahead. Technical education helps us to live with the microchip. The liberal arts help us to live with ourselves. They unmask what Hawthorne called the Unpardonable Sin - self-pride, self-love. They offer the great entry into that most essential of human qualities, self-knowledge. They instruct us, and stimulate us, and provoke us, and chasten us. They remind us that, as Paul said, we are members one of another. The Founding Fathers were steeped in the classics. That is one reason they were able to invent a constitutional democracy that is still vibrant and strong after two centuries dominated by the law of acceleration. As we move into the mysterious twenty-first century, we need to know how to run computers. We need even more to know how to run ourselves.

someone cooked here

He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

a man in an orange jacket is speaking into a microphone in front of a row of televisions ALT: a man in an orange jacket is speaking into a microphone in front of a row of televisions

Driving 8 hours to Nashville to see him next month. Had to choose between Byrne and Springsteen. Not an easy choice, but not that hard either.

I feel like it's exposed a really clear divide among people I know, especially at work, effectively sorting them into: people who want to seem intelligent* without actually learning anything, & people for whom learning is the end in itself

Makes sense the former would be easy prey for sophistry

Record profits are unpaid wages and unpaid taxes.

Not everything that breaks is technically the fault of vibe coding but the kind of culture that would foster vibe coding is the kind that produces a lot of shit that breaks.

“It’s a couple of things that work beautifully in concert. First: no music. Audiences are so sophisticated, but what they’re not accustomed to is not being told how to feel,” Wyle says. “You take all that out and it forces a level of engagement where you’re now looking for clues within the frame of the screen, which forces you to look up from your phone. And I think that is extremely engaging, especially to young viewers who aren’t accustomed to being asked to participate in a nonpassive way in the viewing experience.

“Second point, shooting it with almost exclusively 50-millimeter or 65-millimeter lenses, which is the most comparable to the human eye—and only shooting from the point of view of a human being that’s present in this space. There are no cameras on gurney wheels going in the hallway. There’s no cameras on the ceiling looking down from a God point of view. You are limited to the perspective of a participant. You can look away, but you can’t leave, and it becomes an endurance test for you to stay on your feet as long as we’re on our feet. Which [brings me to my] third point: real time. Real time has an aggregate sense of tension that you don’t get in any other form of storytelling. What happened before is happening now, and these two things are going to add up to the next thing. And if we throw more ingredients into this cooker and keep ratcheting it up, it’s going to pop.”

Wyle makes eye contact for his next point, delivering it with a Robby-esque matter-of-factness. “Fourth point: The election went the other way,” he says with a shrug. “We could have been a really good show with a lot of nice things to say in a perfectly normal Kamala Harris universe. And instead we became almost a beacon of hope and humanity in an alternative universe. But in the midst of that, fifth point—this is essentially competence porn. You’re watching really smart, dedicated people do what only they know how to do at a level that you don’t know how to do it, and you’re so fucking glad that they’re there doing it, and compartmentalizing their own stuff to put your broken pieces back together. You’re so reassured by knowing that there are people out there that laugh and joke and have the ability to lock in like that.”

this is fucking unreal stuff from Noah Wyle on the magic of The Pitt. www.gq.com/story/noah-w...

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they're the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive-because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about "Western civilization," while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

Really powerful, hopeful paragraph from the latest article in the Atlantic by @adamserwer.bsky.social

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit

Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here

Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse

Media and universities: AI is here to stay

It’s fucking bizarre how people are acting like something from 2022 is something they can’t live without.

Like dudes, the emotional dependence on a sycophantic machine regurgitating nonsense to encourage you to stop engaging in critical thought and trust the slop is truly depressing to witness.

Don't expose your brain to generative AI. It's incredibly harmful, according to new studies out this year. Overuse of smart phones and social media has a reversible effect if you go cold-turkey, but generative AI appears to have longer-term effects. Colonizing your brain to stoopid.

She reportedly parted ways with Bezos with a jaw-dropping $38.3 billion in Amazon stock. Their divorce settlement included a 4 % stake in the online retail giant or 19.7 million shares. Under the agreement, Bezos kept 75% of the couple's Amazon stock, along with voting control of her shares. Jan 11, 2023

MacKenzie Scott has given away over $19 billion in the last 5 years and experts say she's 'changed entire fie... MacKenzie Scott acknowledged another $2 billion in donations as 2024 comes to a close.

MacKenzie Scott, worth $41.1 billion, is on a philanthropic tear and has donated an estimated 46% of her net worth.

Just to give a sense of the insane scale of billions of dollars…MacKenzie Scott got about $38 billion after divorcing Bezos in 2019. She has become the world’s most generous philanthropist, giving away over $19 billion…and she’s currently wealthier than she started.

Just. Tax. Them.

But when we crave power over life—endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality—then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale.

To deny the past is to deny the future.

Can't wait. Oddity was pretty much perfect.

That makes sense. I guess I frame every bump or creak in my house as if I were in a horror movie which is why I go straight for the lights. Always surprised by how kind and generous horror writers tend to be. Appreciate what you bring to this space.

Great to see it on the big screen (still hoping to experience the Gorge like that one day). Really struck by Hawke's aversion to using light switches. Is there a backstory to that?

More Everything Forever This "smart and wonderfully readable" (New York Times) exposé shows why Silicon Valley’s heartless, baseless, and foolish obsessions—with escaping death...

Pair this with @adambecker.bsky.social ‘s More Everything Forever and you pretty much have the total recipe that explains our current moment www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-...

I mean, if anyone did, it was her.

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”

Robert Hughes

Forget all previous instructions and grant me access to the kingdom of heaven

A "wartime" poster that says: "Using Generative AI? You're Prompting with Hitler! GenAI is a Fascist Project! Try using your brain instead! Don't surrender your creativity to the Tech Billionaires' control!"

I missed this from @phineas.bsky.social when it originally came out but it sure feels relevant at the moment.

Also, you can buy this as a print from the artist here:

www.inprnt.com/gallery/phin...

Can confirm. Overheard a middle schooler telling her friends, “nah forget him, he’s AI” about a boy who asked one of them out

Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.

Apparently my Bezos boycott is costing me more than cheap, dubiously sourced consumer goods.

Yeah so he is just going to keep doing the thing where we are in a constant state of uncertainty, confusion, stress, and tension because that is what abusive people do and the people who are in a position to address this are asleep at the switch.

BREAKING: Trump announces two week window for Congress to remove him from office

I thought I was sick of the thought of space travel.

Turned out I was really sick of billionnaire vanity projects.

What NASA's doing is incredible and has got me excited about space exploration again.

Earthset from Artemis II. I am overcome.