well, if this works the way the mob does, you raise prices on one to justify raising prices on the other, and then keep the cycle going until everyone is immiserated and dependent.

Honestly Turnitin is probably negotiating a deal like this right now.

Here's my one AI prediction: the one company that can reliably 100% certainly tell whether or not a piece of text is llm-generated is the company that generated it, so eventually companies will sell searchable databases to schools/universities. Kind of a plagiarism protection racket.

It would be very surprising if “people are generally self-deceived and pretty bad at forming rational beliefs” and “people’s dissatisfaction with the economy is entirely rational and grounded in their obvious economic facts” were both true, and yet that seems to be the default Bluesky position.

“We need expertise in the complexities of betrayal in our espionage work, which is why we’ve hired this known traitor to head our counterintelligence program. no one has more experience in selling out their country.”

Yeah the process by which the anglo-Iranian oil company became “British Petroleum” is revealing! I

object lesson in why its important to study history in detail rather than just getting broad strokes: until i educated myself i seriously believed the US were equally as culpable in the overthrow of irans democratic government as the brits were. in fact the brits were 10.000.000x as culpable

Self evident, really, transubstantiation in a chemical
formula is god—good—gold—glad—glut—glute—gluten. That’s also why Jesus has a great butt on crucifixes when he’s made out of gold.

this is the funniest one—paraphrasable as, "we spent so little time thinking that we're characterizing something a pope didn't do as entangling himself in politics."

Like, Pope Julius II led armies in the field and Alexander VI was *the* Borgia, but sure, let's pretend this is a c20 thing

For better and for worse, our contentment is only very loosely linked to underlying economic conditions. People managed to live happy lives in c19 levels of poverty, which should give us pause in assuming clear correlations.

The bit that I will offer by way of mild disagreement is that many times in history have had inequality much greater than ours and culture much more centered on the lives of the ultra wealthy, yet that has not been an obstacle making it intrinsically impossible to live a fulfilling and happy life.

I think it's instructive to ask why one can't say "I am middle-class, can mostly afford things, have seen my financial circumstances and personal consumption improve somewhat over the last five years, and many of my friends are similarly positioned": it's because the internet will yell at you

lol

One advantage of using Alpert to think through the problem is that he brings out how the issue here isn't really partisan—it's not fighting about how good the Biden economy was or whatever—but rooted in our sense that anything short of excellence is reason for dissatisfaction.

One enters Stancil discourse with some trepidation, but I do think we've lost the capacity as a culture to be content or satisfied with our lives, and we express that by bemoaning "the economy."

I keep recommending Avram Alpert's "The Good-Enough Life," but it's great on this.

Let me tell about the peculiar agony of having an eighty year old woman at church yesterday open a conversation by saying “did you get my email?”

Like it’s not possible to say more directly ”you’re going to hell”

the analytic tradition has to defend itself on the grounds of style because its politics and substance suck.

What grounds could there be for citing Searle positively in contrast to Judith Butler? Have you considered that Butler writes with lots of rhetorical questions and they’re very annoying?

Jack Ryan and noted Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon face off in the potboiler to end all potboilers, The Da Vinci Danger.

iirc Erdoğan‘s rise was enabled by his refusal to aid in Iraq, denying Incirlik in particular. so maybe item 4 is “more plausible than it seemed.”

Legit our art consistently fails us in giving the world brilliant villains

Oh that’s better

Epic fail, got a subhuman paintmogging a looksmaxing Jesus over here

Caesar Humanist

It is I think the smugness that’s troubling. I can buy knowing something but not being able to act, but then don’t fault others for being in the same position.

18th-19th century world history:

I think the downside is this: “huh, the American People don’t want to impeach the President, it appears they do support the war” style coverage.

the new American civics test: explain this scene in a way that doesn’t make you sound bloodthirsty

I think this is downstream of a social system that weighs false negatives as much better than false positives. in our system no one says anything until the evidence is decisive.

Black Panther -Killmonger killed Klaue YouTube video by Tanvir TMH

i dare your close reading to account for this scene and still contend that he’s the good guy:

youtu.be/vpFHIpgQNpU?...

There is a whole scene whose sole purpose is to reveal who he really is underneath the revolutionary rhetoric!