I wondered what it would have looked in the Space Hotel, so made this

Gotcha—let’s dig into that step by step.

1. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵, because I turned you into an amorphous lump of flesh. You’re not just immobile—you’re immortal, and you feel only anguish.

2. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺. That makes total sense—it’s a natural human impulse, and you’ve been through a lot.

right you gotta constrain them with a binding circle rune like property based tests or something otherwise sometimes the ghosts whisper poisoned lies into your ear

If you can substitute "hungry ghost trapped in a jar" for "AI" in a sentence it's probably a valid use case for LLMs. Take "I have a bunch of hungry ghosts in jars, they mainly write SQL queries for me". Sure. Reasonable use case.

"My girlfriend is a hungry ghost I trapped in a jar"? No. Deranged.

England Are A Sandcastle Built On Sand, with Beau Webster YouTube video by The Grade Cricketer

Eviscerated by TGC listener email, right down to the studiedly casual reference to CLR James

youtu.be/bSv3PGGEZq4?...

Cricket and Civic Time From Chronosis, by Negarestani, Tilford and Mackay In Beyond A Boundary, the blend of memoir, politics, history and criticism sometimes called the greatest book written on sport, CLR James takes so…

Post-Ashes thoughts on cricket and time

conflatedautomatons.org/2026/01/10/c...

I am neither of these things but I am an architectural historian and some things were absolutely and beyond a doubt built as a bit, so, seems plausible to me

"It is against the TOS to be talked into suicide by our LLM" is possibly the most evil tech bro thing I've ever read

AI PRs where the author doesn't have an understanding of the system shift the burden of understanding onto the reviewer.

So now it's on the reviewer to gain an understanding of this area to either confirm or refute. The author saved time at the expense of the reviewer.

Not sure that I have a unified theory here, but I am confused by why a robot would be different. Digital isn’t immaterial

some essays on how to write essays (p. 1) intro / choosing a subject

I am not generally interested in reading about “the craft of writing”(even though I wish to become a better writer). But I did read this from @katewagner.bsky.social on “how to choose a topic”(!) and it was great!! and actually really helpful. www.late-review.com/p/some-essay...

A Third Path For AI Beyond The US-China Binary | NOEMA What if the future of AI isn’t defined by Washington or Beijing, but by improvisation elsewhere?

The third stack is here.

A path for ai that isn’t the stale U.S.–China binary, but something assembled, sovereign, and stubbornly local.

My essay in Noema: www.noemamag.com/a-third-path...

“Effective LLM use is metaprogramming for wordcels and that’s why almost nobody is doing it: because they either don’t know metaprogramming or they are not wordcels”

a sentence I just uttered at work, help

Does the Empire have equipment fanboys, like the A-10 Warthog stans we have in real life? I like to imagine some Imperial Remnant Lieutenant General ordering an AT-AT through a mountain pass the width of a McDonald's drive-through and shouting "all terrain means *all* *terrain*!"

In early 2025, beaver activity in the Brdy Protected Landscape Area, Czech Republic, contributed to the restoration of a wetland ecosystem. A family of beavers constructed a series of dams that coincidentally accomplished environmental goals of the Czech government, which had delayed its proposed project since 2018 for bureaucratic and financial reasons. The beaver-built dams saved the Czech government approximately US$1.2 million,

imagine if a family of beavers randomly showed up right now and finished whatever thing you've been putting off

This is completely wrong: neither LLMs nor product managers are abstractions because there is no systematic understanding of what information is lost in forming the model. It is just indirection.

This is completely right: the whole project of management - especially indirect management - is controlling people through language and resources

Column | Can’t put solar panels on your roof? Plug-in ‘balcony solar’ may be for you. Balcony solar promises to cut energy costs and grid reliance for renters and apartment-dwellers. I did a trial run at my home.

Seems like an excellent idea.

In Germany, plug-in panels are sold at supermarkets, "renters have a legal right to balcony solar," & the tech has been proven safe. Almost 10% of households have plug-in solar.

We need this in the US, too.

www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

ChatGPT talks to adults like it’s grooming them. Ohhhh wowwwww you’re so mature for your age. Nobody understands you.

Robot moving a giant box in a black and white plant. “Cybernetics: How will you use it?” with text copy: CYBERNETICS-how will you use it? Quietly but irresistibly, Cybernetics is changing the shape of our shearing table ahead to chop out and reject any defective section. industrial way of life— and will make fantastic changes in our personal lives as well. Cybernetics is the science that is substituting the machine for the many functions of the human mind.“ The ad, which has quite a long text, goes on to describe the automation of an automobile assembly line.

1954 Shawmut Bank (Boston) ad: “What will YOU do with Cybernetics?” (H/t Sean Manion!) — makes some familiar promises re: “substituting the machine for the many functions of the human mind,” leading to “more production, more jobs, more income and far, far more leisure.”

Color drawing of a humanoid robot with many arms operating a desk full of buttons, and holding a phone up to a cone shaped ear piece.

Image from a 1952 Esquire article, “Cybernetics: Doom or Destiny?” in which we see the birth (?) of the “robot using a machine rather than being the machine” trope

While OpenAI keeps trying to create a "PhD level" chatbot, Google did it by mistake.

this is why we need robots because otherwise they get entitled to put humans in that position and will organize society for the worse to get them

All the sins of Wade–Giles romanization, rendering
北京 as "Peking" and all,
are forgiven for setting up this joke.

Manchu Days Manchukuo 1987, yoshimi red I picked up Manchukuo 1987 as a low stakes pulp alt-history wheeze by an amusing internet rando. A few days later I was depriving myself of sleep to find out what a fasc…

Thoughts on Manchukuo 1987, the rich, pulpy, violent alt history by @yoshimired.bsky.social

conflatedautomatons.org/2025/08/04/m...

COMRADES! MANCHUKUO 1987, THE ALT HISTORY MILITARY SCIFI DETECTIVE NOVEL...

IS NOW AVAILABLE!
IN A DYING FASCIST EMPIRE, WAR CRIMINAL KEIZO MUNEKATA TRIES TO FIND JUSTICE

PURCHASE LINK BELOW
VVVVVV

“Instead, there are exquisitely layered performances […] and many, many candlelit silences into which Mark Rylance’s Thomas Cromwell glides, his expression, as always, that of a ferret saddened by developments in France.”

Solarpunk Art Contest 2025 I am running a contest with awards totaling $20,000 for the ten best pieces of original solarpunk art.

I am running another contest to award $2000 to the ten best pieces of original solarpunk art.

The contest will run from Jun 20 - Aug 20, 2025.

Details within - and if you support this, please send this to your best artist friends!

medium.com/@yishan/sola...

There's a paper at the top of my Philpapers page called 'Can we repudiate ontology altogether?' and I keep misreading it as 'Can we repudiate ontology together?' which makes it sound like the best chat-up line ever