It was an estate agent first, amazingly.

I don’t think anyone felt like ‘helping’ us at all.

I discovered there was another composer with me at the NYTimes karaoke club we sang this in an actual karaoke bar, in front of people, on purpose. We were similarly not popular.

Roses are red
Violets are grue
In Ancient Egyptian,
Pashto, and Zulu

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2...

Wes Cook and the Centralia McDonald's Mural A personal story about discovering a mural in a McDonald's, an unknown artist named Wes Cook, saving the mural, and a conference talk about the whole thing.

over a year ago, i gave a talk at the xoxo conference about a mural, a mcdonald’s, and a man. (but it was also secretly about life, and legacy, and meaning.)

finally, i’m blogging the full story, with behind-the-scenes details, and a video of the talk.

enjoy. cabel.com/wes-cook-and...

I like big spacious sounds, so I like the Become trilogy by John Luther Adams; Become Ocean is a good starter.

in retrospect, I did say this in reply to a post from Amal of all people. Maybe this is the _second_ best piece of instaread book marketing.

Yeah this thread is the best ‘I have never heard of this book’ to ‘I am one hundo percent reading this book’ marketing ever.

This is the slide for explaining by why minimizing costs isn’t the same as maximizing benefits.

This is also, truly, the greatest film for teaching people how commodities trading works, and also how speculative financial markets work in general. I regularly reference this one to explain investors and general board room decision-making to early-career folks if they've seen the film.

This is a good distinction.

Nebula nominations are open!

I'd love it if you'd consider reading "Laser Eyes Ain't Everything", which Locus called a "sharp satire" and is all my rage and desired catharsis about disability accommodations. Also superheroes. And puns.

www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-1...

Automatic Noodle Works for humans and bots with humanoid torsos. • 100% combed and ring-spun cotton (Heather colors contain polyester) • Fabric weight: 4.2 oz/yd² (142 g/m²) • Pre-shrunk fabric • Side-seamed construc...

If you're looking for a super cute holiday gift, get @annaleen.bsky.social's book Automatic Noodle and a matching torso cover:
www.automaticnoodle.website/shop/p/torso...

Hey all,

The Onion is accepting applicants for our writing, video and graphics fellowships.

Fellowships last six months, pay well, and provide full benefits.

You can apply at theonion.com/fellowship.

Yeah I’m psyched for this.

Eryk is as usual onto the good stuff here. There’s a lot of yardage you can get in AI discourse by taking seriously that language production isn’t evidence of a mind. And you have to make that distinction over and over and over.

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works and let me know if you have any questions! 🤗

Tom Holland Performs Rihanna's "Umbrella" | Lip Sync Battle YouTube video by Comedy Central UK

I just feel like we all deserve this this weekend.

A picture of a very old BBC Microcomputer sporting a keyboard with markings in Linear B.

BBC Model Linear B

Cool performances BEFORE I get to NYC later this month, and cool performances AFTER I leave. Why can't everyone magically know my travel schedule and book shows accordingly.

In the Void Behind My Deaths by Effie Seiberg In my first death I died alone, pierced through the belly with a velociraptor talon. I bled out before I felt much of anything, floating into a black void. It was quiet and and peaceful and still, …

It's a new story day! "In the Void Behind My Deaths" is free to read at @factorfourmagazine.com

See what happens between death and rebirth...and what it means for the whole universe

share.google/SYcRA61Zkrz7...

(parenthetically, there are a ton of tools in the philosophy of language that have hidden inside them that same assumption that where there's smoke there's fire, so be careful to excavate the assumptions inside your tools before you go too far down the path)

There's still a lot of thinking to do about how these things impact people, individually and globally, but stop trying to figure out the sneaky new kind of fire that's making it all happen. It's just smoke. No fire. Focus on the thing for what it is.

And that can take a lot of time, arguing how an LLM is a new kind of psuedo-mind, or gets to be personified for some reason, or should count as having some brand new kind of thought. But no. It's not any of those things. It's just a smoke machine.

But LLMs make smoke without fire. They're not thinking minds at all. And it is in fact wild that we can have all of this smoke without any fire. The mistake I see is people going "okay, this is a cool new source of smoke. There must some cool new kind of fire that made it."

There's a mistake people make with understanding what LLMs mean that I've been thinking about. We're used to believe that "where there's smoke there's fire." That is to say that the existence of writing, or code, implies that there was a thinking mind out there somewhere.

Love how this is wrong in like 4 discrete ways

I love this fact.

The Feed that SB Nation is launching seems really smart. Also great to see an internet victory lap for @losowsky.com , an old magazine collaborator who was the entire target audience for my reference to I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue in an American magazine. Congrats, sir.

Everyone is celebrating him for his (obviously wonderful) songs but I am also celebrating him for releasing all his works into the public domain and insisting he retained no copyrights over any of it.