Generative AI doesn’t generate information; it generates words. – Hannah Cyrus This very impressive cover was called to my attention by Radley Balko, who also supplied “pope”. The other links above the video were provided by Mike Siegel; Tracy Quan; Ryan Marino and Stephen Lemons; Nun Ya; IncarcerNation; and Mike Masnick, in that order. Metaphor alert. Librarians vs. slop generators. R.I.P. Martha Ann Lillard and Louise Lasser. Maggie admitted to herself, “I like this pope”. Good riddance to…
Right after a session. “Your problems don’t sound so bad to me,” the therapist said. Two hours later he was swinging from a rope.
It is frustrating how powerful a good name is, or how destructive a poor name is. A name is that imprecise or distracting can derail what it represents. It is difficult to give a topic the breath it deserves when you are choking on the nomenclature. Evil can be hidden behind a pleasant name, or obscured from criticism by an awkward one. If you are fighting for a cause who's name requires a subtitle to convey its sentiment, you are carrying weight that your opponents likely aren't[^1]. A…
Set in the near future, a detective accused of murdering his wife has 90 minutes to prove his innocence to an advanced AI judge. Welcome to the future. Set in a future where you’re considered guilty until proven innocent, under permanent monitoring in a surveillance-ruled society, it’s in a very-near future that is probably one law bill away from becoming reality. Chris Pratt is good playing the officer on trial, while Rebecca Ferguson nails at playing a flat plain soul-less AI judge who’s…
A small independent movie theater near me with a reputation for witty marquees put up the following display to advertise Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey":Before there were the Jews ... there was The Odyssey.This set off a lot of consternation. All the local papers have stories on it. It was included in an all-congregant email sent by my Rabbi, alongside other concerning events such as a Jewish community member's car defaced with swastikas (very concerning) and the majority of Oregon's House…
It’s Sunday, and it’s time for another “picdump!” Here are the memes, pictures, and cartoons floating around the internet that I found interesting or relevant this week. Share and enjoy! Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot The post Sunday picdump for Sunday, July 19 appeared first on The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the…
Here’s the big idea in Keith Johnstone’s book Impro: Children are naturally creative, but are violently formed into repressed adults by Western culture and education The process of becoming more creative and expressive is largely a process of unlearning these habits of repression Improv — improvisational comedy — is thus not just the skeleton key for learning to act, but for unlocking a more authentically human way of life This take doesn’t sound particularly original, but references to Impro…
Links Posted to Thoughts The Week of 07-12-2026 There were 5 links posted this week. 07/17/2026 @07:27 The AI LayoffsIf, for most of the economy, the "AI" recession continues to look much like other recessions, that's good news for anxious policy-makers. At least they know what to expect. The much bigger hazard will be the financial wildfire that starts in the tech industry itself. With trillions of dollars in leveraged financing, much of it circular, Enron is not a good model because it's too…
One of the goals for Hawkworld is to give Hawkfans a way to find the comics featuring Hawkman, Hawkwoman, and Hawkgirl. You often have to go over the solicitations with a fine-tooth comb several times to find comics with the Hawks. Even that is usually not enough. There are several ways, but here is one method that you can use to find the Winged Wonders in the comics. League of Comic Geeks is one of my go-to sites for comics info. One of their features is a list of the recent comics for each…
I wrote about this on my substack blog the other day but realized I should put it here too, just in case. I got news last week that Vimeo on Demand is going to shut down. I have several videos posted there – so if you have bought any of those – first of all – thanks, those videos were/are a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. And I appreciate the support I got from readers who bought them…helped me keep my head above water. Once they disappear from Vimeo, I’ll still have them – and I’ll try to…
I knew it was legal to sell fake medicine in the US. It sucks, but "homeopathy" has been around forever here, and the "medicine" is just sugar pills, so it's not going to actively hurt anyone (outside of scamming them out of a few dollars.) Our government decided banning them isn't a hill worth dying on, so these fake remedies have been grandfathered into the culture. I accept this. What I didn't know is just how lax the regulations are for selling such a product here. I had never looked…
I’m enjoying Yaroslav Hrytsak, Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation, trans. Dominique Hoffman (PublicAffairs, 2024). It allows me to see this history within its broader European and even global contexts. That is the best way to make a national history make sense.
Located on the southwestern outskirts of Xinying, Tainan, this was a former transshipment station for salt produced at the solar evaporation ponds of the Qigu Saltworks (七股鹽場) and Budai Saltworks (布袋鹽場). In the mid-1950s salt production outpaced domestic consumption, prompting the state to invest in infrastructure to trade salt on the international market. Construction of this particular facility was overseen by the nearby Xinying Sugar Factory (新營糖廠) with labor provided by the Veterans Affairs…
Star Trek was vibe coding before it was cool.
Before The Office made its debut, the landscape of TV comedies was driven by Friends and Baywatch. Studios wanted to see beautiful people cracking jokes. The British version of The Office was the antithesis of that, and the showrunner of the American version wanted to keep that spirit. When Allison Jones was casting The Office, she looked for emerging actors. The casting call used the words “non-star” and “unknown.” As they auditioned, she told them, “If you think you’re doing too little,…
This is a year of anniversaries. Moody Bible Institute turns 140 and Moody Radio turns 100. I listen to Moody Radio almost daily. I think Moody Church and Moody Bible Institute are the premier Evangelical Christian sword in today's world... Celebrating 100 years of Moody Radio, connecting generations through timeless broadcasts and iconic moments captured in history. This is a year of anniversaries. Moody Bible Institute turns 140 and Moody Radio turns 100. I listen to Moody Radio almost daily.…
In the UK as elsewhere, we’ve recently seen the far right orchestrate a campaign against refugees, presenting them as dangerous to women and girls and the vanguard of an invasion aimed at destroying Britain. Asylum seekers, forced by the goverment into hotels pending the examination of their claims, have found themselves surrounded by angry mobs, demanding their removal from the neigbourhood. In one wave of riots, a hotel was set on fire, and the occupants feared for their lives. Recently in…
One of the OGs of Bear circulated a question that got me thinking about time travel. What have been examples of great cities? Why did they achieve greatness? How did they contribute to the world? Here’s my list of globally dominant cities: City Period Problem Contribution Key Figures Athens 450–400 BC How should humans think? Philosophy, democracy, reason Pericles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides Rome 50–200 AD How do you govern vast societies? Law, engineering, administration, empire…
Debating anti-LLM zealots and toxicity is a huge waste of time and energy. Just wait and they will become irrelevant; they have a short expiration time.
Not enough people realize that China's push for open source AI is an explicit CCP strategy to crash the US stock market and economy.People are like, "Oh my God, it's so cheap! It's amazing how China is so much better world citizens than the US!"The reason it's so cheap is because they are subsidizing it in order to damage the US labs, which could crash the U.S. stock market, which could crash the U.S. economy.And the moment that happens, Taiwan will instantly vote to rejoin China.Kimi K3 just…
This technology is a free, easily accessible weapon put into the hands of the worst people in the world. – “Jane Doe 4” Shame, Shame (#1504) It’s only a year since Zuckerberg was forced by public outcry to cancel this: [Facebook has] launched its inaugural [CGI] model…in…[an] effort to compete with the likes of…GPT Images…and Google’s [moronically-named] Nano Banana 2 in the [slop] race [to the bottom]. The new model, called Muse Image, [has been embedded like a tick] into the Instagram…
This post follows the journey of Hawkgirl in the DCU from July 11, 2023 ( the day Isabela Merced was announced as Hawkgirl)! It has been confirmed that Hawkgirl will be in the Superman sequel and may also make some more appearances in Peacemaker Season 2. Here are Isabela Merced's Instagram, IMDb, and Wikipedia pages! DC Universe Wiki Caution: There are spoilers ahead, so watch the movie and TV shows first! Click here for the Hawkgirl/Isabela Merced Gallery! February 6: Isabela Merced’s…
NYCSim is a truly impressive digital twin for New York City. Part real-time spatial platform and part living sandbox, this browser-based simulator allows you to explore a virtual Manhattan from the comfort of your own home. By pulling in live municipal transit data, real-time air quality metrics, and local weather feeds, the platform transforms a static city plan into a living, breathing map.&
Saturday 18th July 2026 First up for today’s blog is a quick update for subscribers who receive each blog by email at 06:00 to confirm Thursday’s post about Caversham’s route 22 being axed was updated online at 06:15 on Thursday just after publication to take account of ‘Breaking News’ that the route had been reprieved following a late decision by Reading Council to provide “a one-off capital grant to allow a new electric bus which, alongside existing Zero Emission Bus Regional Area (ZEBRA)…
Happy Saturday, everyone! Here on Global Nerdy, Saturday means that it’s time for another “picdump” — the weekly assortment of amusing or interesting pictures, comics, and memes I found over the past week. Share and enjoy! Screenshot The post Saturday picdump for Saturday, July 18 appeared first on Global Nerdy.
Friday, July 17, 2026 - 20:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Anne Lister was widely read and infinitely curious about scientific topics. When she turned her curiosity to the human body, there was an underlying purpose. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #567 Clark 2023 Anne Lister’s Search for the Anatomy of Sex About LHMP Full citation: Clark, Anna. 2023. “Anne Lister’s Search for the Anatomy of Sex” in Decoding Anne Lister: From the Archives to ‘Gentleman Jack’, Chris Roulston & Caroline…
The midterms won't save us. The only thing that will save us is a really smart think piece here on Substack, or perhaps the perfect meme.
This week’s newsletter from Culture.pl contains several articles on language, one of which, by Mikołaj Gliński, answers How much Polish is there in Esperanto? Here are some excerpts: The Slavic Esperanto lexicon is generally considered to derive from two Slavic languages, both of which Zamenhof knew very well – Russian and Polish. While Russian, as he later recalled, was his favourite during his early days, as well as the language of the larger part of his linguistic output, Polish was the…
If you are building a commonplace book, you must learn how to create an ontology that works across books. Unfortunately, developing this ontology is anything but trivial. We must be able to store ideas (entries) and find them later to use them in our essays or conversations.Even worse, storing entries and looking up entries have inverse cost functions, i.e. the more time you take to store something, the easier it is to find later. The less time you take to store an entry, the harder it is to…
