onfocus

She also wrote that President Trump’s own words hurt his case, as his hyperbolic descriptions of Portland as war-ravaged and burning showed that his “determination was simply untethered to the facts.”

The truth still matters in some courts.

This is a list of writing and formatting conventions typical of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, with real examples taken from Wikipedia articles and drafts. It is meant to act as a field guide to help detect undisclosed AI-generated content on Wikipedia. This list is descriptive, not prescriptive; it consists of observations, not rules.

Makes sense that Wikipedia is on the leading edge of AI cleanup and sharing what they've learned. Very interesting read.

You just have to think for yourself. Know what tradition you’re aligned with, whether it’s a philosophical one, a religious one, or one that rises out of a particular past oppression—or all of the above. There might even be a group or a school of thought you’re reacting against. If you haven’t thought about these things before, read less daily news and try to find an approach that reflects what matters to you.

I've been thinking about this essay quite a bit since I read it. I've been disappointed with Ezra Klein and this gets at some of the reason why. But I think Coates' reminder that knowing you're part of a tradition or school of thought that will continue after you're gone is a powerful idea. It's easy to lose sight of that in the daily news chaos and this essay was a good reminder that humanist ideas might not be very old in the grand scheme but they are powerful. Also thinking about this:

You treat people humanely—everyone.

People can come in the tent without agreeing on every policy. But you have to make the demand that all people will be treated humanely. That belief guides what you yourself will do. You don’t buy into the MAGA lies to get supporters. You give them a vision of what you support, and you call them to it.

That's a bright line that I can get behind. I appreciate hearing this.

The quote is devastating. It reveals a president who is either completely detached from reality, easily manipulated by advisors feeding him false information, or being deliberately deceived by old Fox News footage (as we now know was happening). It raises fundamental questions about who is actually running the country and whether the person with access to nuclear codes can distinguish between television clips from five years ago and reality.

We need to have a national conversation about fitness in the media so some adults in the room will feel confident about standing up.

While the latest increases are in line with Disney’s past behavior, the timing isn’t ideal given the PR crisis that followed Disney temporarily pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live! off ABC.

LOLOL winning business

We all need to transition to this way of cooking, because clearly this is where the future is going. I expect in a few short years kitchens will be much smaller. Gone will be stoves and ovens and flat tops. Restaurant kitchens will only be a small closet with a microwave.

[sensible chuckle]

Chien added that we need a broader societal conversation about the looming environmental costs of using that much electricity for AI. Beyond carbon emissions, he pointed to hidden strains on water supplies, biodiversity, and local communities near massive data centers. Cooling alone, he noted, can consume vast amounts of fresh water in regions already facing scarcity. And because the hardware churns so quickly—with new Nvidia processors rolling out every year—old chips are constantly discarded, creating waste streams laced with toxic chemicals.

Fancy autocomplete is a nice-to-have not a destroy-the-planet-to-have.

“We’re going to get out there and we’re going to do a pretty big number on those people in Portland,” he said, describing them as “professional agitators and anarchists.”

The most important thing to remember about deploying troops to Portland is that the Epstein files still haven’t been released. Trump seems desperate for an armed conflict somewhere. Please remember who has the power here and who the aggressor is.

“Free speech culture” means that you can call for censorship, disproportionately abuse other people for speech, chill and deter people for speech, even call for violence against others so long as you do it in certain ritualized and stylized ways that people who were on the debate team like. If you dehumanize fellow Americans from a lectern or with a debate moderator or as a contributing writer to a magazine, that promotes free speech culture; if you do it in a social media post denouncing the speaker, or from a protest outside, or in a letter to the Dean, that harms free speech culture. “Prove me wrong” is a magical incantation that renders what follows pro-free-speech-culture.

Excellent description of how the term "free speech" means something very specific in maga culture.

Papers, please. The hallmark of fascist states of eras past and your favorite movie about authoritarianism is now also the official policy of the United States...

This episode discusses a recent Supreme Court shadow docket decision that allows ICE to stop people based on their race or location. I haven't seen much (any?) discussion in the media of what seems like an obviously unconstitutional decision so it was good to hear this discussion.

The Trump administration, from the president down to the middle levels of obscure Cabinet departments, is populated by people whose defining experiences in public life involved being silenced by social platforms.

Antisocial trolls getting revenge. See also: Musk.

The fundamental issue with “debate me bro” culture isn’t just that it’s obnoxious, it’s that it creates a false equivalence between good-faith expertise and bad-faith trolling. When you agree to debate someone pushing long-debunked conspiracy theories or openly hateful ideologies, you’re implicitly suggesting that their position deserves equal consideration alongside established facts and expert analysis.

We are basically living in GamerGate culture now. The trolls won. All the tired tactics: just asking questions, sealioning, whataboutism, gish gallop, strawmanning, slippery sloping, or just joking gaslighting is what people mean when they say debating, blarg.