Black Sea dolphins.
it’s not a dark enlightenment, what we are undergoing is a dark reenchantment.
people’s understanding of the world is increasingly formed by sources seeking to intrigue or awe, rather than inform with anything like procedurally vetted approximations of mundane truth.
if you configure a bell to chime every time you get a like, that’s an engagement ring.
to be fair, the humans don’t seem to do much better with their tiktok than the llms do with all the crap and slop in their training data.
lots of conversation inspired by this, arguments about interest rates and square feet etc, but i think people fail to appreciate how profoundly just *the last five years* of this graph have contributed to a profound sense of hopelessness for many of us.
(with interest rates way up, not down!) https://zirk.us/@interfluidity/114882783179068669
A graph showing median home prices growing much faster than median incomes, with a really shocking increase in median home prices since the 2020 pandemic.
i'm sure i've missed some text or tweet or mail or call and offended you.
after sunlight is reflected across so many funhouse mirrors, does it still serve as a disinfectant?
yesterday i was a bit shocked by the degree to which “flat earth tiktok” had otherwise perfectly normal people just asking questions.
from “What determines rent?” #DavidTimoney https://fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.com/2025/07/what-determines-rent.html
Text: “In the case of housing, there are real constraints such as restrictive planning regulations and limited real resources (builders and building materials), but the biggest determinant is the reluctance of volume builders to over-supply the market and so depress prices. In this context, the state is a volume builder that has taken a self-denying ordinance to maintain house prices, both for owner-occupiers and landlords, which is why the UK government is so reluctant to build council houses despite the pressing need, and why US liberals like Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue that "abundance" can be achieved by simply rolling back regulations and striking out building codes, which provides an easy excuse to ignore capitalist realities in favour of a technocratic can-doism.”
if one wanted to sum up what American governance has lost in a single word, “faithfulness” would not be a bad choice.
this by Mila Sohoni is wonderful, reads like aspirational science fiction but describes a very recent past. https://www.virginialawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sohoni_Online.pdf
ht @nicholashandler.bsky.social
kindness is sexy.
@ItsThatDeafGuy she hates the substances that bring you clarity.
what if Donald Trump is dead and the guy in the White House is Jeffrey Epstein in disguise?
just asking questions. do your own research.
SEO has been the art of manipulating search engines to influence human behavior.
What name will we give to the practice of managing training data + agentic web search results to manipulate LLMs who may increasingly provide humans with information (or misinformation) that conditions their behavior?
the most basic fact of fiscal policy is it’s not how much you spend that matters most, but the quality of activity and distribution of goods, services, and safety that results from the spending.
if at 11:11 we are supposed to make a wish, what must we do at 4:04?
(too late — it's 4:05 now.)
"They failed to understand that there’s a big difference between accountability and revenge, and that Trump is only interested in the latter." @ddayen https://prospect.org/justice/2025-07-15-jeffrey-epstein-is-policy-issue/
wait ‘til he gets them to stop removing the cocaine too.
finally something literally Mt-Rushmore-worthy!
philosophical disturbances bleed from the epistemological to the ontological.