James Gleick / is on Nostr

Author.
Chaos, Genius, The Information, Time Travel.

Website: https://around.com
Searchable:

Last Notes

2024-07-07 14:16:16

I’ve read the New York Times all my life, and I worked in the newsroom for ten years, and I’ve never seen the news department along with the editorial department commit to a nakedly partisan political crusade, as they are now. Evidently they are more outraged by Biden’s determination to continue running for re-election than they have ever been by Donald Trump.
#NYT https://mastodon.social/@jeffjarvis/112741426032898617

2024-07-02 15:31:17

“These are not justices; these are Trump cronies. This is not legal reasoning; this is vandalism.”
Adam Serwer in The Atlantic (gift link)
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/07/supreme-court-donald-trump-immunity-decision/678859/?gift=vgcKXZKCrHTQr6wr7_bnjQi97oJ90I1cliJ8SVIQelw&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
#Scotus

2024-06-24 19:33:22

“Artificial intelligence” (#AI) is the wrong term for the many services for which the term is being used. These are not generating intelligence. They are generating text or images or music—that is, information.
But it's not real information. It's ersatz* information. So when you hear "artificial intelligence,” I suggest that you substitute “ersatz information.”
—
*pseudo, fake, synthetic, spurious

2024-06-11 23:14:39

“The thing with Sam Alito is that he doesn’t give a fuck. He is a seventy-something Fox News watcher and religious fundamentalist who happens to find himself in a position of immense and almost incomparable power over all of American society and he’s going to take that power to the limit to advance his own political preferences. He’s not even going to go through the motions of pretending that’s not the case.”
Josh Marshall understands Alito all too well. Gift link:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/resilience-part-2-or-thoughts-on-sam-alitos-dgaf-justicehood/sharetoken/Y8snIS0q4CvM

2024-06-08 23:14:40

Meta is deploying chatbots powered by AI to impersonate humans in its discussion groups. The chatbots make stuff up—that is their nature. One invents a nonexistent child. Another pretends to have nonexistent merchandise. It shouldn’t be necessary to explain how vile and poisonous this is, but Casey Fiesler spells it out:
https://theconversation.com/ai-chatbots-are-intruding-into-online-communities-where-people-are-trying-to-connect-with-other-humans-229473
#Meta #AI

2024-06-08 17:53:34

TIL that—as of 1954—an original van Gogh painting hanging in the bedroom of a woman working as a telephone operator and sharing a Manhattan apartment with two others would be enough to raise suspicion that she had another source of income but not enough to suggest that she was wealthy.
[Extra credit for identifying my source.]

2024-06-08 00:16:17

Trump is testing the mainstream press. He’s saying in every way possible: Yes, I really am going to be a dictator. Yes, I really am going to dismantle the democratic institutions that have defined this country for 250 years. Yes, this really will be the last election, if I win it. And by the way, of course that means the end of a free press.
Now, how are you going to cover this political season? https://mastodon.social/@indivisibleteam/112576597337880208

2024-05-31 06:20:09

“I did not find the case trivial. I found it nauseating, a grouping of some of the least attractive and sleaziest human beings I have ever imagined in proximity to the levers of power. And critically, these were people actively and consciously engaged in an effort to corrupt an election. I came away from the trial thinking it was actually important that Trump had to answer for this conduct.”
@npub16gw…a2j5
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/thoughts-on-donald-trump-s-conviction

2024-05-31 05:34:06

The @npub1x4j…7kdx was ready for the verdict.
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/112/533/598/690/154/744/original/a7cf4683cfea4f20.png

2024-05-27 18:45:36

Man running for president offers you his holiday greetings.
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/112/514/061/787/967/516/original/a6c30b4809c7d0aa.jpeg

2024-05-22 04:34:48

Candidate for President, on Trial for Multiple Crimes, Will Not Take the Stand to Defend Himself under Oath.

2024-05-09 16:09:28

If the bribe you’re soliciting is $1,000 in a paper bag, the FBI will arrest you. If it’s $1 billion in dark money, does that make it legal?
https://wapo.st/3UBf4Fy
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/112/411/526/226/447/272/original/57c7d2a7c7bfb0cd.png

2024-05-02 16:50:22

If you’re frustrated about what the online world has become, and you remember “the good old days” with nostalgia (rightly or wrongly), and you despair about our collective ability to find a way forward, this by [@molly0xfff](https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff) offers an important perspective. With reason for hope. She has become an essential voice, along with [@pluralistic](https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic) and Jaron Lanier.
https://www.citationneeded.news/we-can-have-a-different-web/

2024-04-26 23:22:09

How bad is the Supreme Court now? It’s this bad:
“It’s a rogue court, a thoroughly corrupt one, one that is so far gone in its corruption that it feels free even from the practical obligation to clothe its corruption for the sake of appearances.”
(Josh Marshall, gift link.)
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/peering-into-the-corrupt-courts-pretensions-and-corruption/sharetoken/mODEiFEfA3a3
#SCOTUS

2024-04-25 20:14:07

In your worst nightmare, did you consider the possibility that Trump would at the last minute:
—toss out the laughable argument that it didn’t matter what crimes he had committed, it didn’t matter whether or not he was guilty, because he had been president, and presidents are allowed to break the law—they’re “immune”;
—and then, after all the lower courts had swiftly and irrefutably explained how absurd that was, (1/2)

2024-04-16 17:05:08

Reminder that Clarence Thomas’s wife organized and financed these very crimes. So does he recuse himself? Nah.
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/112/281/512/021/951/201/original/a65deb64c232314f.png

2024-04-15 18:54:42

Maggie Haberman reports in the NY Times that the stable genius fell asleep at his own criminal trial.
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/112/276/280/564/621/352/original/130da8feff1748b7.png