I think this is true: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/why-ai-isnt-going-to-make-art

In particular, the idea of art as a series of choices is something I was thinking about recently, as opposed to life, which might be characterized as a series of responses.  Do we really choose dispassionately between options in life, or is that something that we infer when looking back on our lives?  Situations present themselves (good, bad) and w respond, sometimes well, sometimes catastrophically.

But art lies exactly in making choices, as the article describes.

There’s an article in the Guardian today about a book proposing reparations for slavery in the UK. It pointed out that such reparations need not be monetary. That got me thinking: perhaps the primary value for a reparations process is the accurate accounting of exactly what wrongs were done, and the cost of those wrongs. Often an accounting of the wrongs of the past amount to nothing more than generalized handwringing and a vague sense of guilt, but processes like the Waitangi Tribunal require detailed, specific analysis of wrongs and their ongoing consequences, which in itself constitutes a value.

www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/attention

With notes on how sustained attention may lead to synchronized biochemical processes that reinforce themselves.

Truth #11 of The Thirteen Truths of Superman
— Read on orphansandempires.substack.com/p/americas-kryptonite

inspired polemic

An interesting and well written article that pushes for an informed activism that encompasses tech.
— Read on wedontagree.net/technically-radical-on-the-unrecognized-potential-of-tech-workers-and-hackers

I keep saying this, but i keep having to.  Listening to yet another pundit debate about whether whatever trump is doing right now (in this case, reversing direction I Ukraine) is good policy or bad policy, and it's not the right question.  It might have good effect. It might be catastrophic. The issue is that one man is in a position to decide!  He is a KING!  We don't want a king!

UBI doesn't mean "no work".  It means divorcing work from remuneration.  There's still plenty of good work, but no one wants to pay you for it, so you get paid independently of your work. For example, you write songs.  You build a house for yourself.  You learn to sail, and take people sailing.  You raise a kid.  

You don't expect to get paid for any of it, but you do the work because work is meaningful and life affirming.  Remuneration, the money you need to live, doesn't depend on renting your labor out, which when you think about it is a pretty modern idea.  Back in the day we had patronage, and inheritance, and allowances (and slavery!) and all sorts of mechanisms that didn't directly tie labor to money.

The Guardian sees us in a time where we transitioned away from Pax Americana to an indeterminate state where we can’t rely on the US because the leadership keeps changing direction, so other countries have to form institutions that work around us (https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/may/10/are-we-heading-for-another-world-war-or-has-it-already-started).  But that’s just the intermediate position; the US will bring its weight to bear to actively oppose much of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world will have to find a way to stand up to it.

Don’t perform outrage.  Don’t go to your opponents’ districts and give town halls.  Don’t go to ICE facilities and get arrested.

Identify those amongst your colleagues in the Republican Party who are doing things that they feel are wrong.  Talk to them, and find out what you can do to make it possible for them to do what they feel is right (security for their families? Anonymous voting?)  Then do that.

6-3 decision revokes the ability of a lower court to stay executive orders nationwide, thereby putting the authority of a lower court judge below that of the President. Since the selection of cases decided by the Supreme Court is at their discretion, and won’t even reach them if no appeal is made, seems to me this means that if the King decides tomorrow that, due to his bad bowel movement this morning, all women whose name begins with “M” should be arrested and shot,  no one in the land other than the Supreme Court can suspend the order until its legality is determined.

Or: WA state court declares my son’s citizenship valid by birth, but NJ declares it is following the rules when he flies into Newark and ICE confiscates his passport and arrests him; this is legal unless and until the Supreme Court issues an injunction.

And, by dint of a prior ruling that absolves the King of any legal responsibility in the execution of “official business”, the King is never held accountable for his act and retires comfortable in the knowledge that no M-named shrews or their grieving loved ones will ever see justice.