@LibraryThing founder. Lead @TalpaSearch developer. Father, hacker, bibliophile, ex-classicist, Mainer, Catholic.
Portland, Maine
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This is terrible, but also the answer is clearly Luke.
"If you were to date John, Matthew, Mark or Luke, who would you date?"
The women of the popular podcast 'Girls Gone Bible' discuss which bible personality they'd pursue romantically.
"I'd probably be with James because he seems so rational...and seems super cute too."
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1/4 I’m against all AI art, but artists need to understand the economic reality that AI art satisfies two things:
1. lower costs
2. Lower friction
The former can't be solved; AI art is going to be essentially free. But a lot of the value isn’t the price, but the lack of friction. Real art and artists can, I think, do a lot here. Combined with the art being better, moral suasion and social pressure, reducing the friction involved in getting traditional art can make a big difference.
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3/4 There’s been a lot of condemnation of AI book covers recently, and I share their negative opinion of such things. But, look, I work in books and even I don't know how to hire a cover designer. I could probably find one, asking all my friends and probably Googling. But I'd be a shot in the dark. Quality, cost, delivery—all would be up in the air, and probably a headache. I’d gladly spend the money if I needed a cover, but I understand not wanting the hassle and risk.
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4/4 Art will survive AI, but it needs to learn from this, and develop sites, networks, standards, systems, and so forth that reduce the friction the way AI reduces friction. Any idiot can make AI art; any idiot should be able to find an artist and pay for good art—easily, simply, with assurances the art is done according to spec and on-time. Delivering that to businesses is worth more money than AI will ever save them.
PS: big companies solve this by having art directors, directly or at a design firm they work with habitually. My (artist) kid thinks the answer isn’t “better ways to find real art,” but, basically, “art director as a service.” You’d need ways to be sure, but I like that idea.
PPS: My own kid is training to be a cartoonist and I still couldn't find anyone! (He said he'd do it, but he has schoolwork; it wasn't going to happen before next summer.)
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Tim Spalding 🇺🇦 retweeted
When we look back in fifty years and ask ourselves how democracy gave way to tyranny, a huge part of it will be that everyone voluntarily abandoned reading, and it turns out you can’t have a modern, developed, free state without a highly literate population.
There is absolutely no reason for adults to still be reading books when movies exist. You are literal wasting your time staring at paper when you could watch the same story in 2 hours.
Imagine being a grown adult bragging about how many books you’ve read. Congratulations, you read paper for fun.
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These people are so weird. Private citizens can become knights, nobles, etc. The Constitution only bars Federal office holders from accepting titles of nobility.
Maybe foreign office-holders, should be forced to renounce their citizenship, but that isn't an actual rule and never has been. Lots of American citizens hold a government post elsewhere.
What is the difference between making someone Pope and making them a knight
Why is the Pope still an American citizen?
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The whole topic is fascinating en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph…
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For context, in 1889, the Pope condemned "Americanism."
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We need to confront the possibility that all that lead poisoning my generation suffered actually made us smarter.
I am speechless. Thomas Aquinas College just dropped a study on the rigor of the new SAT.
It compares the 1980/87 test with 2026. The findings should terrify every parent and teacher...
Vocabulary has collapsed.
Old SAT: 70.6% of questions tested vocab.
New SAT: 15%.
The old test forced students to know a wide range of words through analogies, antonyms, and sentence completions. The new test abandoned that. Most vocab questions now just ask students to fill in one blank from context.
Reading passages also got radically shorter (average ~97 words vs 300–340).
The new test uses short expository passages and hands you the necessary background knowledge inside the text. The older tests leaned much more heavily on argumentative and persuasive writing, assumed far more historical, scientific, and cultural knowledge, and penalized students who lacked it.
This is a redefinition of what "college readiness" means.
If you believe that kids should develop rigorous vocabulary, be capable of sustained reading, and possess background knowledge, I have bad news for you. The SAT no longer measures these.
If you want a future where children can actually read difficult texts and construct complex arguments, the SAT must be replaced now.
This cannot go on.
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If 41% of Americans are black, 50% are veterans, 39% are Hispanic, 30% are Jewish, 29% are Asian, 27% Native American, 27% are Muslim, 30% are gay and 21% are transgender… intersectionality isn't just a good idea, it's the LAW!
Americans are immune to propoganda, they just on average think 21% of Americans are trans and 27% are Muslim for no real reason
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Inspired by AlphaGo, I've had agents wrestling with each other a million bouts/second for three months now, recursively evolving the perfect fighting technique. Where Jacob failed, my swarm of wrestling bots will defeat God.
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Tim Spalding 🇺🇦 retweeted
Think not of the books you’ve bought as a “to be read” pile. Instead, think of your bookcase as a wine cellar. You collect books to be read at the right time, the right place, and the right mood.
— Luc van Donkersgoed
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Tim Spalding 🇺🇦 retweeted
Guy whose mother-in-law is named Lakshmi Chilikuri pretending that Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are too tough to pronounce.
Vance's "I'm just a good old boy"'s act grows more tiresome and less believable by the day.
JD Vance says of the Middle East that it's "a region of the world made up of countries whose name I couldn't even pronounce"
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Publishing is already tearing itself apart over AI. And it's going to get worse.
For @WIRED, I spoke with Macmillan and PRH staff about AI at the rest of the Big Five.
I also spoke with bestselling authors who've gone to "war" with publishers over AI use and are now demanding disclosures and threatening to leave their publishers altogether.
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