Big Balls may dream of a bigger Cybertruck today, but soon enough his dreams will turn to statins, and to summer nights cool and quiet enough to sleep with the windows open.
“The US of AI”, talk by Matthew Kirschenbaum at Princeton
University
Submitted by Richard.
In the convention center’s Central Hall, the 200-foot robotic arms of a gang of sugar-pink and lime-green concrete pumps are entwined in the rafters, like diplodocuses snuggling together.
“Welcome to the SXSW of Concrete”, Georgina Voss for The Atlantic
Found myself re-reading this 2017 essay because I got excited thinking about trying to design an STS-type class around concrete. What a great read.
The fault in the libertarian utopia is that in the absence of government, you still get governed.
eric gonzalez juenke on Bluesky
Submitted by Kriti.
You’d think that a guy with Peter Thiel’s money might spring for a couple of eyebrows
The absence of a period really seals this for me.
Then just enjoy the safety jazz, cool cat.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on Bluesky
I am a little surprised this federal government agency hasn’t already been killed by the current regime, though I imagine some new challenge to the constitutionality of its existence may be snaking its way through the courts (an attempt last year failed due to plaintiff’s lack of standing).
The supply chain is an object of unknowing, a tool of abstraction.
Draft of the Supply Studies Research Guide that I’ve been working on with Matt Hockenberry (all credit to Matt for the sentence, to be clear)
This is maybe more perfect in context—the guide is mostly a practical introduction to doing open-source investigations of supply chains; having this weird poem of a sentence in there is so striking. (Also, it’s an important point to understand about supply chains!)
The guide as it currently exists is a grant deliverable and I spent some of this weekend giving it a big copyedit pass. The longer term plan is to try and turn it into an academic press book. I hope this sentence persists through future versions, it’s so insane.
He is a low-grade villain who has found his way to where the crystals are kept and is now tossing them at the wall to work out anger issues and to test his sophomoric theories about the world.
“A theory of Elons”, Steve Randy Waldman on his blog
Bracken-Grissom studies deep-water shrimp, a group in which the features that distinguish one species from another often have an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin quality: the number of spines on the tail fan, the tooth-like points on the top of the rostrum, the presence or absence of a ridge on the carapace.
“The Challenge of Deep-Sea Taxonomy”, Sarah Deweerdt for Nautilus
Submitted by Emily.
Only a bit of masking tape holds Rousseau’s republican project together.
“Notes on the next republic”, Matt Pearce in his newsletter