Dear friends,

I made an offhand joke today about Bluesky being the only stream where you can step into it at any point and it will be exactly the same, then couldn’t remember which ancient Greek I was riffing off of. Turns out it was Heraclitus! Which led me to the wonderful word doxography, used to describe the works of the ancients discussing the even-more-ancients. Which is why I look up things I used to know even when I’m sure that if I just stay very still and don’t make any sudden moves that missing knowledge will sneak back into my brain like a cat onto a lap—if you don’t look up things you already know, you won’t learn anything extra!

In 1938 The Story of Ferdinand was the number-one bestselling book, outselling Gone With The Wind.

This is so grotesque (CW: body horror) that I don’t know why it hasn’t been a plot point in multiple books/movies. (Or maybe it has and I haven’t seen it as I mostly avoid body horror?)

“Loplop, Father Superior of the Birds,  is the name of a birdlike character that was an alter ego of the Dada-Surrealist artist Max Ernst.”

The eight styles of Thai dress (all beautiful).

You can (if you are so inclined) buy hot-pickle-flavored cotton candy. I would say ‘report back’ but I’m pretty sure I know what the report would be (‘yep, tastes like hot pickles and sugar’). In the same vein, recently I learned that a frozen absinthe piña colada is a thing that exists (at least in Hackney).

Talking with a colleague today about how irritating it is when people anthropomorphize LLMs, I said that calling them “agents” makes that anthropomorphization more likely; they should be called something less human-sounding. I’d like to propose calling LLMs “vector hammers”. So instead of saying ‘I asked the agent to help me code,’ you would say ‘I hit it with the vector hammer until it worked.’ Way more satisfying, right?

I didn’t buy this book when I saw it in a charity bookshop in Glasgow; looking it up later I saw that a reviewer on Goodreads called it “one of those things all book hunters hope to stumble across in their trawls of shops” and I’m afraid they were right.

Stay well!

Your friend,

Erin