March 2026 archive

Naomi Alderman’s The Power meets Monty Python’s “Hell’s Grannies”

A man struts and huffs and puffs and expands like a blowfish, but all the old women close their eyes. Deny him the female gaze. Refuse to be a witness to his Almighty Greatness, let alone a cheerleader. And not only does he deflate, he disappears in a puff of, well, nothingness. Existential nothingness. Beauvoir …

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The blink. This is perfect.

“She blinks at me. … The blink isn’t confusion. It’s not processing. It’s a screensaver. It’s her brain going into standby mode because the incoming information doesn’t match the preset programming.” from a repost with no author name    

“… these guys have no idea how stupid they look.”

“The camera closes in on two cops standing beside the tank, each with an assault rifle.  Both weigh over three hundred pounds.  One is wearing a uniform of green-and-gray camouflage, as if he were hunting deer in the woods.  The other is wearing a uniform in brown-and-beige camouflage, as if he were hunting insurgents in …

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Claude’s Constitution

https://www.anthropic.com/constitution I’m half way through and just can’t … To this point, I have two questions: 1. Have any of the authors prepared a comparable constitution for their own child/ren?  If not, why not?  If so, could I read it? 2. Have any of the authors taken just ONE philosophy course in Ethics?    

Non-Experts are Training AI

https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technology The really scarey thing is that those who are training AI have themselves no training in training.   No Education degree. Let alone a Psychology degree and a Philosophy degree.  And they’re juggling concepts like autonomy and morality?  WTF?! And considering the range of applications (unlimited), it’s alarming that they have no Humanities knowledge.  Nor …

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What if the typical worker’s pay had risen like CEO’s pay?

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what-if-the-typical-workers-pay-had