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Chad Levinson

@chadlevinson.com
1.5K followers 825 following 3.1K posts

Academic in DC (Virginia Tech SPIA) né CHI, NYC, omnivore, decent cook, novice gardener, puppy papa, LLM hater, he/him The President’s Echo System: How Foreign Policy is Sold to Americans (2026) www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067430…

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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 3h
My spiciest take about electoral politics is that most people get two things about campaigns backward: that campaign platforms win elections (they don't make a big difference) and are full of empty promises (winners try to do what they said they would).
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 3h
If someone you know challenges the claim that opposition to welfare programs is due largely to white people viewing it as a benefit that Black people get, show them this.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 3h
My border collie loved rivers and hated lakes (particularly the Great Lake we lived near)
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 4h
To me, this is a prime example of the chat bots' sycophantic tendencies. Trump: will I succeed? Grok: Of course, sir. How could it be otherwise.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 5h
Do they even count pills anymore or do the machines automate that? I assume they spend all their time dealing with buggy info systems and downloading coupons to fill gaps in insurance coverage while the rest of the store is under lockdown and the self-checkout stations blare error messages.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 6h
As shitty as the CVS experience has become for customers, I've assumed it's worse for employees
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 6h
My response to arguments along the lines of "Ai helped me navigate the drudgery of Canvas" is the same as the atheist's response to the adage that there are no non-believers in a foxhole (ie, it's an argument against foxholes)
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 6h
Another thing we can thank our techlords for: as Ai bots radically increase the number of page requests they make, web hosts respond by adding not-a-bot verifications everywhere, and scammers follow by adding their own allow-access requests to Ai slop pages.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 7h
Definitely 2, but 1 is more portable
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 21h
How to Get to Heaven from Belfast
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 21h
Somebody Somewhere
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 30/09/2026
[borrows Annihilation audiobook]
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 30/09/2026
This part amuses me as well. If Smith did not already know Schmidt had his staffers' texts, he does now, and paid no price in finding out.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 30/09/2026
Disgust is the only humane response to these companies and their products
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 29/09/2026
He coulda just said Smith isn't Bambi, but I suspect he mistakenly believes Bambi's female.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 29/09/2026
I don't think these people ever admitted that it was an error to book the Four Seasons Landscaping parking lot.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 29/09/2026
And they're spending more on Democrats because Big Tech thinks they're going to win. This is the real predictive betting market.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 29/09/2026
Death recorded
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 29/09/2026
The arms race seems to consist mainly of adopting Ai across various domains.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 29/09/2026
We cannot base education policy on the experience of a professor at a liberal arts college with an endowment of $1.7 million per student.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 29/09/2026
This piece is arguing against a straw man. Nobody I know has said that writing is the only way to learn, just that it’s an essential tool.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 28/09/2026
Learning by way of the Civ 4 technology tree.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 27/09/2026
It’s still a problem if the viewer doesn’t know that it’s fabricated, regardless of the technique. But I can’t imagine why a documentary filmmaker would bother with realistic CGI.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 27/09/2026
The text I'm reacting to is highlighted in the first pic. AI-generated, trained on existing footage. That's very different from a CGI video game avatar, by my read. If its CGI, this is very bad reporting by VF.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 27/09/2026
But it says clearly that whatever generated the footage, it was trained on prior material. CGI isn’t trained, afaik.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 27/09/2026
So this is bad reporting by vanity fair?
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 27/09/2026
But… it’s still fabricated, no? Is the viewer clued in?
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 27/09/2026
Dammit. I hate to say it, but this is not a legit documentary since it includes a substantial amount of fabricated material.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 27/09/2026
My current least favorite word: compute (noun). Our current moment is one in which brute force is mistaken for efficiency, elegance, and ease.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 25/09/2026
See also judicial term limits
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 25/09/2026
And by "other places," we're talking about "not New York." Public is always faster if you need to park (paid or otherwise).
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 25/09/2026
I paid for a spot in the east village for about six months (after moving back from SF) and then just gave my car to my sister in Chicago.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 25/09/2026
Even in Brooklyn, people choose to pay parking tickets in lieu of renting a garage (comparably priced and more convenient)
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 25/09/2026
… Game of Thrones
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 25/09/2026
See also, Lost, Battlestar Galactica.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 25/09/2026
Accessories to murder, every one of them
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 24/09/2026
The rare serial drama with an ending that pays off
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 24/09/2026
Imagine if we'd invested this money in high-speed rail, solar and wind power, and indoor air quality. Our country would be cleaner, healthier, and better connected. Instead, we're replacing human interaction with computer game addiction and boiling the planet for the privilege.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 24/09/2026
Nope. Not helping him do this. He’s a bigot who delights in stoking hatred.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 23/09/2026
It kinda makes sense since the only successful business model he ever pulled off was slapping his name on stuff and collecting a licensing fee
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 23/09/2026
This seems like the dumbest possible way to address the problem legislatively.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 23/09/2026
In IR theory, Liberals believe strong states pursue absolute gains (everyone is better off even if weak states gain ground), Realists believe they pursue relative gains (they gain ground even if they forego absolute gains). Only Trump believes in the pursuit of relative AND absolute losses.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 23/09/2026
New cult just dropped
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 23/09/2026
Aside from the hollowness of predicting a durable shift from a single result, pundits misrepresented the precedent of Latino voting behavior. Trump was barely higher than Bush II.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 23/09/2026
waive
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 23/09/2026
I bet we could get Congress to wave the early withdrawal penalty, too
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 22/09/2026
MIDDLE English gave way to modern English 100 years before Shakespeare wrote this play, which was set in Verona (where they spoke Italian).
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 22/09/2026
The entire idea of electability is basically a grift, sold to us by people who cannot make a substantive case for their favored candidate.
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 22/09/2026
Folks, I hate to say it, but I think the Golden Age of television is over
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Chad Levinson @chadlevinson.com · 22/09/2026
As the FAA starts to roll out Ai air traffic control (with my beloved wife due to land at DCA this evening) I can't take my mind off the time I was scheduling an appt with an electrician and the "operator" suddenly started speaking Portuguese.
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