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Chas Brown

@chaszzzbrown.bsky.social
333 followers 255 following 646 posts

Music produces a kind of pleasure without which human nature cannot do. Consciousness is a spectator sport.

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Reposted by Chas Brown
Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I got really annoyed that so many stories about the "Cornell 7" case don't link to the underlying court documents. So I compiled the key filings from Jane Doe's civil suit and from a separate suit brought by one of the accused. Read them here: annabower.substack.com/p/read-the-c...
annabower.substack.com
Read the “Cornell 7” Documents
I compiled key court filings from Jane Doe’s civil suit and a separate suit brought by one of the accused. Read them on Slip Opinion.
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Paul Hikari @paulhikari.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The product is apparently real, but this video's AI. perfumepaws.com/products/pee...
perfumepaws.com
Peeoutus Projector
Velvet
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bjkeefe @bjkeefe.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
From part IV of @kkomaitis.bsky.social's series. It's not just about this, but it's a nice piece to whet your appetite. See @masnick.com's post for the link: bsky.app/profile/masn...
For much of the first decade of social media, the dominant challenge was abundance. The internet was expanding faster than anyone could meaningfully navigate it. There were too many websites, too many videos, too many blogs, too many voices competing for attention. Search engines, recommendation systems and social networks addressed this problem by filtering complexity. Their algorithms reduced uncertainty by pointing users toward content they were likely to find useful, interesting, or entertaining. In a world defined by informational overload, curation felt like liberation.

Today’s challenge is almost the inverse. Few people now struggle to find information. Instead, they struggle to determine which information deserves trust. The scarcity that once characterized knowledge has been replaced by a scarcity of confidence. We inhabit an environment saturated with images, opinions, analyses, commentary, and increasingly synthetic media. Artificial intelligence has accelerated this transformation still further, reducing the cost not only of distributing information but of producing it in almost limitless quantities. The bottleneck has shifted. Discovery matters less than discernment.Yet the architecture of the dominant platforms remains largely optimized for the earlier age. Systems originally designed to maximize relevance increasingly operate within an environment where reliability has become the more precious commodity. Recommendation engines still reward attention because attention remains measurable. [highlight]Trust, by contrast, is extraordinarily difficult to quantify. It develops slowly, depends on context and often requires forms of human judgment that resist computational simplification.[/highlight] The result is a subtle but increasingly consequential mismatch between what societies need and what platforms are designed to provide.
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The idea of a "tech industry" has always relied on "computer" being a special kind of medium, akin to alchemy. And if tech demands to be king, AI hype has now elevated LLMs to a king of kings. But the solipsism has hit a dead end. The only way forward is to recognize that computers are not special.
productpicnic.beehiiv.com
LLMs are just normal technology. But tech is just a normal medium.
The more we focus on a particular technology, the more we lose sight of what normal people actually care about.
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Maciek Hamela @maciekhamela.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
With the Strait of Hormuz closed, Iraq has resorted to moving its oil across the desert to Syria in hundreds of tanker trucks, in true Mad Max style. From there, it will be shipped to worldwide markets.
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Cabel Sasser @cabel.panic.com · 26/09/2026
can't a guy walk down the street anymore without being harassed by artificial intelligence
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 27/09/2026
this is the greatest thing i have ever heard
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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
*If you don't like coders for some reason, this is a real schadenfreude feast of coders lamenting and wringing their newly-useless human hands www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/c...
reddit.com
From the ClaudeAI community on Reddit
Explore this post and more from the ClaudeAI community
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Tallgirl6234 @tallgirl6234.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
“If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now, for wheat is wheat, even if people think it is grass in the beginning.” - Vincent Van Gogh
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Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.
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Kate Crowe @kcrowe.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Every time people talk about the efforts to desegregation schools like they happened forever ago, I m think, Ruby Bridges is younger than my dad.
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Emma Mitchell @silverpebble2.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Small finds from the wood, September 🍒🪶🌿:
A collection of small nature finds from my local woodland, including green acorn, rosehips, Viburnum opulus berries, pigeon feather, spindle berries & leaves , alder cones & grove snail shells
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 11/09/2026
There are indeed thousands of LessWrong posts, as well as papers and books, which make a particular theoretical case for why AI will kill us all that many people find convincing. I'm going to try to explain it as faithfully as I can.
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Sanho Tree @sanho.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Why does the Washington Sun — which I very much want to support — have a share button for X, but not for Bluesky? Why insult us like this? It’s shameful. You should know better.
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Premee Mohamed @premeemohamed.com · 08/09/2026
I hope my future smart TV enjoys hearing "Oh sweetie! Don't do that, my darling baby! No no! That is NOT for Franca my little pwincess! No it is NOT! No it is not!" as well as "FIASCO I SWEAR TO GOD YOU HECKITYDANG ASSCLOWN" until its electronic brain eventually goes insane and explodes
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Greg Egan @gregegansf.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
… cause the picture to fall, but removing fewer than K nails will leave the picture supported. The result above is from recent work by Tom Verhoeff: arxiv.org/abs/2605.27617 that I read about in Scientific American: www.scientificamerican.com/article/math...
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Greg Egan @gregegansf.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
In the free group generated by four letters, if you remove any two letters (and their inverse) from this product of 16 elements: 𝑎𝑏𝑎⁻¹𝑏⁻¹𝑐𝑑𝑏𝑎𝑑⁻¹𝑐⁻¹𝑑𝑐𝑏⁻¹𝑎⁻¹𝑐⁻¹𝑑⁻¹ it simplifies to 1, but dropping any single letter does not give 1.
A picture bearing the words “This picture hangs insecurely on 4 nails”, hanging from a string that winds in a complicated way around four nails.
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 03/09/2026
This tangy, creamy sauce is the perfect home for all those extra herbs you may have on hand from other recipes — that leftover sprig of mint, the stemmy part of that bunch of cilantro, the droopy basil. nyti.ms/3Uzsfuo
nyti.ms
All-Purpose Green Sauce Recipe • 4★
This tangy, creamy sauce is the perfect home for all those extra herbs you may have on hand from other recipes — that leftover sprig of mint, the stemmy part of that bunch of cilantro, the droopy basil. You can use any combination of soft herbs here; you’ll need two packed cups altogether.
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McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 03/09/2026
The interpersonal battle that defines a generation... www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wit...
mcsweeneys.net
With God as My Witness, I Will Not Pick the Restaurant
Our 13th most-read piece of the year. 7/25/23 7/28/24 8/3/25 8/29/26 CALENDAR 2027
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 31/08/2026
the retconning is to support the argument that "trump won in 2024 because of anti-woke." but other than some nebulous "vibe shift" and the prominence of a few podcasters, there is vanishingly little hard evidence for this claim.
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Matt Szafranski @mszafranski.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
But muh narrative...
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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Replacing human opinion writers with AI will result in predictable pieces that say the same thing over and over. by David Brooks
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Jack Womack @jwomack.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
@cairdiul.bsky.social
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Rep. Debbie Dingell @debbiedingell.house.gov · 25/08/2026
Let’s just call it Lake Natalie so we know you’ll start protecting our Great Lakes.
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Boo!-per Lund @cooperlund.online · 22/08/2026
The actual scandal is that the butter cow from Iowa’s state fair is an imposter, butter pushed over a frame
today.com
State fair butter cows aren’t made entirely out of butter — and people are udderly shocked
“I feel deceived. It should have been a solid block of butter. If we cannot believe in butter cows, what can we believe in,” one person tweeted.
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Solomon @solomonrmissouri.com · 22/08/2026
Kacey Musgraves performing …..You know, I honestly don’t know
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Janel Comeau 🍁 @verybadllama.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I have recalled the groceries that are in your pantry and which you were probably planning to eat forgive me they’re full of salmonella and maybe broken glass
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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Actress Hayden Panettiere has died, her representative confirms. She was 36 abcnews.com/US/hayden-pa...
A photo of Hayden Panettiere
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Frank Conniff @frankconniff.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
A show featuring Bill Maher, but he’s the off-screen announcer and then barely in it? Sound like a utopian fantasy? It’s real: Steve Allen’s Music Room, from the early eighties. This episode with Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager and Anthony Newley is pretty great. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEMQ...
youtube.com
Steve Allen's Music Room: Show #3 - with Terry Gibbs All-Star Band
YouTube video by TGmovier
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Gil Roth & his Virtual Memories Show @vmspod.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
RIP #JohnCrowley. Go read LITTLE, BIG, the AEGYPT cycle, KA, ENGINE SUMMER, and more. One of the most amazing, inventive writer I ever recorded with. Our talks: 2013 - chimeraobscura.com/vm/podcast-r... 2017 - chimeraobscura.com/vm/episode-2... 2022 - chimeraobscura.com/vm/episode-4...
photo of author John Crowley in 2013, sitting at a table in a hotel room beside copies of his novel LITTLE, BIG, with a microphone on the right side of the show. He's wearing a white sport coat and green button-down shirt
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 01/08/2026
They demonstrate the adage that worker-driven automation improves quality, while capital-driven automation improves *throughput*: pluralistic.net/2026/07/28/h... 70/
pluralistic.net
Pluralistic: Discernment (28 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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dmercer.bsky.social @dmercer.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Visited the new Chicago Brand Museum today. It's fascinating. (It's not a museum of just Chicago brands; it's a museum of lots of brand, which happens to be located in Chicago.) Fans of typography, graphic design, package design, and more will love it.
Glass shelves displaying dozens of different types of spice tins.Row after row of one pound coffee cansShelf displaying small containers of typewriter ribbons.More shelves, this time filled with dozens of varieties of small oil cans
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Chas Brown @chaszzzbrown.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
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Dan of the Year @downwithdan.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Dang they really got a category for everything
THR
The Hollywood Reporter *
@THR
Louis C.K. Wins Grammy for First Special Since Sexual Misconduct Allegations
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Chas Brown @chaszzzbrown.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Kurt Vonnegut Doris Lessing Isaac Asimov Octavia Butler Phillip K Dick
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The Editorial Board @editorialboard.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
1. I was telling you we deserve some answers. Among Graham Platner's supporters in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, what did they know and when did they know it? www.editorialboard.com/how-did-a-di...
editorialboard.com
How did a dirtbag get this far?
Jenny Racicot slapped fellow progressives back into adulthood.
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Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
OK everybody...still working out some kinks but... A new daily game, with boards written and edited by John Green. hankgreen.com/smush
hankgreen.com/smush · Jul 8
348 pts · ★★ pangram first
🟨🥞🟨
🥞⭐🥞
🥞🥞🥞
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Chas Brown @chaszzzbrown.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
(RIP Sheri Tepper, Julian May, et al) William Gibson N.K. Jemisen Peter F. Hamilton Tim Powers Nancy Kress
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Mary Gillis @marygillis.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
A man who publicly was doing something which, when done wrong, can cause graft-vs-host disease, an autoimmune disease which can attack, among other things, your GI tract, now has an autoimmune disease which is attacking his GI tract. What a coincidence.
the-independent.com
Millionaire biohacker reveals he has incurable disease amid mission to ‘defeat death’
‘My stomach is eating itself,’ the tech entrepreneur announced on social media
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molly conger @socialistdogmom.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
tfw you’ve just finished pissing on jefferson davis’ grave
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Jordan Uhl @jordanuhl.com · 05/07/2026
Trump is watching the Fox News feed of himself watching Fox News
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Sanho Tree @sanho.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
It’s worth watching Mamdani’s full 13-minute address. THIS is the 4 of July speech the country deserves. If you teach, consider adding it to your curriculum. If you’re a parent, watch it with your kids. This is a weekend to reflect. This speech was pitch-perfect. This speech should be remembered.
youtube.com
Mayor Mamdani Delivers Address Marking America’s 250th Birthday
YouTube video by NYC Mayor's Office
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Digital Brain @yourdigitalbrain.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Peacock spiders are only 4mm long, but their courtship dance rivals any bird of paradise. Australia has over 90 species of these tiny, ultra-colorful performers.
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Rocky Mountain Mike @rockymntnmike.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 01/07/2026
"Carcinization" is a biological phenomenon: given time, across environments, many species turn into crabs. The body of a crab, with its low center of gravity, sideways gait (for evading predators), ease of concealment and protected organs is endlessly suitable: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcini... 1/
Two crabs dance with their claws entwined; one has the Google logo on its back, the other, the Apple logo. Their audience is a much larger crab, bearing the Meta logo. The scene is set on a dune.
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zeynep tufekci @zey.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
I know it’s not a popular position but I really don’t see mass unemployment from generative AI soon because of structural and technical features of the tech. Gift link where I explain the reasons. It’s distraction when AI will really cause many other big problems. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/o...
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Seán Doran @theseaning.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
"Crazy Beautiful!" 5,234 images from 2 time-lapse sequences photographed by Sophie Adenot & Jessica Meir on ISS Expedition 74 are repaired, remastered & retimed to create this video of aurora australis with music by Andreas Vollenweider. 11m19s 4K youtu.be/22mTjdmpG1M
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Flat Pluto Coven @adhdgobl.in · 28/06/2026
Mel Brooks has been around for 40% of the US's existence.
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Chas Brown @chaszzzbrown.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
@michaelhobbes.bsky.social Here's another taste test for you and aubrey... sparkling fruity bone broth!
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Frank Conniff @frankconniff.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
As someone experiencing the joy of having a washer and dryer in my apartment, I now know this: the washing machine is the best laundry basket, the dryer is the best clothes drawer.
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