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J.D. Porter

@jdporter.bsky.social
519 followers 537 following 204 posts

www.jdporter.org Literature/DH scholar, Price Lab at UPenn | I work on text mining, canons, literature and philosophy, and so on | Writing in PMLA, Synthese, The Atlantic, Cultural Analytics, the Stanford Literary Lab pamphlet series, etc

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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I’ll never forget A.O. Scott calling The Da Vinci Code “Dan Brown’s primer on how not to write an English sentence.”
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
To me the genre that seems ripest for LLM writing is the airport book, the kind of stuff on If Books Could Kill: -Short / padded -Tenuous relationship to the truth -Reinforces existing hierarchies -Weak, often irritating prose -Author clearly running a lazy scam only strengthens their authority
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I think JCO is saying that even if LLMs could make both kinds of books, romance readers would be more likely to accept them. She sees romance readers as indiscriminate consumers of the novel-as-commodity. This seems to me totally belied by the incredible complexity of romance as a genre system.
publicbooks.org
Genre Juggernaut: Measuring “Romance” - Public Books
For its scale and internal complexity alone, the literary genre of “romance” warrants more study than it has received.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Is romance more “formulaic”? I guess, in some respects, but identifying something as part of a “formula” doesn’t make it easy to write. Witness the many human-authored failures to write a likable-but-flawed heroine. Or imagine telling an action-movie director to "just add a thrilling car chase".
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Consider these two books: 1) A rambling meditation on modern labor written in an uncanny corporate prose style 2) A tightly-plotted love story with compelling characters Which seems easier for an LLM to make? Which one is “literary” and which a romance?
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
JCO is making a (dubious) sociological claim here rather than a technical one (“some kinds of readers don’t care if what they read is by people”), but I do think it's interesting that, on the level of the actual text, LLMs are probably a lot better at simulating literary fiction than romance novels.
A Twitter post by Joyce Carol Oates in not-cool mode, reading: “This is why Al-generated romance novels make perfect sense. Formulaic fiction doesn't need to be written by hand, so to speak; what difference does it make if a machine "writes" it? There are machine-made clothes & there are custom-made clothes. They appeal to different consumers.”
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
View of the park where the Phillies play. The scoreboard says CLINCHED because they clinched a playoff spot, which is kind of a funny thing to say for the last game of the season, but I’ll take it.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I call mine “Flotsam”. No project is real until I have to make that file for it
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
You can see me in the reflection in that first photo. I saw two young tourists in it when I came back to think about it some more. Kelly, the Seine, the paint, “Seine”, the plaque, those kids. Can AI do that (“do what?”). No, it never will.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
This is an offshoot of the famous “my kid could do this” response to abstract art. Most kids couldn’t, sure, but the more accurate response was always: “do what?” The answer to that cannot be automated.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
So if some bot made “Schuykill” and it was just as “good” as “Seine”, why would anyone put it in a museum? Why would anyone care? A machine could have done this decades ago but, just like today, there would be no point.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
This is part of what modernism worked through! The work of art derives its meaning not from form alone but from an entire context. Duchamp must pick the particular toilet and put it in an art show. People must interpret it. Otherwise it’s just a toilet.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
We could have been making automated Kelly paintings and Coolidge poems for years. But we haven’t, and in fact we never even seriously considered it.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
But this has been true in modernism for over a century. Duchamp’s “Fountain” was literally mass produced. Modernist poetry like this isn’t random (I love this poem) but very simple algorithms could easily make a “poem” that an ordinary reader would struggle to differentiate from it.
A poem by Clark Coolidge. It reads: ounce code orange / a / the / ohm / trilobite trilobites
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
The plaque says Kelly used random chance to decide which squares to fill with each color. Seems to me like he must have weighted the odds somehow (the regions appear too river-like to be truly random) but still, this feels like the kind of thing a machine could easily do. It’s even binary!
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I saw this painting today (“Seine”, by Ellsworth Kelly), and I’m increasingly convinced that modernism holds an answer for us about how AI art will be received if it ever becomes pretty indistinguishable from human art.
The painting “Seine” by Ellsworth Kelly. Small black and white rectangles are scattered across a long horizontal wooden canvas, like a pixelated distillation of light reflecting off a river.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
I work on stuff like this from a literary angle. My instinct is, we know that some facts about actors do not apply to the works, eg Hamlet has not had antibiotics. It may be that the actor is equally performing an indeterminacy of eyebrow hair countability.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Edmundo Sosa’s heroics saving me from having a really dumb take about how the Angels’ right field wall is weirdly short
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Even in Michigan Philly calls to me
Photo of the Fleetwood Diner in Ann Arbor, MI. The diner’s name is a neon sign, but several letters have burned out, so the lit-up part just says WOOD ER, which is kind of like the stereotypical way people write the Philadelphia pronunciation of “water”.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
This is a great dataset! Among many other things it contains info about many of the poets I would once have considered (and probably on some level still consider) the *cool* poets. Your Fred Moten, your Lyn Hejinian, your Craig Dworkin, your Elizabeth Willis, etc. Find your own cool poets now!
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Can’t wait to read this!!
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Elmer Fudd actually has far more ontological heft than Tilly Norwood because the agency and being of fictional characters are conferred through imaginative acts rather than computational complexity, but Big AI isn’t ready for that conversation…
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
An AI “actor” or “performer” is really just a cartoon. They don’t have any more agency or interiority or personhood than Elmer Fudd.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Felt like what we really needed was a pop song with no clear connection to the team, to sing at random intervals. But then I randomly sorted 60 yrs of Billboard to pick one and got this—an incredible song, but it goes way too hard for an activity called "footie" www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T9v...
youtube.com
Sly & The Family Stone - Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
YouTube video by SlyATFamilyStoneVEVO
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
A year since the Clippers scandal broke and the main fallout so far is that Kawhi has managed to flee US jurisdiction
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Harrison's *worst* failure wasn't dying immediately from his own speech but that was his *signature* failure. (His worst thing was, oddly, the same as Lincoln's—picking a contemptible racist VP.)
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Trump has tried to replicate each other President’s signature failures, from the hits (internment camps, corruption, losing a war in Asia) to the deep cuts (tariffs, destroying the WH, picking a contemptible racist VP), but I’m still kind of surprised to see him going for the William Henry Harrison.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
I put the Lynx on as background last night and wound up intently watching the whole thing. Miles uses time and space like no other player I’ve seen. So much fun to watch defector.com/olivia-miles...
defector.com
Olivia Miles Is The Throwback Point Guard Of The Future | Defector
Vertical video makes Olivia Miles look good. Horizontal video makes her look better. Her gift shines in context, on the unadorned and unsoundtracked platform that is the next day’s full-game replay. W...
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
It's really funny to me how often Zohran gets helpful advice about how to do something he just did without the advice
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
For a second I was trying to figure out why you had a picture of my dog
A small dog enjoys the sun by the Delaware River, with the Ben Franklin Bridge in the background. She’s maybe a miniature poodle, black and tan coloring.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Even if this wasn’t an affront to humanity, and even if it was possible to train an LLM on a one-person corpus (no), using solely one person’s words *obviously* doesn’t guarantee you get their views. Example: you can make the phrase “this wasn’t an affront” from this post.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Brunson is pretty clearly the biggest ball hog of any NBA Finals MVP. No one who shot as much as him missed as often. The size of the dot shows assists/game. He was below the median on that front, so not moving the ball around, either. Singular player—not sure we'll see a winner like this again.
Scatterplot showing every NBA Finals MVP. The x axis shows how many shots each player took per game. The y axis shows the player's field goal percentage. The point of the graph is that Brunson took a lot of shots but didn't make very many—in fact, everyone who shot at least as often as him made more, and everyone who missed as many as him shot less. Players are sized by assists per game, and Brunson was a little below the median on that front, so it's not like he was making up for it with playmaking. Also the two players closest to him were great defenders, whereas he is one of the worst defenders ever to get the award. Players are colored more or less by their team when they won, although I was lazy about matching the colors exactly.
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Reposted by J.D. Porter
Hannah Walser @hkpmw.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Idk what’s going to happen tonight, but I was rooting for the Phillies in the 2022 World Series when Sam Alito decided to attend a game, so I know that karma is real
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
When a team invites a dictator to the game it’s good if they lose, is my view
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
I think if every well-informed person in the country can understand jokes about your last four mayors, you have to accept that pretty much anyone who moves to your city can quickly become a "true" citizen of it. Hegemony facilitates assimilation.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
The scale and dispersion of Knicks fans emerging like cicadas for their team’s once-per quarter-century title run shows us just how much pain James Dolan causes almost every year
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Even if Bezos never made another dollar, you could tax him at that rate for 85 years, and he'd still be a billionaire. Doubling his taxes *is* bad policy, but only because we ought to take back much, much more.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Here's the math: Warren tax = 0 on first $50m + 2% on next $950m + 6% on the rest Bezos is so rich (net worth ~$275b) that only the last number matters, and it comes about to about $16.4b. There are 3.8m teachers in the US, making on average $74k/yr. 16.4b / 3.8m = ~$4.3k 4.3k / 74k = 5.8%
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
This is obvious horseshit, but I think it's useful to put numbers to this stuff sometimes. The Warren wealth tax would raise $16.5b from Bezos alone in the first year, which amounts to $4k for every teacher in the US, roughly a 6% pay raise on average. Bet that *would* help that teacher in Queens!
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
I don't know, the last couple sports novels I remember reading are all great
Cover of the novel The Celebrant, by Eric Rolfe GreenbergCover of the novel The Longshot, by Katie KitamuraCover of the novel The Master of Go, by Yasunari KawabataCover of the novel The Universal Baseball Association, Inc.: J. Henry Waugh, Prop., by Robert Coover
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Much more difficult to list the 100 worst novels of all time
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Jokić’s style contrasts sharply with the explosive scorers in the NE corner, which includes all the other recent MVPs. SGA shoots the least FT of any non-Jokić of the past 10 years, but he’s still in that region, so the contrast with Jokić might heighten the grifter vibe people feel around his game.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
One thing I hadn’t realized until I made this is that Jokić takes relatively few FT, especially for a big man. My theory is that it’s because he’s usually just standing there when he shoots. Walton, another floor-general big, is an interesting comp.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Answer: He’s on the high end, but he’s not an outlier. He basically played like Michael Jordan last year, and this year he’s kind of like Cavs-era LeBron.
Graph showing seasons for NBA MVPs since 1974, which is the first year the relevant data exists on Basketball Reference, where I got it. The x axis shows field goal attempts (FGA), reflecting how often a player shot in general. The y axis shows free throw attempts (FTA), reflecting how often a player shot free throws. Both are scaled per 75 possessions, to mitigate differences in pace from one season to the next. Dots are colored based on the team the player was on when he won MVP.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is in the top right corner. His 2025 season is near a bunch of Michael Jordan years. His 2026 season is close to LeBron, Shaq, and Harden.

SGA hasn't won MVP for 2026 yet, so maybe this is jinxing it for him, but whatever.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
How bad a foul baiter is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander? See if you can guess which two dots are his on this graph of MVP seasons. Dots are further right if players shot the ball a lot. Higher dots mean players shot more free throws. Answer lower in the thread.
Graph showing seasons for NBA MVPs since 1974, which is the first year the relevant data exists on Basketball Reference, where I got it. The x axis shows field goal attempts (FGA), reflecting how often a player shot in general. The y axis shows free throw attempts (FTA), reflecting how often a player shot free throws. Both are scaled per 75 possessions, to mitigate differences in pace from one season to the next. You'd expect a clean correlation between FGA and FTA, since shooting is generally necessary for drawing shooting fouls, but these dots are pretty widely distributed.  (R squared in a linear regression is .27, so FGA explains less than a third of FTA). This graph erases some nuance, e.g. you get fewer FTA if you tend to score when fouled (i.e., getting and-1s), but it's still a decent rough picture.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Enkidu was a great Philly dog. He was confident and self-possessed, loved food dropped on the sidewalk, and looked vaguely like Gritty. What he loved to do, he did, and I was lucky that so often he included Hannah and me. He was my buddy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9II...
youtube.com
Enkidu Blue
YouTube video by Nothing
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
This is one of the best 21st century jazz albums
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Once again pondering the fact that Penn's motto, Leges Sine Moribus Vanae, is usually translated as "Laws without morals are useless".
thedp.com
Judge orders Penn to comply with federal subpoena seeking list of Jewish faculty, students
Penn has until May 1 to respond to the subpoena's requests, but will not be required to “reveal any employee’s affiliation with a specific Jewish-related organization.”
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Kobe stans can take some comfort in the fact that he still has the second-longest run on top. Wilt: 11 years Kobe: 10 Admiral: 9 MJ: 6.3 Fulks: 6.2 David Thompson: 5.9 Booker: 5.8 No one else got to 4 years. Frankie Baumolhtz and Mel Riebe got 2 days apiece, so Bam's already out of last place.
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J.D. Porter @jdporter.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
When Robinson retired 9 years after that, Karl was still around, and got the title back (now tied with Shaq) for that same 1990 game. Finally TMac got rid of him for good by scoring 62 in 2004.
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