iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Jesse Raber

to bebop or not to bebop 🌹🔨 @beansnbops.bsky.social · 12h

she let me hit because im trustworthy loyal helpful friendly courteous kind obedient cheerful thrifty brave clean and reverent

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 13h

Glanced at a computer in the public library and noticed a woman was asking ChatGPT how to present medical evidence in a court of law. Didn't stop to snoop but did see that it was all like "And here's the *really important* thing: ..." Good luck with that ma'am...

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 15h

"We have to make room for the outdoor seating for the new Indian restaurant" ... bro we've been having good weather for a while now and I've yet to see anyone eating outside there.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 15h

Still an important holiday but I'm not forgiving U of C for evicting the fair from its ancestral home in a pedestrian plaza (pictured in OP) to its new digs in a medium-depressing parking lot

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Not my fav but one that I heard recently that threatens to supplant the original in my imagination. TW: Tuvan throat singing youtu.be/XreCsCQVPIM?...

youtu.be

Albert Kuvezin & Yat-Kha - Love Will Tear Us Apart 2006

YouTube video by (Too much) confusion

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

According to a friend who used to work for one, business school is just one long networking event with some pretextual "classes" attached. You bond, you haze, you compete, you prove you're a go-getter, you pick up a vocabulary, but you don't, like, deeply study ideas, not even business ideas.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

It's early C20 "there are too many Jews at Harvard" all over again

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Pride and Prejudice and DraftKings

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Sure, this is valid for people who socialize in order to enjoy the company of others. But evidently our AI bro friend is living in a long-19th-century novel where he must navigate a web of dynastic alliances and social climbing by taking up expensive hobbies, like whist, that keep him in the swim.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Getting your tires changed eh

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Still thinking about this. Are they speaking a Turkic language? Is it a conlang like Klingon? Do the people at @lingthusiasm.com or some other smarties know?

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

It's wild how recent most of the names are, even for common elements

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Also the names of the noble gases (neon, argon, krypton, xenon) mean "the new," "the inactive" [an-ergic], "the hidden," and "the stranger."

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Reading this excellent memoir about chemistry and surviving fascism as part of my "friends can ask me to read any book no questions asked" policy. Learning that cobalt is named after kobolds and nickel is named after a little German devil (cf. Old Nick) - both from miners' slang.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Counterpoint: it's cool when people have their own names for foreign places. Let the French call it Londres, not London. Let Hispanophones say Nueva York. These aren't terms of disrespect; they're signs that cultures matter enough to each other to adopt them into their own languages.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

So I haven't read it but Grossman's earlier, realist work seems to be about guys who resemble the author but also obviously suck. He's exploring his own feelings of suckiness, including his own sexism. But it's definitely possible to explore that while still reproducing it...

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

If you stretch the borders enough, Spoke and Bird is great especially if it's patio weather

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The story is so similar to other periods of Chicago culture, too. Once you stop expecting "Chicago conquers the world" and start looking for quieter stories about life in a city with its own unique relationship to American culture, there's plenty to find. The Studs Lonigan books are from the mid-30s

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

... which is where Chicago writers like Dreiser, Hamlin Garland, and Floyd Dell went. But you could tell a similar story about Boston writers like Howells. Mencken noted a high water mark in regionalized literary culture but he didn't, like, scare it off.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Thanks, very interesting! It seems silly to attribute any causality to Mencken's essay; Chicago's literary rises and falls are driven by deeper forces. There's a standard narrative that things head downhill in the 20s, as regional literary centers generally lose talent to NYC ...

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Reposted by Jesse Raber

Elizabeth Wrigley-Field @wrigleyfield.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

My Minnesota friends have already seen this, but I keep thinking about it and want more people outside our state to, too.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

AI hypers have poisoned the well, but in another climate that would be surmountable. But our politics is dominated by outright lying, and now giving a good-faith hearing to opposing ideas just makes you a sucker. We're learning to live in that environment, but it's making us a bit monstrous.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Yup. Asking for evidence only of "systemic/procedural" antisemitism implies that it only counts if there's some deliberate, official conspiracy (in the manner of classic antisemitic theories of Jewish conspiracy). But it's awfully late in the day to say that "lone wolves" aren't a systemic problem.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Learning something new every day

Article title: Feast of the Ass
Article category: Medieval Christian Feast

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Reposted by Jesse Raber

dan mentos @danmentos.com · 22/09/2026

[job interview] interviewer: so god killed all your kids? job: that's right

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Reposted by Jesse Raber

ve, the ghost of info past @vortexegg.com · 01/10/2026

People need to understand the people leading the AI industry, transhumanist/longtermist/EA movements, and tech broadly, as died-in-the-wool pseudoscientists, denialists (climate change, the holocaust), and crank purveyors of conspiritualist woo of the highest order. The height of Rationalism.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

this footnote to Augustine woke up and chose violence

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Reposted by Jesse Raber

Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This is an excellent article by Leif Wetherby - why AI is a cultural technology not a collection of human-like agents (citing our work on this). And why the anthropomorphism is a distraction from the very real risks and dangers and the way to deal with them. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | Stop Talking About A.I. Like a Human (Gift Article)

If we want to figure out the proper way to control A.I. models, we need to recognize what they really are.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Getting into this artifact guessing game from the Met. They show you 10 objects and you have to place them in space and time. After a week or so I'm saying stuff like "it looks like pre-Inca Peru ..." My record is getting to the top 7% of players on a certain day. anthropeum.com

anthropeum.com

Anthropeum

A daily game that challenges our understanding of human cultures. Ten objects. 5,000 years of human history. Guess where and when each artifact was made. See how you rank.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

sorry but technically an epic poem can't be tragic. aristotle said so

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Many are saying bsky.app/profile/jrab...

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Yeah if you're driving on the mag mile something has gone horribly wrong. There's just no reason to do it!

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Reposted by Jesse Raber

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I guess I’m about to be all meta, but with regard to a certain colorfully named distributive avian construct in my corner of the discourse: I find it notable that the originators of said construct repeatedly insist that there is a single correct interpretation for how the construct is understood.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Never mind, the data has spoken ... American society is broken bsky.app/profile/usap...

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Look I'm sympathetic to many arguments in favor of popular genre fiction (some of it is quite good, it's okay to like things that are comfortable, its dismissal often reflects prejudice toward its readers, etc etc) but I just can't with the people who are like "how very dare you *judge* art!!!??"

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I won't be remembered for my life's work or my most treasured personal relationships but my hobby bullshit that I'm not really that good at shall live for ever

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Reposted by Jesse Raber

PJ Harvey Dent @bsakat.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Wendy Carlos should be on the 20 dollar bill. There should be a 50-foot-tall, solid-gold statue of her in Pawtucket. You should be able to buy all her albums in any format you want and a line of custom branded synths. She should be a household name along with Bob Moog.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

How much of this is just people working from home? Because while that's a double edged sword for sure, it's not really a bad thing overall. It'd be nice to see a chart that separates that out.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Hot Corn Summer has passed into fall, but I'll still be smashing that repost button on notable corns. The most Midwestern and the most American of crops, subject of our first national mock epic (Joel Barlow's *The Hasty Pudding*, about grits) ... is swole corn the Joe Rogan of the left?

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Trying to explain how it's ambiguous whether Augustine "knew" that the Roman empire was falling, with previously unthinkable disasters foreign and domestic piling up, internal refugees scrambling around while elites turned away from civic life ... wasn't too hard to convey that vibe ...

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This quarter they've got me on City of God, Middlemarch, and ancient tragedy. Quite a changeup from my usual strictly Americanist teaching beat -- feels good to limber up.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Now that the first class is wrapped I suppose I'll 🚨 announce 🚨 that I've started teaching in UChicago's Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, an extension school version of their classic great books curriculum. Chicago folks, come take a class! graham.uchicago.edu/program/basi...

graham.uchicago.edu

Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults

Read and discuss a collection of the finest works of literature, philosophy, history, and social thought ever written.

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

No! Do you have a link by any chance?

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Jesse Raber @jraber.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It's not just that a pluralistic teaching corps grinds the gears of propaganda ... it's also that people who devote their lives to teaching are, by and large, less reactionary than your average bear. (Not that we're saints ...) They want "teaching" without the type of people who want to teach.

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