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Nic Darling

@nicdarling.com
154 followers 160 following 120 posts

Words and technology but rarely at the same time.

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Reposted by Nic Darling
Ryan Packer @typewriteralley.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
George Saunders on using AI: "Writing is the most precious way one person can communicate their essence to another person. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to get better at making myself present in my writing. Why would I want to sacrifice even one iota of that?"
Have you spent time trying to write or revise with AI? Is there an experiment that would be interesting enough to try?

I have not. Not for a second. To me, this whole idea of using AI to write is . . . anathema. A thing to be most radically avoided.

Writing is the most precious way one person can communicate their essence to another person. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to get better at making myself present in my writing. Why would I want to sacrifice even one iota of that? Not even in an email and certainly not in a short story or novel.Who are we ceding our authority to, exactly, when we let AI write for us? And why? Why surrender our agency (that amazing ability we have to reach across time and space, with our strange, idiosyncratic phenomenon, and land within the sensibility of another human being) to something that, by its very design, pushes the individual sensibility aside? And in the name of . . . what, exactly? Ease, I guess? Efficiency? The person who chooses to write with AI has also sacrificed, from the start, the opportunity of experiencing difficulty, of struggling to say what he wants to say, of making himself evident in his prose, of trying to find out what he believes. By this, he sacrifices a chance to know himself and his mind better. To me, that’s a shame. And it’s dangerous, because, as we are now finding out, it affects the brain and lessens our capabilities. Thanks, but no thanks, get thee behind me, etc.
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Patrick Galey @patrickgaley.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Shame on everyone involved in creating a timeline where a company with a $42 billion operating loss and which spends $8 billion to make $4 billion can con enough land visitors into a $1 trillion IPO while claiming it is gonna kill us all
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samuelwa.de @samuelwa.de · 28/09/2026
My “Involved in Human Trafficking“ shirt has a lot of people asking questions that are making me want to stop wearing my shirt rather than reconsider my involvement in human trafficking
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Jared Yates Sexton @jysexton.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Just helping with editing here. These bots aren’t sentient. They’re doing what they’re programmed to do. OpenAI, a private company supposedly bound by laws, committed federal crimes.
Screenshot of BBC article: OpenAI bots (struck through) meddled with multiple US government agency sites
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 26/09/2026
Does my Speak-n-Spell feel pain when I type O-U-C-H? The jury is out. Philosophers and neuroscientists say that's fucking stupid, but I called a guy from the Center for Pretending that Household Electronics Are Sentient and he said there's no way to know for sure.
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More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
BREAKING: The state of New York is suing Polymarket, claiming the company operates an illegal gambling platform in violation of state gambling laws.
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Preeti Chhibber @runwithskizzers.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I am going throw myself into the sea
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EL-P @el-p.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Judge temporarily overturns child-to-wood chipper order
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Prof Bill McGuire @profbillmcguire.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Exxon is now expecting a 2.5 - 3C rise by 2050 But says f*ck you - we are just going to keep right on sucking up as much gas and oil as we can Because even though we know what's coming, we really don't give a sh*t www.reuters.com/business/ene...
reuters.com
Exxon raises 2050 global emissions forecast, sees slower coal decline
The world is at risk of falling behind in efforts to reduce carbon emissions by 2050, ExxonMobil said in its annual energy outlook published on Thursday, as ​the burning of coal could decline at a slo...
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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 19/09/2026
Referring to the harm as being caused by LLMs, when it is caused by people, actually serves to exonerate the people as if they did not make explicit decisions.
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Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
In this class we're in the middle of reading about ways that AI has already harmed real people in its actual applications. There are so many examples (and that list is growing everyday) that it's not possible to cover them all. arstechnica.com/health/2023/...
arstechnica.com
UnitedHealth uses AI model with 90% error rate to deny care, lawsuit alleges
For the largest health insurer in the US, AI's error rate is like a feature, not a bug.
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 19/09/2026
Yeah, I've been a tech nerd for decades but all the "AI" stuff really does feel like "Sooooo we're taking a type of computation that's actually bad at most things and putting it in a whole bunch of stuff to make it work worse because... if we don't the whole economy's going to crash or something?"
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Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 17/09/2026
“A senior executive at Microsoft said A.I. systems built on the work of others will be seen as ‘an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions’ and possibly the greatest robbery of labor in human history, according to court documents unredacted Thursday in an ongoing Manhattan lawsuit.”
orlandosentinel.com
Docs in A.I. copyright suit reveal startling admission by Microsoft exec over ‘astonishing theft’
The admission appeared in a newly unredacted filing in the landmark copyright infringement legal battle playing out between newspapers like the Orlando Sentinel and tech companies Microsoft and OpenAI...
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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 17/09/2026
it is not "acting out" it is doing exactly what it's being programmed to do, and the failures come because it's being overseen by incompetent people with no ethics
gizmodo.com
'Be Transparent Only If Asked': OpenAI Models Acted Out in Six Newly Disclosed Ways
The stories were published as part of OpenAI's new effort to disclose more such incidents.
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Josh Zingher @zingherpolisci.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Really hard to overstate just how central AI video slop is to the broader authoritarian project. It allows people to visualize fantasies without having to pay the social costs of such actions, while desensitizing people about the act itself. It's 4chan on steroids w a veneer of respectability.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Therrrre it is.
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Anat Shenker-Osorio @anatosaurus.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
There was a time when most working class voters didn't merely vote Democratic by default, being Democratic voters was core to their identity. A time Dems took sides, saying there's capitol & labor; we're with the latter. Where they relished angering the rich. /1
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
New Gallup polling finds that 71% of Americans approve of labor unions and 56 million Americans would join a union tomrorow if they could. We are witnessing a historic rebirth of worker power. If you want a better life for you and your children, join or support a union.
epi.org
Unions are extremely popular: 56 million workers would join a union if they could
New Gallup polling finds that 71% of people in the U.S. approve of unions, continuing the highest period of favorability in over 60 years. This coincides with the greatest number of workers represente...
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Daniel Moser @dmoser.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Pollution levels in London after 10 years of advancing sustainable transport.
Map showing Lower Pollution levels in London after 10 years of advancing sustainable transport.
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Unicorns Happen @silvy777.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
83% of the Earth's life-without-parole prison population is in US. US is 4% of the world's population.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Shut it down. Now.
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Bradley P. Moss @bradmossesq.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
These people had protected status. They lived here legally. They worked, they paid taxes. They made lives. Raised families. Now we’ve dehumanized them. Ripped away that protection and told them to get out. This is a stain on the soul of this Nation.
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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
I have, with my own eyes, watched my tax dollars in the form of missiles as they hit buildings inhabited by civilians. I'd much prefer subsidizing a grocery story I don't use.
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David Slack @slack2thefuture.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
If you still have a Twitter account, today is a great day to delete it. Nothing you could possibly get out of that site is worth having your name associated with child pornography. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
arstechnica.com
Elon Musk’s xAI used child porn to train Grok models, lawsuit says
xAI accused of training Grok on real and AI-generated child pornography.
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Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · 07/07/2026
‘Polarization’ has become the master concept for diagnosing our current democratic crisis. But this is not polarization. It is the radicalization of the political right. By misdiagnosing it, we risk becoming complicit in the crisis. 🧵 Just out in Perspectives on Politics doi.org/10.1017/S153...
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Just once I want a reporter to reply, "Doesn't it feel humiliating to kiss this moron's ass so aggressively? Aren't you worried about your grandkids reading this shit in school?"
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John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
$2 million a year would cover the salaries of approximately 40 writing instructors (paid a reasonable, but still low wage). I would love to do a John Henry v. the steam shovel experiment to see which has superior effects, whatever this initiative discovers, or 40 additional writing instructors.
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Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
The only thing I really want to add to the plentiful discourse around this weird behavior is that no one’s “child” goes to college. College students are legal adults more than capable of choosing to take some fun, critical, interesting courses without guys online being paternalistic about it.
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Brooke @brooklynmarie.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Being undocumented in the United States is a civil violation. It is not a felony. It is not even a misdemeanor.
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The Onion @theonion.com · 24/08/2026
Guy Who Sucks At Being A Person Sees Huge Potential In AI theonion.com/guy-who-sucks-at-being…
Guy Who Sucks At Being A Person Sees Huge Potential In AI
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Dex Anderson @dexanderson.com · 17/08/2026
During the great recession, 1 in 3 Millennials lived with their parents. We are not in good economic times, friends.
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More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
When adjusted for inflation, the real hourly wages of U.S. workers have decreased since last summer.
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Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Axios writer: I melted my brain with AI. Not only can I no longer read, but I don't even understand the purpose of reading anymore. Here's how you can also do this. www.axios.com/2026/08/11/r...
Axios: AI has become my reading buddy as I've plowed through my summer book list, helping me keep track of plots and characters, unpack themes, and make sense of wordy, old prose.

Why it matters: The way many of us actually read books — a few pages before bed, a chapter at the beach, another on a plane — makes it easy to lose the thread. AI can help you pick it back up without starting over.
📖 I really got into using AI while reading James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans." The text was far too dense for casual vacation reading. My first prompt asked:

"I'd like a guide as I read The Last of the Mohicans who can help me understand what I've read and where the story is, without giving spoilers or getting ahead of my progress. Can you do this, chapter by chapter?"
The robot agreed: "Cooper's sentences are long and his diction is archaic."
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Thor Benson @thorbenson.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
"Sorry, my product randomly breaks the law sometimes" is not something we would tolerate from other industries. Maybe we shouldn't tolerate it with AI
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Also the Republicans were screaming that Fauci helped authorize vaccines for children, which is something every goddamn parent I know was praying for every day for more than a year and have been thankful for ever since. These people are all self-centered idiotic sociopaths, nothing more.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
This is VERY bad. Congressional investigation immediately. They’re trying to use Palantir to figure out who you voted for. 0% chance this ends well. Stop it ASAP.
axios.com
Exclusive: FBI gets voter's IP address in new fraud probe tactic
The move offers a glimpse into how authorities are now digging into voter rolls and registration practices.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Two straight days in which news organizations made uncanny valley image choices where famous people look like Onion stock image illustrations.
USA Today: RFK Jr. will host a new cooking show with celebrity chefsNYT: Ross Douthat Joins 60 Minutes as Correspondent
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Headquarters @headquartersnews.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Chicago teen shares his experience in ICE detention centers: I am 18 years old and I just graduated from high school in Chicago. I was in ICE detention for 2 months and 10 days. They kept me in solitary for 2 days for no reason, alone in a room with just a toilet. They never let us go outside.
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
I guess I am comfortable saying that in cases where people you formerly respected, or presumed you did, are now actively choosing to sunset their own minds & surrender them to machines invented by incels and billionaires, then yes there should be a stigma for that. This is what society is for
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Futurism @futurism.com · 30/07/2026
"I have no idea how to get around this."
trib.al
Hack "Writers" Fuming After ChatGPT Starts Refusing Prompts to Copy a Specific Author's Style
AI "writers" are seething after ChatGPT began refusing requests to mimic a specific author's style, living or dead.
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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
not sure how anyone can stay on an app thats fighting in court for the right to generate non consensual nudes of people, including children
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[Christopher M. Federico] @chrispps.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
this sounds elitist but our recovery from the present moment will depend in part on being able to once again effectively malign, ostracize, and refuse a platform to cranks
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Joaquin Castro @joaquincastrotx.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
112 children are imprisoned at Dilley. The youngest child imprisoned at Dilley is 2 months old. None have committed any crime. Private investors make money for each new child taken into Dilley. We need to #ShutDownDilley and end family detention.
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Working Class History @workingclasshistory.com · 28/07/2026
#OtD 28 Jul 1915 the United States' 19-year occupation of Haiti began. Writer James Weldon Johnson observed "economic corruption, forced labour, press censorship, racial segregation, and wanton violence introduced to Haiti by the US occupation" in 1920 stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/1001...
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More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
AI is making everyone's life more expensive, according to CNN. "Households must spend just over $375 more to purchase the same goods and services as they did this time last year due to AI’s inflationary impact,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says. www.cnn.com/2026/07/28/e...
cnn.com
AI is making your life more expensive. Here’s how | CNN Business
AI is raising prices for Americans – and not just electricity bills.
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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 28/07/2026
about half of centrists and the center-left for some reason concluded that climate change was passe hippie bullshit that doesn't matter, and we're about to learn how wrong that was, the hard way prospect.org/2026/07/28/c...
prospect.org
The Strongest El Niño in History Is Coming. Get Ready. - The American Prospect
Donald Trump has no ideas, but America is ready for a U-turn on climate change.
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
"$10.6B is being spent this year to rush AI into our classrooms. You’d have to assume there’s a mountain of evidence motivating this Manhattan Project-style spending. Well, not so much. More like a mountain of AI hallucinations." medium.com/@jasonsattle...
medium.com
Here’s what we know about AI and education. It’s not good.
Yet we know the proven interventions that do work will remain sorely underfunded.
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More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
U.S. taxpayers spend about $2 billion every year on Medicaid for Amazon and Walmart employees, subsidizing the companies that refuse to adequately pay hundreds of thousands of workers, or give them healthcare. /1
popular.info
Taxpayers spend about $2 billion annually on Medicaid for Amazon and Walmart employees
American taxpayers are spending billions every year providing Medicaid benefits to hundreds of thousands of employees of Amazon and Walmart, a new analysis by Popular Information reveals.
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Evan Greer @evangreer.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
NEW: I wrote for MSNBC about how Madison Square Garden turning off their facial recognition cameras for Taylor Swift is a perfect encapsulation of our dystopian present: where the wealthy can use surveillance to consolidate power, and the rest of us live in a privately owned panopticon.
ms.now
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got to buy MSG's privacy. Her fans aren't so lucky.
Reports that Madison Square Garden temporarily shut off its facial recognition system for Swift’s wedding expose a glaring problem with how the elite wield and control mass surveillance.
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Jennifer N. Victor @jenvictor.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Today, in violations of the rule of law that would be sufficient for impeachment in any other American presidency but aren't in this one because pathological partisan loyalty has rotted the constitutional order:
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