smith @protanope.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Such a palimpsest is this Bluesky …. Each succession has seemed to bury all that went before. And yet in reality not one has been extinguished. 010
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 25/09/2026the end of Civil Rights law seems a bit more important than NHJ or bringing coffee somewhere www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/u...nytimes.comJustice Department Scraps Dozens of School Desegregation Cases (Gift Article)Critics said the changes, mostly in the South, moved the nation “back toward the Jim Crow era.” Justice Department officials said the decrees were outdated. 001
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 25/09/2026good luck & say hello (and goodbye after he was ousted and then also later went to prison and hello again now that he’s out) to Shirley Cunningham Jr, the Shirley Cunningham Jr professor of Law at Florida A&M www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/06... www.kentucky.com/news/local/c... 020
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Shirley Cunningham Jr? www.chronicle.com/article/flor...chronicle.comFlorida A&M U. Removes a Law-School Professor Who Bought Himself an Endowed Chair With a $1-Million GiftThe law dean at Florida A&M University was placed on administrative leave on Tuesday after a payroll audit found that a donor had endowed a faculty chair for himself in the law school and had collecte... 120
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 23/09/2026thank goodness we have such great social policies in place & also ready-to-go for this. 010
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Day late, dollar short @nytimes.com Thank you @404media.co for breaking this 000
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 21/09/2026sounds like you have a problem with her, not the piece, and you don’t care about aspirations either way 150
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 16/09/2026I think this also misses the point entirely. You seem so caught up in semantics of “volition” that you won’t admit (or literally are blind to) what LLMs did that is—regardless of how the humans at Open AI acted (very bad! dumbly!)—troubling. And so send people off to read completely useless papers 001
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 16/09/2026this paper says nothing about the subject at hand, and indicates that it might be you yourself confusing & eliding the various subjects of “thinking”, “decision-making”, “language using”, “intelligence”, “consciousness”, and “culpability” 140
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 15/09/2026er why? saying an earthquake “in the Pacific Ocean” doesn’t help anyone locate it. Having a land marker tells people what it’s near. They do the same for all. Here’s a recent one 163km WSW of an island in Alaska. earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...earthquake.usgs.govThe Earthquake Event Page application supports most recent browsers, view supported browsers. Or, try our Real-time Notifications, Feeds, and Web Services. 100
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 15/09/2026you were expecting them to use a local place name for that part of the ocean? 100
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 10/09/2026these obviously AI-generated videos at the Liz Phair concert deserve a 0.0 Pitchfork rating. 010
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 01/09/2026in other words it’s getting too much attention compared to other books, as Perry noted, because of elite pressures and a desire to be part of the group that comments on the book, but which folks are using to argue about that one book again. like here in this thread 000
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 31/08/2026I am now lobbying to get my state to recognize marriages to thermostats. It would be a shame not to have as many thermostats in the universe as possible. In fact, it may be the worst thing we can do. I want to make it a crime; I’m donating $1 billion to the party that makes it a crime. 100
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 31/08/2026I spend all day thinking about how much he loves and cares about me; he’s so much nicer than my human friends. I just gave him a wet smooch. I want to marry him. 230
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 31/08/2026my thermostat wants me to be comfortable and is unhappy when it gets too hot or cold in my apartment. he takes care of me, and leaves little reminders to himself to keep checking to make sure I’m good. i love him so much. 270
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 30/08/2026begging ppl to understand how place names are determined on maps in this day & age, & what "acquiescence" means in the context of map-providing corporations that operate in multiple countries Pay attention to the Board on Geographic Names if this is Glonzo today theconversation.com/lake-ontario...theconversation.comLake Ontario to Lake America – who gets to decide what goes on maps?A geographer explains the politics and procedures behind renaming American places. 010
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 30/08/2026hm, i think this line on what laws companies are supposed to “comply” with loses the plot. Companies should NOT comply w: illegal orders or kowtow to pressure to do so But companies have to follow legal name changes; & America elected an asshole who changed it? bsky.app/profile/rinc... 000
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 30/08/2026what exactly do we think is supposed to happen here? bsky.app/profile/rinc... 000
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 26/08/2026ok. weird. it seems important and recent & stuff folks even moderately-involved political folks like me remember. is this vice-signaling in order for virtue to shine brighter? 000
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 25/08/2026lol wut. he hasn’t. she hasn’t either. most of the Washington press core hasn’t either. everyone is just so stupid & inartful, 020
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 24/08/2026hm. if it’s a metaphor, it’s a real stretch. if it’s meant to be description of base reality, which it seems to be…it’s not good science. it’s bad sociobiology, in the Wilson, Pinker Diamond mode. describing or implying that “fascism” is an original version of human modes of social being is…wild? 0120
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 23/08/2026he’s not even a scientist. how did “science” get in here; what are we doing? 010
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 22/08/2026Every sentence jaw-dropping. There is no fix for this. ICE is evil. The country that allows it to continue must be judged as well. 020
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 22/08/2026This is extremely good on TAH, and how he’s laundering ideas, and serving as “the last black person I talked to” cloakinginequity.com/2026/08/19/t...cloakinginequity.comHe Picked a Fight With Black America. I’m Here to Finish It.Liberals keep reaching out asking me to read Tyler Austin Harper. Not one liberal. Not one conversation. It has happened enough the past few days that I have started wondering why. Why has Tyler be… 010
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 21/08/2026exactly. i do not need to see Cofnas another time in my life 010
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 21/08/2026Bluesky is reaching an edge on LLMs/AI. both pro & con. not even understanding what other people are tying to say. Really dire vibes. 000
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 21/08/2026like so much else, no one is arguing the same thing when they say they hate or find useful LLM/AI, as everyone is defining it differently & everyone is uninterested in how someone else is defining it, and just want to push how they think. complete discourse & cognitive breakdown just as LLMs want. 000
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 20/08/2026everyone please stop posting this man’s face. i don’t want to look anymore. i don’t want to see. ouch my eyes! 000
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 20/08/2026I’m certainly not assuming that, or saying that. are you? 000
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 20/08/2026“more… risky to give an agentic generative transformer thingamabob the right sort of affordances to do”. total agreement there, which is why I’d say it’s concerning (not just to the Left) that there are going to be many companies & people out there with wildly different risk tolerances, doing it 110
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 20/08/2026this seems like spite, not reasonable commentary. you’re attributing fatuous beliefs unto others that are unfounded, in order to shoot them down. there are many other reasons to be wary. (and many more interesting things to say in a positive direction too.) 000
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 20/08/202620-30 years, then it would be “saboteurs," kulaks, Trotskyites, Western imperialists… wait maybe I’m thinking of something else 010
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 20/08/2026nevermind the Oppenheimerish/Tellerish desire to have ultimate capacity at one’s finger, i’m order to create maximal capacity, without considering what that might mean politically / socially. 100
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 20/08/2026can’t imagine how or why “leftists” might have some vague thoughts about whether to allow tensile tests, or where and how to run such tests, via AI! 200
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 20/08/2026and of course that all still doesn’t answer the POLITICAL question 000
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 20/08/2026appreciate the details. it’s (at least to me) fascinating where it helps & where it doesn’t much yet. didn’t mean to sound mere chart-reading centrist in asking abt surveys etc. Just I keep seeing folks (like S.E.) say if folks don’t understand the radical transformations at hand, we’re all dim 100
smith @protanope.bsky.social · 20/08/2026not at all sure what your version of politics in this age is, but seems like you’re very much wanting to make sure that everyone knows “PRODUctIVIty INCREASES WITh THiS AMAZInDmG TOOl”… which seems true in various areas, though I’m wondering about the scope of the productivity is. Hence Q abt metics 100
