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Ben Aldred

@sleepingscholar.bsky.social
105 followers 81 following 208 posts

Author, Librarian, Folklorist, Storyteller, Game Writer, Genderqueer, City Wizard. www.sleepingscholar.com

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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
“Mazdas do a fine job getting you where you need to go, and Maseratis are simply not worth the investment,” Mr. Tang said. Open-source models, he added, “offer a better bang for your buck.” I find this quote very illustrative in the weird model of AI companies. The comparison is very useful.
nytimes.com
Corporate America Is Getting Hooked on Open-Source A.I. (Gift Article)
Companies like AT&T are increasingly using cheap, freely available artificial intelligence models over expensive ones from Anthropic and OpenAI.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Current centrist democrats want to return to a model of early 21st century capitalism as if the last decade doesn't prove this model is ineffective in combating economic capture by fascists. Free market liberalism just leaves exploitable loopholes through which you can drive a MAGA boat parade.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I think going forward, whenever I have to miss a costume party, I will RSVP that I will be coming in the costume of Godot.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
I have a superpower. That is to find the common thread between two (or more) topics on the fly. It can be a party trick, but it’s a damn useful thing as a librarian. My wife sent me this today and it took me all of one minute to determine the common thread. Information persistence.
Text image: I love people who are intellectually omnivorous. 
The kind who can discuss folklore, black holes, bird migration, poetry, and grocery store pricing in a single conversation without getting lost.
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Reposted by Ben Aldred
Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
I would like to propose the Taco Bell Principle When a person/institution Did A Problem, & IMMEDIATELY fesses up & takes proactive steps to solve it That's exactly what we want them to do? So how bout we let them live ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Shows about “sports” that I love despite not being much of a sports person. Sports Night Friday Night Lights Heated Rivalry
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Mitch McConnell died as he lived, illegally exploiting someone’s death for political gain.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
@xplainthexmen.bsky.social hearing the final discussion of Planet X puts me in mind of another piece of media from the time, Southland Tales. Both share a kind of inarticulate rage at the state of the world post 9/11, truly infuriated but struggling to make a coherent story from incoherent feelings
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Overheard at Logan Square Farmer’s Market “why did I agree to this Bingo night, Eric?”
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Great piece by a friend of mine. www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/my-...
mcsweeneys.net
My Manic Pixie Dream Femme Fatale
“Her legs went all the way up to the fringe of her baby-doll dress. Presumably further than that, but that’s where the bright polka dots distracted me from t...
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
@xplainthexmen.bsky.social The New X-Men timeline of ages is fucked, if the silver age stories happened when QQ was born, Xavier would have been 25 when founding the school. Though that makes some of his teaching decisions more understandable if he’s a twenty something.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
@xplainthexmen.bsky.social every time you describe the cuckoos as little Emma Frosts, I think to myself that it should be pluralized like attorneys general.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
This is a very significant article, mainly because someone in the situation room is throwing him under the bus. My money is on Vance or Rubio. Happy Taco Tuesday to those who celebrate.
nytimes.com
How Trump Took the U.S. to War With Iran
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
In D&D this week, I coined a term for the upgraded version of a frenemy. The Nememour.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
@xplainthexmen.bsky.social congratulations on the upcoming conclusion, are there thoughts of a finale live event? As a Chicago resident, I haven’t been able to attend prior live shows, but I would travel for one if it was the last chance.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Reflecting recently on how fucked up the game of hangman is. Like babies’s first public execution? Lookout kids if you can’t spell things properly it’s the noose for you? We don’t think about it because we’re introduced to it so young, but it’s real weird if you think too hard.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
Fun strategy for activists getting their phones illegally searched by ICE, put in numbers with names like "White House whistleblower" or "Marco Rubio secret phone" so they get all paranoid about their internal security.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Something can both be a distraction and a massive injustice. Minnesota and Greenland are both trying to distract from the Epstein files, and the fact that he’s willing to start WW3 and the Civil War should tell you how bad they really are.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
This article basically admits that the business model of AI is addiction. You will become dependent on it and get locked into paying for it. Don’t use AI.
nytimes.com
Opinion | I’m Betting That OpenAI Will Go Broke
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
This is a message to the 'God has a plan' people out there. ICE murdered a woman whose name is literally Good. Do you think that might be a sign from God? Maybe pray on that a bit.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 04/01/2026
I had an idea, Kickstopper, a platform where you raise money to buy the rights to beloved franchises/movies and deliberately sit on them to prevent terrible remakes. Top of my list: The Princess Bride. What franchise/movie would you buy to ensure it's never remade?
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
@xplainthexmen.bsky.social Jay’s answer to the crossover question was everything I come to the podcast for!
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
ADHD medication has the same meter as teenage mutant ninja turtles and the fact my brain pointed that out proves its necessary.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
I’ve adopted a rhetorical flourish in recent years that comes from my experience in union negotiation. When I am talking about someone flawed I tend to use the phrase “are they perfect? Yes, absolutely perfect no flaws” delivered with mild sarcasm.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
One of my biggest frustrations with American politics is how many programs have been turned, rhetorically into personal benefit programs. So many programs are designed to help not only the individual but society. But Reagan era conservatism turned them into personal entitlement programs.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
I realized something about LLMs, but to talk about it, I have to tell on myself a bit. I'm an excellent bullshit artist. It's a skill I don't use in my day to day life, I've found that bullshitting people is ultimately pretty unsatisfying. But I know what bullshitting looks like. LLMs are bullshit.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
Sometimes having the right name for a project is almost enough for me to want to do it. Case in point, a choir that does only They Might Be Giants songs known as the Countless Screaming Argonauts.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Useful information for what to do if someone you know gets detained. Good to share with folks ahead of time.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
The central issue with AI in higher education is that we don’t assess our specific goals properly. The key goal for higher education is comprehension and analysis. We want students to be able to encounter information, understand it and react intelligently.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
We’re coming up on the holidays. If you have a family member in ICE, they don’t get to eat with you, they don’t get to visit, they don’t get the comforts that they deny others. And tell them why.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Key thing about the Kimmel censorship debacle. Part of the point was how milquetoast the joke was. They want the overton window so authoritarian that they can censor anyone.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
I was eating a salad with cherry tomatoes earlier today and accidentally Denethored my iPad
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
@xplainthexmen.bsky.social so, in the recent discussion of Pyro, Miles mispronounced the name St. John, which misses the terrible pun. In Australia it would be pronounced sin-jin like the gerund form of singe.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
So, everyone is freaked out by AI's capacity to make sense, but Outlook's pattern recognition suggested this to me. As I tried to name a second well known brand of sparkling water, it decided that instead of waterloo, what I was most likely to type was "waterless water".
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 27/07/2025
A peek into my brain: I am describing how the milk and cheerios ratio is important for the infusion of cereal with liquid. My brain goes, the word for that with water is hydrate, so just substitute the root for milk! Fortunately, my brain works fast enough to keep me from lactating my cheerios.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
One of my favorite things to do as a librarian is un-shush people. “You don’t have to whisper here, this isn’t a quiet floor”
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
ICE are scared little babies who won’t show their faces because people might be mean to them. They are snowflakes.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
One of the biggest problems of society today is the assumption that the mid 20th century is 'normal' The post-war era in the US was a massive change from other parts of history. 1. We had an energy boom. The world had access to more energy from more sources than ever before.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 05/07/2025
One of the fundamental problems with us politics is the differing difficulty levels. The right’s goals are to make a small group rich and hurt people they hate. That’s easy. The left wants to build a more sustainable and lasting system that benefits the most people. That’s governing in hard mode.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
So, this is the day America dies. 45 billion a year for ICE enforcement and detention. The budget of the FBI is 10.1 billion a year. The Federal Bureau of Prisons is 8 billion. The Marines are 57.2 Billion. FEMA is 33 Billion.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
The flight time between philly and chicago is almost always .85 movies. In other news, I have watched Conclave up to just before the reveal of the final twist.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
Nothing like waking up super early to get to your flight, only to get the delay notification once you drop off the rental car.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
@xplainthexmen.bsky.social “close to the violence machine” sounds so much like an album title and it makes me think what musical genre each X-team would be. X-force being metal, classic X-factor being easy listening suitable for zz105. What would other iterations be?
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 15/06/2025
The corporation I wish did something for Pride is Spirit Halloween.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
Here's something to think about with GenAI. How long until they include product placement and ads. Until your report favorably mentions whatever company pays OpenAI the most. Don't think it'll happen? Look at google searches.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Yeah, my top results had some accurate hits. openpsychometrics.org/tests/charac...
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
I'm gonna talk about myself for a change here. I'm in the process of being reluctantly promoted to being in charge of my department at work. I'm also in the process of sending out a ton of agent queries for my book. I also got elected to the ALA council and to the Exec. Comm of my library. Whee!
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
My shorthand for my gender: They revoked my man card and I decided not to apply for a replacement.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Welp, got a new favorite vampire movie.
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Ben Aldred @sleepingscholar.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
So, we’re facing down economic chaos, but the administration will not fix it. They will use it to declare a national emergency and impose terrible measures. Don’t believe the emergency.
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