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Adam Riggio

@adamriggio.bsky.social

230 followers 430 following 1.7K posts

Education, Training, & Curriculum Design Professional; media entrepreneur figuring out the next project; For All Our Futures newsletter at https://forallourfutures.beehiiv.com/; he-person; slowly recovering faith in humanity, recovery not guaranteed

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Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · Aug 19

Visit the current form of For All Our Futures! My newsletter covering all the major issues in modern business & technology today, one of many locuses for progress-minded professionals to share ideas & build new futures for everyone.

for-all-our-futures.beehiiv.com

For All Our Futures

Building Communities of Professionals for Progress & Freedom

for-all-our-futures.beehiiv.com

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Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 3h

I knew this would happen. I called it. He’s such a predictably vain little dingus

Screenshot of Adam being totally right that Trump would hate that TIME cover photo of him because it makes him look bald, and he is bald, and totally insecure about how bald he is. It’s important to acknowledge, as the original poster does, that this is very evocative of Leni Riefenstahl’s photography of Hitler, and it’s important that we recognize this.

But also recognize how bald he is and how totally insecure he is about being bald! Bald!

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 3h

I KNEW IT!!!!!

MeidasTouch @meidastouch.com · 4h

Trump is not too pleased with the photo they used of him in TIME Magazine

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 4h

Definitely she’s exploring that dynamic of the resentful mentor, especially when she says she sees herself in both places

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 19h

And he'll hate it anyway because the photo makes him look bald.

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 19h

This reminds me of the worst AI job interview experience I ever had: all the specific points that I made were summarized with the most generic boilerplate HR platitudes imaginable. The screener flattened all my individuality out of my interview responses.

www.404media.co/what-happene...

What Happened When AI Came for Craft Beer

A prominent beer competition introduced an AI-judging tool without warning. The judges and some members of the wider brewing industry were pissed.

www.404media.co

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 19h

Someone like the narrator of "Father Figure" will never understand how his paternalism will be seen as manipulative lies, just as Taylor likely sees Scott Borchetta that way today. Just as a lot of people will never consider an artwork's hidden meaning to be more important than the superficial.

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 19h

For all that we may try to encourage more nuanced ability to understand art, there will always be people who never bother to think. It's unfortunately depressing.

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 19h

The Lonely Island skewered this character much better than Salinger managed because their music video never let their self-righteous dick escape being the butt of the joke. The narration of "Threw It on the Ground" never let that character take over.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYL...

Threw It On The Ground

YouTube video by thelonelyisland

www.youtube.com

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 19h

The most brutal & best example is how most people who read Catcher in the Rye when it first launched who took Holden Caulfield as the intelligent, insightful figure he presented in the narrative. Holden was supposed to be an arsehole, but few noticed.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cat...

The Catcher in the Rye - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 19h

What makes this especially twisted is that the anti-intellectualists have a point! A lot of people prefer to think of art in simple terms. Humans are notorious for not seeing nuance in storytelling. We're especially good at taking unreliable narrators as straightforward purveyors of truths.

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 20h

This is an anti-intellectualism that's very common on the internet: the idea that only pretentious professors think that art has any deep meaning at all. Best illustration is this cartoon that makes me want to scream.

Best statement of modern online anti-intellectualism. First panel of a cartoon with Edgar Allan Poe dancing and prancing about how much he loves ravens. Second panel of students in literature making up a terrible interpretation of the Poe poem "The Raven" about how ravens are bird. Third panel is the literature teacher explaining that the ravens in the poem are symbols representing despair, remorse, and how feelings of regret manifest in a person's mind. The ghost of Edgar Allen Poe appears to yell at the literature teacher, probably something abusive, about how she has presumed that his poem is more complicated than "Ravens are pretty, tra la la la!"

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Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 20h

This is about more than Taylor Swift writing one easy-to-misinterpret song. "Father Figure" is one more instance of a media environment that encourages people to understand art superficially & make outrage-baiting takes whose ignorance helps them spread.

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Reposted by Adam Riggio

Jess Hardie @jesshardie.bsky.social · 1d

When even Yglesias knows you are full of it.

Matthew Yglesias quote tweeting Sally Jenkins tweet of the “Don’t Bet Against Bari Weiss” article

Sally: This is really smart. Amazed at the hysteria over the ascendance of a woman entrepreneur who clearly knows how to cover and sell news and who's not afraid to take on a mob.

Matt: I don't think people are "betting against Bari Weiss" the concern is that she will succeed in transforming CBS News into regime-aligned propaganda.

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Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 20h

Understanding what "Father Figure" actually means also requires thinking about her relationship with Big Machine label head Scott Borchetta. Then you understand the song as about a toxic pseudo-paternal relationship that dominated most of her adult life.
www.elle.com/culture/musi...

Taylor Swift Says She 'Can Relate to Both Characters' in Her 'Father Figure' Lyrics

“I can make deals with the devil because my dick’s bigger / This love is pure profit.”

www.elle.com

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Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 20h

This requires a lot more thought about what you hear than the conclusion "Father Figure" + "I protect the family" + hat merch = Taylor's a secret MAGA. For one, it requires listening to the whole song instead of just the chorus, thinking through what it means as a story.

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 20h

The arc of the song is a snappy story about a paternal, kind, protective professional who turns on their most successful protege after they use the badass business skills they were taught against their mentor. But the narration is slippery because the song is from the POV of the vengeful mentor

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 20h

So if you're listening to the song, you hear the title phrase "I'm your father figure," & the hook "I protect the family." The hat would make one think that Taylor has written an anthem for MAGA parents.
www.threads.com/@trashyypand...

ilona is reading 🍉 (@trashyypandareads) on Threads

This is about to be the MAGA mommys’ new favorite hat

www.threads.com

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 20h

This is a great opportunity for me to rail against one issue in modern online media criticism: a lot of people get very viral takes without thinking with any complexity about the meaning of art other than the most superficial viewpoints.

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 20h

My daughter is a huge Taylor Swift fan. My wife is a less-fanatical Taylor Swift fan who sometimes follows progressive social media commentary about art & pop culture. This weekend, she discovered a weird point in Life of a Showgirl criticism: claims that "Father Figure" was a pro-MAGA track.

Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 20h

This Canadian Thanksgiving has been super busy, but it's also brought me insights as a Swift-dad & as a progressive person raising my kids in a bizarro media environment. So I will now write a thread about "Father Figure."

Reposted by Adam Riggio

Commercial Solar Guy @commercialsolarguy.com · 1d

Wind turbine base install

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Reposted by Adam Riggio

elias isquith @eliasisquith.blog · 2d

i think it’s noteworthy that a lot of centrist pundits have decided to just take it as a given that jd vance lies constantly and to treat this as almost part of his intellectual program so that only gauche rubes would bother to mention or care about it.

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Adam Riggio @adamriggio.bsky.social · 2d

Took some time for antiquing

Reposted by Adam Riggio

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 2d

I've been re-acquainting myself with NNs, transformers and LLMs this week, so these are early thoughts. But I am starting to think about language without the capacity to imagine language, i.e., an LLM unable to imagine itself participating in language. mail.cyberneticforests.com/what-machine...

What Machines Don't Know

Imagining Language Without Imagination It's important to acknowledge that Large Language Models are complex. There's an oversimplified binary in online chatter between the dismissive characterizatio...

mail.cyberneticforests.com

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Reposted by Adam Riggio

Erik Loomis @erikloomis.bsky.social · 4d

This Day in Labor History: October 10, 1917. The red light district of New Orleans, known as Storyville, closed due to the efforts of reformers seeking to eliminate vice from the city. Let's talk about sex work and how banning red light districts just made workers unsafe!

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