Ben Hammerslag
@bhammerslag.bsky.social
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
You can test new tech ideas using the Seinfeld Test
Would the product eliminate the plot of an episode? (Google maps, cell phones, paypal, battery packs)
Good tech.
Would the product inspire new Seinfeld plots? (NFTs, AI chatbots, crypto currency, blindboxes, metaverse land sales)
Bad tech.
Would the product eliminate the plot of an episode? (Google maps, cell phones, paypal, battery packs)
Good tech.
Would the product inspire new Seinfeld plots? (NFTs, AI chatbots, crypto currency, blindboxes, metaverse land sales)
Bad tech.
January 31, 2026 at 6:57 AM
You can test new tech ideas using the Seinfeld Test
Would the product eliminate the plot of an episode? (Google maps, cell phones, paypal, battery packs)
Good tech.
Would the product inspire new Seinfeld plots? (NFTs, AI chatbots, crypto currency, blindboxes, metaverse land sales)
Bad tech.
Would the product eliminate the plot of an episode? (Google maps, cell phones, paypal, battery packs)
Good tech.
Would the product inspire new Seinfeld plots? (NFTs, AI chatbots, crypto currency, blindboxes, metaverse land sales)
Bad tech.
@hodgman.bsky.social A real long shot, but: there was a Little Gray Books lecture on the subject of Spies and Spy Rock. Do you know if the presenter is on social media?
January 26, 2026 at 2:06 AM
@hodgman.bsky.social A real long shot, but: there was a Little Gray Books lecture on the subject of Spies and Spy Rock. Do you know if the presenter is on social media?
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
traveling back in time and ignoring his cries of "it hardly seems necessary" and digging a revolver into jemmy madison's temple until he writes federalist #86, "what if the president is the biggest most corrupt shit-for-brains in history and also going insane"
January 19, 2026 at 5:42 AM
traveling back in time and ignoring his cries of "it hardly seems necessary" and digging a revolver into jemmy madison's temple until he writes federalist #86, "what if the president is the biggest most corrupt shit-for-brains in history and also going insane"
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
Great advice for the present moment too.
January 14, 2026 at 4:15 AM
Great advice for the present moment too.
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
RFK: “Where did all this autism come from? It never existed when I was a kid!”
“A Christmas Story”, a 1983 movie based on a 1971 memoir about a childhood in the 1930s: “This is my brother Ralphie. He has a ton of sensory issues and behaviors we don’t understand. Every family has a child like him.”
“A Christmas Story”, a 1983 movie based on a 1971 memoir about a childhood in the 1930s: “This is my brother Ralphie. He has a ton of sensory issues and behaviors we don’t understand. Every family has a child like him.”
December 26, 2025 at 2:43 AM
RFK: “Where did all this autism come from? It never existed when I was a kid!”
“A Christmas Story”, a 1983 movie based on a 1971 memoir about a childhood in the 1930s: “This is my brother Ralphie. He has a ton of sensory issues and behaviors we don’t understand. Every family has a child like him.”
“A Christmas Story”, a 1983 movie based on a 1971 memoir about a childhood in the 1930s: “This is my brother Ralphie. He has a ton of sensory issues and behaviors we don’t understand. Every family has a child like him.”
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
annual holiday reminder, female cardinals are brown so any time you see two red cardinals snuggling on a branch, they are boyfriends
December 18, 2025 at 12:05 AM
annual holiday reminder, female cardinals are brown so any time you see two red cardinals snuggling on a branch, they are boyfriends
@hodgman.bsky.social AOME has so warped my mind that when my wife sends me pictures of a cape she wants to buy, all I can think is "There's money available to become a French Gendarme, cape fee included!"
December 5, 2025 at 9:01 PM
@hodgman.bsky.social AOME has so warped my mind that when my wife sends me pictures of a cape she wants to buy, all I can think is "There's money available to become a French Gendarme, cape fee included!"
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
Please, I beg you. If this happens to someone you know: don’t be graceful about it. This level of planet-destroying ignorance to the effects of technology has to be socially ostracized.
November 26, 2025 at 5:11 AM
Please, I beg you. If this happens to someone you know: don’t be graceful about it. This level of planet-destroying ignorance to the effects of technology has to be socially ostracized.
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
It’s fun to think about the surgeon who will botch your surgery 20 years from now and what he’s doing at this moment. He just ran all his homework through ChatGPT. He just read that article about vaccines and autism at the CDC website. He just watched an Instagram video about the moon landing hoax.
November 21, 2025 at 4:27 AM
It’s fun to think about the surgeon who will botch your surgery 20 years from now and what he’s doing at this moment. He just ran all his homework through ChatGPT. He just read that article about vaccines and autism at the CDC website. He just watched an Instagram video about the moon landing hoax.
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
And then I said "Sir, it's the Enterprise!"
November 16, 2025 at 2:14 AM
And then I said "Sir, it's the Enterprise!"
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
reeling at the idea that trump is using an example of people who pay by check at the grocery store in 2025. if you freaky fridayed him into a normal person's life he would starve to death in a week.
Trump: "It's time for Republicans to do what they have to do and that's terminate the filibuster ... we should start tonight with 'the country's open, congratulations,' then we should pass voted ID, we should pass no mail in voting ... you go to a grocery store, you have to give ID."
November 5, 2025 at 2:25 PM
reeling at the idea that trump is using an example of people who pay by check at the grocery store in 2025. if you freaky fridayed him into a normal person's life he would starve to death in a week.
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
So much of "cancel culture" discourse is a re-description of the normal functioning of a democracy and public discourse by people who didn't like the results of one, or both, or how it made them feel.
Saying that someone doesn’t deserve to be a senator isn’t canceling them, that is the public opinion candidates are subject to in a democracy.
October 25, 2025 at 3:24 PM
So much of "cancel culture" discourse is a re-description of the normal functioning of a democracy and public discourse by people who didn't like the results of one, or both, or how it made them feel.
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
To check if a pundit is being honest, ask “would he have made this claim a year ago, before he knew it would be a defense of Trump” and folks, I’m 100% certain Douthat would not have argued “The president needs to demolish the East Wing and build a palace” last year
October 26, 2025 at 2:55 PM
To check if a pundit is being honest, ask “would he have made this claim a year ago, before he knew it would be a defense of Trump” and folks, I’m 100% certain Douthat would not have argued “The president needs to demolish the East Wing and build a palace” last year
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
This is my regular reminder to everyone that jstor is open to the general public now; a free account there will give you access to 100 papers a year.
regrettably if you try to point this out online you'll get yelled out by 79208 journalists going OH SO YOU WANT JOURNALISTS TO STARVE??? even if you're, say, a journalist yourself, and point out that while there are clearly no easy answers, the status quo isn't exactly working for society
September 29, 2025 at 1:19 PM
This is my regular reminder to everyone that jstor is open to the general public now; a free account there will give you access to 100 papers a year.
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
The eye exam is the perfect game design. That big E is a great tutorial that teaches you the basic mechanic. But it doesn't baby you and quickly gets hard as they introduce the small and blurry enemies.
September 7, 2025 at 7:12 PM
The eye exam is the perfect game design. That big E is a great tutorial that teaches you the basic mechanic. But it doesn't baby you and quickly gets hard as they introduce the small and blurry enemies.
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
I mean, whom amongst us hasn't bought a church for someone, developed a secret crush, attempted to commit a murder, then written a book about the experience.
The new Elizabeth Gilbert memoir sounds absolutely berserk
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
September 1, 2025 at 12:46 AM
I mean, whom amongst us hasn't bought a church for someone, developed a secret crush, attempted to commit a murder, then written a book about the experience.
Increasingly convinced that this -- the Legislature refusing to hold the Executive to account -- is Gödel's Loophole.
A US appeals court ordered the Trump administration to resume publicly sharing data on how it is spending federal dollars -- with one judge writing separately to blast the government for suddenly and unilaterally refusing to follow a law that requires transparency
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
August 11, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Increasingly convinced that this -- the Legislature refusing to hold the Executive to account -- is Gödel's Loophole.
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
As end-of-empire scenarios go it is so much more dignified to get your capital city sacked by the Visigoths than to have a bunch of illiterate rich people in their 70s doing it through a series of incomprehensible tantrums because their brains were defeated by their phones.
August 5, 2025 at 11:44 PM
As end-of-empire scenarios go it is so much more dignified to get your capital city sacked by the Visigoths than to have a bunch of illiterate rich people in their 70s doing it through a series of incomprehensible tantrums because their brains were defeated by their phones.
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
So you’re telling me the Wizard of Oz presented itself as a towering force of overwhelming technology, only to be unmasked as just some guy, off-screen?
So apparently, it may turn out that The Wizard of Oz at the Las Vegas Sphere wasn’t entirely made in AI and Google threw the VFX crew under the bus by claiming it was all done by artificial intelligence.
If true, then fucking yikes.
If true, then fucking yikes.
August 5, 2025 at 3:02 PM
So you’re telling me the Wizard of Oz presented itself as a towering force of overwhelming technology, only to be unmasked as just some guy, off-screen?
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
Michael Moorcock has a guide for writing a book in three days. It's entirely possible, I've done it. But here's the thing: no one in the entire world needs a book that has been written very fast. That is not a valuable thing.
We *already* had things that let you write books in thirty-six hours. They were called "manic episodes" and "shittons of speed". Did Philip K. Dick die in vain?! RETVRN!
I saw someone today say that they think AI writing is awesome because they spent 36 hours using Claude to write a book for them and their wife liked it (and she reads A LOT!) and I'm going to go outside now and see if I can get abducted by aliens.
July 25, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Michael Moorcock has a guide for writing a book in three days. It's entirely possible, I've done it. But here's the thing: no one in the entire world needs a book that has been written very fast. That is not a valuable thing.
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
The actual public service chatgpt provides is in demonstrating the effect of never hearing the word no on the human psyche, it has made billionaire brain pudding a condition accessible to everyone irrespective of net worth
July 19, 2025 at 12:26 PM
The actual public service chatgpt provides is in demonstrating the effect of never hearing the word no on the human psyche, it has made billionaire brain pudding a condition accessible to everyone irrespective of net worth
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
really interesting that the vice president cites as a key intellectual influence a guy who thinks black people are natural slaves
Curtis Yarvin, who has been profiled in media like Politico and The Wall Street Journal, has publicly stated in the past that he thinks black people are naturally fit to be slaves.
July 5, 2025 at 2:30 PM
really interesting that the vice president cites as a key intellectual influence a guy who thinks black people are natural slaves
Reposted by Ben Hammerslag
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem threatened to use her armed agents to “liberate” Los Angeles from its own elected leaders.
When our Senator dared to ask a question, he was attacked by her security detail.
When our Senator dared to ask a question, he was attacked by her security detail.
Senator Padilla makes an excellent point: if the FBI and Secret Service were willing to physically remove a Senator they had just escorted into the room, force him down on the floor and cuff him because he tried to ask a question
What do you think they & ICE do to regular people?
What do you think they & ICE do to regular people?
July 4, 2025 at 6:43 PM
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.