Civilian Reader
@civilianreader.com
960 followers 910 following 2.1K posts
Reader of books (biblio-Sisyphus), listener of music, watcher of movies, drinker of coffee & wine. (Same handle on Insta.) I also like basketball. Basically just ricocheting my way through life. http://civilianreader.com
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civilianreader.com
I mean, any excuse to re-read? Love the octopuses, too!
civilianreader.com
Private Eye, nailing it once again.
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Private Eye offers up an excellently scornful commentary on the relentless polling. It’s become ridiculous and has oversimplified our politics to dangerous levels of stupid and irresponsible.
SHOCK POLL:
NIGEL FARAGE WILL BE PM TOMORROW
IN an amazing poll conducted
by The Pointless Polling Company, it was revealed that voters' intentions
may well change over the next three and a half years and at present it's 100 percent impossible to guess what the next government might look like.
However, 99 percent of journalists
agree that it would be much more fun if we had an election tomorrow and everybody resigned and everything was chaos and Farage had a go at being PM, just for the hell of it, because it was so much fun when
Brexit happened and then the government kept falling every five minutes and we could write endless pieces about (cont. p94)
Reposted by Civilian Reader
13sarahmurphy.bsky.social
Private Eye offers up an excellently scornful commentary on the relentless polling. It’s become ridiculous and has oversimplified our politics to dangerous levels of stupid and irresponsible.
SHOCK POLL:
NIGEL FARAGE WILL BE PM TOMORROW
IN an amazing poll conducted
by The Pointless Polling Company, it was revealed that voters' intentions
may well change over the next three and a half years and at present it's 100 percent impossible to guess what the next government might look like.
However, 99 percent of journalists
agree that it would be much more fun if we had an election tomorrow and everybody resigned and everything was chaos and Farage had a go at being PM, just for the hell of it, because it was so much fun when
Brexit happened and then the government kept falling every five minutes and we could write endless pieces about (cont. p94)
Reposted by Civilian Reader
therightram.bsky.social
Just announced at NYCC, my new book with the incredible Mike Perkins at DC Vertigo. Black Tower!

Spies, Spells, London, Magic and Espionage!
civilianreader.com
Heh. Or split it between Obama, Biden, and maybe Hillary Clinton.

His head might actually explode if that happened.
numb.comfortab.ly
Nobel Committee should just troll Trump, and give Obama a second Peace Prize.
Reposted by Civilian Reader
numb.comfortab.ly
Nobel Committee should just troll Trump, and give Obama a second Peace Prize.
Reposted by Civilian Reader
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
We never incited violence, we just called this guy a member of antifa who funded terrorism and told our followers to pay him a visit ha ha and then a totally unrelated group of people threatened to murder him in front of his students ha ha
"The petition to disband our Turning Point chapter is blatantly defamatory," Ava Kwan, outreach coordinator for the Turning Point USA chapter at Rutgers, told Fox News Digital in a statement.
"The accusations of 'inciting violence' and 'making threats' are complete lies," Kwan said. "The same people claiming we're suppressing their free speech are actively trying to silence us for speaking the truth. It's not just ironic, it's hypocritical and absurd." 
tpusa_rutgers Do you want to become a socialist? If so, make sure to pay this professor a visit!!!! All jokes aside help us report this professor who has ties to Antifa which now is designated as a domestic terrorist organization. DO YOUR PART AND HELP MAKE RUTGERS A PLACE FOR ALL STUDENTS TO LEARN WITHOUT BECOMING A RADICAL SOCIALIST
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colinsmith.bsky.social
An entirely charming Mary Blair concept painting for the 1952 Walt Disney animated short “The Little House”.
civilianreader.com
Easy one from where I live: “Toronto”
merriam-webster.com
What’s the word where you’re from that, when pronounced exactly as it looks, identifies a tourist immediately?
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paulwaldman.bsky.social
I feel like I'm seeing this all the time now: A Reddit post, a YouTube video, etc. lamenting the dire effects of the proliferation of AI (in this case a teacher talking about their students being rendered unable to think and learn) followed directly by an ad for an AI product
Reddit post from a teacher lamenting that AI is making their students unable to learn, followed directly by an ad for Microsoft's AI product
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meemalee.bsky.social
Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI
"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat.
People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian
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keithwdickinson.bsky.social
Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.
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philnobilejr.bsky.social
You don’t need AI; AI is not “inevitable.” That’s a lie being fed to you by companies who are going to lose a fuckton of money if they don’t convince you that AI is something you can’t live without.
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
civilianreader.com
If your business model requires exploitation of others, you don’t have a valid business model.
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jonathancoe.bsky.social
This morning I turned on my phone only to find that it had changed my user name to Shirley, and when I tried to enter a simple Google query it came out as "Do you like gladiator movies?"

Then I realised it was in Airplane! mode.
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iandunt.bsky.social
Calling English a 'rip-off degree' is one of the most blatant exhibitions of personal barbarism I've ever seen. You've demonstrated nothing but the poverty of your own mind.
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plashingvole.bsky.social
In a woodcut released today the Guild of Thieves and Cutpurses declared that enforcement of regulations against Thieving and Pursecutting would ‘devastate a growth industry’ and damage the economy.
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dreamwisp.bsky.social
Because it feels relevant as we continue to evaluate the media and our representatives’ statements, my favorite way to identify the active vs. passive voice.
A post by Rebecca Johnson:
“I finally learned how to teach my guys to ID the passive voice. If you can insert "by zombies" after the verb, you have passive voice.”

A tumblr respond from mightymur:
“The final, brilliant word on passive voice.
"She was killed [by zombies.]"<--passive
"Zombies killed [by zombies] her." <-- active”
civilianreader.com
His coverage of Google, Apple, et al, is really good. (Don’t think AI plays a big role in this book, though.)