Martyn Wendell Jones
@martynwendell.bsky.social
Senior associate editor, The Bulwark. American in Canada, writer. Dad newsletter: https://martynwendell.substack.com/
Pinned
Drone Hysteria, Alien Cultists, and the One-Armed Prophet of Cosmic Enlightenment
My guided tour of the everyday impossible.
www.thebulwark.com
I wrote about the time a UFO cultist brought me to the public meeting of his organization and then caused scandal by trying to accommodate me in a way that violated their esoteric norms: www.thebulwark.com/p/drone-hyst...
fantastic story here
Thanks @jackjenkins.me for this great story of one of the bravest families I know.
religionnews.com/2025/11/25/h...
religionnews.com/2025/11/25/h...
How one conservative Christian family is pushing back against ICE
A coalition of activists, everyday citizens and people of faith — including theologically conservative Christians — who have pooled resources and learned new technologies to mount an effort they say i...
religionnews.com
November 26, 2025 at 4:34 AM
fantastic story here
President Balzac
The thing about Trump stories is that they always have that extra layer of stupidity that you’re not expecting. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/u...
November 26, 2025 at 1:18 AM
President Balzac
This is the week for sharing this Clare Coffey classic. Take and read: www.thebulwark.com/p/skip-the-c...
Skip the Cocktails This Thanksgiving
It’s a wine-and-brandy kind of holiday.
www.thebulwark.com
November 25, 2025 at 10:35 PM
This is the week for sharing this Clare Coffey classic. Take and read: www.thebulwark.com/p/skip-the-c...
Reposted by Martyn Wendell Jones
They are not onto something. And scientists who believe they are need to spend more time reading philosophy of mind.
November 25, 2025 at 8:57 PM
They are not onto something. And scientists who believe they are need to spend more time reading philosophy of mind.
Reposted by Martyn Wendell Jones
one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.
November 25, 2025 at 4:15 PM
one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.
Reposted by Martyn Wendell Jones
It turns out that not legislating and just doing censure votes is bad for morale www.thebulwark.com/p/from-repub...
From Republican House to Retirement Home
Mike Johnson is watching dozens of his colleagues shuffle off toward the exits.
www.thebulwark.com
November 25, 2025 at 8:11 PM
It turns out that not legislating and just doing censure votes is bad for morale www.thebulwark.com/p/from-repub...
Posting an idea I am not going to make good on: "Shrimp Dance Screen Test" would be a video anthology of many shrimp—frozen shrimp, modeled clay shrimp, cartoon shrimp—being made to dance to Hiroshi Suzuki's 1976 banger, "Shrimp Dance." Who can get this dream to live? www.youtube.com/watch?v=rErl...
Hiroshi Suzuki Shrimp Dance
YouTube video by Japanese Jazz Fusion
www.youtube.com
November 25, 2025 at 6:04 PM
Posting an idea I am not going to make good on: "Shrimp Dance Screen Test" would be a video anthology of many shrimp—frozen shrimp, modeled clay shrimp, cartoon shrimp—being made to dance to Hiroshi Suzuki's 1976 banger, "Shrimp Dance." Who can get this dream to live? www.youtube.com/watch?v=rErl...
There's some outstanding stuff here; I'm currently petitioning my colleagues to acquire this poster for the office www.juliensauctions.com/en/items/207...
November 25, 2025 at 3:52 PM
There's some outstanding stuff here; I'm currently petitioning my colleagues to acquire this poster for the office www.juliensauctions.com/en/items/207...
Sort of wishing I could get back to the fresh sight of being I seem to have had following the arrival of our firstborn, when it seemed as though most of the fixed parts of my life before had been thrown into the air and were fluttering around me martynwendell.substack.com/p/dang-volum...
November 25, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Sort of wishing I could get back to the fresh sight of being I seem to have had following the arrival of our firstborn, when it seemed as though most of the fixed parts of my life before had been thrown into the air and were fluttering around me martynwendell.substack.com/p/dang-volum...
[regular Pooh bear image] "fart walk"
[sophisticated Pooh bear image] "constitutional"
[sophisticated Pooh bear image] "constitutional"
Breaking news this morning at the Washington Post. And you people think I should cancel my subscription??
November 24, 2025 at 5:19 PM
[regular Pooh bear image] "fart walk"
[sophisticated Pooh bear image] "constitutional"
[sophisticated Pooh bear image] "constitutional"
this is fantastic
November 24, 2025 at 3:19 AM
this is fantastic
Reposted by Martyn Wendell Jones
i just reviewed 50+ applications for an arts award and most of them were written by chatgpt. And then the other reviewers said they put them into Gemini to rank them. At a certain point, if everyone is giving their thinking entirely over to AI, why are we even bothering with any of this anymore?
November 23, 2025 at 5:32 PM
i just reviewed 50+ applications for an arts award and most of them were written by chatgpt. And then the other reviewers said they put them into Gemini to rank them. At a certain point, if everyone is giving their thinking entirely over to AI, why are we even bothering with any of this anymore?
Reposted by Martyn Wendell Jones
"Worse, the reason the pitch had been appealing to me to begin with was likely because a large language model somewhere was remixing my own prompt asking for stories where 'health and money collide,' flattering me by sending me back what I wanted to hear."
Fascinating read on how a suspicious pitch highlighted a growing problem in freelance journalism: A flood of generative AI that even prestige publications don't catch, complete with fabricated quotes, from scammers who see opportunity in a field so many real humans are struggling to survive in.
Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era | The Local
A suspicious pitch from a freelancer led editor Nicholas Hune-Brown to dig into their past work. By the end, four publications, including The Guardian and Dwell, had removed articles from their sites.
thelocal.to
November 23, 2025 at 6:05 PM
"Worse, the reason the pitch had been appealing to me to begin with was likely because a large language model somewhere was remixing my own prompt asking for stories where 'health and money collide,' flattering me by sending me back what I wanted to hear."
what everyone calls it when I do a really good edit
November 23, 2025 at 6:38 PM
what everyone calls it when I do a really good edit
Reposted by Martyn Wendell Jones
Found an incredible gift for someone’s cool dad
November 22, 2025 at 8:02 PM
Found an incredible gift for someone’s cool dad
Reposted by Martyn Wendell Jones
NEW: JFK was assassinated 62 years ago today. The current occupant of the White House is undoing much of what he did and sought to do.
www.thebulwark.com/p/donald-tru...
www.thebulwark.com/p/donald-tru...
Trump Is Destroying JFK’s America
Kennedy’s vision of a country built up through the service of its citizens is fundamentally incompatible with the vulgar cynicism of the current president.
www.thebulwark.com
November 22, 2025 at 4:07 PM
NEW: JFK was assassinated 62 years ago today. The current occupant of the White House is undoing much of what he did and sought to do.
www.thebulwark.com/p/donald-tru...
www.thebulwark.com/p/donald-tru...
Reposted by Martyn Wendell Jones
oh it’s like this was designed for me specifically
November 22, 2025 at 2:18 AM
oh it’s like this was designed for me specifically
A two-can-of-Celsius sort of day. Going for hummingbird levels of cardiac activity over here
November 21, 2025 at 8:42 PM
A two-can-of-Celsius sort of day. Going for hummingbird levels of cardiac activity over here
obviously not the most notable thing to point out here, but I can't get the idea out of my head that "broader . . . punches" just means "slaps"
Musk has apparently manipulated Grok so much that it says he's a better athlete than LeBron James and a funnier comedian than Jerry Seinfeld.
Imagine being so insecure you need to program an LLM to boost you like that.
Imagine being so insecure you need to program an LLM to boost you like that.
November 20, 2025 at 6:21 PM
obviously not the most notable thing to point out here, but I can't get the idea out of my head that "broader . . . punches" just means "slaps"
Reposted by Martyn Wendell Jones
listen to this king. a team with low morale is ineffective. relatedly, a team with high morale is effective. also relatedly: we are going to win
“I want their morale as low as possible because a team with low morale is ineffective.”
Meet the veteran who chases ICE on a scooter
Meet the veteran who chases ICE on a scooter
Meet the veteran who chases ICE on a scooter
Clifford “Buzz” Grambo patrols the streets of Baltimore to keep his neighbors safe—and make federal agents uncomfortable.
www.motherjones.com
November 20, 2025 at 3:06 PM
listen to this king. a team with low morale is ineffective. relatedly, a team with high morale is effective. also relatedly: we are going to win
wife got a sneaky clip of me scraping our windshield this morning; it actually serves as something like a postcard from our Toronto autumn so far
November 19, 2025 at 8:47 PM
wife got a sneaky clip of me scraping our windshield this morning; it actually serves as something like a postcard from our Toronto autumn so far
one more cup of coffee surely won't hurt me or anyone I love in an irreparable way, I have determined
November 19, 2025 at 6:42 PM
one more cup of coffee surely won't hurt me or anyone I love in an irreparable way, I have determined
A+ use of the en-dash. The editor who worked on this piece must be a real sicko (complimentary)
November 18, 2025 at 9:44 PM
A+ use of the en-dash. The editor who worked on this piece must be a real sicko (complimentary)
From the other site: an excerpt from a letter Gadamer sent to Heidegger in 1973 mentions "the great American naivete, which makes historicist self-alienation impossible for the American..." x.com/ls_foundatio...
Leo Strauss Foundation on X: "Gadamer to Heidegger (March 25, 1973): "Boston College is a university founded and maintained by the Jesuits—on the whole of high quality, a kind of rival to Harvard and naturally 'continental,' i.e. oriented towards France and Germany. The usual disproportion between" / X
Gadamer to Heidegger (March 25, 1973): "Boston College is a university founded and maintained by the Jesuits—on the whole of high quality, a kind of rival to Harvard and naturally 'continental,' i.e. oriented towards France and Germany. The usual disproportion between
x.com
November 18, 2025 at 8:51 PM
From the other site: an excerpt from a letter Gadamer sent to Heidegger in 1973 mentions "the great American naivete, which makes historicist self-alienation impossible for the American..." x.com/ls_foundatio...
that's one way to reframe a question
MBS: "We are not creating fake opportunities to please America, please President Trump. It's real opportunities."
November 18, 2025 at 5:49 PM
that's one way to reframe a question