Anthony Ha
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anthonyha.bsky.social
Anthony Ha
@anthonyha.bsky.social
4.2K followers 850 following 240 posts
Writer, @TechCrunch.com weekend editor, Original Content co-host, loud karaoke singer
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anthonyha.bsky.social
wow they’re still doing this today?
photo of james carville followed by text message that begins, “Folks, it’s James Carville. Believe me when I tell you: This ain’t good.”
November 5, 2025 at 6:58 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
New York City, US capital of hating AI 😎
www.adweek.com/brand-market...
“I know people in New York hate AI, and things like AI companionship and wearables, probably more than anywhere else in the country,” Schiffmann said. “So I bought more ads than anyone has ever done with a lot of white space so that they would socially comment on the topic.”
September 27, 2025 at 5:26 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
god i love richard brody www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
The result is a movie thinned out almost to the point of total insubstantiality—as close to a non-experience as I’ve had at the movies in a while. Once, after I’d panned a movie, a friend asked whether I was suggesting that she not see it; I said no, I was suggesting that she not enjoy it. Almost always, a movie worth critiquing at length, even negatively, is one worth seeing. Not “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey”; if the movie theatre had an ejector seat like James Bond’s Aston Martin, I’d have pressed the button. At least in this regard, “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” is an exceptional movie.
September 19, 2025 at 9:00 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
this sounds like the sloppiest slop that ever slopped www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...
Orson Welles’ Lost Movie Will Use AI to Reconstruct Missing 43 Minutes Amazon-backed firm Showrunner, led by Edward Saatchi, is using the film as a test case for how Hollywood can overhaul production. The results won't be commercialized — the tech giant hasn't obtained rights from Warner Bros.
September 5, 2025 at 12:20 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
spotted in morningside park
sidewalk note that reads: “Columbia Vichy on the Hudson”
August 26, 2025 at 8:45 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
this is a good profile, but boy it's hard to feel good about where A24 seems to be headed www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Legacy studios such as Sony Pictures have attempted to buy a stake in A24; instead, the company has opted to take Wall Street money, preferring not to be drawn into what one executive called Hollywood’s “hundred years of doing things a certain way.” But emphasizing innovation comes with other hazards. Thrive Capital, which helped to secure A24’s $3.5-billion valuation, is also a major backer of OpenAI, and A24 courted the firm specifically for its artificial-intelligence connections. Scott Belsky, the head of A24 Labs, the studio’s tech initiative, has embarked on a listening tour, speaking with filmmakers about how they might benefit from such advances. [Kelly] Reichardt speaks fondly of her A24 era. “I had a film about a guy stealing milk and another one about a hurt bird and a ceramicist,” she said. “They were up for it! They might not have been up for it for a third film, but they were up for it for two.” The company’s advocacy for quieter films had been a godsend. “The Mastermind” landed at mubi—which, she told me, “totally let me make the film I wanted to make”—and got strong reviews at Cannes. But A24’s move away from indies struck her as a loss for both the industry and the art form. “For someone like me, it’s a heartbreak,” she said.
August 26, 2025 at 1:46 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
this sounds like a cool and fun part of chinese culture, i wish someone had told me about it sooner

also, more lawyers should begin their defense by saying “I grant you this looks odd”

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/n...
Ms. Greco’s lawyer, Steven Brill, said that it is common in Chinese culture to give cash to reporters “in a gesture of friendship and gratitude.” “I grant you this looks odd,” Mr. Brill said. “But I assure you that Winnie’s intent was purely innocent.”
August 21, 2025 at 12:23 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
Come for Andrea Long Chu's evisceration of Thomas Chatterton Williams, stay for the surprisingly hopeful note at the end archive.is/VAQ4u
This is what Baldwin was getting at when spoke of the “spiritual state” of America. “The political institutions of any nation,” he wrote in The Fire Next Time, “are always menaced and controlled by the spiritual state of that nation.” What he meant, I think, was that every time a person contests or defends a political situation, they are also contesting or defending the intellectual terms on which that contest is conducted. You cannot fight without fighting about how you fight. That is why Williams cares so desperately about what the summer of 2020 made us think, even if the protests manifestly failed to achieve their objective goals; it is also why liberal institutions were so eager to snatch up these ideas and exhaust their potential before tossing us back the husks. What [Zohran] Mamdani’s win suggests, however, is that they did not get them all.
August 5, 2025 at 4:49 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
the most relatable thing about ari aster is his hatred of shorts www.nytimes.com/2025/07/16/m...
Aster, the 39-year-old auteur who made the relentlessly unsettling films “Hereditary,” “Midsommar” and “Beau Is Afraid,” has a long list of realities that his brain registers as mortifying or terrifying. “In a way, ‘Beau Is Afraid’ — that’s him,” says Lars Knudsen, laughing. He would know, as the person who has produced all of Aster’s films. “He’s afraid of everything,” Knudsen says. There’s having a body, obviously: Aster doesn’t like to wear shorts, lest people discover he has legs.
July 16, 2025 at 2:20 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
good spam
text message reading “I’ve already saved you a seay, and there’s going to be amazing food and cake. Don’t be late!”
July 2, 2025 at 9:44 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
they don’t make comics like this anymore (complimentary)
Splash page from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen Number 49, showing a comically obese Jimmy Olsen trapped in a manhole. Art by Curt Swan. Superman: Look, Jimmy, while you’re in this condition, stay home! Your extra blubber is a hazard! Jimmy: No, Superman! I won’t quit my job! But I promise to be more careful hereafter! Art by Curt Swan
June 29, 2025 at 5:25 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
my final answer
Anthony's top 10 movies since 2000: In the Mood for Love, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Royal Tenenbaums, Sweeney Todd, Sunshine, Speed Racer, Up, Melancholia, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hereditary
June 27, 2025 at 8:10 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
and here's an incredibly bleak vision of the future, courtesy of Paul Pope's lawyer
My lawyer, for example, he thinks within two or three years, Marvel Comics will replace artists with AI. You won’t even have to pay any artists. And I think that’s completely conceivable. I think storyboarding for film can easily be replaced with AI. Animatics, which you need to do for a lot of films, can be replaced. Eventually, comic book artists can be replaced. Almost every job can be replaced.
June 21, 2025 at 7:31 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
Paul Pope used chatbot to prep for our interview techcrunch.com/2025/06/21/c...
It’s a good question. In fact, I was asking AI before our talk today — I think the best thing is to go to the source — “compare unlicensed art usage [for] AI-generated imagery with torrenting of MP3s in the ‘90s.” And AI said that there’s definitely some similarities, because you’re using work that’s already been produced and created without compensating the artist. But in the case of AI, you can add elements to it that make it different. It’s not like [when] somebody stole Guns N’ Roses’ record, ”Chinese Democracy,” and put it online. That’s different from sitting down with an emulator for music with AI [and saying,] “I want to write a song in the style of Guns N’ Roses, and I want the guitar solo to sound like Slash.”
June 21, 2025 at 7:28 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
damn virginia woolf knew how to start an essay newrepublic.com/article/1159...
Anybody who has had the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of two facts: First, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are 25 elderly gentlemen living in the neighborhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult offered to the chastity of their aunts.
June 12, 2025 at 3:12 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
and is that bird singing to him?
anthony eats a sesame pancake sandwich while a bird sits on his backpack, staring hungrily
June 4, 2025 at 2:28 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
i did not like thunderbolts as much as this writer did, the dissection of the MCU’s house style is perfect www.newyorker.com/culture/crit...
Marvel’s solution has been to specialize in superheroes—blatantly suit-clad beings who zoom around and kick people—who also, ha-ha, think that superheroes are dumb. The M.C.U. is designed to provide fan service, but it has also tried to give mainstream viewers—who might be, at once, tempted by and skeptical of superhero movies—a subtly shimmering force field of plausible deniability to crouch behind. They’ve done this mainly via metacommentary and sheepish jokes. Often, the films have a weird, pandering (and thus contemptuous) vibe. They can seem so eager to reassure you that you are not watching a superhero movie—those are silly—that they lose sight of the deeper shame that might drive someone to watch a superhero movie to begin with. This is the humiliation of not being good or powerful enough.
May 26, 2025 at 2:50 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
Hey, I appreciate you engaging and walking me through this! Probably not quite the change you'd like to see, but I did update the post.
After this article was published, a TechCrunch reader argued that given the extensive workflows involved in updating system prompts, it's "quite literally impossible for a rogue actor to make that change in isolation," suggesting that "a team at xAI intentionally modified that system prompt in a specifically harmful manner OR xAI has no security in place at all."
May 18, 2025 at 9:41 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
this salon must be woke as hell
photo of a chinatown sign that reads BLUE SKY HAIR SALON
May 11, 2025 at 11:18 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
it was nice while it lasted
screenshot showing a 1489 day streak in duolingo
May 1, 2025 at 1:08 AM
anthonyha.bsky.social
And this is just deeply embarrassing. (6/6)
They matched wits. Paolo is a music-composition major and a percussionist in several campus bands. He pressed ChatGPT-4 on its understanding of musical beauty. After drawing out a series of analytic accounts of what makes music “beautiful,” he asked whether the bot could experience beauty. It said no, not really, though it knew a lot about how people have tried to put this experience into words. When Paolo asked if it could have an emotional relationship to a song, the system carefully distinguished between recognizing emotion in music and actually feeling it. It said it lacked a body, and that this absence barred it from certain ways of knowing music. Paolo asked it to write a song that would make him cry. It tried. Paolo sent me a note: “The system failed the test.” But I was crying, there on the couch, reading.
April 26, 2025 at 12:47 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
It's encouraging that an entire class of Princeton undergrads and grads had no interest in using AI (or at least admitting to it) - and then so, so dispiriting that their teacher's response is basically: "You Polyannas, you fools!" (5/6)
Let me offer a dispatch from the impact zone. When I first asked a class of thirty Princeton undergraduates—spanning twelve majors—whether any had used A.I., not a single hand went up. Same with my graduate students. Even after some enthusiastic prodding (“Hey! I use these tools! They’re incredible! Let’s talk about this!”), I got nowhere.
April 26, 2025 at 12:47 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
Instead of any discussion of why vast sums of money are getting poured into a technology that's currently wildly unprofitable, we get mystification and hype. (4/6)
On the contrary, staggering transformations are in full swing. And yet, on campus, we’re in a bizarre interlude: everyone seems intent on pretending that the most significant revolution in the world of thought in the past century isn’t happening. The approach appears to be: “We’ll just tell the kids they can’t use these tools and carry on as before.” This is, simply, madness. And it won’t hold for long. It’s time to talk about what all this means for university life, and for the humanities in particular.
April 26, 2025 at 12:47 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
The Trump administration's ongoing attack on higher education? A "sideshow." The fact that OpenAI is losing money even on users who pay them *$200 a month*? Dropped in parenthetically and otherwise unaddressed. (3/6)
Because I’m a historian of science and technology, part of my terrain is the evolving role of the university—from its medieval, clerical origins to the entrepreneurial R. & D. engines of today. I teach among the humanists, and my courses are anchored in the traditional program of the liberal arts, in the hope of giving shape to humans equal to the challenge of freedom. But my subject is the rise of a techno-scientific understanding of the world, and of ourselves in it. And, if that is what you care about, the White House’s chain-jerk mugging feels, frankly, like a sideshow. The juggernaut actually barrelling down the quad is A.I., coming at us with shocking speed. Before heading off to a fintech startup, this student urged me to subscribe to OpenAI’s two-hundred-dollar-a-month turbocharged platform. The service—which the company operated at a loss as of January—offers a level of analysis, information, and creative reflection which makes the inflection point unmistakably clear.
April 26, 2025 at 12:47 PM
anthonyha.bsky.social
I had to cut this for length, but he actually brought up curation as a solution!
Interviewer: I wonder if there are examples of gatekeeping now that are productive or helpful? Because my mind naturally wanders back to this collectors’ edition of “Perdido Street Station.” There are so many ways people get ahold of the book, but to preserve the specialness of it, we have this beautiful artifact [which costs $600]. Not that you can solve this in an interview, but are there ways to do that that aren’t just price gated? China Miéville: I honestly don't know. I would like to think so. You’re right, of course — this is a collector's edition. And if one was putting out this edition and one was also saying all other editions of “Perdido Street Station” have been withdrawn from circulation, that would be a dick move. So this is for a specific set of people who, yes, have to be willing to spend a certain amount on this edition, in the way that some people might be willing to spend that money on a PlayStation, or a car, or a particular pen or something. I mean, gatekeeping is a really an intrinsically negative term, I think, so maybe there's some way we could think in terms of curation, and not make it financially driven. But as you say, I'm really open to suggestions because at the moment, what you've got is Martin Shkreli buying the f—-ing Wu Tang album, and that’s about as bad a model as you can get.
April 6, 2025 at 4:46 PM