john
@curiousjohn.bsky.social
outlier, not always in the direction I want
superforecaster, techie, expat
@john_henry elsewhere
generally delighted to receive correspondence at [email protected]
superforecaster, techie, expat
@john_henry elsewhere
generally delighted to receive correspondence at [email protected]
Reposted by john
I am highlighting a bunch of examples of people genuinely trying to use LLMs and genuinely not finding them very useful to illustrate that this really isn’t just a “rabid AI haters who’ve never actually tried it” conversation
Yes, this is exactly what happened to me. I lost more time checking and verifying than doing it myself, so I quit
suspect a big reason why many academics and others who work in areas where getting facts RIGHT is key are disinterested in using LLMs for research:
they’ve tried it, they keep noticing major errors in output, and they conclude that having to verify all that doesn’t actually save them time.
they’ve tried it, they keep noticing major errors in output, and they conclude that having to verify all that doesn’t actually save them time.
December 21, 2025 at 7:30 PM
I am highlighting a bunch of examples of people genuinely trying to use LLMs and genuinely not finding them very useful to illustrate that this really isn’t just a “rabid AI haters who’ve never actually tried it” conversation
Reposted by john
This year, many people resigned their posts at the slightest hint that the Trump regime was displeased with them instead of staying and making someone fire them.
Sharyn Alfonsi is showing us why you stay and refuse: you make clear your superiors are wrong and may them pay the costs of firing you.
Sharyn Alfonsi is showing us why you stay and refuse: you make clear your superiors are wrong and may them pay the costs of firing you.
Again, from Michael Grynbaum, here is Sharyn Alfonsi's full email.
It must be read:
It must be read:
December 22, 2025 at 11:06 AM
This year, many people resigned their posts at the slightest hint that the Trump regime was displeased with them instead of staying and making someone fire them.
Sharyn Alfonsi is showing us why you stay and refuse: you make clear your superiors are wrong and may them pay the costs of firing you.
Sharyn Alfonsi is showing us why you stay and refuse: you make clear your superiors are wrong and may them pay the costs of firing you.
Reposted by john
When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.
Seems like it's worth posting this one again.
Why Do Historians Still Have To Go To Archives?
Why do historians go to archives? Hasn’t everything already been digitized?
contingentmagazine.org
December 22, 2025 at 1:40 AM
When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.
Reposted by john
"I’m sure I discovered William Burroughs and Edgar Rice Burroughs in the same summer [laughter] and read them simultaneously, it’s like _Naked Lunch and _Thuvia Maid of Mars [laughter] and I think that is the literary DNA that accounts for much of what I’ve done."
- William Gibson, 2013, interview
- William Gibson, 2013, interview
January 30, 2024 at 6:42 PM
"I’m sure I discovered William Burroughs and Edgar Rice Burroughs in the same summer [laughter] and read them simultaneously, it’s like _Naked Lunch and _Thuvia Maid of Mars [laughter] and I think that is the literary DNA that accounts for much of what I’ve done."
- William Gibson, 2013, interview
- William Gibson, 2013, interview
Reposted by john
im getting really sick of the primary voices i hear about "ai" being a problem coming from people who think learning enough about how it works to identify its use is some kind of sin and whose justifications for hating it range from vibes-based to mystical
December 21, 2025 at 11:30 PM
im getting really sick of the primary voices i hear about "ai" being a problem coming from people who think learning enough about how it works to identify its use is some kind of sin and whose justifications for hating it range from vibes-based to mystical
Reposted by john
I want to read this article. Two (meant constructively) things:
1) "demonstrating that LLMs are worthless for indexing" should, like most of these things, have qualifiers like "in our hands and with our LLM"
2) when people talk like this about accuracy, I suspect the workflow as much as the model.
1) "demonstrating that LLMs are worthless for indexing" should, like most of these things, have qualifiers like "in our hands and with our LLM"
2) when people talk like this about accuracy, I suspect the workflow as much as the model.
There’s an excellent and devastatingly thorough article in the latest @indexers.bsky.social journal by Elizabeth Bartmess and Michele Combs demonstrating that LLMs are worthless for indexing
December 19, 2025 at 4:04 PM
I want to read this article. Two (meant constructively) things:
1) "demonstrating that LLMs are worthless for indexing" should, like most of these things, have qualifiers like "in our hands and with our LLM"
2) when people talk like this about accuracy, I suspect the workflow as much as the model.
1) "demonstrating that LLMs are worthless for indexing" should, like most of these things, have qualifiers like "in our hands and with our LLM"
2) when people talk like this about accuracy, I suspect the workflow as much as the model.
Reposted by john
An example of how Trump is a vehicle for grievances because everyone driven by resentment projects onto him. A leftist like AOC feels America is beautiful and wants to improve it. A crank leftist likes the idea of destroying America, but is totally powerless, therefore they approve of Trump doing it
December 19, 2025 at 2:33 AM
An example of how Trump is a vehicle for grievances because everyone driven by resentment projects onto him. A leftist like AOC feels America is beautiful and wants to improve it. A crank leftist likes the idea of destroying America, but is totally powerless, therefore they approve of Trump doing it
Reposted by john
I've come to realize that a lot of people like him because he tells them it's OK to not have any values either. Values require effort. MAGA is about effortless decadence, sit in your chair and get mad at computer with the rest of us, it's great.
Virginia Heffernan wrote this shortly after the 2016 election and it still holds true
December 16, 2025 at 4:20 PM
I've come to realize that a lot of people like him because he tells them it's OK to not have any values either. Values require effort. MAGA is about effortless decadence, sit in your chair and get mad at computer with the rest of us, it's great.
Reposted by john
capital believes that labor has built them a mill which turns wage labor into a slave you can ethically employ. they believe that this is the end-state of capitalism. palantir and anduril stand for the proposition that they can use this slave to murder their way into eternal tyranny
it's going to take the bottom 30% and then they will belatedly realize that it only should have taken 10%, and the 10% it should have taken is not from the previous bottom
Prediction: AI/LLM isn't going to take jobs from software engineers except perhaps the very bottom 10% of the industry. There is just gonna be a lot more code.
June 12, 2025 at 6:53 PM
capital believes that labor has built them a mill which turns wage labor into a slave you can ethically employ. they believe that this is the end-state of capitalism. palantir and anduril stand for the proposition that they can use this slave to murder their way into eternal tyranny
Reposted by john
okay the WaPo editorial board has been an abject disaster since it was Bezosified but a literal “are we the baddies” letter is a fantastic bit, full marks for this one
![The Washington Post
Opinion
Letters to the Editor
As a conservative, I'm beginning to wonder: Are we the bad guys?
Republican bigotry, tariffs and defense spending, through readers' eyes.
Yesterday at 4:43 p.m. EST
[Photo of Nick Fuentes in a red MAGA baseball cap in front of an America First flag]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:gvda6fem6r7selm4gzjjww4a/bafkreicuvmcbdaphyqrgmpbrhcodgri3t6vm6hywvt7zbwgrk4bsv7pxdi@jpeg)
December 13, 2025 at 8:45 PM
okay the WaPo editorial board has been an abject disaster since it was Bezosified but a literal “are we the baddies” letter is a fantastic bit, full marks for this one
Reposted by john
It’s a great YIMBY example, like you build a bunch of giant luxury apartments close to downtown, the McKinsey and Kirkland associates live there instead of “gentrifying” or whatever, and it eventually turns into an actual neighborhood
December 13, 2025 at 4:47 PM
It’s a great YIMBY example, like you build a bunch of giant luxury apartments close to downtown, the McKinsey and Kirkland associates live there instead of “gentrifying” or whatever, and it eventually turns into an actual neighborhood
Reposted by john
i went to an evangelical Christian high school that had a fair number of girls in purity balls (most were run through churches, not the school). i’m not closely monitoring my old classmates, but last I checked less than 20% were still in some flavor of fundamentalism? Political reproduction’s woeful
Thinking about those Purity Balls where fathers make their daughters participate in bizarre, quasi-nuptial rituals pledging their virginities to daddy, and how it was easier to laugh at that psychosexual drama back when it was less apparent that the plan was to build all of politics around it.
We can all play this game of which demographic shouldn’t be allowed to vote since the US right wants women’s right to vote to be banned. The group that has proved themselves the biggest liability is Republican men.
December 13, 2025 at 5:09 PM
i went to an evangelical Christian high school that had a fair number of girls in purity balls (most were run through churches, not the school). i’m not closely monitoring my old classmates, but last I checked less than 20% were still in some flavor of fundamentalism? Political reproduction’s woeful
Reposted by john
They like Trump and want to help him. They have pre-written "THE COMEBACK KID" narratives ready to break out of he crosses back over 40% approval for a couple polls, not to report a narrative but to try and change it
AP on Trump now, and Biden in June 2022.
For Trump, declining to 36 percent approval is “good news.”
For Biden, holding steady at 41% is “a source of concern.”
For Trump, declining to 36 percent approval is “good news.”
For Biden, holding steady at 41% is “a source of concern.”
December 12, 2025 at 3:03 PM
They like Trump and want to help him. They have pre-written "THE COMEBACK KID" narratives ready to break out of he crosses back over 40% approval for a couple polls, not to report a narrative but to try and change it
Reposted by john
Really refuse to let the worst people have ownership of techno-optimism
December 10, 2025 at 11:12 PM
Really refuse to let the worst people have ownership of techno-optimism
Reposted by john
one reason the framing as "AI" is so bad is that it makes people think "interact with this like a person" when in fact the only way to make it remotely useful is "interact with it like an extremely powerful but extremely weird user interface"
This is really a huge part of why upper management is so in on AI. They think it will let them manage computers the way they currently manage the people who make the computer work. It will not.
I'm just saying I had someone tell me I had to hold the AI accountable and and no no I don't. That was not the effective way to coax it into doing the thing I wanted
December 9, 2025 at 1:49 PM
one reason the framing as "AI" is so bad is that it makes people think "interact with this like a person" when in fact the only way to make it remotely useful is "interact with it like an extremely powerful but extremely weird user interface"
Reposted by john
In the campaign the pattern was that there was a fake, imaginary Trump the media created, and the more the real incompetent Trump faltered the more the fake competent Trump was inserted into stories, analysis etc bsky.app/profile/lilb...
Is, "Too big to ignore," possible at this point? His senility got too big to ignore when he had a mental breakdown during his 2024 campaign. Most media outlets ignored it.
July 10, 2025 at 5:54 PM
In the campaign the pattern was that there was a fake, imaginary Trump the media created, and the more the real incompetent Trump faltered the more the fake competent Trump was inserted into stories, analysis etc bsky.app/profile/lilb...
Reposted by john
Nothing prevents a Dem Congress from line-item invalidating every single Oracle Corporation owned patent.
It'd destroy both one of Trump's biggest bribers, and one of the most abusive patent troll corporations in all of history.
It'd destroy both one of Trump's biggest bribers, and one of the most abusive patent troll corporations in all of history.
a lot of this shit might make more sense if trump were going to live another decade or two in power, but he isn't going to. these people are all behaving as if trump at 79 years old is putin when he was 48 years old, and that there'll never be any negative consequences.
New WSJ reporting: "During a December visit to Washington, David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner, he'd make sweeping changes to CNN, a common target of President Trump's ire, people familiar with the matter said..."
December 9, 2025 at 2:31 PM
Nothing prevents a Dem Congress from line-item invalidating every single Oracle Corporation owned patent.
It'd destroy both one of Trump's biggest bribers, and one of the most abusive patent troll corporations in all of history.
It'd destroy both one of Trump's biggest bribers, and one of the most abusive patent troll corporations in all of history.
Reposted by john
a lot of this shit might make more sense if trump were going to live another decade or two in power, but he isn't going to. these people are all behaving as if trump at 79 years old is putin when he was 48 years old, and that there'll never be any negative consequences.
New WSJ reporting: "During a December visit to Washington, David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner, he'd make sweeping changes to CNN, a common target of President Trump's ire, people familiar with the matter said..."
Behind Paramount’s Relentless Campaign to Woo Warner Discovery and President Trump
David Ellison has launched a hostile takeover bid for Warner Discovery, taking his case directly to shareholders after Netflix clinched a deal.
www.wsj.com
December 9, 2025 at 7:43 AM
a lot of this shit might make more sense if trump were going to live another decade or two in power, but he isn't going to. these people are all behaving as if trump at 79 years old is putin when he was 48 years old, and that there'll never be any negative consequences.
Reposted by john
there is no available evidence that donald trump understands what a tariff is, what a trade deficit is, and what the national debt is.
The way Trump talks about the problems he caused by unilaterally imposing tariffs is fairly insane, even by his standards.
www.politico.com/news/2025/12...
www.politico.com/news/2025/12...
December 9, 2025 at 6:09 PM
there is no available evidence that donald trump understands what a tariff is, what a trade deficit is, and what the national debt is.
Reposted by john
WHICH MESSAGE WILL RESONATE WITH DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTERS?
"Better angels of our nature"
OR
"Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger... I will punish the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pomp of the ruthless."
"Better angels of our nature"
OR
"Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger... I will punish the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pomp of the ruthless."
Once again, for 2028 I'm a single issue voter and that issue is post-Trump lustration. GTFO with "better angels of our nature" for once.
They're using the confinement box, one of the most horrific methods of CIA torture in the post-9/11 black sites, against migrants now. This is the direct result of the lack of consequences for the architects of the torture program. Either there will be criminal penalties for this or it will expand.
December 9, 2025 at 2:58 PM
WHICH MESSAGE WILL RESONATE WITH DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTERS?
"Better angels of our nature"
OR
"Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger... I will punish the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pomp of the ruthless."
"Better angels of our nature"
OR
"Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger... I will punish the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pomp of the ruthless."
Reposted by john
it is incredible that legalizing watergate has been the overriding ideological project of the american right for fifty years
December 8, 2025 at 8:39 PM
it is incredible that legalizing watergate has been the overriding ideological project of the american right for fifty years
Reposted by john
Let's build hyper-personalized AI-powered software that avoids the attention hijacking anti-patterns that defined so much of the last decade of software design - here's our manifesto with principles on how we can do that - more thoughts on my blog: simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/5/r...
December 5, 2025 at 4:13 PM
Let's build hyper-personalized AI-powered software that avoids the attention hijacking anti-patterns that defined so much of the last decade of software design - here's our manifesto with principles on how we can do that - more thoughts on my blog: simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/5/r...
Reposted by john
"the government should try, convict and then kill the secretary of defense for the crime he very obviously seems to have committed" seems like a radical thing to say, but -- no, it's not. it's the actual penalty for what pete hegseth, a man who ordered death squads to murder civilians, has done.
December 5, 2025 at 7:24 AM
"the government should try, convict and then kill the secretary of defense for the crime he very obviously seems to have committed" seems like a radical thing to say, but -- no, it's not. it's the actual penalty for what pete hegseth, a man who ordered death squads to murder civilians, has done.
Reposted by john
look i just love learning about new-to-me heresies
Why is nobody discussing that the anti-trans student in Oklahoma spends much of her essay promulgating the Pneumatomachian heresy and will thus spend an age in Hell?
December 3, 2025 at 8:10 PM
look i just love learning about new-to-me heresies
Reposted by john
like, just, by the odds, any social justice movement large enough to be useful will offgas irritating shit like this purely as a consequence of its existence
December 3, 2025 at 4:36 AM
like, just, by the odds, any social justice movement large enough to be useful will offgas irritating shit like this purely as a consequence of its existence