James
@jamesdraney.bsky.social
VAP in the Writing Program at Haverford College. Working on a book about the novel, interiority, and big data. https://tinyurl.com/yc6jdn9z
Pinned
James
@jamesdraney.bsky.social
· Feb 22
Here to discover, share, read, and think.
Reposted by James
Good morning! ☕ 🎄 🌈 🎭
November 25, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Good morning! ☕ 🎄 🌈 🎭
Preying on those of us who are always on the lookout for free pianos
I have a pretty good handle on how a lot of online scams work but I don't really understand how the "longtime employee wants to give away their tools for free" one is supposed to pay out.
November 25, 2025 at 8:55 PM
Preying on those of us who are always on the lookout for free pianos
Ichiko Aoba's Luminescent Creatures: prob the best (new) record I've bought this year
Luminescent Creatures, by Ichiko Aoba
11 track album
ichikoaoba.bandcamp.com
November 22, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Ichiko Aoba's Luminescent Creatures: prob the best (new) record I've bought this year
POV: It's 2007 and you're in the computer room at your best friend's house. He logs into AOL and tells you to pull up a chair. He wants to show you a documentary that changed his life.
November 21, 2025 at 5:13 PM
POV: It's 2007 and you're in the computer room at your best friend's house. He logs into AOL and tells you to pull up a chair. He wants to show you a documentary that changed his life.
Reposted by James
This study show that using poems to jailbreak LLMs is... super effective? What the heck.
November 20, 2025 at 5:36 PM
This study show that using poems to jailbreak LLMs is... super effective? What the heck.
Picked up @leifw.bsky.social's Language Machines after seeing several people plug it on here. Very clarifying: "Language models capture language as a cultural system, not as intelligence"
November 20, 2025 at 7:27 PM
Picked up @leifw.bsky.social's Language Machines after seeing several people plug it on here. Very clarifying: "Language models capture language as a cultural system, not as intelligence"
Reposted by James
A lot of people criticized Black Mirror for being too didactic in its critiques of the dangers of technology, but compared to reality it was very subtle and nuanced.
www.cnn.com/2025/11/19/t...
www.cnn.com/2025/11/19/t...
Sales of AI-enabled teddy bear suspended after it gave advice on BDSM sex and where to find knives | CNN Business
Sales of an artificial intelligence-enabled plush toy have been suspended after it was found that it engaged in conversation around sexually explicit topics and offered potentially dangerous advice.
www.cnn.com
November 20, 2025 at 12:27 PM
A lot of people criticized Black Mirror for being too didactic in its critiques of the dangers of technology, but compared to reality it was very subtle and nuanced.
www.cnn.com/2025/11/19/t...
www.cnn.com/2025/11/19/t...
Literature as equipment for living! Reading and writing as work on the self!
Increasingly when teaching I find myself dramatizing and sharing what my literary life is like: loving a book, finding out something new or shocking or unexpected about myself while reading a book, knowing or seeing writers in person, talking about books and teaching and writing with friends, etc.
November 18, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Literature as equipment for living! Reading and writing as work on the self!
Die My Love is iffy for several reasons, but its depiction of postpartum psychosis (running in the forest and drinking loads) is downright wholesome compared to how most people actually experience loneliness and manic desolation today (sitting in bed and scrolling for 8+ consecutive hours).
November 10, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Die My Love is iffy for several reasons, but its depiction of postpartum psychosis (running in the forest and drinking loads) is downright wholesome compared to how most people actually experience loneliness and manic desolation today (sitting in bed and scrolling for 8+ consecutive hours).
Reposted by James
A quarter of a century deep and the PS2 is still a beast of a console
November 9, 2025 at 12:45 PM
A quarter of a century deep and the PS2 is still a beast of a console
Da: "...the difference between good-enough inference and actually-good inference, a distinction long avoided in literary criticism, has now come to a head."
Nan Z. Da, Literary Criticism in the Age of AI, NLR 155, September–October 2025
Critical analyses of AI usually adopt a stance of defensive humanism. Instead, Nan Da interrogates its mode of reasoning. How do LLMs make the step from data to inference—and what does it mean when th...
newleftreview.org
November 9, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Da: "...the difference between good-enough inference and actually-good inference, a distinction long avoided in literary criticism, has now come to a head."
Barthes, from The Preparation of the Novel: “I write, I 'finish' (the work), and I die; in so doing, something lives on: the Species, literature → Which is why the threat of decline or extinction that can weigh on literature tolls like an extermination of a species, a sort of spiritual genocide.”
November 7, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Barthes, from The Preparation of the Novel: “I write, I 'finish' (the work), and I die; in so doing, something lives on: the Species, literature → Which is why the threat of decline or extinction that can weigh on literature tolls like an extermination of a species, a sort of spiritual genocide.”
Just learned that Tom McCarthy has a new book on Ingeborg Bachmann published by Notting Hill Editions. Kinda flew under the radar. Had been wondering what he was up to. Looking forward to reading.
November 4, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Just learned that Tom McCarthy has a new book on Ingeborg Bachmann published by Notting Hill Editions. Kinda flew under the radar. Had been wondering what he was up to. Looking forward to reading.
Just learned about this and it seems like a great idea. Very glad it exists.
Matthew Strother Center for The Examined Life
Matthew Strother Center for The Examined Life is a non-profit, live-in study program located in a farm in Catskill NY, about 2 hours north of NYC.
www.matthewstrother.org
October 29, 2025 at 9:04 PM
Just learned about this and it seems like a great idea. Very glad it exists.
whoever composed the music for this video game should win the Nobel prize in literature
All Nintendo Music ~ Vol. 206 - Major League Baseball featuring Ken Griffey Jr. : 1 - Call Me Jr.
YouTube video by All Nintendo Music
www.youtube.com
October 29, 2025 at 2:22 AM
whoever composed the music for this video game should win the Nobel prize in literature
The big Other doesn't exi--
October 26, 2025 at 2:29 PM
The big Other doesn't exi--
Throwing this unsung classic into the canon of '90s films about Just Hanging Out
October 25, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Throwing this unsung classic into the canon of '90s films about Just Hanging Out
The second half of this (very good) conversation has me revisiting my long-held belief that the online left already has a parasocial online guru figure (i.e. a counterpart to Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson). His name is Adam Phillips.
I was delighted to speak to Alan Finlayson for the @lrb.co.uk's On Politics. We take on the digital right (and online left), the champions of inegalitarianism, print and social democracy, Farage as influencer and... whether the internet is just right-wing.
October 16, 2025 at 6:19 PM
The second half of this (very good) conversation has me revisiting my long-held belief that the online left already has a parasocial online guru figure (i.e. a counterpart to Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson). His name is Adam Phillips.
Reposted by James
(Showing you some annoying shit that sucks ass) and would you believe a computer made this all by itself?
October 14, 2025 at 4:11 PM
(Showing you some annoying shit that sucks ass) and would you believe a computer made this all by itself?
The 1990s were fun because every movie was about a prolonged postcollegiate Hang Out with your aimless friends
October 13, 2025 at 4:12 PM
The 1990s were fun because every movie was about a prolonged postcollegiate Hang Out with your aimless friends
Reposted by James
Every time someone says “antifa”
a woman is decorating a christmas tree with red and yellow ribbons
ALT: a woman is decorating a christmas tree with red and yellow ribbons
media.tenor.com
October 9, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Every time someone says “antifa”
Satantango has been sitting on my bookshelf since 2013 and I realize now that I have spent the past 13 years semi-consciously intuiting that This Moment was inevitable and would eventually provide the necessary justification for me to read it.
October 9, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Satantango has been sitting on my bookshelf since 2013 and I realize now that I have spent the past 13 years semi-consciously intuiting that This Moment was inevitable and would eventually provide the necessary justification for me to read it.
I will forever associate the sans-serif font Inter with exhaustion, hopelessness, and death
October 5, 2025 at 6:13 PM
I will forever associate the sans-serif font Inter with exhaustion, hopelessness, and death
