Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
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vermilious.bsky.social
Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
@vermilious.bsky.social
Mostly here to see my friends
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
i’m not crying you’re crying

xkcd: Fifteen Years

Fifteen Years
xkcd.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:58 AM
What we have learned across Godzilla, Rogue One, and The Creator is that Gareth Edwards is fantastic at making a certain kind of extended battle sequence utterly captivating, and that his films come alive in these scenes. Because otherwise, they are sort of lifeless.
rogue one is bad folks. i have believed this since i saw it in theaters and no subsequent rewatch has changed my mind. basically a chop job until the final sequence, which is good (for star wars)
November 24, 2025 at 9:50 PM
This cover raises the important question: Why didn’t Superman ever use the cool S on his costume?
Action Comics 1095 cover. The reference research for this one brought me back, man
November 22, 2025 at 12:20 PM
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
So... spells.

We're using spells to undo the work we've done... tricking rocks into thinking with lightning.

And trapping evil cars in circles of salt.

The old ways are new again.
Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..."

https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
November 20, 2025 at 5:52 PM
"All we get is one life, and there are too many books" is going on the family quote wall next to "Willful, but naive" and related bangers.
The bigger thing here is—outside certain extremely narrow professional competency areas, you must train yourself not to get mad at people for not having read something. I fight the instinct all the time! But we all get one life, and there are too many books.
It hits different reading this whole thread.
November 20, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
November 19, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
Antisemitism is a lot like Qanon child abuse conspiracies in that there’s this real and bad phenomenon and, parallel to that, what can only be described as a large scale mass psychosis about a mostly fictional version of the same phenomenon
November 16, 2025 at 8:48 PM
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
nothing says you’re kicking ass at Buddhism quite like having an insatiable desire for something
November 12, 2025 at 10:16 PM
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Happy partially muscled skeleton screaming by the perimeter fence day to all who celebrate. A solemn 30 second screaming before vanishing will take place at 11am.
November 14, 2025 at 9:47 AM
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
RE starbucks picket line--the relevant detail is "picket line, do not cross." Pass that along. Proclaiming that you are in no danger of doing so because you are too aesthetically pure to let Starbucks coffee pass your lips is...unhelpful and does not give the impression you perhaps imagine it does.
November 13, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
Pretty much all affordability discourse could benefit from just posting this chart.

If you're in the better off America, all the luxury goods you want in excess are for the most part much cheaper. If you're in the poorer America, most of the shit you need to live/grow is more expensive.
November 10, 2025 at 2:53 PM
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
AIPAC sucks, supports genocide, and is a hub for Christian Zionists as much as anyone. *And* at the same time:

When you vaguepost like this about issues unrelated to Israel suggesting an org associated with Judaism is to blame, you are at least FLIRTING with antisemitic conspiracy theory.
November 10, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
Happy There Is A Circulatory System Walking Through The Kitchen Day to all who celebrate.
November 10, 2025 at 10:54 AM
Attempt it over four days in May every year and no other time. Trust me. I speak from experience.
you know a series is going to rock when this is the parental advisory
November 6, 2025 at 1:28 AM
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
Do you love the Chicago Public Library? Do you not want to wait weeks for books? Do you still want to be able to go to programs? Send a letter to electeds !

In the budget, Brandon Johnson is proposing 89 cuts to positions, and cutting our book budget in half. actionnetwork.org/letters/no-l...
October 27, 2025 at 2:35 AM
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November 5, 2025 at 4:44 AM
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
Did not expect one of the best paragraphs I’d read about baseball would come from an Irish newspaper

www.irishexaminer.com/sport-column...
November 2, 2025 at 2:22 PM
This is a great idea
Best exercise I've done is have students ask an LLM something they're personally experts in (they're all 18-19, so these are all accessible topics).

One student this year asked for Top 10 MLB players in 2025. LLM gave a bunch of plausible names...and then Rafael Devers. Asked students why. (1/2)
It takes being an expert in some area to get a sense of where LLMs fall tragically short there.

Unfortunately, they also have a habit of making everyone perceive themselves an expert without any expertise needed to discern the outputs. It’s easy for it to feel like magic in these circumstances.
November 4, 2025 at 1:10 AM
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
the password to the louvre surveillance server was "louvre"

www.thesocialpost.it/2025/11/02/f...
November 3, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
F. Scott Fitzgerald: In my book I invented Gatsby lifestyle as a cautionary tale

The president: At long last, we have created the Gatsby lifestyle from the classic novel The Great Gatsby
November 1, 2025 at 4:48 AM
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It's a Chicago holiday
November 1, 2025 at 12:06 PM
We watched gremlins 2 tonight, which my wife had never seen. Going from the film to Key and Peele to this was pretty great.
Megan Thee Stallion
November 1, 2025 at 4:00 AM
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
Reposted by Benjamin "Not Ben Shapiro" Schapiro
I used to work at a small shop that made little plastic vampires.

There were only 2 of us working there, so I had to make every second count.
October 28, 2025 at 11:36 PM
Wild that I've always lived in a cow tools world
43 years ago today, readers the world over opened their newspapers and gazed upon cow tools for the first time. happy birthday cow tools. you look great.
October 28, 2025 at 6:59 PM