adamgreenfield

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

Twenty-eight years after our first meeting, @Jwomack remains every bit the gentleman litterateur (and Keens remains the place to go for Porterhouses and martinis).

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

Most Sunday opinion these days is crafted to provoke just what I’m doing now, and I do kinda feel played. But it’s great to see this line of argument appear in print, from what ought to be a decently bully pulpit. Moore’s completely right: we won’t address the housing crisis here in #London, let alone achieve #housing justice, with the current generation of bullshit high-rise developments. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/11/what-low-rise-paris-can-teach-london-about-quality-of-life

adamgreenfield, 7 months ago to random

It's long past time for me to have a proper website, especially now that my fourth proper book is coming out — one place for people to find information about those books, my public speaking, SML versions of my bio, etc. I don't have a huge budget — in 2023, would you recommend Squarespace, or hiring a developer?

adamgreenfield, 6 months ago to random

Spot the ABSOLUTELY BASIC error in this otherwise-interesting piece on high-energy cosmic rays. Truly most of us (myself often enough included) are virtually illiterate as to the fundamental contours of being-in-the-universe, and science journalism like this doesn’t help. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/24/amaterasu-extremely-high-energy-particle-detected-falling-to-earth

adamgreenfield, 1 year ago to random

I have a friend – a cherished friend, of some twenty years’ acquaintance – who’s building things on top of ChatGPT, and guilelessly enthusiastic about the prospect, and has just in general decided to be completely cheerleadery and uncritical about this class of technologies. And I don’t know how to tell him that I think they represent the enclosure of the commons, and a theft from those of us who generated the corpus – accumulation by dispossession happening before our eyes, in real time.

adamgreenfield, 6 months ago to random

Every once in awhile I get the urge to print up a mess of t-shirts that read JOHN BRUNNER WAS BASICALLY RIGHT. This is one of those times.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

You know what I’d really love? I’d love it if people stopped calling me a “doomer” because I think it’s much too late for carbon mitigation, and that we’ll have to wait for a massive contraction of the planetary economy before any gross reduction in emissions is possible. This is just facing up to the facts, not an admission of species-wide defeat or a counsel of passive acceptance.

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

First, I hope it goes without saying that Larry Summers has never been right about anything but the Winkelvii, and fuck him forever. But ever since I heard about his advice to Elizabeth Warren the other day, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

adamgreenfield, 5 months ago to random

I have always liked the salary scheme John Brunner devised toward the end of “The Shockwave Rider,” with jobs being compensated in direct proportion to their social utility, energy requirements and degree of difficulty, danger or unpleasantness. A world where middle-school teachers and care nurses were paid a hundred times what baseball players or newsreaders were would be a good world.

adamgreenfield, 3 months ago to random

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” – Maya Angelou. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/05/republicans-far-right-extremists-augusto-pinochet-helicopters

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

New Swans. Not sure about this, on my second full listen; Gira’s not in full voice, the songs feel thin & have yet to click. “Paradise Is Mine” has something of the old feel to it, but tbh it makes me sad when a band comes out with something in a novel direction & the best thing you can say about it is that it reminds you of their old work. I want to believe, though.

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

One thing I’m actually grateful to postmodernity for is evacuating the whole semantic category of “hero.” It isn’t simply that every last one of the historical figures I was taught to revere in childhood was eventually revealed to have been all too human – the unsurprising revelation that all of us stand on feet of clay seems to have permanently disrupted the process of canonization prospectively. It is impossible to imagine anyone being lionized now the way JFK or MLK were when I was a child.

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

I don’t honestly care who they get to play James Bond next. But if the plot of the next film hinges on Bond defeating the apocalyptic tantrums of sociopathic man-baby zillionaire Neelon Husk? And nails the grotesque details of Husk’s lifestyle – all the cringetacular dad jokes, the sweaty Calacanite hangers-on, etc.? I’ll buy every last ticket you have to sell me.

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

Creative people who are interested in everything have a much harder time getting visibility for their work than those who find one thing and stick to it. It’s so much easier when “Oh, he’s the parklet guy,” or “She does those Lovecraftian botanist drawings,” or whatever. But invariably some of the most interesting projects I encounter are those pursued with no thought of career consistency or personal brand. If this is you I just want to say: I see your work and I’m so glad for it and for you.

adamgreenfield, 2 months ago to random

This piece shimmers with something uncanny right beneath the surface, which is the specter of a direction machine learning might have taken had it not been developed inside the constraints of the late-capitalist political economy and property-rights regime. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/science/ai-learning-biology.html

adamgreenfield, 2 months ago to random

Heads up that I simply don’t read wall-of-text posts or comments, and I strongly suspect I’m not the only one. The 500-character limit on my home instance feels juuuuust about right for easy, pleasant readability.

adamgreenfield, 2 months ago to random

I’m going to make explicit something I’ve been practicing for a while now: I will not boost posts that contain machine learning- (“AI”) generated images, as surely as I will not boost those without alt text, and I encourage you not to do so either.

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

So, uh…what’s really going on in Moscow? (You may speculate, but please indicate that you’re doing so, and please do cite sources for any assertions of fact you make, thanks.)

adamgreenfield, 1 year ago to random

Lookit: to a reasonable first order of approximation, anything crypto is just Galt’s Gulch, and Galt’s Gulch always fails. I wish more people would wrap their heads around this.

adamgreenfield, 5 months ago to random

There are, of course, worse things in the world, but I find it nearly unbearable that all of us are constantly exposed to the banal things Elon Musk thinks, says and does, whether we want to be or not. I cannot remember the last day on which I did not see or hear his name. (I’m doing it to you right now, and I hate it!) He is the very worst of us, and I look forward to a time in which he is first ignored and then forgotten.

adamgreenfield, 1 year ago to random

I've been holding off on saying anything about this — for among other reasons because it involves a specific product endorsement, which I always feel a little iffy about — but the results are so exceptional I want to share them. For the past four months or so, I've been taking a daily probiotic called Symprove. It touts a whole range of benefits, and tbh, while I do have somewhat improved digestion and energy those improvements are too marginal to justify the considerable ongoing expense.

adamgreenfield, 7 months ago to random

Kids, I am super here for any actual reasoned attempt to explain consciousness in terms of alleged quantum effects, but please, please try to come up with a version of this theory that doesn't dip significantly into woo, I'm begging you. Begging.

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

I have just learned a very lovely new word: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proplifting

adamgreenfield, 2 months ago to random

Sure, this wannabe-Gilead stuff sounds goofy AF, but fortune favors the prepared mind. These troglodytes have an existing network. They have capital. They have a more or less clear sense of what they want to do, and the order they want to do it in. And you better believe they will have a sufficiency of people willing to do the foot-soldiering. We mock them at our peril. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/inside-a-secret-society-of-prominent-right-wing-christian-men-prepping-for-a-national-divorce

adamgreenfield, 2 months ago to random

I am curious about the impact of so-called “AI” on the labor market for illustrators, specifically, as I think that’s a really useful canary. I can’t find anything good, though – just buzzwordy, speculative noise from content farms or LinkedIn. Can anyone point me at solid, empirical work on this?