2026-06-07
Cool article from WIP about Edo Japan. A pre-nineteenth-century panopticon seemed pretty interesting, but I think the subtext of the article is that great peace established by rent-seekers comes at a large psychological price? I guess? Caring more about status than civil unrest does seem like a distinctly human feature, though, and today's panopticon proves that indelibly. Still, being a nobody is way better than being a somebody; that's probably my favorite lesson from the Didache: "Your soul shall not be joined with lofty ones, but with just and lowly ones shall it have its intercourse."
Article from NYRB on Joan Semmel, a painter who was in art school during the abstract art explosion of the 1950s and pivoted to painting nudes in the 70s and throughout the rest of her life. It was sad to see that so many people back then thought that there could only be room for a woman to be either her career or something else, and I think the criticism we see of the Girlboss is a weird indication of certain societal progress and a fundamental identity crisis we find among women and men respectively. Still, though, there's a certain honesty in Semmel's work that makes me more empathetic to struggles women face in Current Year. There's a realism to the nudes; it's definitely not something you'd see on OnlyFans or Instagram. It's real people, flabs and weirdly shaped nipples and all—with no real concern for the viewer. An interesting irony is that these paintings portray a more real human nude than most photos I see of naked women today. Wait, um—I mean—I don't look at photos of naked women. Shut up!
Quick post from Gwern on using "retcon planning" to help train AI dungeon masters. I've played a good bit of D&D before, and what I've discovered is that the best DMs are the ones who can make shit up on the fly and build their world around player experiences. If a DM tries too hard to keep players built into their swathes of pre-written lore and worldbuilding, they end up being a total railroader and not fun to play with. I tried doing some AI roleplaying adventures a few years ago, and thought it was alright for a fun quick solo adventure. But unfortunately, LLMs are not that creative, so many of the stories you engage in are cliche and predictable. Even today with LLMs being cheaper and somewhat more accessible, this is still a major bridge to cross. There's definitely some hardcore nerds out there who have trained their own models to be totally personal to their preferences and play style, but I'd still rather just do it the old-fashioned way. Maybe if there's a way for people to combine their personal LLMs and have them be part of a group adventuring party, that could add a decently fun layer to it, but even then I feel like it would still be overkill.
Great article from The Argument on the Mississippi Miracle. People have been lambasting Mississippi and the South in general regarding education standards for quite some time, but in the background, Mississippi was quietly killing the game. Literally just teach phonics, train teachers on the actual curriculum, and hold kids back a grade if they don't pass the tests. No Child Left Behind was a mistake. That new stupid reading technique was a mistake. Kids need to be told when they're not performing well; no more participation trophies, skids.
A more recent article from The Argument about the so-called Messenger Class. I've heard this group of people referred to as the Laptop Class too, from Cory Doctorow I think. I'm not gonna pull up which one of his blog posts said it, just trust me bro. Anyway, it's mostly people who work what I would call basically bullshit jobs a la Dave Graeber: journalists, software engineers, academics, people who work at non-profits. The article basically just says that people in those fields live in specific parts of the country—namely the Bay Area, D.C., and NYC—try to make sweeping claims about society despite the fact they live in small insulated neighborhoods themselves. Like, it doesn't matter how much data you have access to or how you analyze it; the only way to know what's going on in a community is to live in it day by day, talk to your neighbors, and actually experience things for yourself. These insulated messengers don't wish to do that, so of course their worldview is going to be skewed in some snooty kind of way.
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