Paul Matzko
@paulmatzko
Historian, author of The Radio Right (Oxford 2020), day job: trust and governance at the Institute for Humane Studies.
Honestly, I feel like Europe owes Nova Scotia & Newfoundland a hearty thank you, both for 1) all the cod and 2) for creating a perfect ocean current ramp for all that deliciously warm Caribbean water that's pointed straight at Europe
Everyone has their favorite black swan existential crisis. Mine is the collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) current, which would in a generation or two give northern Europe the climate of Labrador, dropping average temps by 18-54 degrees F.
My favorite insight from Lee is that there's a future where Uber and Waymo (and avs and human chauffers) forge a complementary relationship.
What's strange to me about the self-driving rollout is just how patchwork the future is. If you've ever taken a Waymo, you instantly understand that the near future is autonomous. But if you don't live / visit one of those cities where it operates, then avs come across as scary, barely imaginable.
You can check the extent to which your creative output influences LLMs relative to others. I scored relatively high for someone who's not well-known, which I suspect is b/c I have published in crawlable outlets: journals, editorials, newsletters, podcasts, etc.
Then, in contrast to the 30s/40s when Christian nationalism was a self-description, the uptick of the terminology in the late 20th c. tracks the (re)invention of fundamentalism in the 1980s by critics of folks like Falwell, Jones, etc.
You can see the uptick in uses of "Christian nationalism" in the 1930s/40s on Google ngram, then a decline in the 1950s, a steady rise in the 1980s, before an explosion in the 2010s.
That the search on TikTok is "who is will ferell" makes me feel old as shit. 😅
My first tankie pile-on since I left Twitter! Makes me feel a bit nostalgic, lol.
I suppose it is fitting that the new passport portrays Trump defacing the Declaration of Independence, a protest against a king who also thought he stood above law and custom. They didn't quite think this one all the way through...
Depending on who's correct about the future of A(G)I, this chart will be (in)famous a decade from now.
Bigots like Rep. Ogles are bad at history. I was a research assistant for this book, which notes the ways that the Founding Fathers explicitly linked their own freedom of religion to preserving the rights of the small Muslim communities that existed in America at the time.
And in that regard it's nearly identical to the rhetoric of conservative apologists for segregation in the mid-20th century condemning pastors for "getting political" from the pulpit. But to *not* condemn something so obviously immoral was to tacitly condone it. Silence was a political act.
The glee with which right-wing outlets report on Ricky Gervais' chiding of celebrity anti-ICE comments at the Grammys is a reminder that *not* taking a political stance can itself be taking a political stance. It's a vote in favor of the status quo.
Another Friday, yet more examples of blatant authoritarianism. From left to right: violating freedom of the press & bypassing the normal judicial process, fighting over funding a murderous paramilitarized secret police, and unleashing the national security state on the democratic process.
Oh, so you reduced tariffs and allowed Americans to buy $10k luxury evs from China? Is that what you did? If not, then be quiet and go have a seat at the kids' table.
And yes, I'm still salty about Bernie Sanders basically running this meme with Rush Limbaugh in 2007 during our last, best shot at real immigration reform.
It's not rocket science. The American public thinks immigration is a good but also want an orderly process and a secure border. They don't like it when Stephen Miller's goons kidnap people. And they didn't like it when Obama / Biden half-assed immigration liberalization via cheap executive orders.
Every death from kidney disease is a policy failure. If we allowed people to sell their spare kidneys, people like Nick Mangold wouldn't have to die while waiting for a donor replacement. By treating kidneys like blood instead of like plasma, we cause thousands of unnecessary deaths per year.
Lots of (deserved) animus for the MAGA candidate who sicced ICE on the Hyundai plant, but bear in mind that a union guy gave her the tip. Unions maximize benefits for union members, even when that means collaborating with fascists and when it comes at the expense of the general welfare.
A very silly article. The underwhelming release of GPT-5 is another sign that simply scaling LLMs won't lead us to AGI (whatever that means) and neuro-symbolic systems which *might* still have years of R&D to go. Far from "resurgence," AI doomerism is doomed. 2025 might just be its apogee.
The NYPost has never been able to resist a clickbait lede, but this is low even by their standards. He slipped in a parking lot. It makes as little sense to blame a catfishing AI for his death as it would for me to blame the public library for the car crash I got into while driving there.
Same energy. Covering up burnout by claiming to be a martyr for a cause, any cause.