Tag: Fucking Texas

2023.08.13 – media_log

I spent most of today grading papers and prepping for my comp exams, which start tomorrow. I didn’t spend much time online and only posted two humorous things on Facebook. I’m going to need a really good reason to put those social media apps back on my phone.


Courtesy of greeblie via Wikimedia

Nobody ever questioned where that database holding 10,000 hours of Olive Garden commercials was located. Now we have ChatGPT teaching kindergarteners. This is the most important read: AI Causes Real Harm. Let’s Focus on That over the End-of-Humanity Hype “Magic 8 Balls that we can play with by framing the prompts we send them as questions such that we can make sense of their output as answers.”

Barrels of drinking water for migrants walking through Texas have disappeared it’s so easy to automatically suspect someone of spiteful behavior. We’re driven by us vs them in so many more ways that we forget that these are actual people whom we exploit with impunity and perhaps deserve at the very least to not die

The Latest Trend on Yachts? Submersibles Good. Gooooood. Feel the power course through your veins! It took three reporters to write this ass-licking advertorial. The Oceangate disaster doesn’t make an appearance until paragraph 11.


media_log is a collection of media that I’ve consumed throughout the day – not in bite-size, headline-only, hot-take form as per social media, but actually reading the article and having a thought. Since taking the social media apps off my phone, I’m being more intentional with how I spend my attention.

2023.08.12 – media_log

I’ve been moving my research notes and memos into Obsidian. I like the simple Markdown files that are kept on my computer first, then synched, and the wiki-style linking between notes and topics. Also, moving the notes is a great way to review them before my exams start on Monday.


The most important story:
Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper, seizing computers, records and cellphones “The search warrant, signed by Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, appears to violate federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists. The law requires law enforcement to subpoena materials instead. Viar didn’t respond to a request to comment for this story or explain why she would authorize a potentially illegal raid.”

The constitutional case that Donald Trump is already banned from being president. A look at that argument those “conservative lawyers” (so it must be true!) are making about the 14th Amendment. It’s soothing to think so, but my expectations are low.

Texas questions rights of a fetus after a prison guard who had a stillborn baby sues There is some possibility for this to bite Texas in the Lone Star. The idea of “personhood” cannot be applied to women carrying the fetus and not individuals threatening There is so much structural sexism on display in this piece–most importantly, not believing women about their own bodies– that we almost see the scaffolding that allowed the overturning of Roe v. Wade.


Was Bigfoot seen in Pennsylvania last year? Witnesses say ‘yes’ Obviously.


Penn State gender pay gap is among worst compared to public Big Ten schools, federal data show They mention the pay increase of the female president but not the pay of the football coach even though they keep saying “Big Ten.” (Coach’s salary in 2022? $7 million.) WE ARE, I guess.

A slightly sadistic experiment aims to find out why heat drives up global conflict “In other words, does extreme heat trigger a psychological effect that is driving up the violence?” I’m curious if the increased aggravation that people feel because of the heat is because of our social conditioning against sweat. Is that increased aggression a Western, white issue? The growing cultural preference for Western-style aesthetics is a problem. There was an article about sweat yesterday, I’ll have to find it. Got it -> We Must Learn to Love Our Sweat

media_log is a collection of media that I’ve consumed throughout the day – not in bite-size, headline-only, hot-take form as per social media, but actually reading the article and having a thought. Since taking the social media apps off my phone, I’m being more intentional with how I spend my attention.