Alan Jacobs

On reading eccentrics, cranks, and weirdos. 

A sample of the work of the great watchmaker George Daniels (1926-2011). I never travel to London without visiting the Clockmaker’s Museum, though I sort of miss its old rather obscure location at Guildhall. 

How writing a blog about Terrence Malick makes me pretty much exactly like Terrence Malick. 

Now that I live in central Texas, when I return to my native Alabama I am always thinking: Dang, the trees here are tall.

WSJ:

AI is trained in part on what people like, and people prefer the brown-nosing, says Myra Cheng, a computer-science Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University and lead author of a March study on agreeable AI. Participants rated sycophantic AI responses significantly higher in quality and, after interacting with a more obsequious model, said they were more likely to return to the AI.

This bodes ill.

The home of The Victorian Society was well chosen. 

Kit Wilson:

In 1968, [Kołakowski] was fired from Warsaw University for “forming the views of the youth in a manner contrary to the official tendency of the country,” banned from teaching and publishing entirely, and placed under constant police surveillance. 

As I come to the end of my teaching career, I am bitterly disappointed in myself: I have never been formally charged with “forming the views of the youth in a manner contrary to the official tendency of the country.” 

Angus taking a break from playing in the garden hose, which is his favorite thing to do that does not involve eating.

For my Buy Me a Coffee supporters I wrote a report from Mission Control. 

How much would you pay for a smarter baby? — I can imagine the lawsuits later: “We paid for a smarter baby but instead we got a child who’s compassionate and generous! We’ve been screwed!”