The problem with the theory of the “uni-context” is that it’s an explanation of the behavior of Extremely Online People masquerading as an account of “everyone” or “the world.” Extremely Online People are like strong secularists: they think they’re more common than they are, and they believe that the whole world is trending in their direction.
Absolute tactical idiocy by Tuchel. Argentina have far too much quality: if you allow them to have as many free shots from 20 meters as they want, one (or more) of them will go in. 🏴-🇦🇷
UPDATE: someone writing in to the Guardian made my point at greater length:
England didn’t just go defensive, they sat in their box. This wasn’t a Ghana-style immaculately coached shutting off of all passing lanes, this was a stand in a line and see if a team can score. Fernandez had had three previous shots not closed down from that sort of range. At some point he was going to beat Pickford. Argentina had done exactly that corner routine twice before. Argentina had been allowed to cross the ball in multiple times from exactly that area and had hit both posts and Pickford had made two really good saves. Against Norway, Tuchel was angry because England weren’t repetitive enough; well. against Argentina they allowed the same two patterns of play over and over and over again. What did they expect?
Don’t park the bus, England. DO NOT DO IT. You will pay. 🏴-🇦🇷
Watched: Eno. What a wonderful documentary: an idea-generative film about a master of generative art. 🍿
Back cover of the forthcoming.
In my previous post I used the line “Can you dig it? I knew that you could.” It’s a line I've been using for fifty years, since I heard Billy Crystal deploy it in a routine on Saturday Night Live in which he portrayed an old jazzman called Face.
Crystal’s routine was based on people he knew from his childhood, jazz musicians who came into the Commodore Music Shop on 42nd Street in Manhattan:
That’s Billy Crystal’s father Jack in the plaid shirt on the right. Larger image here.
Currently listening: Count 'Em 88, by the Ahmad Jamal Trio. Can you dig it? I knew that you could. ♫
Finished reading: A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies by David Thomson. Thomson is the best living writer on the movies, but this is his worst book, by miles. He seems to be judging movies for what was done to us by TV and the internet. Dyspeptic without being insightful. 📚
Call me an optimist, but I believe that the majority of scholars, despite being under enormous pressure to publish, would prefer to be more engaged than removed from the fundamental pursuits and texture of their discipline. They enjoy wrestling with sources, data, and theories, and are innately repelled by the superficiality of having AI write a complete paper. They want to lean into their work, not lean back in an automated armchair. As NYU astrophysicist David Hogg recently wrote, “Anyone working in astrophysics is someone who wants to do astrophysics, not someone who wants to learn the answers.”
I would say that anyone “working in astrophysics” at a university may well want to do astrophysics but also wants to get tenure and be promoted and maybe even get a job at a more prestigious institution — and if using chatbots promises an easier and more reliable path to those goals, then they’ll use chatbots to do the work for them. Intellectual curiosity even when real can be overwhelmed by greater urgencies.