Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org

As both a #medic and a #writer, I'm going to go out on a limb and say the ethical bar for #fiction #writing is *far* lower than the bar for #medicine. Reading a bad story may make you feel like you've wasted an irretrievable chunk of your life, but it's very unlikely to land you in the morgue. So the idea that there might be ethical uses for #AI in medicine but not in writing seems rather strange to me.

"Well, *I* thought it was funny."

— my tombstone, probably

Speaking as someone whose entire adult life has been spent keeping people alive, I'm going to go out on a limb and say Lillian #Bonsignore knows a hell of a lot more about saving lives than Elon #Musk.

Hello, #Republicans.

#Democrats have been telling you for months that we don’t care if #Clinton is in the #Epstein files. If he raped kids, he should pay the same penalty as anyone else. But I guess y’all have your talking points and you are by God going to stick with them.

You know as well as we do that #Trump is all over the redacted parts. Every time you pretend otherwise, you’re announcing to the world that you’re just fine with pedos as long as they’re on your side. For some of you, it’s a selling point.

We see you, and we won’t forget.

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Feel free to quote, share, or copy and paste if you find it useful.

Texting is fine for short communications, to be clear. But anything more than a few sentences is actively painful.

Also, that 30-minute video you want me to watch could and should have been an essay. If there's no transcript, fuggedaboudit.

Something you may not know about me: I dislike reading long-form content on my phone, or really doing anything on my phone more than necessary. E.g. if you want to have an in-depth conversation with me, please send me a direct message rather than texting.

Hey, it was better than spilling a bunch of jewel boxes all over the passenger seat floor and leaning down to fumble through them while going 80 mph down the interstate! Which I, uh, may have done a time or two.

Sword in one hand, latte in the other, combat boots on both feet. It's a thing.

#Knowledge is #justified #true #belief. That definition is about 2500 years old, and although #philosophers have been trying to come up with a better definition ever since, no one has. All claimed counterexamples are #sophistry.

A lot of my fellow #scientists and/or #atheists have trouble with the word "belief" because they associate it with faith—which in turn can be defined as belief *without* justification, or whose truth is unknowable. But it's really a lot simpler than that.

If I walk inside dripping wet, and someone asks me if it's raining, and I say it is because I've just been out in it, then I'm stating my belief. What you believe is anything you can honestly affirm if someone asks you, "Is such-and-such true?"

Belief can be simple and immediate or complicated and long-term. It can be trivial or profound. It can be true or false, justified or unjustified, testable or untestable. The honesty, that's the key. Knowledge, a proper subset of belief, has a much higher standard.

The above is an extended way of saying that if someone begins a loaded question with an aggressive, sarcastic "Did you know ..." then you are amply justified in truly believing they're full of shit.

I'm pleased to announce that Becca now has her own storefront. As well as the #calendar, there are now some lovely #dragonfly address labels, with more of her amazing #wildlife #photography to come. If there's anything you'd like to see, let me know and I'll be happy to pass the request along!

https://www.zazzle.com/store/r_e_lee_photography

Points for originality, though, I guess. I wonder how he gets along with his fellow #masculinity-obsessed manboys who go gaga for #Viking-themed shit?

"Being a male doesn't make you a #MAN !!
MEN believe in #God, its a prerequisite to being called a MAN.
You have a #Effeminate #heathen male not a man 💯🙏✝️"

Well, there it is, the stupidest thing I'll read on the internet all day. Hopefully.

Unashamed plug: Becca Lee, my beloved wife and an amazing #wildlife #photographer, finally has her work up for sale. If you're looking for a 2026 #calendar, this would be an *excellent* choice. 🙂

https://www.zazzle.com/things_with_wings_a_wildlife_photography_calendar-256547422419714113

Do you want the #PLA in #Venezuela? Because this is how you get the PLA in Venezuela.

"So you're not willing to define #dinosaurs, except as 'not #birds because I say so'? Okay."

Really I should know better than to keep having this argument, but for some reason I can't resist.

Someday, someone will write The History of the #Decline and Fall of the #American #Empire, perhaps even in the then-former territory of the United States. In that work, the #Roberts #Court will be correctly identified as one of the chief causes of its destruction.

https://thehumanityarchive.substack.com/p/undoubtedly

There have been worse Supreme Courts, including of course the one which issued the Dred Scott decision. But I honestly think there's never been one so venal, so inconsistent, and so cowardly all at once. If the #Constitution I swore to defend survives their filthy hands, it will be only through fire—much as #Taney et al. made inevitable Shiloh and Antietam and Gettysburg and the Crater, and at last Appomattox.

If the nation is *very* lucky, at least some of the six "Justices" currently using the Constitution for toilet paper will live to see the blood and hear the screams and smell the shit.

There's a style of writing that's become popular.

One-clause sentences.

One-sentence paragraphs.

Maybe two or three sentences if you're lucky.
But no commas.
Never any commas.

Definitely only one sentence per line.
Nonstandard spacing.

Lots of ellipses ...

Writers think this makes their work sound punchy.

Lots of emphasis.

It doesn't.
It's boring.

Some people say it's all AI writing.
Because that's how AI writes.
Like this.

And AI does write like this.
Often.

But it's not all AI.

People do it too.

For the love of God.
Please stop.

#ScienceFiction fans are weird. I should know: I've been part of organized #fandom since I was too small to see over the tables in the huckster room, as we called it in the days when we printed fanzines on mammoth vellum.

#FlatEarthers are weird. Not fun weird like fen (something something dodged sabertooths uphill both ways). Just boring, depressing, will-you-please-go-away weird. Which to be fair, is the reaction some people have toward fandom, but usually when we encounter those people we let them be.

Flat-earthers who are also SF fans? That strikes me as a deep wrongness in the universe.

I get a lot of mileage out of "This is not difficult to understand, unless you choose not to."

"Why are #atheists so *angry* all the time?"

This.

The smugness, the arrogance, the idea that no one could find any worth in a child's life and well-being other than through #religion. When true #believers show every day, all over the world, how little they value anyone.

This is why.

And, of course, #notallbelievers. Probably not even most. But *enough*.