Paul Campos

When I was wrestling with the LLMs yesterday, it wasn't just a random experiment: it was because I was looking for a good case study in regard to the following question: As a fan, how much do you value championships, in the context of the overall experience of fandom? Here's the specific example:

Noah Berlatsky has a good summary of what would be obvious in most countries most of the time, but can't be in America because America doesn't lose wars (except for the ones where we are stabbed in the back by our internal enemies. There ought to be a German word for that).

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said late Tuesday he is “drawing up plans” to end the processing of international flights in left-leaning cities, pointing to protests outside an immigration detention center in New Jersey as rationale.

Most people “slip” into the roles society provides them, [and we should dismiss] any implication that “faulty personalities” are the cause of human cruelty. . . .the exception—the real “sleeper”—is the rare individual who has the capacity to resist authority and assert moral autonomy but who is seldom aware of this hidden strength until put to the test.

It's been three days since President Donald Trump visited Walter Reed Medical Center for his latest physical examination, and the White House has yet to release the results. As CNN reports , this break from the administration's own previous practices will likely “fuel further questions about his health and fitness.”

Dan's post regarding Eve Fairbanks' essay about what's wrong with AI prose reminded me of a thought I'd had a couple of times recently, which is this: Such criticisms are reminiscent of the arguments Orwell makes about contemporary — meaning eighty years ago now — English language prose, in his classic essay “Politics and the English Language.” So I re-read that essay, and it was an uncanny experience:

Scott posted one of Trump's Truth Social rants from this evening, but one from all of fourteen minutes later was even more unhinged:

I was fooling around with FRED this morning, as one does, and here are some stats: (The FRED numbers are presented in nominal dollars; I've converted them to CPI-adjusted dollars).

Because after 18 years as a front pager on this site I still don't know how to schedule posts to appear at a certain time (in this as well as so many other ways I am LGM's token Boomer FPer), I'm trying to sneak this in between some other pleas.

Thanks to everyone who has bid on this item so far. I'm going to throw in a bonus, which could, assuming the eventual book becomes A Literary Classic, earn the winner of the auction if not wealth uncountable, then at least what I believe the kids refer to these days as “fat stacks.”