In his recent book on the moral philosophy of Iris Murdoch, Mark Hopwood gives us “a Murdoch who is no longer just a defective analytic philosopher, but a thinker in a tradition of her own,” writes Parker Henry:
Today, on the House Floor, I honored Oakland's own Olympic figure skating champion and GOLD MEDALIST, Alysa Liu. You carry the heart and spirit of Oakland everywhere you go - we are so proud of you. Congratulations, Alysa on your incredible accomplishments - and for doing it on your terms.
thanks pamela! it was a PACKED room they had to turn people away!
red envelope against a black background announcing a new book deal for SOON YOU’LL BE JUST LIKE US by chin-sun lee
so thrilled my new novel, SOON YOU’LL BE JUST LIKE US, has found a home with Creature Publishing!🩸i spilled my guts all over this weird, dark tale of psychological horror that while writing led me to truly unexpected places. i hope readers will likewise feel a delicious gasp of surprise.
Thesis: fact
Antithesis: feeling
Synthesis: fact-based feeling
Good morning! Yes, this is he
Of course one day we were going to do literary jumble sales on Clothes in Books. And the day has come. From Barbara Pym to Mapp and Lucia, with a surprise teaser from Graham Greene. With pictures. Please add your own favourites and mentions.... clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-...
Debuting after Fifty, panel discussion at #AWP2026 in Baltimore (Thurs, March 5th) with @scribblepost.bsky.social and others!
YES
Monochrome photograph featuring a standing Iranian woman in a hijab holding a portable radio and tape deck on her shoulder in an interior
Iranian artist Shadi Ghadirian, Untitled (from the Qajar series), 2002 #womensart
A laminated sign: BREAK DOWN CARTOONS AND BOXES BEFORE PUTTING THEM IN THE RECYCLE BIN.
“Ok so the basic premise of this one is that there’s a coyote and a roadrunner and the coyote’s efforts to catch the roadrunner become ever more elaborate and comical but – and this is the crucial bit – he never catches the roadrunner. Here are some of the common tropes used…”
Sign saying ‘our bartenders are so light fingered they could be concert pianists’ Why, are they going to rob me?
I feel they have misunderstood this expression:
Gotta love how academic books don't earn you money, but LLMs can make money off of stealing them in the aggregate and if you write enough, they can also profit from stealing your personality after you are dead.
In non-WWIII news, the Supreme Court has denied cert in Thaler v. Perlmutter, leaving in place the DC Circuit’s decision denying copyright to wholly AI-generated works. This will leave for another day hard labor and industrial policy questions about hybrid works generated in part by AI.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Can you give me a reason to accept it, though? That's what I'm struggling and waiting for. What's the reason to accept the notion that Congress can hand off the power to declare war to the President? GENERAL SAUER: Well, we don't contend that. Again, that would be -- JUSTICE GORSUCH: Well, you do. You say it's unreviewable, that there's no manageable standard, nothing to be done. And now you're -- I think you -- tell me if I'm wrong. You've backed off that position. GENERAL SAUER: Maybe that's fair to say.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: You're saying there's inherent authority in foreign affairs, all foreign affairs, so regulate commerce, duties and -- and -- and -- and tariffs and war. It's inherent authority all the way down, you say. Fine. Congress decides tomorrow, well, we're tired of this legislating business. We're just going to hand it all off to the President. What would stop Congress from doing that? GENERAL SAUER: That would be different than a situation where there are metes and bounds, so to speak. It would be a wholesale abdication.
From tariff arguments
GORSUCH: What's the reason to accept the notion that Congress can hand off the power to declare war to the President?
SAUER: Well, we don't contend that.
What if Congress decides it's "tired of this legislating business"?
That'd be a "wholesale abdication," Sauer ntoes
It would be cool to have a legislature that acted to defend its own constitutional prerogatives and, maybe as a treat, the interests of the people it represents too.
"Amazon is building a marketplace for publishers to license their content to companies with AI products, according to people familiar with the matter." – Something does not add up. Read my first leaflet:
Two things: Kitty Kelley was alleged to have made shit up in her Sinatra bio, so it’s sort of poetic that she does so in her book reviews. But also: Kitty Kelley is alive and well and reviewing books?
markoppenheimer.substack.com/p/kitty-kell...
The first five words of this are enough to induce an anxiety attack in anyone who knows even a little bit about cobol and the systems that still run on it.
A felted picture of a warty frog, arms in air, going AAAAH!
Art. #frog #AAAAH #needlefelt #wool #art
A February 19 #SJC IP Subcommittee letter from Senators Schiff and Tillis questions the American Law Institute about its controversial #copyright restatement project. Learn more here! copyrightalliance.org/wp-content/u...
Just a few weeks till our first class!
There is no artificial intelligence — only intelligence, and computers are not capable of possessing it — at least not in the way that we generally associate intelligence with reference to judgment. Computational efficiency — the ability to discern patterns through mountains of data so as to be able to predict outcomes, or to generate new patterns based on the past, is not an exercise in intelligence, and the anthropomorphism employed here affects the way we think about these issues. We need to exercise great care at the outset. Intelligence isn’t reducible to stimulus-response, regardless of the sophistication and complexity of the experiment. Aggregations of data can tell us where we’ve been. Perhaps also where, based on the past, we are likely to go. They can find patterns that may escape human perception that can inform future decision-making, but they necessarily are engaged in measuring the past, not dreaming about the future. They’re incapable of being inspired. So let’s be really careful here and not entrust our future to the guardians of the past.
From a piece I wrote 6 years ago.
medium.com/@nturkewitz_...
Anyone know the last name of an "Alex" employed at Christie's New York, probably the Antiquities department, in 2017? Trying to interview 🙏
UK restaurant chains including Nando's, KFC and Burger King have withdrawn from a commitment to source slower-growing, happier chickens, blaming supply constraints amid soaring demand for the protein product.
Lovely @secondmentions.bsky.social for the humble chicken in this FT report. #proteinproduct
Congress why?
it makes me so happy that a column I once managed at Publishing Trends could be a source for such cool data.
A photo of an ice cream machine with a sign reading, "Anything is possible with ice cream." Beneath that is a hand lettered sign reading, "No ice cream".
2026 basically
sold!
Charlotte Wood's THE NATURAL WAY OF THINGS was described by a bookseller at Fort Collins' Old Firehouse Books as being about "feral rabbit women", which is wonderful.
