Alexander R. Phillips

tHe LAnGuAgE is fROm aI bUt ThE iDEas aRe mInE.

Unbundling the pharmakon so it's just poison now.

I ride a bicycle in Delhi and like it.

I would like it much more, of course, if they would #BanCars and #LetDelhiBreathe.

treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure

Red bicycle in front of canal.

Holding a cup of coffee in foreground, canal in background.

Aarti on the Ganga.

1857 uprising memorial in Meerut. Statue showing two 1850s era sepoy soldiers.

Enjoyed the arrival of spring with a cycle tour along the Ganga canal leading to Haridwar. Did some 1857 tourism along the way.

Anyway, this is the climate crisis.

Me too! Then I logged on here and found out another war is on.

Same.

Sometimes I feel sad that because of LLMs, I can't do contract grading or guaranteed B grades ever again.

An illuminated stork on the right side of a bible's page printed in 1455 by some Johannes Gutenberg (GW04201). The stork is angry.

This is my space! My page! My book! Signals the angry stork in a Gutenberg bible of 1455. #skystorians

I, for one, miss that first year on here when I could read all the posts in less time than it took to drink a cup of coffee.

So close to calling for mass infanticide.

Might I interest you in a book instead?

"Instead the worker generates surplus-value, which smiles at the capitalist with all the allure of something he gets for free."

Is Chuck Tingle the reincarnation of Karl Marx?

When I taught "Capital" vol. 1, ch. 1 I used to joke that Marx's fetishism wasn't the fun kind, but now I'm not so sure. "Capital" is a very horny book.

"Write an e-mail announcing that 1/3 of the staff are to be laid off. Include two sentences about how painful it is to *me.*"

I always called Abrams a card shuffler, this is better. Star Trek and Star Wars both should have been left in the 20th century.

ChatGPT is like this Magic Button you can press to *instantly* make your instructor sad and anxious; like a non-commital insult pre-packaged in digital form.

"AI" has such a hard time imagining itself, it's basically impossible! 🤔

I drew a face on a paper plate. Who could even begin to understand how it perceives the world or what it dreams of?

Without naming your job, tell me something you say over and over again at work.

"B+ is a perfectly respectable grade ... Sorry, grades are non-negotiable ... The grade that you have is the grade that you earned ... How about you make an appointment with me after semester break?"

Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harbourless immensities.

I try to be charitable, but I'm always naïvely astonished at how naïve people are about this tech. Today too a random conversation with a stranger devolved into me explaining that "AI" doesn't edit, it predicts, and if the wirds aren't yours, neither are the thoughts.

Someone made "AI" videos of my late grandmother and I was pissed. Leaving aside that it was a bad likeness, it implied that I couldn't face loss and needed to be shielded from the most basic facts of being alive. Better would be to save the water and energy and just tell me she's on a farm upstate.

Me designing a class on Marx's "Capital": Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!!

Me teaching the chapters about money: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

I've appreciated it more since I started teaching language.

Eat your heart out, "Middlemarch," you've got nothing on this banger.

"chomsky fri dinner"

😑

Nevermind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college:

Oceanography
The Monstrous Feminine in Horror Cinema
Intro to Yiddish
Shakespeare's History Plays
Faust