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  This is pretty good. Lots about longtermism, singularitarianism, and effective altruism (now *there's* a wild misnomer), if you've ever wondered what drives these big-tech weirdos with god complexes #reading #books #BigTech #AdamBecker #SiliconValley #AI #ethics #tech

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  "We need to regard text as a deepfake medium as well." Ted Chiang on why "AI" is not conscious, or capable of moral reasoning, in case anyone's wondering: https://www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2026/06/no-artificial-intelligence-is-not-conscious/687378/ #AI #LLMs #tech

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  Loved this chat about words for smells (27 mins.): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002xgzt #smell #words #language #podcast

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  Been looking forward to this one #books #reading #IrishLiterature #MaryCostello #BookCovers #novels

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  The Birds' Disaffection. A new book spine poem: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/book-spine-poem-the-birds-disaffection/ #books #poem #FoundPoetry #VisualPoetry #poetry #wordplay #BookSpines #bookmash

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  "Here's a nice quiet beach and an ice cream van to go with your dangerous heat and climate chaos" – picture editor at Ireland's state broadcaster, apparently I'm so tired of this ignorance. https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0625/1580210-weather-ireland/ #weather #climate #journalism #Mastodaoice #ClimateDiary #ClimateChange

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  RE: https://zirk.us/@grammargirl/116704173778333410 A few other reasons to avoid the term "hallucinate" in the context of LLMs: —It anthropomorphizes genAI, which is a harmful reflex. —It's a popular industry term for a reason. It perpetuates and strengthens the way genAI companies want us to perceive the technology. —Maybe most saliently: GenAI does nothing *but* hallucinate. Using the word to describe only some outputs implies erroneously that it's not hallucinating *all...

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  Met this lovely White Ermine (Spilosoma lubricipeda) in the shade out the back #moths #wildlife #Ireland #mothtodon #IrishWildlife #NaturePhotography

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  Best thing I've read in months. I picked it up because I was attracted to the title on the spine in a second-hand bookshop; I knew nothing about it, and I'm awestruck #books #memoir #LGBTQ #abuse #CarmenMariaMachado #literature #BookCovers

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  Saw "nonhabit-forming" in a book and wanted to parse it (nonsensically) as "forming of non-habit". I wrote about these tricky hyphens once: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/non-life-threatening-unselfconscious-hyphens/ #punctuation #hyphens #semantics #writing #EnglishUsage

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  RE: https://mastodon.ie/@clickhere/116493231355733839 These findings are unsurprising but worth spotlighting. Politicians and journalists still active on X for "engagement" or whatever dubious reason (or, to a lesser degree, active on FB) are soaked in deeply warped notions of public opinion on immigration, inequality, LGBTQ issues, etc. Their Overton window misaligns badly with reality #Mastodaoine #Ireland #IrPol #inclusion #research #PublicOpinion

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  You either love false dichotomies or you don't.

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  It's not "a substack" – it's a newsletter (on a platform that promotes nazis) #substack

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  "Some AI-loving journalists appear to believe that if they’re clear enough with the AI program they’re using, it will truly understand what they’re seeking and not just do what it’s made to do: steal shit." Marisa Kabas: https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/refusing-to-accept-big-tech-s-ai-poisoned-future-of-journalism #journalism #AI #ethics #WritingCommunity

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  For fans of Jane Schoenbrun's amazing 2024 film I Saw the TV Glow, this is a good discussion: https://www.projectionboothpodcast.com/2026/03/episode-791-i-saw-tv-glow-2024.html #film #podcast #movies #JaneSchoenbrun #filmmaking

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  This is a smart, skeptical, tech-literate account of the various technologies (and their often-obscure infrastructures) that have taken over parts of our lives, or threaten to: smartphones, machine learning, robotics, internet of things, etc. Recommended #books #reading #tech #technology #BookCovers #AdamGreenfield

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  Fun to see the Irish idiom "make a hames of" in a national news headline: https://www.rte.ie/news/2026/0417/1568809-odonovan-protests/ I wrote about the expression in 2012: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/making-a-hames-of-it/ #language #IrishEnglish #dialect #idioms #phrases #words #blogpost

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  Was sitting outside reading when a small flash of reddish-brown movement caught my eye; I looked down just in time to see what I'm fairly sure was a bank vole (Myodes glareolus) bump into my shoe then run back the way it had come and duck into the bushes for cover (and maybe to hide its embarrassment) #vole #wildlife #IrishWildlife #countryside #outdoors

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  The contrivances pile up a little, but I'm enjoying this story, a decade after everyone else #reading #dystopia #fiction #postapocalyptic #BookCovers #EmilyStJohnMandel

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  If you're in need of some sweary fun, here's an interactive Periodic Table of Swearing: https://ptos.moderntoss.com/ #swearing #profanity #slang #language #cursing

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  What kind of profanity is this? https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2026/04/06/what-kind-of-profanity-is-this/ #language #swearing #slang #profanity #linguistics #words #StrongLanguage

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  I received this charming children's book about herring gulls as a gift recently. It was published by 't Widde Vool in the Netherlands in 1985. Text by Conny Sýkora, illustrations by Sacha van Dulm #HerringGulls #birds #environment #books #nature #illustration

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  On misnegation and overnegation and how they can trip up writers: https://blog.oup.com/2026/03/implicit-negation-is-easy-to-miss/ Battistella's piece cites this post of mine on misnegation and why it shouldn't be overestimated, I mean underestimated: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2018/11/19/misnegation-should-not-be-overestimated-i-mean-underestimated/ #language #semantics #writing #WritingCommunity #negation #linguistics

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  Analysis finds that Google's "AI Overviews" are giving people 10s of millions of wrong answers *every hour*. But the analysis is by an AI startup, so who tf knows 🤷‍♂️ https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/google-ai-overviews-misinformation #Google #misinformation #AI

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  Eavan Boland and the emergence of a poetic self. On the blog: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2026/03/29/eavan-boland-and-the-emergence-of-a-poetic-self/ #poetry #IrishPoetry #EavanBoland #literature #identity

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  RE: https://me.dm/@anildash/116304281218412979 "The hectobillionaires have begun their final assault on the last, best parts of what's still open, and likely won't rest until they've either brought all of the independent and noncommercial parts of the Internet under their control, or destroyed them." – @anildash #internet #AI #OpenWeb

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  "We're just speedrunning a climate disaster because these companies are shoving these tools in our face that nobody wants" (and that don't work) @acollierastro on an "AI" puff piece in @newscientist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFGcqWbwvyc #science #AI #journalism #climate #tech #technology #enshittification

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  That viral clip of a horse that rescues and befriends a kitten is AI slop, folks Probably no point telling the clip's many apologists that the exploitative tech that delivered this slop is endangering actual animals here in the real world #GenAI #AI #animals

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  I wrote a little about Agatha Christie – as a verb https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2025/10/11/to-agatha-christie-v-tr/ #language #AlienEarth #AgathaChristie #slang #writing #blog #verbs #verbing #LanguageChange #pragmatics

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  Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy feels more like an autumn/winter read, but I didn't want to put it off any longer. By the end of the first paragraph I was all in: "This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow." #books #reading #MervynPeake #literature #f...