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Mica glittered from the white stone. Town of the pure crystal, I learnt Latin in your sparkling cage, I loved your brilliant streets. Places that have been good to us we love. The rest we are resigned to. The fishermen hung shining in their yellow among university bells. ― Iain Crichton Smith Once, in Jerusalem, I struck up acquaintance with an intelligent and interesting Syrian... I told him that I was born in Aberdeenshire in Scotland. He was amused and pitiful, though a little hazy. "Abe...| argmin gravitas
Here’s the bird that never flew;Here’s the tree that never grew;Here’s the fish that never swam;Here’s the bell that never rang.― superficially apocalyp...| www.gleech.org
Recently I spent some time at a liberal arts college, doing close reading out loud with a group of the profs. It was lovely; stimulating, collegial, civilised. A little pocket of air outside history. But I was aware of being an interloper, of feeling inimical to them. But why? After all, I’m an obsessive reader – and they do little else. I’m uninterested in most kinds of worldly success – and, e.g., none of the six professors present had ever heard of YCombinator. We both love learnin...| argmin gravitas
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath; We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death. Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day; But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May. Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end; For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend. Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides; But her ears are vexed...| argmin gravitas
When someone accumulates money and wants more, or fame or acclaim and wants more, or climbs the ladder of large organisations, or thinks everyone else is wrong and wants to establish their theory, we call them ambitious. I have large ambitions, but not this kind. None of my ambitions involve accumulating wealth (now that I have enough) and I am already as famous as I can stand (not at all). I want to provide the great synthesis for my time. (What does this mean?) I want to be a universal crit...| argmin gravitas
This class is substantially based on this paper, this paper, this post and this post.Interactive bit:Please complete the following sequences with the highest...| www.gleech.org
I enjoy shocking people by telling them I don’t use LLMs.This isn’t true, but it’s morally true for the reference class I’m in (people who wrote a book about...| www.gleech.org
Apple Music, Amazon, these aren't our competitors. Our only competitor is silence.– attributed to Daniel EkNotes on Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and t...| www.gleech.org
Jan: Gavin is going to California. Bloody airline website won’t let me check in; error message is uselessly vague. Sigh. Airport. Lady on the desk asks for my ESTA confirmation. Takes me ages to find the two numbers you need to log in, so she gets bored and overrides the message and waves me through. I then see that actually I don’t have an ESTA. I apply for one sweating in the security queue. Comes through 67 minutes later, when I’m nearing the front of the boarding queue at the gate. ...| argmin gravitas
“Fuck; fuck!” the sister said, three days late to the tithe. Blink, blink, twitch canonical digits to commit. Blink, blink, digits. Blink— (It’s now actually easier to read the logprobs right off the spike train; the blinks are just to prevent soreness, or seizure. But there’s no avoiding soreness if you’re as behind as she.) She bleared on. The cleaner picked around her desk, its hum a familiar part of the morning — though normally felt through sleep. Outside, the sun painted t...| argmin gravitas