That was fast: Afroman cleared of charges. Also noticed that in an amicus brief, the ACLU argued that the deputies’ lawsuit was a classic SLAPP approach, referring to a type of lawsuit that seeks to discourage criticism of public officials by burdening individuals with lawsuits in retaliation for talking about state wrongdoing.
Speaking of autoethnographies, I just heard about Dorothy Roberts’ latest and it looks intriguing.
The belief that LLMs are intelligent is based on the idea that language and intelligence are equivalent. From November, this article from The Verge argues that idea is a misnomer, instead arguing that we should think of language as a cultural tool we evolved to share our thoughts with one another.
On AI and the value of “taste” in Silicon Valley. As a pretentious hipster reformed, I welcome the return of bad taste as a social dealbreaker. Except for when bad taste is good.
I’m watching the feminist writer scene go hard on some recent books: Jamilah Lemieux’s Black. Single. Mother. and Lindy West’s Adult Braces.
Both books were published on March 10, and both authors are talented, with impressive bylines, with significant followings baked in. Incidentally, they come from the same cohort we loosely refer to as “feminist blogging,” though both would probably bristle at the description. And both use autoethnographic methods to leverage their personal lives to tell bigger stories about social, cultural and economic dynamics (a common method among feminists, where the personal is often made explicitly political). Lemieux goes further by including a series of essays by other Black single mothers at the end of her book, expanding the frame from memoir into something more collective, a full bloom.
West’s book has gone ultra viral over the last few weeks while Lemieux’s has found significantly less footing. West’s work is being spectacularized in real time, while Lemieux’s support has been mostly grassroots, respectful (thankfully), and largely limited to Black media outlets and NPR. This reproduces one of the oldest patterns in feminist media: a white woman’s confessional work circulates as universal or spectacular (West is being treated like a spectacle currently, which is great for sales and visibility but comes with negative trade-offs), while a Black woman doing rigorous, arguably more structurally ambitious work gets categorized as niche, an outlier. That this is happening within the very audience that would generally name and critique this dynamic in any other context makes it worth sitting with.
While I respect both authors and their bodies of work, I am looking forward to Lemieux’s book because I know firsthand how difficult it is to get a publisher and an audience for serious, foundational work like this. I suspect it will prove relevant long after the viral moment is over.
Rapper Afroman is going ultra viral this week as his “Lemon Pound Cake” trial plays out in the news. He captured the raid on security cameras in his home and used the footage in a series of songs, videos and merch. He ultimately did not face charges after the search, and argues (with evidence) that the police broke his door and stole $400, which provides the platform and substance for everything that followed. He argues the police shouldn’t have been there at all, and didn’t follow protocol when they were, and that as a citizen and artist he’s expressing his feelings about it in his preferred medium. Is this a winning legal strategy? Time will tell.
In the meantime he’s winning at public opinion. The trial is shaping up in the public view as a defamation vs. free speech trial, with the artist’s prolific work about this no-knock raid performed at his house, itself arguably unethical, held up as harassment by the officers who did the job. True crime, legal experts and court watcher accounts are going gangbusters providing cultural and legal analysis alongside video of court testimony. It helps that the court footage is a rich text — both hilarious and revealing.
Meanwhile: another first amendment case in and around rap lyrics is playing out now. A brief history of rap and the First Amendment.
More discussion on how “last mile” problems suggest that stories about massive AI disruption of jobs are hyperbole.
This writer suggests that LLMs used to be pretty cool and creative — read: exceedingly weird — and that corporate tinkering to prepare the tech for a broader market took away some of the magic.
The “stochastic parrot” argument against LLMs has some rhetorical limits.
Podcast: The kids in ICE detention.
I misused PESOS below, c’est la vie, I’m doing a POSSE model. Here’s someone smarter than me on POSSE v PESOS.
Anne Helen Peterson on the erosion of good, stable, sustainable jobs.
Turned on a couple of micro.blog site features: if you’re reading this feed on a social site (Mastodon, Bsky, Threads), I’m posting from micro.blog and syndicating out from there. Replies from federated social sites (Bsky, Mastodon) are now syndicated on my site as comments under my blog posts.
My digital presence has been deliberately fractured for years, so I’m watching how this site stitches together my breadcrumbs through SEO, with the serious stuff and throwaway asides alongside the occasional hilarity. Currently one of my top Google results.
Big internet controversy over dress codes in chain restaurants.
Just experienced my first thundersleet.
Author Margaret Atwood plays with Claude and reports back on her experience.
On the many failures of social media companies to act with pro-social ethics.
Pulling everything she’s ever posted back to her own website: Lisa Charlotte Muth flips POSSE to PESOS, “Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate (to your) Own Site.”