The Romantic: How Diane Keaton’s quest for beauty left an imprint on American culture — A beautiful appreciation of a beautiful spirit and woman.

The Oatmeal’s comic/essay about AI art starts as yet another AI rant, but then goes in an interesting direction that more or less aligns with how I think about using AI for writing. I use it for what the Oatmeal calls administrative drudgery — dragging cans of paint up the stairs to paint the Sistine Chapel. But I do not use it to write.

New Paper Finds That When You Reward AI for Success on Social Media, It Becomes Increasingly Sociopathic. “… when [AIs] were rewarded for success at tasks like boosting likes and other online engagement metrics, the bots increasingly engaged in unethical behavior like lying and spreading hateful messages or misinformation.” Fortunately, this is not a problem when people use social media.

An intriguing defense of Julian Jaynes' theory of how human consciousness emerged

Scott Alexander reviews Julian Jaynes’s alternative-science masterpiece, “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” and argues Jaynes is half-right.

The Trump government is like those episodes of MASH where Henry Blake leaves the camp and Frank Burns is in charge.

Bobby Brainworms says babies live inside women’s placentas, which is not how women’s bodies work, and that he’s going to assign someone to prove that acetaminophen causes autism, which is not how science works.

… when people say, “How come you were never mad at the last guy?” I say, “Because I wasn’t paying attention.” … I thought the last guy was pretty smart, and he seemed good at his job, and I’m lazy by nature. … So I don’t check up on people when they seem okay at their job. You may think that’s an ignorant answer, but it’s not, it’s a great answer. If you left your baby with your mother tonight, you’re not going to race home and check the nanny cam. But if you leave your baby with Gary Busey…

— John Mulaney, “There’s a horse in the hospital.”

I was today years old when I heard John Mulaney’s “Horse in the Hospital” routine, and it’s brilliant. “If you left your baby with your mother tonight, you’re not going to race home and check the nanny cam. But if you leave your baby with Gary Busey… "

I am a heavy user of dictation on the iPhone — I probably dictate as much or more than I type — but don’t use it on the Mac or iPad. If I have a full-size keyboard available, it’s easier for me to type.

The online conversation community seems to gravitate toward corporate-owned silos rather than commons, and seems to like its arbitrary 300-character limits. These two trends are frustrating to me.