Here's another clip of how great Norm Macdonald was at taking the most awkward comedy and making it so funny you couldn't help but laugh. Norm is doing a bit about Steve Irwin (Crocodile Hunter) dying... 10 days after it happened.

RIP Norm. A good man. youtube.com/watch?v=1-MJy7…

fam is mourning Norm MacDonald, so here is a 30 sec clip of him discussing Moore's paradox (with Larry King, who is struggling to keep up)

Great piece on twitter's "pile-on/mockery culture" problem by Freddie deBoer - whose substack is fast becoming a fave. It's also something I think about a lot re my own use of twitter (given I fall into this trap, though hopefully less than I used to). freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/perhaps-you-…

obligatory wordle brag - Wordle 212 2/6 ⬛🟨🟩🟨🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I love optical illusions (eg. Akiyoshi Kitaoka), and always think they’re cool and fun and interesting. But auditory illusions really upset my confidence in my own senses and leave me more unnerved than delighted

A really interesting conversation with Ken Burns. (Does any interviewer hear the words ‘that’s a great question’ as often as Tyler Cowen does?)

This week's Ruffian is about the benefits of arguing with yourself... ianleslie.substack.com/p/why-you-shou…

the adaptation to a world deeply integrated with AI tools is probably going to happen pretty quickly; the benefits (and fun!) have too much upside.

This week's been a big year for AI

Hey what if AI is going to literally slaughter every living creature on this planet in the next 3 years? Watch Eliezer Yudkowsky ⏹️’s new interview on and see why that's not even a joke 🤯😵 youtube.com/watch?v=gA1sNL… 🧵 Here are my notes and abridged clips:

Before AI can turn us all into paperclips, it's going to psychologically destroy us.

Relative to the extinction threat we should probably worry a little less about climate change and a lot more about AI nytimes.com/2023/03/12/opi…

In today's Ruffian: an eye-opening conversation with the excellent Tom Chivers about the existential risks of AI ianleslie.substack.com/p/flashpoints-…

An AI-generated image wins the Sony World Photography Awards. "Boris Eldagsen himself has come out and stated after the winning result was announced that this isn’t a photograph at all. It’s an image generated by inputs he provided to the Open AI photo tools". Info+links 🧵👇

Getting Midjourney to describe pictures I’ve taken and then using that description as a prompt is my new favourite thing

Is this a Cercis canadensis? Or is that a siliquastrum #gardening #trees #puns

I'd save this podcast episode for a time when you can listen to it twice. It's that kind of idea. But it's fascinating. pca.st/episode/c77e91…

I was standing behind someone in a queue who was Liking every post in their Instagram feed. Seemed weird but I wonder: what is the argument against doing this?

Interesting discussion and (maybe unsurprising) results in a large scale Turing test on AI art astralcodexten.com/p/how-did-you-…