Jeff Sharlet

Artificial Intelligence and Creative Writing: A Policy of Sorts. I've posted versions before, but I update this each term following conversations with students. Here's my Fall '26 edition. In no way definitive! Learning as I go.

There’s a half-life to everything. On the origin of my politics in the leaky fridge of my youth. Also, this old man and his sad but sweet cafe. www.instagram.com/p/De-N2TGJfW...

Another death in ICE custody this weekend, this one in Otay Mesa at the core civic facility www.daylightsandiego.org/ice-detainee...

a lot of correct criticism of outsourcing knowing your child to AI; but also what is this list? i could get a better description by picking up an alt weekly and reading the wrong horoscope (RIP). it's generic, meaningless. so overwhelmed by complexity you choose meaningless de-humanization.

Elizabeth Holmes is not the face of motherhood for incarcerated women. Jazmin Valentine wailed in agony for 6 hours in labor while staff and nurses LAUGHED at her. She had to resort to sliding her amniotic sac under her cell door to prove she was in labor.

I have more thinking to do but this piece by Matt Pearce gets at some of where I’m leaning. mattdpearce.substack.com/p/nathan-fie...

News you can use

Nathan Fielder: Do you understand why the joke was funny Elizabeth Holmes: Steamed hams is a funny thing to call a hamburger

Today in boring pictures. By which I mean pictures I take when I feel like all the words have been for nothing. www.instagram.com/p/De5LiuJJT-...

Late adaptor here, just catching up now with the *depth* of this shit pit. Let my relative "moderation" -- I'm not really a screamer -- give extra oomph when I say this is *an enemy.* Not of any faction--an enemy of us all, even if you're a fool who imagines you're this murderbot's friend.

For fuck’s sake

Might not want to read this www.instagram.com/p/De2KybOlMj...

This seems like a Nathan Fielder skit but it's real. "Real." *Real*??

Add it up.

More "akshually" from the guy a small but too-large number of people who consider themselves liberal or left have duped themselves into thinking "has a point." He's not an anti-zionist, he really is an antisemite. He's not a populist, he's a fascist, dreaming of a "pureblood" nation.

Even if the Republican wins, as remains likely, this is a huge amount of change that doesn't just evaporate after the election.

The first genuinely honest ad for generative AI I've ever seen, from Microsoft / CoPilot A mediocre white guy sees his non-white colleague getting praised for good work, he asks AI to *literally copy it*, and then he gets all the praise instead: www.ispot.tv/ad/SoDi/micr...

Another way to look at the political calendar is that it's really like December 23, 2020, right now. About 14 days til J6. I'm NOT saying there will be another coup attempt, but just as so many dismissed those who spoke of what seemed like the obvious heightened danger of a "weak" Trump...

I'm just glad to see that David Lynch is working again. Death slowed him down, but this is some of his most unnerving material. And dead Dennis Hopper, as "the president," is at his melting-cheekbones, oxygen-deprived creepy best!

Brother moon, sister sun

Shooting at a car to stop a shoplifter is not justified. Even if no one was harmed, let alone shooting to death a 1 year-old baby.

Dear all the college kids, Get your flu shot. Sincerely, All your professors

Today in “All Folk Horror is True”: posted outside a junkyard coiled in rusty barbed wire near Cropseyville, NY

Tennessee Rep. Justin Pearson—running to flip a key midterm seat—will be locked out of a meeting that could pause new xAI data centers in Memphis.

OpenAI’s chatbot fed the school shooter’s violent fantasies and planning up to the massacre, our investigation reveals.

And it’s not just the centrists doing this. Some popular “left” (read: tankie) sites have been doing a lot of “akshually” on behalf of Tucker & MTG, too. The gullibility/opportunism/head-in-the-sandism is staggering.

Bus stop, but neither of us was waiting. “Living life,” she said of what had brought her here. Same… www.instagram.com/p/DepLqexlIm...

TikTok “Permanently Suspends” the ‘Musk’ Film Account, Raising Suppression Fears (Exclusive)

Reading my hometown paper, Schenectady Gazette, chronicle of the long demise. On nearby Gloversville: “those brownfields are unlikely to ever house factories… ever again.” The dooming double “ever.”

Note that she’s clearly identified as press.

Halloween is just 16 days away...

My two cents on a book worth a lot more than that—why, I think you shld buy it in hardcover. I shared an except w/ my students because I never *assign* hardcovers. It’s so good a bunch bought it anyway. Worth every penny.

A pretty dumb or dumb pretty picture for a generous day of writers—a journalist, an audio documentarian, a poet, and the ghost of a medievalist who sang like the lark and who was always kind—about whom my thumbs, tapping, found a few words. www.instagram.com/p/DeiWNnON6c...

This skeet in context — scroll up — is a perfect bitter poem. Which, for an account called “weepscreed,” seems fitting.

A pretty dumb or dumb pretty picture for a generous day of writers—a journalist, an audio documentarian, a poet, and the ghost of a medievalist who sang like the lark and who was always kind—about whom my thumbs, tapping, found a few words. www.instagram.com/p/DeiWNnON6c...