Lakis Polycarpou

substack.com/@lakispolyca...

Hey @sarahlongwell25.bsky.social can you do a focus group here in NY-17? I am very worried that @caitfornewyork.bsky.social is not breaking through. The Dem PAC ad on TV here is terrible; Lawler's ads are well-calibrated for the low-info voter who doesn't like Trump but thinks Lawler is not as bad.

The air has turned yellow. Can't say I'm a big fan.

I have a thesis that it’s actually very hard to write like AI because LLMs are not copying in the normal sense of the word. They are producing something alien. Write how you want and run your prose through Pangram if you don’t believe me.

We need to talk more about the incentive structure of going to school where everyone knows that it’s possible for all the other students to cheat without consequence. In this reality,*not* cheating is actually the bigger risk.

How are the AI markets doing?

On the one hand, erase the universe. On the other, maybe it could bring prices down?

Do I smell a bubble bursting?

Indie horror seems reemerge at times of cultural exhaustion—and right now it’s having a moment. A few thoughts on one of the best recent films in the genre. #film #movies #horror #obsession.

My belated take on #grantagate. In short: I would be surprised if this happens again next year.

Brilliant!

Yes, I am scared.

I wonder if we appreciate the degree to which modern civilization is built not just on precision, but on *the value of precision* -- and the degree to which generative AI is undermining that value.

Stratechery

Yes. What we're seeing is the geopolitical equivalent of bankrupting a casino.

It's like sometime last November they ran down the "is it fascism?" checklist and realized they were missing something important.

Frustrated oligarch? Want to make all of your data center dreams come true? Well, how about using old jet engine turbines to create your electricity? Right?! That is why people say you are a genius(at least to your face) The WSJ says, "Jet engines are a natural fit" for this role. Really?!!

From Definitions.net: "fuckery Bullshit with an element of gaslighting. When someone tells a blatant lie and you know they’re lying, and they know you know they’re lying, and you know they know you know they’re lying, but they stick with the lie."

Let me just pre-answer all of these questions. If what you're asking could, in any way, reflect badly on the administration, it's fake news or I'm unfamiliar with it.

Woke mob has been active a lot longer than I thought

Don't forget, Christopher Columbus discovered the U.S.A., and Donald Trump invented the airplane.

open.substack.com/pub/noahberl...

Favorite review: “It is the most terrifying horror movie I have seen since Eraserhead. The tension! Will the table setting be symmetrical? If the fork is out of alignment, will the simulation crash?”

🤔

Can’t believe they released the Epstein files to cover up for the Melania movie.

If you buy a ticket to Melania but don't attend, are you still eligible for the bonus perks? Asking for a friend.

They bought the cat a new toy and this was the reaction.. 😂

Infuriating.

I wrote this two years ago. I think it (mostly) holds up, especially in light of Trump's attack on the Fed. Authoritarians always think they know better than the experts.

At first glance, I misread this headline as "girls desire to marry plumbers," and I thought, good for them.

Everyone knows that the best way to deal with a bully is to complain a little at first, but give them what they want in the end. It's just common sense.

The margins by which Prop 50 won is the biggest story of night.

This post wins the prize

after millions of views and shares of my Portland Frog art. (thank you all🙏🏾) I got requests to highlight priests, and chickens, and Chicagoans, and T-Rexes, and more… all of us who refuse to bend the knee. so this is for US. 𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚃𝚊𝚕𝚕. 𝚆𝚎 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚆𝚒𝚗.

Love this.

Better headline: "President loses his shit over no kings protest."

The original Tron is proof (if you needed it) that no, the '80s were not that cool. Feels like they're scraping the bottom of the IP barrel with this movie. @wired.com #tron #TronAres

Truly disgusting ICE detained an autistic 5 year old girl in Leominster, Mass Using this child-a US citizen-as bait to lure her father-who has lived in the country for 20 years-out so they could arrest him How do these people live with themselves www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8AmrWut/

"The entirely innocent people whom the regime liquidated by the millions, the "objective enemies" in Bolshevik language, knew that they were "criminals without a crime." - Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism www.lakispolycarpou.com/the-punisher...

Thinking about what it means for the administration to fetishize The Punisher.

I had some thoughts.

Can't believe they're making me side with Big Pharma for the 2nd time in five years.

When people complain that “GPT-5 is wearing the skin of my dead friend,” it suggests that OpenAI was probably right to make the new version less sycophantic. Serious question, though: if you love it so much, why can't you just prompt GPT-5 to behave like GPT-4?

South Park may or may not be the hero we need right now, but it's definitely the one we deserve.

I always respected Hitchens. Even when he was on the "wrong" side of an issue (like his support for the Iraq war) he argued from a position of conscience. This video truly is chilling — and a reminder that even in the realm of authoritarianism, not all regimes are the same. (Thanks to TMH).

www.politico.com/live-updates...

I've come to the horrible conclusion that the only reason ICE looks like this (under an administration that LOVES a uniform!) is that in the not-distant future, they want civilian vigilantes taking it upon themselves to do more violent versions of this same work. And they'll be indistinguishable.