Kate Trafeli retweeted
This is why it’s urgent that you give art your full attention. No texting in theaters. No scrolling while watching TV. You need to recover the ability to read for an hour or more. In an age of phone addiction, there’s joy & a kind of freedom in being immersed in a work of art.
Kate Trafeli retweeted
Explaining how he arrived at this picture, Alberto Giacometti took away the crockery and a vase of flowers from his mother's sideboard. 'I was left with three apples; have you tried to see three apples simultaneously at a distance of three metres? So I took two of them away.'
Kate Trafeli retweeted
a lot of people obviously haven't seen Spirited Away, in which a monster driven by greed consumes people and steals their voices, doing perfect imitations of those it's devoured, and it's hard to think of a better metaphor for generative AI.
Kate Trafeli retweeted
Singularity – an animated ode to our cosmic destiny inspired by Stephen Hawking, who returned his borrowed stardust to the universe 7 years ago today themarginalian.org/2020/04/2…
Kate Trafeli retweeted
The partnership between the US and the West was extraordinary. It lasted 80 years and - for all its crises and hypocrisies - it was a time of more growth, prosperity and peace than any period in recorded history. It’s never easy to let go.
🇺🇸 Letting go.
It is very hard to let go.
Especially, if what is disappearing is the most successful partnership and alliance between nations in history.
The transatlantic “West” was a wonder to behold. Former foes united. NATO: the greatest defensive alliance in history.
European integration: long a common project.
The debt that 🇪🇺 & 🇩🇪 owe to so many Americans is huge.
We think of people, music, cities, films, books, art. Of Robert Frost. Of a dream.
I think of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard (where I spent a year with @RoryStewartUK); SAIS; a Florida High School in Panama City (where I spent another year). Greenwich village.
I think a lot these days of Richard Holbrook and Madeleine Albright and her warning: esiweb.org/news/gerald-knaus…).
I have too many 🇺🇸 friends to count.
Yet, this is no time for illusions.
Trump & MAGA share more with Mussolini than with Mitt Romney or John McCain. They are hostile to European democracies. To human rights.
They are no friends.
The US we loved is disappearing. May it reappear one day.
For now, Europeans must manage. It will be hard. Yet, we must succeed.
To preserve ideals we shared for decades with 🇺🇸. But for now, without the US.
🇨🇦🇪🇺🇬🇧🇺🇦
Kate Trafeli retweeted
I've accepted that Twitter is a quick moving, shallow platform where many people, including intelligent ones, don't give things much thought. Thus, nuance can get lost. I've also accepted that my tweets get seen by millions of people. As a matter of probability, a percentage of those people be stupid, so basic concepts, even when explained in detail and with patience, will be hard for them to understand. Thus, some number of people will find it very difficult to understand how you can say "hey those those are pretty ugly" but be against "hey those shoes are ugly and thus you're a bad person."
I have no plans or intention of changing because I gain nothing from this platform. I don't sell subscriptions, merch, or do collaborations with companies. I simply post what I want. Frankly, it does not bother me that the same people who wish to deport me find my posts unpleasant. I post all my content for free, so they can take it or leave it, as is.
Incredibile speech from someone who sees the big picture. Have been appalled by Labour’s “delusion that the UK’s best interests and economic future align with those of Silicon Valley.” Insane.
Baroness Kidron may have saved the UK's creative industries with her speech in the House of Lords today.
She managed to get the House of Lords to approve her amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Bill, which among other things requires overseas gen AI companies to respect UK copyright law if they sell their products in the UK. (As a reminder, it is illegal to train commercial gen AI models on ©️ work without a licence in the UK.)
What's astonishing is that her amendments passed despite @UKLabour reportedly being whipped to vote against them, and the Conservatives largely abstaining. Essentially, Labour voted against the amendments, and *everyone else who voted* voted to protect copyright holders.
This should give you some sense of the strength of feeling over the government's plans to upend copyright law to favour AI companies.
The bill still has to go through the Commons. But, as it stands, it would require generative AI companies selling their products in the UK to license any copyrighted training data they use.
This is what standing up for the creative industries looks like. I strongly suggest you watch her entire speech.
(If you want to read it instead, the link to the transcript is in the first reply ⬇️)
Kate Trafeli retweeted
I’m in Munich and people keep asking me to decode Vance’s speech. OK: In Vance English “free speech” means “Let Musk run your elections” and “democracy” means “let Russia run your elections.” Now move on. 2025 is about what Europeans do, not what Americans say.
Kate Trafeli retweeted
"Resist loss of the miraculous
by lowering your standards
for what constitutes a miracle.
It is all a fucking miracle."
Louise Erdrich on the deepest meaning of resistance – amazing, amazing poem: themarginalian.org/2024/11/1…
Kate Trafeli retweeted
I can't figure out if vaccines work or not.
Tough one. I can see why RFK Jr is so concerned.
Need Sherlock Holmes on this one.
“There is also no doubt that both racism and sexism played an important role in Harris’s defeat.
But my own conclusion is that both of those things were amplified by the flood of disinformation that has plagued the U.S. for years now” open.substack.com/pub/heathe…
Kate Trafeli retweeted
Europe now stands alone in confronting the largest threat to its security since the annexation of the Rhineland.
Kate Trafeli retweeted
Man, if @elonmusk allowing the #Polymarket platform to be front and center on X isn't a blatant attempt at election interference, I don't know what is. It's nuts that a betting platform is being touted as a legit poll. Its clearly attempting to mislead voters.
Kate Trafeli retweeted
If the left gets up and votes, the right never wins. That's why they're trying so hard to restrict voting rights.
With all that's going on in the world, we need to move forward as a civilization instead of backwards, especially with women's rights.
VOTE.
Kate Trafeli retweeted
In a time when so many forces are conspiring to steal our attention, replace artists with machines, and atrophy our thinking, reading is more important than ever. A people who can’t read, write or create is a people who can be easily controlled. Read a book to annoy a fascist.
Kate Trafeli retweeted
So “leave it to the states” should really be changed to “leave it to the individuals,” and those individuals should have the freedom to decide, in concert with whomever they decide to include in that decision, what happens to their own bodies. 12/13
