still de-cent......

In 1970, IBM researcher Edgar F. Codd published an 11-page paper that changed database design. He proposed organizing data using mathematical relations instead of forcing programmers to navigate rigid tree structures. Decades later, developers embraced XML databases, then schemaless JSON stores, with endless predictions that SQL was finished. Then some of those systems started adding schema validation, joins, ACID transactions, and SQL-like query languages. Turns out changing how you store data doesn’t make the relationships between it disappear.

Removal of constitutional judges manu militari and installment of new judges outside the constitutional route of Poland... nitter.gq/izakaminska/status/211…

1er casting de Jean Paul belmondo 1964

What would the writing of superintelligent AI sound like? You might expect it to have the characteristics of good human writing — figurative language, high information density, coining new terms, and punchiness — but dialed up to 11. Well, that’s what Claude did, until Anthropic dialed it back recently because of user complaints. It didn’t sound superintelligent to most of us. Instead, the neuralese writing style sounds like a “stupid person’s idea of a smart person”. Our response to information density and metaphor-laden writing looks something like the cartoon graph I've drawn. Beyond a point, it completely backfires. The reason human writers don’t overdo it isn’t because they aren’t capable, but because they are aware of the reader’s cognitive burden. One of the hardest skills to learn as a writer is to simulate the reader’s experience. It’s easy to train AI to mimic mediocre human writing. But optimizing it to be (perceived as) good is really hard, and made much harder by the fact that when everyone uses the same few AI models we get tired of their tics very quickly. Most Claudeisms are individually pretty good. I hate that I can’t use “load bearing” in my writing any more. If it weren’t for AI overuse it would be a neat metaphor. A broader question is whether most tasks in the economy are like chess, where there is a clear performance metric that can be optimized, or whether they’re like writing, where quality is a multidimensional balancing act without clear training signals beyond human mimicry.

Politics blends both. Decisions draw on data and incentives while voters respond to identity, fear, and hope. Separating the two completely is rare; recognizing their interaction is the practical part of intelligence.

Happy to announce I built a Greek/English reader site with all the surviving plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, & Aristophanes. Multiple translations for each play; click to parse & define for any Greek word; full Greek & English search. greekdrama.johnhboyer.com

Yes, "état" in French means both the political State (as in country/government) and a condition or status. The graffiti leans on that ambiguity for a pointed jab: leave it (the State, or the mess) in the toilets where you found it. N'est-ce pas?