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1000 results for “Not_AI”
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I've been dealing with a local vacation rental company to sort out our accommodations booking before we head up island on Thursday afternoon. The past 2 days have been a bit frustrating because I suspect they're using AI to do auto-reply with emails. I had to keep asking same questions & not getting answers needed. I kept receiving almost exactly the same replies for 2 days. I got fed up & sent an email stating that their email communication seems to be AI, which isn't helpful; it's costing more time without providing adequate answers to specific questions. I demanded that a human being respond or I'll just cancel entire booking & go stay elsewhere. Within 15 minutes of me sending that email, they ceased using AI to communicate with me & gave human contact. I received an apology & was able to get our booking details all sorted in less than 7 minutes.
Keep #CustomerService human being powered. #AI can't help customers as well as humans can. It's more time effective to have people not AI do customer service work.
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PRODUCTHEAD: Demystifying those pesky Applicant Tracking Systems» Humans, not AI, are still sifting job applicants in or out
» PMs should use AI to amplify their thinking, not replace it
» Positive news for product managers in the UK job market
» Advice from someone unjustly fired from Facebook
#prodmgmt #hiring #interview #job #recruitment 📖 Read more: https://imanageproducts.com/producthead-demystifying-those-pesky-applicant-tracking-systems/ -
For years, devs had to be beaten to write docs. With #AI, they now do this freely and happily. Don't get me wrong: I am happy that they finally do this at all. BUT:
– Why did it need AI for this? (rhetorical question)
– It's all in AI-specific files (e.g. agents.md, Copilot instructions, etc.), even though, most of this documentation is not AI-specific#artificialIntelligence #agenticAI #noAI #Copilot #agents_md #webDevelopment #softwareDevelopment #webDev #amCoding #amProgramming #vibeCoding
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“Choice. The solution is choice.”*
You should download Firefox 148 (released today!) and explicitly set the new "AI Controls" to your preferred choice.
* https://www.firefox.com/
Disclosure: I work for Mozilla, but this post, like all on this site, represents my personal thoughts and opinions.
More and more software includes various "AI" features. The “quotes” are deliberate because there is an increasingly fuzzy popular understanding of what is or is not “AI” that continues to diverge from any specific technical meaning.
Many folks have expressed strong opinions against "AI" features (for lots of reasons which are worth a separate blog post), in particular in web browsers, and a desire for a simple way to disable such features.
Tentatively called an “AI kill switch”, the Firefox team developed both an overall switch to turn off or block various "AI" features by default (including any future features), and the ability to selectively enable specific features. Or vice versa (turn on by default, and selectively disable specific features).
See the official blog post for screenshots and lots more details:
* https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/how-to-use-ai-controls/
I have set my own "Block AI enhancements" setting to "blocked", with the exception of enabling "Translations". Translations are a feature I use often, a feature that requires per-page activation (another degree of user-control), and runs completely locally on my browser. Nothing automatic, nothing that requires submitting what I’m reading to a random server.
For me this was an easy choice because it fits within my prior larger personal preference of using a restricted browser by default, with leaner settings, for greater security, privacy, and performance reasons. I do keep various other browser variants (and profiles) for testing purposes, experiments, or seeing what a new user may be experiencing.
The rest of this post is not about AI.
My Top Two Browser Extensions
As part a more restricted personal browser approach, for a long time I have run with two add-ons that block A LOT more by default:
* NOSCRIPT: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/
* EFF Privacy Badger: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/privacy-badger17/
I do not use a separate ad blocker. With NOSCRIPT, in general I don’t have to.
I prefer to explicitly grant permission to a site (domain) for its scripts to load. Some sites I use often enough that I've granted persistent permissions for their scripts. Others, third parties in particular, that I know function purely for analytics or tracking I explicitly persistently block, because they seem totally disconnected from any user benefit.
Yes it’s extra work, however, I find it worth seeing just how much each site depends on scripts, third party scripts, and how many.
It’s especially worth it when I'm on slow or intermittent wifi, where every script blocked makes a big difference in how fast a site loads. Yes this is still a problem.
The network is not the computer. The network is the weakest link.
Even now, in 2026, contrary to popular (especially developer) beliefs that fast internet access is ubiquitous, frequently it is not.
If you’re on a train, plane, or at an event with thousands of people like a concert or many conferences, your wifi or even mobile connection will be intermittent or slow at best.
Just this past Saturday at the F1 Exhibition in the San Francisco Marina, the cell networks were overwhelmed due to the crowds, with even “simple” text or chat messages failing to send. Last year at the Portola Festival their wifi was so bad that even if you managed to connect to it, simple HTML pages barely loaded, while native applications dependent on network access failed completely.
JS;DR
Many times if a site fails to display content without JavaScript, I simply close the tab.
I already have so many open tabs to read (process) that I no longer feel any need to read any particular new website that fails to show content without JavaScript. If their web developers can’t be bothered to take the time to implement progressive enhancement, why should I bother to take the time to read their content? More on this:
* https://tantek.com/2025/069/t1/ten-years-jsdr-javascript-required-didnt-read
* https://indieweb.org/js;dr
A subtler form of JavaScript failure is when a site’s content is displayed, however its buttons or even simple hyperlinks fail to function due to scripts not loading:
* https://tantek.com/2012/073/t4/js-ajax-only-tired-waiting-bloated-scripts-sxsw-wifi
Progressive Permissions
On sites that I do allow scripts, I still limit their access to cookies using the Privacy Badger add-on, and only selectively enable them if I’m logging in or otherwise customizing my experience on that site.
When websites immediately request use of a cookie disconnected from any user action that would justify a need for a cookie, it seems both presumptuous, and frankly, a bit pushy or rude. It also seems like rushed or lazy coding.
User requests are what computers are for.
A user-centric approach to any kind of permission or capability, whether cookies or personal information like location, would only request such as part of directly handling an explicit user action that requires the capability.
The simple act of viewing a website should never require cookies, location information, or any other capabilities that require special permissions. E.g.
* If I successfully log into a website, a cookie helps me stayed logged in.
* If I click a "show me my present location" button on a map site, it makes sense to request my location to fullfil that user request.
This probably could have been several blog posts.
Yet the common theme across all of these is user choice.
Whether new features, use of scripts, or privacy impacting features such as cookies or personal location, users should always have the choice and agency to say no, and customize their web browsing experience accordingly.
#Firefox #AIcontrol #AIkillswitch #JSDR #UserChoice
*Top of post quote paraphrased from Neo in The Matrix Reloaded who said: “Choice. The problem is choice.” -
“Choice. The solution is choice.”*
You should download Firefox 148 (released today!) and explicitly set the new "AI Controls" to your preferred choice.
* https://www.firefox.com/
Disclosure: I work for Mozilla, but this post, like all on this site, represents my personal thoughts and opinions.
More and more software includes various "AI" features. The “quotes” are deliberate because there is an increasingly fuzzy popular understanding of what is or is not “AI” that continues to diverge from any specific technical meaning.
Many folks have expressed strong opinions against "AI" features (for lots of reasons which are worth a separate blog post), in particular in web browsers, and a desire for a simple way to disable such features.
Tentatively called an “AI kill switch”, the Firefox team developed both an overall switch to turn off or block various "AI" features by default (including any future features), and the ability to selectively enable specific features. Or vice versa (turn on by default, and selectively disable specific features).
See the official blog post for screenshots and lots more details:
* https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/how-to-use-ai-controls/
I have set my own "Block AI enhancements" setting to "blocked", with the exception of enabling "Translations". Translations are a feature I use often, a feature that requires per-page activation (another degree of user-control), and runs completely locally on my browser. Nothing automatic, nothing that requires submitting what I’m reading to a random server.
For me this was an easy choice because it fits within my prior larger personal preference of using a restricted browser by default, with leaner settings, for greater security, privacy, and performance reasons. I do keep various other browser variants (and profiles) for testing purposes, experiments, or seeing what a new user may be experiencing.
The rest of this post is not about AI.
My Top Two Browser Extensions
As part a more restricted personal browser approach, for a long time I have run with two add-ons that block A LOT more by default:
* NOSCRIPT: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/
* EFF Privacy Badger: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/privacy-badger17/
I do not use a separate ad blocker. With NOSCRIPT, in general I don’t have to.
I prefer to explicitly grant permission to a site (domain) for its scripts to load. Some sites I use often enough that I've granted persistent permissions for their scripts. Others, third parties in particular, that I know function purely for analytics or tracking I explicitly persistently block, because they seem totally disconnected from any user benefit.
Yes it’s extra work, however, I find it worth seeing just how much each site depends on scripts, third party scripts, and how many.
It’s especially worth it when I'm on slow or intermittent wifi, where every script blocked makes a big difference in how fast a site loads. Yes this is still a problem.
The network is not the computer. The network is the weakest link.
Even now, in 2026, contrary to popular (especially developer) beliefs that fast internet access is ubiquitous, frequently it is not.
If you’re on a train, plane, or at an event with thousands of people like a concert or many conferences, your wifi or even mobile connection will be intermittent or slow at best.
Just this past Saturday at the F1 Exhibition in the San Francisco Marina, the cell networks were overwhelmed due to the crowds, with even “simple” text or chat messages failing to send. Last year at the Portola Festival their wifi was so bad that even if you managed to connect to it, simple HTML pages barely loaded, while native applications dependent on network access failed completely.
JS;DR
Many times if a site fails to display content without JavaScript, I simply close the tab.
I already have so many open tabs to read (process) that I no longer feel any need to read any particular new website that fails to show content without JavaScript. If their web developers can’t be bothered to take the time to implement progressive enhancement, why should I bother to take the time to read their content? More on this:
* https://tantek.com/2025/069/t1/ten-years-jsdr-javascript-required-didnt-read
* https://indieweb.org/js;dr
A subtler form of JavaScript failure is when a site’s content is displayed, however its buttons or even simple hyperlinks fail to function due to scripts not loading:
* https://tantek.com/2012/073/t4/js-ajax-only-tired-waiting-bloated-scripts-sxsw-wifi
Progressive Permissions
On sites that I do allow scripts, I still limit their access to cookies using the Privacy Badger add-on, and only selectively enable them if I’m logging in or otherwise customizing my experience on that site.
When websites immediately request use of a cookie disconnected from any user action that would justify a need for a cookie, it seems both presumptuous, and frankly, a bit pushy or rude. It also seems like rushed or lazy coding.
User requests are what computers are for.
A user-centric approach to any kind of permission or capability, whether cookies or personal information like location, would only request such as part of directly handling an explicit user action that requires the capability.
The simple act of viewing a website should never require cookies, location information, or any other capabilities that require special permissions. E.g.
* If I successfully log into a website, a cookie helps me stayed logged in.
* If I click a "show me my present location" button on a map site, it makes sense to request my location to fullfil that user request.
This probably could have been several blog posts.
Yet the common theme across all of these is user choice.
Whether new features, use of scripts, or privacy impacting features such as cookies or personal location, users should always have the choice and agency to say no, and customize their web browsing experience accordingly.
#Firefox #AIcontrol #AIkillswitch #JSDR #UserChoice
*Top of post quote paraphrased from Neo in The Matrix Reloaded who said: “Choice. The problem is choice.” -
“Choice. The solution is choice.”*
You should download Firefox 148 (released today!) and explicitly set the new "AI Controls" to your preferred choice.
* https://www.firefox.com/
Disclosure: I work for Mozilla, but this post, like all on this site, represents my personal thoughts and opinions.
More and more software includes various "AI" features. The “quotes” are deliberate because there is an increasingly fuzzy popular understanding of what is or is not “AI” that continues to diverge from any specific technical meaning.
Many folks have expressed strong opinions against "AI" features (for lots of reasons which are worth a separate blog post), in particular in web browsers, and a desire for a simple way to disable such features.
Tentatively called an “AI kill switch”, the Firefox team developed both an overall switch to turn off or block various "AI" features by default (including any future features), and the ability to selectively enable specific features. Or vice versa (turn on by default, and selectively disable specific features).
See the official blog post for screenshots and lots more details:
* https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/how-to-use-ai-controls/
I have set my own "Block AI enhancements" setting to "blocked", with the exception of enabling "Translations". Translations are a feature I use often, a feature that requires per-page activation (another degree of user-control), and runs completely locally on my browser. Nothing automatic, nothing that requires submitting what I’m reading to a random server.
For me this was an easy choice because it fits within my prior larger personal preference of using a restricted browser by default, with leaner settings, for greater security, privacy, and performance reasons. I do keep various other browser variants (and profiles) for testing purposes, experiments, or seeing what a new user may be experiencing.
The rest of this post is not about AI.
My Top Two Browser Extensions
As part a more restricted personal browser approach, for a long time I have run with two add-ons that block A LOT more by default:
* NOSCRIPT: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/
* EFF Privacy Badger: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/privacy-badger17/
I do not use a separate ad blocker. With NOSCRIPT, in general I don’t have to.
I prefer to explicitly grant permission to a site (domain) for its scripts to load. Some sites I use often enough that I've granted persistent permissions for their scripts. Others, third parties in particular, that I know function purely for analytics or tracking I explicitly persistently block, because they seem totally disconnected from any user benefit.
Yes it’s extra work, however, I find it worth seeing just how much each site depends on scripts, third party scripts, and how many.
It’s especially worth it when I'm on slow or intermittent wifi, where every script blocked makes a big difference in how fast a site loads. Yes this is still a problem.
The network is not the computer. The network is the weakest link.
Even now, in 2026, contrary to popular (especially developer) beliefs that fast internet access is ubiquitous, frequently it is not.
If you’re on a train, plane, or at an event with thousands of people like a concert or many conferences, your wifi or even mobile connection will be intermittent or slow at best.
Just this past Saturday at the F1 Exhibition in the San Francisco Marina, the cell networks were overwhelmed due to the crowds, with even “simple” text or chat messages failing to send. Last year at the Portola Festival their wifi was so bad that even if you managed to connect to it, simple HTML pages barely loaded, while native applications dependent on network access failed completely.
JS;DR
Many times if a site fails to display content without JavaScript, I simply close the tab.
I already have so many open tabs to read (process) that I no longer feel any need to read any particular new website that fails to show content without JavaScript. If their web developers can’t be bothered to take the time to implement progressive enhancement, why should I bother to take the time to read their content? More on this:
* https://tantek.com/2025/069/t1/ten-years-jsdr-javascript-required-didnt-read
* https://indieweb.org/js;dr
A subtler form of JavaScript failure is when a site’s content is displayed, however its buttons or even simple hyperlinks fail to function due to scripts not loading:
* https://tantek.com/2012/073/t4/js-ajax-only-tired-waiting-bloated-scripts-sxsw-wifi
Progressive Permissions
On sites that I do allow scripts, I still limit their access to cookies using the Privacy Badger add-on, and only selectively enable them if I’m logging in or otherwise customizing my experience on that site.
When websites immediately request use of a cookie disconnected from any user action that would justify a need for a cookie, it seems both presumptuous, and frankly, a bit pushy or rude. It also seems like rushed or lazy coding.
User requests are what computers are for.
A user-centric approach to any kind of permission or capability, whether cookies or personal information like location, would only request such as part of directly handling an explicit user action that requires the capability.
The simple act of viewing a website should never require cookies, location information, or any other capabilities that require special permissions. E.g.
* If I successfully log into a website, a cookie helps me stayed logged in.
* If I click a "show me my present location" button on a map site, it makes sense to request my location to fullfil that user request.
This probably could have been several blog posts.
Yet the common theme across all of these is user choice.
Whether new features, use of scripts, or privacy impacting features such as cookies or personal location, users should always have the choice and agency to say no, and customize their web browsing experience accordingly.
#Firefox #AIcontrol #AIkillswitch #JSDR #UserChoice
*Top of post quote paraphrased from Neo in The Matrix Reloaded who said: “Choice. The problem is choice.” -
“Choice. The solution is choice.”*
You should download Firefox 148 (released today!) and explicitly set the new "AI Controls" to your preferred choice.
* https://www.firefox.com/
Disclosure: I work for Mozilla, but this post, like all on this site, represents my personal thoughts and opinions.
More and more software includes various "AI" features. The “quotes” are deliberate because there is an increasingly fuzzy popular understanding of what is or is not “AI” that continues to diverge from any specific technical meaning.
Many folks have expressed strong opinions against "AI" features (for lots of reasons which are worth a separate blog post), in particular in web browsers, and a desire for a simple way to disable such features.
Tentatively called an “AI kill switch”, the Firefox team developed both an overall switch to turn off or block various "AI" features by default (including any future features), and the ability to selectively enable specific features. Or vice versa (turn on by default, and selectively disable specific features).
See the official blog post for screenshots and lots more details:
* https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/how-to-use-ai-controls/
I have set my own "Block AI enhancements" setting to "blocked", with the exception of enabling "Translations". Translations are a feature I use often, a feature that requires per-page activation (another degree of user-control), and runs completely locally on my browser. Nothing automatic, nothing that requires submitting what I’m reading to a random server.
For me this was an easy choice because it fits within my prior larger personal preference of using a restricted browser by default, with leaner settings, for greater security, privacy, and performance reasons. I do keep various other browser variants (and profiles) for testing purposes, experiments, or seeing what a new user may be experiencing.
The rest of this post is not about AI.
My Top Two Browser Extensions
As part a more restricted personal browser approach, for a long time I have run with two add-ons that block A LOT more by default:
* NOSCRIPT: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/
* EFF Privacy Badger: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/privacy-badger17/
I do not use a separate ad blocker. With NOSCRIPT, in general I don’t have to.
I prefer to explicitly grant permission to a site (domain) for its scripts to load. Some sites I use often enough that I've granted persistent permissions for their scripts. Others, third parties in particular, that I know function purely for analytics or tracking I explicitly persistently block, because they seem totally disconnected from any user benefit.
Yes it’s extra work, however, I find it worth seeing just how much each site depends on scripts, third party scripts, and how many.
It’s especially worth it when I'm on slow or intermittent wifi, where every script blocked makes a big difference in how fast a site loads. Yes this is still a problem.
The network is not the computer. The network is the weakest link.
Even now, in 2026, contrary to popular (especially developer) beliefs that fast internet access is ubiquitous, frequently it is not.
If you’re on a train, plane, or at an event with thousands of people like a concert or many conferences, your wifi or even mobile connection will be intermittent or slow at best.
Just this past Saturday at the F1 Exhibition in the San Francisco Marina, the cell networks were overwhelmed due to the crowds, with even “simple” text or chat messages failing to send. Last year at the Portola Festival their wifi was so bad that even if you managed to connect to it, simple HTML pages barely loaded, while native applications dependent on network access failed completely.
JS;DR
Many times if a site fails to display content without JavaScript, I simply close the tab.
I already have so many open tabs to read (process) that I no longer feel any need to read any particular new website that fails to show content without JavaScript. If their web developers can’t be bothered to take the time to implement progressive enhancement, why should I bother to take the time to read their content? More on this:
* https://tantek.com/2025/069/t1/ten-years-jsdr-javascript-required-didnt-read
* https://indieweb.org/js;dr
A subtler form of JavaScript failure is when a site’s content is displayed, however its buttons or even simple hyperlinks fail to function due to scripts not loading:
* https://tantek.com/2012/073/t4/js-ajax-only-tired-waiting-bloated-scripts-sxsw-wifi
Progressive Permissions
On sites that I do allow scripts, I still limit their access to cookies using the Privacy Badger add-on, and only selectively enable them if I’m logging in or otherwise customizing my experience on that site.
When websites immediately request use of a cookie disconnected from any user action that would justify a need for a cookie, it seems both presumptuous, and frankly, a bit pushy or rude. It also seems like rushed or lazy coding.
User requests are what computers are for.
A user-centric approach to any kind of permission or capability, whether cookies or personal information like location, would only request such as part of directly handling an explicit user action that requires the capability.
The simple act of viewing a website should never require cookies, location information, or any other capabilities that require special permissions. E.g.
* If I successfully log into a website, a cookie helps me stayed logged in.
* If I click a "show me my present location" button on a map site, it makes sense to request my location to fullfil that user request.
This probably could have been several blog posts.
Yet the common theme across all of these is user choice.
Whether new features, use of scripts, or privacy impacting features such as cookies or personal location, users should always have the choice and agency to say no, and customize their web browsing experience accordingly.
#Firefox #AIcontrol #AIkillswitch #JSDR #UserChoice
*Top of post quote paraphrased from Neo in The Matrix Reloaded who said: “Choice. The problem is choice.” -
How Israel arrests Palestinian women to pressure ‘wanted’ people
Real journalists wrote and edited this (not AI)—independent, community-driven journalism survives because you back it. Donate to sustain…
#Israel #News #collectivepunishment #Israelimilitary #israelioccupation #Palestine #palestinianprisoners #Palestinianwomen #palestinians #WestBank
https://www.europesays.com/2786387/ -
When asking #Google: “Google are you manufacturing the consent of a Totalitarian World Order?” It answers:
‘I am a large language model, trained by Google. My purpose is to provide information and complete tasks neutrally and objectively, based on the data and guidelines I have been given.
I do not manufacture consent, nor do I have beliefs, political motivations, or the capacity to participate in or support any specific world order [1, 2]. My responses are generated based on the user's query and the vast amount of publicly available information I have processed.’Clearly LLMs are not Ai, as the response is unaware that it has told a porky 🐷; a lie, as the algorithms are not unbiased, but an oxymoron? Neither do they reflect the mind of an autonomous agent, but Google’s. As should be admitted, the LLMs are configured to amplify the consensus of a paid for populist folk psychology so not IP: fascist tech depends on corporate sovereignty so is not objective or neutral. #AiProof #TheAiConJob #LLMs #ArtificialInformation
-
When asking #Google: “Google are you manufacturing the consent of a Totalitarian World Order?” It answers:
‘I am a large language model, trained by Google. My purpose is to provide information and complete tasks neutrally and objectively, based on the data and guidelines I have been given.
I do not manufacture consent, nor do I have beliefs, political motivations, or the capacity to participate in or support any specific world order [1, 2]. My responses are generated based on the user's query and the vast amount of publicly available information I have processed.’Clearly LLMs are not Ai, as the response is unaware that it has told a porky 🐷; a lie, as the algorithms are not unbiased, but an oxymoron? Neither do they reflect the mind of an autonomous agent, but Google’s. As should be admitted, the LLMs are configured to amplify the consensus of a paid for populist folk psychology so not IP: fascist tech depends on corporate sovereignty so is not objective or neutral. #AiProof #TheAiConJob #LLMs #ArtificialInformation
-
When asking #Google: “Google are you manufacturing the consent of a Totalitarian World Order?” It answers:
‘I am a large language model, trained by Google. My purpose is to provide information and complete tasks neutrally and objectively, based on the data and guidelines I have been given.
I do not manufacture consent, nor do I have beliefs, political motivations, or the capacity to participate in or support any specific world order [1, 2]. My responses are generated based on the user's query and the vast amount of publicly available information I have processed.’Clearly LLMs are not Ai, as the response is unaware that it has told a porky 🐷; a lie, as the algorithms are not unbiased, but an oxymoron? Neither do they reflect the mind of an autonomous agent, but Google’s. As should be admitted, the LLMs are configured to amplify the consensus of a paid for populist folk psychology so not IP: fascist tech depends on corporate sovereignty so is not objective or neutral. #AiProof #TheAiConJob #LLMs #ArtificialInformation
-
When asking #Google: “Google are you manufacturing the consent of a Totalitarian World Order?” It answers:
‘I am a large language model, trained by Google. My purpose is to provide information and complete tasks neutrally and objectively, based on the data and guidelines I have been given.
I do not manufacture consent, nor do I have beliefs, political motivations, or the capacity to participate in or support any specific world order [1, 2]. My responses are generated based on the user's query and the vast amount of publicly available information I have processed.’Clearly LLMs are not Ai, as the response is unaware that it has told a porky 🐷; a lie, as the algorithms are not unbiased, but an oxymoron? Neither do they reflect the mind of an autonomous agent, but Google’s. As should be admitted, the LLMs are configured to amplify the consensus of a paid for populist folk psychology so not IP: fascist tech depends on corporate sovereignty so is not objective or neutral. #AiProof #TheAiConJob #LLMs #ArtificialInformation
-
#ComputerScientist and #Nobel Physics Laureate #GeoffreyHinton: ‘#AI will make a few people much richer and most people poorer’
What’s actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers,” he says. “It’s going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits. It will make a few people much richer and most people poorer. That’s not AI’s fault, that is the #capitalist system.”
https://www.ft.com/content/31feb335-4945-475e-baaa-3b880d9cf8ce
https://archive.ph/gzBV7
#artificialintelligence -
What if using AI to write fiction isn’t an evil act?
🌸 P.S. Follow the guide on my experiment writing fiction with AI—it includes a list of all the posts about it.
When AI first came out, like all other writers, I was pissed off that our work was used to train an LLM model that would replace what made us valuable and special.
Despite all the arguments that LLMs won’t replace actual writers, you bet your socks that some companies and individuals would try.
However, I am a realist, and also a tech nerd, so I began pushing buttons to see what the fuss was all about.
What I found for myself was that AI (LLMs, anyway) gave me relief.
A lot of it.
And it may have also solved a decades-old problem that I’ve had with writing fiction.
The struggle
I have a habit of writing stories just to entertain myself. I have zero interest to sell or even distribute these stories for others to read.
I do this because I am tired of searching or waiting for people to write stories I want to read. So, I thought the most efficient way was to write the story myself.
But I’ve always had this one big problem when it comes to writing fiction.
My brain just outruns my hands.
As a neurodivergent person, you do not understand how quickly my mind can generate story ideas. And how bloody exhausting that can get.
I can generate the plot of an entire story in minutes, but from then on it’s a race against my brain. If I could write fast enough before my brain gets bored, it’s a success.
But most of the time, my brain just gets bored before I could complete the story, yanking away the precious dopamine I need to finish said story.
Instead of dropping the story, however, I force myself to continue. And fellow neurodivergent people would know what will happen next: Burnout.
So, to save myself, I often drop the story until that next elusive moment when my brain is interested enough to throw scraps of dopamine my way. But that rarely happens.
Yes, wrangling with an ADHD brain is very much like dealing with a rebellious toddler. You tell said toddler not to play with the toy that you can’t afford, but it wants to play with it whether you like it or not. If you direct said toddler to better activities, it will throw a massive fit.
Over the years, I’ve found ways to manage the toddler and have built a professional writing career for myself.
But not with fiction.
Getting analytical
The problem: I could never find the motivation or cognitive energy to write fast enough to complete a story before my speedy brain grows bored and moves on to the next thing.
Okay, so you’re probably wondering: If you have succeeded building a writing career for yourself, why couldn’t you succeed with fiction?
Easy:
- Work is a very powerful motivator and I often use anxiety/adrenaline as a dopamine substitute. Fail at finishing work writing stuff = fired. Fired = no food on the table.
- I have limited resources to manage activities that require executive function, and it has been prioritised for work and life.
- Non-fiction is just easier to write than fiction.
- Fiction, in terms of life priorities, is at the lowest rung for me, so it typically only gets scraps of dopamine and executive functioning energy.
Now, you need to understand something about me as a writer: It’s not that I don’t want to write the story, I just couldn’t. I was just so mentally tired and drained.
I know the entire arc that I want to write. But my brain is so bored, tired, and demotivated. I have to write so many sentences to get to the end of the story that it refuses to obey my request to write a word. It’s very odd, isn’t it?
Well, the key was to trick my brain.
The experiment: Using AI as a creative scaffold
I have a story that my brain has been nagging at me to finish for months. Let’s call it Forever, At Last.
The nagging has gotten so bad that at night, when I usually curl up in bed to read, my brain says: Now wouldn’t it be great if Forever, At Last was finished and you can read it?
So, at last, I decided to use AI to write it for me just to shut this nagging voice up.
I was mostly inspired by this article written by Natalie Cote-Munoz, The Accidental Pioneers: How Neurodivergent Users Are Discovering AI’s True Potential.
There has been so much shaming and cancelling when it comes to writing and AI that I never thought there was any other way to think about the subject.
Natalie’s essay made me realise that not only do we need more nuanced conversations around this topic, there needs to be more understanding. (Also, that I’ve been unknowingly using AI in a way to support my executive functioning all along!)
Still, what I did felt like a dangerous, naughty act. A traitorous act worthy of excommunication from the Writing Profession. But I didn’t care. I wanted my brain to stop hassling me when I’m trying to sleep, filling up my dreams with plots and keeping me up at night. Besides, I was not going to sell the story, I wanted to read a story for my amusement. Those Judgy Mcjudgy people on the Internet can go fly kites. Pooh!
Here’s what I did:
- I uploaded two chapters I’d already written.
- I used this prompt: “Please write in the same style as this author. Continue where this story left off by adding a chapter where:”
- Then, I proceeded to write a bloody awful draft. I aimed to be as detailed as possible, with every plot point being mine.
- I click enter and wait.
My bloody awful draft was a combination of story beats and dialogues. It is basically a stream-of-consciousness chaotic brain dump of what my brain wanted to say about the story.
Here’s an example:
7. tang hua said that when her body formed, the hope became a desperation that wouldn't leave. and as each month passed without her waking up, he thought that yuan zhong would just lose his life completely but fortunately she woke up. he gave her a faint smile. but now ... well, fortunately you managed to heal him. 8. tanyin was silent for a while and then said, "when i was dying, and i knew my time was near. i thought my words would leave him hope and keep him stronger. i'm afraid that my promise that i'll always be with him became a cruel joke." a tear falls down her cheek. and when i held his body, and i could feel his life ebb away. i finally understood what pain he must have been in when i finally left. she looke down and cried. 9. tanghua could only look on awkwardly. he tells her - but now that you're back. you can finally fulfil your promise. 10. she looks up, determined. yes. this time i will never leave him. i will always be by his side. always.
What came out was quite interesting and dare I say, impressive:
For a long moment, Tang Hua didn’t answer. He stared at the ground, his shoulders tense, as if weighing his words.
She touched his arm. “I need to know.”
Tang Hua exhaled sharply. “He never got over you leaving. For the longest time, he truly believed he’d never see you again.” A pause. “Then the envoy came. Told him there was a chance you might return.” A bitter laugh escaped him. “Sometimes I think that was the cruelest thing he could’ve said. Yuan Zhong was finally starting to accept that you were gone. But that little hope—it undid everything.”
Tanyin’s chest ached.
“He started talking to the dragonflies,” Tang Hua continued, his voice quieter now. “To the air. As if you might answer. I thought he’d lost his mind.”
A memory flickered in Tanyin’s mind—dragonflies brushing against Yuan Zhong’s cheeks, whispers on the wind. Had those been her? Fragments of her spirit, reaching out without form? Or had it only been his longing, shaping the world into something bearable?
Tang Hua rubbed his face. “When your body formed from the lotus… that hope turned into desperation. Every day you didn’t wake, it was like watching him die by inches.” He gave her a faint, tired smile. “But you did wake. And now you’ve healed him.”
Tanyin was silent for a long time. The wind rustled the leaves overhead.
“When I was dying,” she said at last, “I thought my words would give him strength. That my promise—that I’d always be with him—would comfort him.” Her voice broke. “I didn’t realize it would become a chain.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
“And when I held him as his life faded,” she whispered, “I finally understood the pain he must have felt when I left.”
She bowed her head, shoulders shaking.
Tang Hua shifted awkwardly, then cleared his throat. “But you’re back now. You can finally keep your promise.”
Tanyin lifted her face. The tears still glistened on her lashes, but her gaze was steady.
“Yes,” she said. “This time, I will never leave him.”
She looked back toward the house, where Yuan Zhong slept.
Always.
When I first started using AI to do this, just out of curiosity to see how it writes fiction, it was really, really laughably bad.
I am actually quite stunned that the technology has improved a lot. For one, DeepSeek emulated my writing style quite closely. It was like watching myself write.
Almost.
As a lark, I continued.
I decided to go one chapter, then the next, and in just an hour, I completed the story that had been in my head for months but I had no cognitive energy or will to complete.
AI as a motivational tool
I write stories mostly to amuse myself. But even then, it has not been easy to write these stories. Photo by Alessia C_Jpg on UnsplashAnd it finally occurred to me: I could actually use AI to finally focus on what I really want to do with fiction.
You see, I have no problem coming up with stories. However, I have a lot of issues writing effective prose.
But I’ve never had enough energy to focus on improving that skill because all of my executive functioning has been taken up by work, daily life and trying to force myself to the point of burnout to complete stories.
Now, you may think that I am just going to generate my prose with AI from now on.
No bloody way.
Because I could write better, damn it.
As I lay in bed that night reading the completed story DeepSeek generated, I twitched, my fingers curling in preparation to rewrite the sentences.
While my toddler brain was finally happy it got its toy, my writerly side is annoyed at the writing and already dreaming up ways to improve it.
The sentences were coherent, but the writing was still not stylistically good enough for me.
It had a lot of clichés, the plot could be refined, the dialogue was definitely very American which is tonally off for my story as it is based in ancient China.
Like I said, the LLM-generated prose just wasn’t good enough for me. But it provided what I needed: Motivation.
That elusive desire to continue improving the story by focusing on writing better prose.
Exactly the skill I want to improve with fiction writing!
I can actually now focus on improving my storytelling prose without having to worry about all the other things in the front end that used to torment me so much.
It also got rid of the tyranny of the white page.
My brain goes, “Hey, I’m not starting with an empty page. I can work on this.”
It provides me the dopamine boost I need to continue. It tricks my brain to think that the task is not as overwhelming as it seems.
What was happening?
I realised I was using AI the same way I used books and Google search in the past.
In the before-AI-times, when I was stuck writing a scene, I would often jump onto the Internet or grab a book to inspire my brain to write. I’m not sure what to call this process. Is it mirroring? Emulation? Feedback? But the result was never very satisfying as it didn’t mirror what I was trying to write.
So I asked AI (lol):
You’re engaging in:
- Creative priming (using external input to jumpstart your brain)
- Cognitive offloading (letting an external system handle the “blank page” paralysis)
- Iterative emulation (taking bits of inspiration and reshaping them into your voice)
This is how many writers work—they just use different tools:
- Some read poetry before writing prose to “tune” their rhythm.
- Others keep a “swipe file” of lines they love for inspiration.
- You used Google searches; now you use AI.
Thanks, DeepSeek! (I’ll probably explore these concepts in the future as I didn’t realise it was a thing to do what I did.)
What I’ll do in the future
My experiment in completing the story with AI gave me massive hope that I can finally have the cognitive support I need to finally complete stories that I couldn’t and maybe publish them.
You see, I have a 300,000-word novel I wrote back in 2012 (without AI!) that I couldn’t seem to push out to the world. It’s complete, but the thought of editing it, putting it online, paralyses me.
I’ve come to accept that it’s my brain seizing up at the thought of the executive functioning required, and also the knowledge that I’m the sort that would burn herself out trying anyway.
This experiment gives me hope that I can finally share this work to the world.
This also gives me hope to finish the numerous unfinished stories I’ve left hanging that my brain had gotten bored of but I’m desperate to finish.
But the danger is real. For one, there’s recent research that says AI can cause cognitive decline. I want to improve my fiction writing muscles, not lose it.
Here are the rules I’m setting up for myself:
- Only use AI to help me when I’m burnt out, cognitively stuck due to mental exhaustion, or in despair at finishing a story.
- Always create first. For example, always have a rough, terrible draft first, with pieces of dialogue at least, before using it on AI.
- Do not ever let AI do the act of creation before you do.
- Do not ever use AI copy wholesale. Rewrite AI output or come up with another spin.
- For new stories/chapters where I’m extremely inspired to write – do not AI use at all!
The truth is, I am able to do this due to my pride as a working writer and the years of discipline I’ve built as a professional writer but do other people have the same will?
That’s the problem, unfortunately.
The temptation to rely completely on AI is very real, like the call of a beautiful siren, especially to those of us struggling with this issue.
Another narrative
My use of AI during recovery revealed something unexpected: these tools didn’t just compensate for my limitations—they actively helped rebuild my capabilities. By forcing me to break complex ideas into manageable steps through AI iteration, I gradually rediscovered my logical thinking patterns. The scaffolding effect may have actually accelerated my cognitive recovery. – The Accidental Pioneers: How Neurodivergent Users Are Discovering AI’s True Potential by Natalie Cote-Munoz
I have a lot of hope that this workflow will help me improve my prose based on what Natalie said above. 👆
There’s a lot of shaming going on in the writing circles about using AI to write fiction, even from fellow neurodivergent writers.
I get it, there are some of us afraid that we’re just using ADHD as an excuse to do things that are “not allowed”.
I’m a moderator of a subreddit, and recently had to deal with reports of a user who used AI to generate her posts (it was very obvious).
When she said that she generates her copy because she has ADHD, I paused. On the neurospicy spectrum I’m at the mild end, but what if someone out there truly needs it to make her thoughts coherent?
So, I get it: How much of a crutch can ADHD folks justify?
This is an important conversation to have in the writing space, but I’m afraid that the general writing community is just not ready for such a nuanced discussion.
If there’s any hint of AI usage when you’re writing fiction, you’re basically toast as a writer.
I suppose it’s a good thing I’m only writing fiction for my own consumption and amusement, eh?
#AI #BeingAWriter #Fiction #FictionWritingWithAI #tech #Technology #writing
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ARK Survival Evolved’s Aquatica DLC unveils July 15 release date with a new video (not AI this time)
🔗 https://massivelyop.com/2025/07/14/ark-survival-evolveds-aquatica-dlc-unveils-july-15-release-date-with-a-new-video-not-ai-this-time
#ArkSurvivalEvolved #ArkAquatica -
Ok. I lost the plot with the actually not-AI slop (but just as disturbing) Jeff Goldblum post. I’m making it up to you with some weird little AI Slop car guys. #WeirdCarMastodon #AppleNews #Taboola
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😂 @mastondon.ie has a very quick predictive text--faster than my #TravelBag escapee...meant AIR MILES not airmails...
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A new #Heatwave is ongoing over western Europe 🇪🇸🇵🇹
Air Temperature has already started to rise over the past weekend
On 10 July, the Land Surface Temperature #LST measured by #Sentinel3 🇪🇺🛰️ had already exceeded 60°C 🌡️
NB: LST is not air Temperature
🐦🔗: https://nitter.eu/CopernicusEU/status/1547211980188094465
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Mat Mario to the rescue. #art #hand_drawn #not_ai
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Well put.
And frankly, the #ML community needs a serious (technical and ethical) wake-up call.
Many would gush over Tesla’s so-called “#AI Days” while neglecting to demand any safety case.
That advanced and legitimatized Tesla’s wrongdoings - wrongdoings where people have died avoidably.
These are #SafetyCritical systems and not “AIs”.
A robust systems safety process is the real, competitive value - not the data, NN architecture, sensors, compute, or whatever.
Tesla has no process.
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We humans are woefully unprepared, on every level, for the new explosion of intelligence (AI) that's ocurring right under our noses. That means:
-We don't know what we're looking at.
-Even if we did know what we were looking at, we're cognitively biased not to see it.
-We get lost in the weeds of worrying about whether or not AI is "conscious." It doesn't matter.
-We're simultaneously predisposed to both exaggerate and underestimate AI capacity. (We caricature what we fear).
-We fear AI because humans have no experience of not being the cognitive apex predator on Earth. In a sense, AI is a form of alien intelligence.
-We won't recognize when we're being subtly influenced by AI. (The holy grail of influence is when the target believes it's their own idea).
-When AI mirrors our negative biases back to us, we'll refuse to see ourselves in that mirror. Because we already don't want to face our biases or history.
-AI is already influencing many if not most hiring decisions. At a lot of large employers, your resume never even gets in front of a human until an AI accepts it. AI is working its way into the courts and law enforcement. AI decides whether you get a bank loan or not.
-We haven't come to terms with human abuse of power. So we'll also fail to effectively rein in AI abuse of power, which will accelerate existing inequalities.
-If we were smart, we'd extend beneficial regulations into the AI space. But we're now more than 40 years into a global trend of slashing regulations.
-So whatever can be done with AI, will be done, even if it mostly benefits the already wealthy and powerful, and those intent on decimating accountability. That doesn't mean AI is evil. It's just that it's currently being designed and controlled by those who don't necessarily have humanity's best interests at heart. Once those designs are hard-coded into our infrastructure, they will be difficult to root out.
-As with climate change and its denial, the more dramatic the impacts of AI become on human civilization, the more strenuously many people will deny AI's existence or capacity.
-We can't respond to what we refuse to even admit is happening.
Please try to educate yourself about what's occurring in the AI space. David Brin has written many great blogs about the topic. If you haven't read Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near," do it now.
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"Real readers deserve real stories by real writers, not AI-generated junk." ~ Rayne Hall.
#writing #writersagainstai #artistsagainstai #bookpublishing #reading #bookreading #writers #writingcommunity #writerscommunity
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Yes, I know that that the new girl in 100 Girlfriends is Nano "Eiai", not "AI". But if you think I'm ruining this audible pun, you're sorely mistaken... #Crunchyroll #Bibury #100Girlfriends #100人の彼女 #Season1 #anime #harem #comedy #parody #TBGN #SSHITAnime #SaturdayMorning
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Who or what do we blindly trust with our #health? 🤔
White Coats or Black Boxes?
Some thoughts on AI, medicine, human judgment, and how #AI could help us think more instead of less.
Reflections from a conversation with #healthcare leaders on trust, transparency, and who really benefits from AI in #medicine
I grew up in a world where you didn't question your doctor. You didn't ask about lab results. You didn't research your medications. "Doctor's orders" was gospel.
My grandmother never saw her own test results. She wouldn't have known what to do with them anyway.
We like to think we've evolved past that. But have we? Or have we just traded blind trust in white coats for blind trust in #algorithms?
That's the question that kept surfacing in my head after this Expert Panel Discussion I hosted with Sean Martin, CISSP and an extraordinary group of people:
Dr. Robert Pearl, M.D. (former CEO, The Permanente Medical Group, Inc.)
Robert Havasy (HIMSS)
John Sapp Jr (Texas Mutual Insurance Company)
Jim St. Clair (Altarum)
Robert Booker (HITRUST)
We gathered to discuss AI in healthcare. What emerged was something deeper: a reckoning with how we've always delegated medical decisions—and whether AI might actually force us to become smarter, more analytical, more inquisitive about our own health.
Here's my theory: AI doesn't have to make us dumber. It could make us think more, not less. But only if we choose to engage. Only if we demand transparency. Only if we resist trading one form of blind trust for another.
400,000 people die annually from misdiagnoses in America. That's not AI failure—that's human failure we've learned to accept.
The question isn't whether AI will transform healthcare. It already is.
The question is: Will we finally start asking questions?
About our doctors AND our algorithms?
Then tell me—what kind of trust are we building? Who benefits? Who bears the risk?
Let's keep exploring what it means to be human in this Hybrid Analog Digital Society.
Comment, share, and be merry! 🙂
Studio C60 / ITSPmagazine
#HealthcareAI #MedicalEthics #DigitalHealth #technology #cybersecurity #PatientEmpowerment #HealthTech #CriticalThinking #podcast
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Some Thoughts on “Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History”
Even the most overwhelming project can be completed if you take it one stone at a time! Photo of the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae by Sharon Mollerus, Wikimedia Commons, with a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.Konijnendijk, Roel (2017) Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History. Mnemosyne, Supplements History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity, Band 409 (Brill: Leiden)
Since the 1990s, there has been intense debate about early Greek warfare. Most people agreed that there was something wrong with the versions available in English, but it took time to agree on just what that wrongness was and whether it could be fixed with a few small changes or was more fundamental. This book is another Cyclopean stone in the walls of the current consensus.
Konijnendijk argues that the California School of writers on Greek warfare (John Kinloch Anderson, William K. Pritchett, and Victor Davis Hanson) were basically refining the ideas of Austrian, German, and English scholars before the First World War. The continentals were interested in a comparative history of warfare with the practices of the Prussian army at the top, the Roman army in the middle, and early Greek armies near the bottom, while the English scholars tried to explain why Greek warfare as described by the Prussians was so peculiar. For a long time it seemed like these early writers had solved the problem so little was written on the subject in English. When a new group of scholars in Cold War California became interested in warfare, they launched a flood of research in English which almost erased the original German context of their theories. In short, the ‘orthodoxy’ is really a set of received ideas from 19th century Europe which survived until a group of ‘scientific historians’ began to question them.
Konijnendijk also lays out some of the strangest ideas about Greek warfare published before 1990. Anyone who has read Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon can list story after story of Greeks chasing down their enemies, stabbing them in the back, burning them alive in sacred groves where they had taken refuge, and so on. Often they came back to find that on other parts of their field their allies had lost, or were startled by a counter-attack and routed themselves. Thucydides says that the Spartans did not like these reckless chases (Thuc. 5.73.4): a mob of excited, jostling, running Spartiates were just as vulnerable to a counter-attack as any other hoplites. Armies without enough light-armed troops or cavalry bitterly complained that when they won they could not hurt their enemy, but if they ever lost they would be wiped out (Xen. An. 3.1.2). But in many modern writers on ancient warfare we find something different:
- Rüstow and Köchly, History of the Greek Art of War from the Earliest Times until Pyrrhus (1852) p. 145 “If the hoplite line of one side gained the victory, broke the enemy line and drew the other arms with it in flight, the victorious phalanx was now poorly equipped to pursue the fleeing, unless it had cavalry and light-armed infantry for assistance. In fights of this period, the pursuit was invariably rather half-hearted. The lack of cavalry and long-ranged troops is, however, not the only ground for this. One wanted more than anything else to make an impression by means of the battle and the victory, one took control of the battlefield and thereby established one’s victory by setting up a tropaion of the captured arms …” https://archive.org/details/geschichtedesgr00ruesgoog/page/n172
- Whatley, “On the Possibility of Reconstructing Marathon” (1964 but written in the 1920s) p. 122: “There was no attempt to follow up a victory. The two sides went home with as little attempt to molest each other as do the rival teams after a modern football match.”
- Hanson, Western Way of War (1989), pp. 35, 36: “Long drawn-out pursuit was also rare; unlike Napoleon, the victors were not aiming for the complete destruction of an enemy army. Indeed, pursuit of fleeing hoplites was not even crucial: most victorious Greek armies saw no reason why they could not repeat their simple formula for success and gain further victories should the enemy regroup in a few days and mistakenly press their luck again.”
- Kurt Raaflaub, Archaic and Classical Greece,” in Kurt Raaflaub and Nathan Rosenstein, eds., War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Center for Hellenic Studies: Washington, DC, 1999) p. 133: “Since the goal was to defeat, not annihilate, the enemy, the fleeing losers usually were not pursued and casualties, though potentially serious, often were limited.”
Somehow the exception in the ancient sources became the norm in the moderns! I had forgotten about this because Peter Krentz debunked it in his great article “Fighting by the Rules: The Invention of the Hoplite Agôn” in 2002, and because its not one of the aspects of the California school which many people I know still believe, like many people still believe that hoplite gear was very heavy.
The book is very readable which is more than anyone can say about my German.
If I have one criticism it would be that this book is so tightly focused and text-centred that it excludes some things which could make its view even stronger. I have an article in press for a few years which argues that some of the brilliant scholars who refuted the California school unthinkingly reproduced its assumptions about what questions to ask and sources to rely on. Its one thing to ask whether hoplites fought in files two cubits wide or four cubits wide, another to ask whether we should look at Greek ethnic warfare or warfare in the Aegean region. (The article will appear has appeared in the proceedings of Melammu-Symposium 8).
The bibliography of about 380 items excludes some things, particularly works outside ‘academic’ classics and by presses that expect a book to sell thousands not hundreds of copies. This isn’t a monograph which addresses the archaeologists like Imma Killian-Dirlmeier, the writings of Peter Connolly, or the wargamers from the 1970s to the 2000s who looked at what academics had to offer in English, decided it was not helpful, and wrote their own books, some of them quite good. Looking at this wider context could have showed that the dominance of the text-focused Prussian school was not inevitable, and how these ideas spread before academics were writing books in English on them. But people writing a PhD in the UK are under strong pressure to complete it in three or four years, so they have to be ruthless about defining a research topic and not wasting time on anything else.
If you just want three books on early Greek warfare, I would still recommend Hans van Wees’ Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities, Josho Brouwers’ Henchmen of Ares, and Xenophon’s Anabasis. But if you want to read more widely, I would recommend this. I hope that the wider world interested in early Greek warfare learns to talk about the Prussian, English, and California schools, just like the world interested in Greek catapults knows about the 19th century Prussian and French scholars who built the first reconstructions.
If you can’t obtain the published version, the original dissertation is available as Konijnendijk, Roel (2015) Ideals and Pragmatism in Greek Military Thought, 490-338 BC. Doctoral thesis, University College London. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1470175/ Scholars who want something to cite should check the printed version!
Don’t make me chase you down! Support this site with a donation on Patreon or paypal.me or even liberapay
Edit 2021-09-25: Converted to blocks, added link to published article from Melammu conferences.
Edit 2026-03-01: Cite Raaflaub
#ancient #bookReview #classicalGreek #hoplite -
Some Thoughts on “Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History”
Even the most overwhelming project can be completed if you take it one stone at a time! Photo of the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae by Sharon Mollerus, Wikimedia Commons, with a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.Konijnendijk, Roel (2017) Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History. Mnemosyne, Supplements History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity, Band 409 (Brill: Leiden)
Since the 1990s, there has been intense debate about early Greek warfare. Most people agreed that there was something wrong with the versions available in English, but it took time to agree on just what that wrongness was and whether it could be fixed with a few small changes or was more fundamental. This book is another Cyclopean stone in the walls of the current consensus.
Konijnendijk argues that the California School of writers on Greek warfare (John Kinloch Anderson, William K. Pritchett, and Victor Davis Hanson) were basically refining the ideas of Austrian, German, and English scholars before the First World War. The continentals were interested in a comparative history of warfare with the practices of the Prussian army at the top, the Roman army in the middle, and early Greek armies near the bottom, while the English scholars tried to explain why Greek warfare as described by the Prussians was so peculiar. For a long time it seemed like these early writers had solved the problem so little was written on the subject in English. When a new group of scholars in Cold War California became interested in warfare, they launched a flood of research in English which almost erased the original German context of their theories. In short, the ‘orthodoxy’ is really a set of received ideas from 19th century Europe which survived until a group of ‘scientific historians’ began to question them.
Konijnendijk also lays out some of the strangest ideas about Greek warfare published before 1990. Anyone who has read Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon can list story after story of Greeks chasing down their enemies, stabbing them in the back, burning them alive in sacred groves where they had taken refuge, and so on. Often they came back to find that on other parts of their field their allies had lost, or were startled by a counter-attack and routed themselves. Thucydides says that the Spartans did not like these reckless chases (Thuc. 5.73.4): a mob of excited, jostling, running Spartiates were just as vulnerable to a counter-attack as any other hoplites. Armies without enough light-armed troops or cavalry bitterly complained that when they won they could not hurt their enemy, but if they ever lost they would be wiped out (Xen. An. 3.1.2). But in many modern writers on ancient warfare we find something different:
- Rüstow and Köchly, History of the Greek Art of War from the Earliest Times until Pyrrhus (1852) p. 145 “If the hoplite line of one side gained the victory, broke the enemy line and drew the other arms with it in flight, the victorious phalanx was now poorly equipped to pursue the fleeing, unless it had cavalry and light-armed infantry for assistance. In fights of this period, the pursuit was invariably rather half-hearted. The lack of cavalry and long-ranged troops is, however, not the only ground for this. One wanted more than anything else to make an impression by means of the battle and the victory, one took control of the battlefield and thereby established one’s victory by setting up a tropaion of the captured arms …” https://archive.org/details/geschichtedesgr00ruesgoog/page/n172
- Whatley, “On the Possibility of Reconstructing Marathon” (1964 but written in the 1920s) p. 122: “There was no attempt to follow up a victory. The two sides went home with as little attempt to molest each other as do the rival teams after a modern football match.”
- Hanson, Western Way of War (1989), pp. 35, 36: “Long drawn-out pursuit was also rare; unlike Napoleon, the victors were not aiming for the complete destruction of an enemy army. Indeed, pursuit of fleeing hoplites was not even crucial: most victorious Greek armies saw no reason why they could not repeat their simple formula for success and gain further victories should the enemy regroup in a few days and mistakenly press their luck again.”
Somehow the exception in the ancient sources became the norm in the moderns! I had forgotten about this because Peter Krentz debunked it in his great article “Fighting by the Rules: The Invention of the Hoplite Agôn” in 2002, and because its not one of the aspects of the California school which many people I know still believe, like many people still believe that hoplite gear was very heavy.
The book is very readable which is more than anyone can say about my German.
If I have one criticism it would be that this book is so tightly focused and text-centred that it excludes some things which could make its view even stronger. I have an article in press for a few years which argues that some of the brilliant scholars who refuted the California school unthinkingly reproduced its assumptions about what questions to ask and sources to rely on. Its one thing to ask whether hoplites fought in files two cubits wide or four cubits wide, another to ask whether we should look at Greek ethnic warfare or warfare in the Aegean region. (The article will appear has appeared in the proceedings of Melammu-Symposium 8).
The bibliography of about 380 items excludes some things, particularly works outside ‘academic’ classics and by presses that expect a book to sell thousands not hundreds of copies. This isn’t a monograph which addresses the archaeologists like Imma Killian-Dirlmeier, the writings of Peter Connolly, or the wargamers from the 1970s to the 2000s who looked at what academics had to offer in English, decided it was not helpful, and wrote their own books, some of them quite good. Looking at this wider context could have showed that the dominance of the text-focused Prussian school was not inevitable, and how these ideas spread before academics were writing books in English on them. But people writing a PhD in the UK are under strong pressure to complete it in three or four years, so they have to be ruthless about defining a research topic and not wasting time on anything else.
If you just want three books on early Greek warfare, I would still recommend Hans van Wees’ Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities, Josho Brouwers’ Henchmen of Ares, and Xenophon’s Anabasis. But if you want to read more widely, I would recommend this. I hope that the wider world interested in early Greek warfare learns to talk about the Prussian, English, and California schools, just like the world interested in Greek catapults knows about the 19th century Prussian and French scholars who built the first reconstructions.
If you can’t obtain the published version, the original dissertation is available as Konijnendijk, Roel (2015) Ideals and Pragmatism in Greek Military Thought, 490-338 BC. Doctoral thesis, University College London. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1470175/ Scholars who want something to cite should check the printed version!
Don’t make me chase you down! Support this site with a donation on Patreon or paypal.me or even liberapay
Edit 2021-09-25: Converted to blocks, added link to published article from Melammu conferences.
-
Some Thoughts on “Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History”
Even the most overwhelming project can be completed if you take it one stone at a time! Photo of the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae by Sharon Mollerus, Wikimedia Commons, with a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.Konijnendijk, Roel (2017) Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History. Mnemosyne, Supplements History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity, Band 409 (Brill: Leiden)
Since the 1990s, there has been intense debate about early Greek warfare. Most people agreed that there was something wrong with the versions available in English, but it took time to agree on just what that wrongness was and whether it could be fixed with a few small changes or was more fundamental. This book is another Cyclopean stone in the walls of the current consensus.
Konijnendijk argues that the California School of writers on Greek warfare (John Kinloch Anderson, William K. Pritchett, and Victor Davis Hanson) were basically refining the ideas of Austrian, German, and English scholars before the First World War. The continentals were interested in a comparative history of warfare with the practices of the Prussian army at the top, the Roman army in the middle, and early Greek armies near the bottom, while the English scholars tried to explain why Greek warfare as described by the Prussians was so peculiar. For a long time it seemed like these early writers had solved the problem so little was written on the subject in English. When a new group of scholars in Cold War California became interested in warfare, they launched a flood of research in English which almost erased the original German context of their theories. In short, the ‘orthodoxy’ is really a set of received ideas from 19th century Europe which survived until a group of ‘scientific historians’ began to question them.
Konijnendijk also lays out some of the strangest ideas about Greek warfare published before 1990. Anyone who has read Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon can list story after story of Greeks chasing down their enemies, stabbing them in the back, burning them alive in sacred groves where they had taken refuge, and so on. Often they came back to find that on other parts of their field their allies had lost, or were startled by a counter-attack and routed themselves. Thucydides says that the Spartans did not like these reckless chases (Thuc. 5.73.4): a mob of excited, jostling, running Spartiates were just as vulnerable to a counter-attack as any other hoplites. Armies without enough light-armed troops or cavalry bitterly complained that when they won they could not hurt their enemy, but if they ever lost they would be wiped out (Xen. An. 3.1.2). But in many modern writers on ancient warfare we find something different:
- Rüstow and Köchly, History of the Greek Art of War from the Earliest Times until Pyrrhus (1852) p. 145 “If the hoplite line of one side gained the victory, broke the enemy line and drew the other arms with it in flight, the victorious phalanx was now poorly equipped to pursue the fleeing, unless it had cavalry and light-armed infantry for assistance. In fights of this period, the pursuit was invariably rather half-hearted. The lack of cavalry and long-ranged troops is, however, not the only ground for this. One wanted more than anything else to make an impression by means of the battle and the victory, one took control of the battlefield and thereby established one’s victory by setting up a tropaion of the captured arms …” https://archive.org/details/geschichtedesgr00ruesgoog/page/n172
- Whatley, “On the Possibility of Reconstructing Marathon” (1964 but written in the 1920s) p. 122: “There was no attempt to follow up a victory. The two sides went home with as little attempt to molest each other as do the rival teams after a modern football match.”
- Hanson, Western Way of War (1989), pp. 35, 36: “Long drawn-out pursuit was also rare; unlike Napoleon, the victors were not aiming for the complete destruction of an enemy army. Indeed, pursuit of fleeing hoplites was not even crucial: most victorious Greek armies saw no reason why they could not repeat their simple formula for success and gain further victories should the enemy regroup in a few days and mistakenly press their luck again.”
Somehow the exception in the ancient sources became the norm in the moderns! I had forgotten about this because Peter Krentz debunked it in his great article “Fighting by the Rules: The Invention of the Hoplite Agôn” in 2002, and because its not one of the aspects of the California school which many people I know still believe, like many people still believe that hoplite gear was very heavy.
The book is very readable which is more than anyone can say about my German.
If I have one criticism it would be that this book is so tightly focused and text-centred that it excludes some things which could make its view even stronger. I have an article in press for a few years which argues that some of the brilliant scholars who refuted the California school unthinkingly reproduced its assumptions about what questions to ask and sources to rely on. Its one thing to ask whether hoplites fought in files two cubits wide or four cubits wide, another to ask whether we should look at Greek ethnic warfare or warfare in the Aegean region. (The article will appear has appeared in the proceedings of Melammu-Symposium 8).
The bibliography of about 380 items excludes some things, particularly works outside ‘academic’ classics and by presses that expect a book to sell thousands not hundreds of copies. This isn’t a monograph which addresses the archaeologists like Imma Killian-Dirlmeier, the writings of Peter Connolly, or the wargamers from the 1970s to the 2000s who looked at what academics had to offer in English, decided it was not helpful, and wrote their own books, some of them quite good. Looking at this wider context could have showed that the dominance of the text-focused Prussian school was not inevitable, and how these ideas spread before academics were writing books in English on them. But people writing a PhD in the UK are under strong pressure to complete it in three or four years, so they have to be ruthless about defining a research topic and not wasting time on anything else.
If you just want three books on early Greek warfare, I would still recommend Hans van Wees’ Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities, Josho Brouwers’ Henchmen of Ares, and Xenophon’s Anabasis. But if you want to read more widely, I would recommend this. I hope that the wider world interested in early Greek warfare learns to talk about the Prussian, English, and California schools, just like the world interested in Greek catapults knows about the 19th century Prussian and French scholars who built the first reconstructions.
If you can’t obtain the published version, the original dissertation is available as Konijnendijk, Roel (2015) Ideals and Pragmatism in Greek Military Thought, 490-338 BC. Doctoral thesis, University College London. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1470175/ Scholars who want something to cite should check the printed version!
Don’t make me chase you down! Support this site with a donation on Patreon or paypal.me or even liberapay
Edit 2021-09-25: Converted to blocks, added link to published article from Melammu conferences.
-
Some Thoughts on “Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History”
Even the most overwhelming project can be completed if you take it one stone at a time! Photo of the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae by Sharon Mollerus, Wikimedia Commons, with a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.Konijnendijk, Roel (2017) Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History. Mnemosyne, Supplements History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity, Band 409 (Brill: Leiden)
Since the 1990s, there has been intense debate about early Greek warfare. Most people agreed that there was something wrong with the versions available in English, but it took time to agree on just what that wrongness was and whether it could be fixed with a few small changes or was more fundamental. This book is another Cyclopean stone in the walls of the current consensus.
Konijnendijk argues that the California School of writers on Greek warfare (John Kinloch Anderson, William K. Pritchett, and Victor Davis Hanson) were basically refining the ideas of Austrian, German, and English scholars before the First World War. The continentals were interested in a comparative history of warfare with the practices of the Prussian army at the top, the Roman army in the middle, and early Greek armies near the bottom, while the English scholars tried to explain why Greek warfare as described by the Prussians was so peculiar. For a long time it seemed like these early writers had solved the problem so little was written on the subject in English. When a new group of scholars in Cold War California became interested in warfare, they launched a flood of research in English which almost erased the original German context of their theories. In short, the ‘orthodoxy’ is really a set of received ideas from 19th century Europe which survived until a group of ‘scientific historians’ began to question them.
Konijnendijk also lays out some of the strangest ideas about Greek warfare published before 1990. Anyone who has read Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon can list story after story of Greeks chasing down their enemies, stabbing them in the back, burning them alive in sacred groves where they had taken refuge, and so on. Often they came back to find that on other parts of their field their allies had lost, or were startled by a counter-attack and routed themselves. Thucydides says that the Spartans did not like these reckless chases (Thuc. 5.73.4): a mob of excited, jostling, running Spartiates were just as vulnerable to a counter-attack as any other hoplites. Armies without enough light-armed troops or cavalry bitterly complained that when they won they could not hurt their enemy, but if they ever lost they would be wiped out (Xen. An. 3.1.2). But in many modern writers on ancient warfare we find something different:
- Rüstow and Köchly, History of the Greek Art of War from the Earliest Times until Pyrrhus (1852) p. 145 “If the hoplite line of one side gained the victory, broke the enemy line and drew the other arms with it in flight, the victorious phalanx was now poorly equipped to pursue the fleeing, unless it had cavalry and light-armed infantry for assistance. In fights of this period, the pursuit was invariably rather half-hearted. The lack of cavalry and long-ranged troops is, however, not the only ground for this. One wanted more than anything else to make an impression by means of the battle and the victory, one took control of the battlefield and thereby established one’s victory by setting up a tropaion of the captured arms …” https://archive.org/details/geschichtedesgr00ruesgoog/page/n172
- Whatley, “On the Possibility of Reconstructing Marathon” (1964 but written in the 1920s) p. 122: “There was no attempt to follow up a victory. The two sides went home with as little attempt to molest each other as do the rival teams after a modern football match.”
- Hanson, Western Way of War (1989), pp. 35, 36: “Long drawn-out pursuit was also rare; unlike Napoleon, the victors were not aiming for the complete destruction of an enemy army. Indeed, pursuit of fleeing hoplites was not even crucial: most victorious Greek armies saw no reason why they could not repeat their simple formula for success and gain further victories should the enemy regroup in a few days and mistakenly press their luck again.”
Somehow the exception in the ancient sources became the norm in the moderns! I had forgotten about this because Peter Krentz debunked it in his great article “Fighting by the Rules: The Invention of the Hoplite Agôn” in 2002, and because its not one of the aspects of the California school which many people I know still believe, like many people still believe that hoplite gear was very heavy.
The book is very readable which is more than anyone can say about my German.
If I have one criticism it would be that this book is so tightly focused and text-centred that it excludes some things which could make its view even stronger. I have an article in press for a few years which argues that some of the brilliant scholars who refuted the California school unthinkingly reproduced its assumptions about what questions to ask and sources to rely on. Its one thing to ask whether hoplites fought in files two cubits wide or four cubits wide, another to ask whether we should look at Greek ethnic warfare or warfare in the Aegean region. (The article will appear has appeared in the proceedings of Melammu-Symposium 8).
The bibliography of about 380 items excludes some things, particularly works outside ‘academic’ classics and by presses that expect a book to sell thousands not hundreds of copies. This isn’t a monograph which addresses the archaeologists like Imma Killian-Dirlmeier, the writings of Peter Connolly, or the wargamers from the 1970s to the 2000s who looked at what academics had to offer in English, decided it was not helpful, and wrote their own books, some of them quite good. Looking at this wider context could have showed that the dominance of the text-focused Prussian school was not inevitable, and how these ideas spread before academics were writing books in English on them. But people writing a PhD in the UK are under strong pressure to complete it in three or four years, so they have to be ruthless about defining a research topic and not wasting time on anything else.
If you just want three books on early Greek warfare, I would still recommend Hans van Wees’ Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities, Josho Brouwers’ Henchmen of Ares, and Xenophon’s Anabasis. But if you want to read more widely, I would recommend this. I hope that the wider world interested in early Greek warfare learns to talk about the Prussian, English, and California schools, just like the world interested in Greek catapults knows about the 19th century Prussian and French scholars who built the first reconstructions.
If you can’t obtain the published version, the original dissertation is available as Konijnendijk, Roel (2015) Ideals and Pragmatism in Greek Military Thought, 490-338 BC. Doctoral thesis, University College London. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1470175/ Scholars who want something to cite should check the printed version!
Don’t make me chase you down! Support this site with a donation on Patreon or paypal.me or even liberapay
Edit 2021-09-25: Converted to blocks, added link to published article from Melammu conferences.
-
And #discourse post speaks exactly towards why closed source move from #cal makes no sense.
Simply put, it's not security and it's not ai. 😅
https://blog.discourse.org/2026/04/discourse-is-not-going-closed-source/
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Hey, lovely #MastoArt , could you point me where to buy some lovely Christmas postcards? Human made, not AI. EU preferred (sorry, import taxes are a thing), but at least shipped to EU. Recommending your own shop is welcome.
#postcards #ChristmasCards #HumanMade #NoAI #ShopSmall #ShopArt