Chris Brockett

@chrisbrockett.bsky.social

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Data janitor at Microsoft Research. Tsundoku expert. Leftover linguist, trying to shoehorn LLMs into gaming. Picking over the debris field of Natural Language Processing. Cognition. Japanese literature.

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Chris Brockett

If you’ve never seen Dorothea Lange’s photographs of the World War II internment camps and the Japanese-Americans who were imprisoned there, today is a good day to see them and to commit to making sure this never happens again. anchoreditions.com/blog/dorothe...

My question is: what connections were used to get the NYT to publish his bullshit? I doubt that any random individual would get the same op-ed accepted. This author and article were carefully placed.

Hopefully someone will check the Michigan voter file to see if it is true that this lad does not vote

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Chris Brockett

More trains please.

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Chris Brockett

Over at the Bad Place, I made a tradition of posting Douglass' "What, To The Slave, Is The Fourth of July," and I intend to carry on that tradition here. Since most versions you read in classes or in textbooks have parts omitted, the link below has the full text of the speech.

(1852) Frederick Douglass, "What, To The Slave, Is The Fourth Of July" •www.blackpast.org On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass was invited to address the citizens of his hometown, Rochester, New York. Whatever the expectations of his audience on that 76th anniversary of the signing of the D...

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Chris Brockett

Opinion | Why I No Longer Subscribe to the New York Times

ah what a helpful op-ed to toss into the mix new york times www.nytimes.com/2024/07/04/o...

Opinion | Why I Don’t Votewww.nytimes.com If casting a ballot is merely expressive, then the same is true of not casting one.

If ever anyone needed an excuse to cancel their NYT subscription, today is the day. I cancelled over a decade ago after they appointed Charles Krauthammer to scribble out paeans to torture. The writing was already on the wall back then.

Why I Don't Vote (OK, I Do Vote, but I Would Like to Discourage You, NY Times Reader, For Doing So For Some Reason) Via @bubbaprog.ilovecitr.us

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Chris Brockett

Celebrated getting my brain back from Covid by writing 1,000 words about the word "fuckery"

What kind of "fuckery" is this? New post for @stronglang.bsky.social on a word for our times: stronglang.wordpress.com/2024/06/30/w... #langsky #swearsky

What kind of “fuckery” is this?stronglang.wordpress.com If there’s one place you’ll find fuckery, it’s in a fuckery. In fact, you’d probably find all sorts of fuckery in a fuckery, including: —treachery, ill treatment or behaviour —nonsense, foolishness, b...

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Chris Brockett

making an unplanned venture into lyrics translation officially for the first time because Qiu Jin wrote a feminist anthem and i'm working on translating it - lyrics as printed on the bag below

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Chris Brockett

new book sits before me, has been a journey! here we are!

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Chris Brockett

Facebook really hates this post, by the way. Not sure why.

America is not perfect. Far from it. But there are ideals worth fighting for, values worth pursuing, even when we fall short. Don’t abandon it to the totalitarians. https://www.popehat.com/p/the-fourth-of-july

The Fourth Of Julywww.popehat.com The America That Could Be

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Chris Brockett

Artist Hitomi Terasawa drew a meticulous cross-sectioned rendering of Hong Kong's infamous Kowloon Walled City before it was razed in 1994. Now we have rare scans revealing the inner workings of the labyrinth-like metropolis. www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/07/kowl...

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Chris Brockett

Reply to

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

The entire genre of dancehall (more or less) came about when a reggae producer repurposed a "rock" beat he accidentally discovered on a casio kid's toy keyboard. People recently discovered the long-anonymous Japanese woman who programmed the beat was in fact a huge reggae fan and scholar.

Okuda Hiroko: The Casio Employee Behind the “Sleng Teng” Riddim that Revolutionized Reggaewww.nippon.com The “Sleng Teng” riddim revolutionized reggae music in the mid-1980s, and has spawned hundreds of versions in the decades since then. Less well known is the story of how the distinctive bassline origi...

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Chris Brockett

Every year I study this image and hope one day our country will make sense.

July 4th Parade, Tule Lake Internment Camp, 1943.

This is a threat to use violence.

Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court presidential immunity ruling: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be" www.mediamatters.org/project-2025...

Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court immunity decision: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution"www.mediamatters.org

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Chris Brockett

SUMERIAN HAS A FRUSTRATIVE MOOD If English had a frustrative mood I think I’d speak in nothing else.

Thanks to SCOTUS, Trump really will turn into Ubu Roi, with all the attendant consequences.

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Chris Brockett

I fully expect Trump to be installed as President, which is not the same thing as elected. If, however, by some fortuitous circumstance, the Dem candidate is elected president, I expect a bunch of red states to secede.

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Chris Brockett

Supreme Court rules 6-3 American Revolutionary War was incorrectly decided

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Chris Brockett

Reply to

Popehat

/8 At any rate, congratulations to the Federalist Society for an achievement beyond the reach of the British, outside the grasp of bloody civil war, impossible to Nazis and Soviets and terrorists: defeating the American idea.

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Chris Brockett

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Popehat

/7 Justice Roberts smug and superior dismissal of the dissents’ concerns seems to come to us via time warp from some time that never knew Trump. The danger of lawlessness he poses are manifest — he and his followers brag of them. Only a liar or fool would dismiss them.

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Chris Brockett

One thing I think people forget is how relentlessly *stupid* every day of the Trump administration was. He doesn’t need to do a big elaborate complicated conspiracy, he can just (e.g.) email a list of every U.S. agent in the field to Putin and say it’s to own the libs, and *that* will have immunity.

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Chris Brockett

www.theonion.com/supreme-cour...

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Chris Brockett

Sorry to all my lawyer friends who spent a bunch of time learning how law works in the US. I had friends who were Flash developers and things turned out alright for them after they pivoted to C# or whatever. Hopefully there's an equivalent for our national legal system

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Chris Brockett

American Democracy [1776-2024]. The killers are still at large. Eulogy by Justice Sotomayor.

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Chris Brockett

A good thing about being Gen X is we were promised the future would be dystopia and by God has it delivered.

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Chris Brockett

Glad to see some members of Congress taking the issue seriously.

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Chris Brockett

a good way to alleviate concerns about Bidens debate performance / age *and* concerns about court overreach would be for Team Biden to schedule a short TV speech on it and give a firebrand performance about what he intends to do about it just sayin

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Chris Brockett

SCOTUS is telling us that it has completely signed on to the project of a second Trump administration, which is establishing an elected autocracy.

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Chris Brockett

Me: "Mr President, I'd like to give you a bribe and commit some treason together." President: "Hold on, lets move this conversation to the Oval Office and bring in some White House aids so we are sure all this gets immunity."

My first read: If a president commits crimes unrelated to him being the most powerful person in the world, he can be prosecuted. But if explicitly uses his powers to commit crimes, he is at least presumptively, and probably absolutely immune from prosecution. I mean, holy shit.