John West

@johnwest.bsky.social

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I report the news with code at the Wall Street Journal. I wrote a book called Lessons and Carols and won a Pulitzer prize for investigative reporting.

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My colleagues have an amazingly-reported story on the World Economic Forum, which "has allowed to fester an atmosphere hostile to women and Black people in its own workplace." www.wsj.com/business/wor...

www.wsj.com

an endpoint that always returns 3.14, etc.: a pi API.

The two groups of people who will never read your entire piece: your commenters and your editors.

I *loved* this piece from @kashhill.bsky.social and Tiffany Hsu. www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/t.... Woven into a gripping yarn about about it one particular "A.I. chop shop," they find that "A.I.-generated content is upending, and often poisoning, the online information supply."

It Looked Like a Reliable News Site. It Was an A.I. Chop Shop.www.nytimes.com BNN Breaking had millions of readers, an international team of journalists and a publishing deal with Microsoft. But it was full of error-ridden content.

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kids today don't know nothing but charge their phone, worship giant white dog, eat hot chip and lie

NARRATOR: The Nissan Leaf offers nimble handling, zero emissions, and will set humanity on the Golden Path. (HANS ZIMMER STING PLAYS) JAVIER BARDEM IN FULL FREMEN REGALIA: Nissan al Gaib!

💀💀💀

ML + LLM = MLM?

From “The Going,” by April Bernard

Is this anything? A sitcom about a family trying to build a dam, and they’re trying to stay together… or break apart. It’s called “Cleave it to Beaver.”

3.5 minutes of darkness? I hope democracy is okay.

Last year, I wrote a little essay for Easter—about the unbearable beauty and misery of miracles. comment.org/easters-mira...

I’m at NICAR this year! Come say hi—even if you don’t want to go to my talk! schedules.ire.org/nicar-2024/i... Also, anything I should definitely do here in Baltimore?

From Fanny Howe

Did you know? If you express skepticism about a technology three times in front of a mirror, certain tech watchers will appear behind you and scream “moral panic.”

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@huaxi.bsky.social's interview w/ John West is live on @anmlymag.bsky.social! "John West’s Lessons and Carols is a book of experimental and genre-defying fragments that chronicle the author’s relationship to addiction, beauty, faith, literature and his new daughter." -Hua Xi tinyurl.com/JohnWestInt

Poetic Conversations: Text as Music ~ Interview with John Westtinyurl.com John West’s Lessons and Carols is a book of experimental and genre-defying fragments that chronicle the author’s relationship to addiction…

thank you, @huaxi.bsky.social for this interview with @anmlymag.bsky.social. It was, as always, a blast talking to you! medium.com/anomalyblog/...

*mario looks into the mirror* "it's a me, beautiful"

Is shaking hands just a socially acceptable way for men to hold each other?

the "Poem of the Day" newsletter from the Poetry Foundation is really great. And today was perfect.

You can tell that ChatGPT hasn't achieved human-level intelligence just yet because dealing with my absurd questions doesn't fill it with neurotic ennui.

It's such a gift to be read carefully by a reviewer, and @markwallace.bsky.social read my book, LESSONS AND CAROLS, so generously, so carefully and precisely in his review. Thank you! www.birchbarkediting.com/microlit-alm...

Modest Ceremonies: John West's Lessons and Carols by Mark Wallace — BIRCH BARK EDITINGwww.birchbarkediting.com Lessons and Carols by John West Eerdmans Publishing Co. 207 pp. Order is a luxury, it seems to me. Being able to count on what will happen when, and in what way, is something many people would like ...

Yet another example of the creeping credentialism stultifying innovation in American life.

[soviet inversion voice] In capitalist America, chef sues you.

The incomparable Allison Parrish laid out how to use JPEG compression on word vectors back in 2016: www.youtube.com/watch?v=meov.... I tried that approach with "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" from Shakespeare. Original here: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56964/...

made a meme

Last night, I reread EXPERIMENT 116, by my friend @renamosteirin.bsky.social, and I decided to try my hand at a translation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116—or, rather, try my computer's hand. Here, I embedded each noun, verb, and adjective and nudged those vectors toward the vector for "angry."

This is me at 37. My favorite thing about my birthday is the reminder that I am going to die. I have this one little life, full of tiny human dramas and triumphs, and it is finite. And thank God for that. It is only in its finitude that it finds meaning. Let me meet it with abundance, I pray.

In due time, we’re all “cancelled” by god.

absolutely revelatory talk here, text vectors can be thought of as waveforms(!), which means you can apply everything from JPEG compression to reverb on them. www.youtube.com/watch?v=meov...