Art Sells

Anthropology in two frames

Cats get it.

Most homeless people in California do not have full-time jobs, Katie Porter lied and @adamcarolla has a great perspective on it Watch

We need more of this California

In 1961, a man with an 8th-grade education picked up a pencil in his prison cell and changed American history. Clarence Earl Gideon was a 51-year-old drifter with gray hair, weathered skin, and a lifetime of hard luck. On August 4, 1961, he stood accused in a Florida courtroom of breaking into the Bay Harbor Pool Room. The evidence was razor-thin—one witness claimed he saw Gideon leaving around 5:30 a.m. with coins in his pocket. About $5 in change, beer, and soda were missing. Gideon swore he was innocent. Too poor for a lawyer, he asked the judge to appoint one. The judge refused—Florida law allowed counsel only in death penalty cases. Gideon defended himself but was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. In his cell, Gideon studied law books, learned about the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel and the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process guarantee. He filed a handwritten petition in pencil on prison stationery to the U.S. Supreme Court. It reached them in January 1962. The Court agreed to hear his case and appointed top lawyer Abe Fortas. On March 18, 1963, in a unanimous 9-0 decision (*Gideon v. Wainwright*), the Supreme Court ruled that the right to counsel is fundamental to a fair trial and applies to the states. Indigent defendants facing serious charges must receive a lawyer. At his retrial with skilled counsel, the key witness was discredited. The jury acquitted Gideon after just one hour. He walked free after more than two years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Gideon’s courage transformed American justice. Thousands of convictions were reviewed, public defender systems expanded, and the principle was cemented: justice should not depend on wealth. One ordinary man’s pencil forever changed the system. In this world ordinary people can do extraordinary things That includes any of you reading this post Don’t underestimate your ability to Change the world

They're as good as the prompts you give them. I give a small preamble to the first question, setting up my objective(s) and whatever contextual elements apply, outline of my own research so far, what still isn't clear to me, or an idea I'm working on...that kind of stuff. Then I drop the first question. What I get back has real meat 🍖 on the bone, compared to some Wikipedia impersonation I would have gotten if I just threw a question at it. From that point follow up questioning is strait forward and highly productive. I've gone back and forth with Gemini for an hour strait (about the time my brain starts to dry) 5 times in the last 2 weeks and put together a solid package of info and analysis. If I had done it the old fashioned way I would have spent 4 weeks doing 100s of hours of extremely tedious reading and extraction to gain an inferior product that's already going out of date.

How is it that the LLMs get things wrong constantly, the very simplest things, and make stuff up pretty much nonstop, yet they are said to be hurtling unstoppably toward god-like power -- if they haven't secretly achieved it already? Is this a con job?

A tiny herd of baby goats just discovered their inner dancers — pure joy in every bouncy step! 🤗🤗

Any advice that actually works?

😂🔥

The quiet shift no one is tracking: A year ago, defending free speech on X got you called a chaos agent. Now the same journalists demanding moderation are running their scoops on the platform first, because that's where the audience went. The market voted. The narrative is catching up second.

@BasedMikeLee Cry me a river

Donald Trump is in fact the president of the United States

@KarmaKontrol @XFreeze Red staters are close to normal. Conservatives in general, my one daughter lives in a red 🍒 county in CALIFORNIA. I have 9 grandkids. Maybe just let the math play out...

Taiwan, Korea, Japan, China, Scandinavia, and every other country throwing money at the birth rate collapse have proven one thing: > The carrot approach does not work. Draconian measures are required. Women's "rights" must be curtailed. Their access to employment and education needs to be sharply limited. This is unlikely to happen in the West. So the only realistic hope left is that Elon or someone like him perfects artificial womb technology.

Taiwan is facing a full-scale population collapse In 2025, Taiwan recorded only 107,812 births a new all-time low, down nearly 20% from the previous year The Total Fertility Rate has now fallen to ~0.72, making Taiwan the country with the lowest birth rate in the world even lower than South Korea This marks the 10th consecutive year of declining births. Marriages have also dropped to record lows Taiwan’s government recently admitted their models were "too optimistic." At this rate, the country’s population could shrink dramatically in the coming decades This is not just a Taiwan problem. It’s a warning for every developed nation