robert p. baird
Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that. || THE NIMBUS, my debut novel, comes out on June 10. Pre-order it now! robertpbaird.com
- It gives me no pleasure to report that this is the same logic Dante used when endorsing a world emperor.
- Was heartbroken to hear from my 4th grader recently that his computer teacher had them use AI to “draw” superheroes based on a text description. He loves drawing superheroes, and fortunately didn’t seem fazed by the exercise, but I also know he’s keenly attuned to how things “ought” to look.…
- It’s insidious poison to teach kids that they can get “better” results by prompting genAI than by drawing something themselves, and I was frankly pretty shocked that the teacher didn’t see that.
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- It was really incredible.
- It's not often that I get to learn as many as two new words in a single day. This morning's reading bagged me four: indiscerptible, intenerating, farraginous, and cryptadia.
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- haha, no. those guys wouldn't touch those words with a sesquipedalian pole.
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- Yeah, a direct form. But didn't occur to me until I saw it in M-W, probably because it sounds so much like "ferrous."
- Kind of interesting to watch the conversation about the new Biden book and remember that the overwhelmingly dominant view on Bluesky after his disastrous debate last summer was that he was fine, actually, except that he was being unfairly hounded out of the race by the media.
- Can't wait to share the road with two-ton automated decision systems on wheels.
- This is insane. Republicans have inserted language into the budget reconciliation bill that would ban states from regulating AI in any capacity for 10 years. from @404media.co www.404media.co/republicans-...
- As good a time as any to remember that Trump is still desperate to match Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. I really think he takes it as a personal affront that it’s been denied to him for so long when it was given to Obama so readily.
- WSJ: Trump is whining bc he can't make any deals. Trump: I solved the Pakistan-India crisis!! India: No you didn't. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05...
- Very good (and very long) thread…
- Pope Leo's first sermon and, uh, his using the phrase "be ever more fully a city set upon a hill" and cf'ing it to Rev 21:10 instead of any of the others before saying "many baptized Christians" are "living in a state of practical atheism" is. Well. Shots fired! www.npr.org/2025/05/09/g...
- It’s a novel about people studying religion on Chicago’s South Side! The new pope studied religion on Chicago’s South Side! Against all odds, THE NIMBUS has an honest to goodness news peg! Now we just have to figure out how to smuggle a copy into the Vatican…
- Yes, I’m thinking what you’re thinking…
- My mom had eleven brothers and sisters. Now, on to 1232...
- Quite the day for anyone who studied religion in graduate school on the South Side of Chicago. Hyde Park is going to need another plaque to match the one marking Barack and Michelle’s first kiss outside the Baskin-Robbins.
- Play it again, Sam.
- David Tracy has died. A towering intellect, a gifted theologian, and a wonderful human being. He taught me a crucial (and difficult) lesson in grad school, which is that you shouldn’t damn a book because parts of it are weak or bad; the task is to figure out what parts you can take with you. RIP.
- Here’s the U. of C. obituary, with some apt appreciations from my friend Ryan: news.uchicago.edu/story/david-...
- Definitely the weirdest part of paying attention to the NBA after many years of not paying attention is the player podcasts. I can't get over how strange it is to hear Draymond or whoever talk about the game he just played, or (stranger still) the game he's about to play.
- The documentaries are part of that, too, though they're obviously not so up-to-date. In a lot of ways, it makes the game more interesting. But it's such a change from the tiny snippets of off-court life we got back when I cared about the NBA the first time around.
- I have an absurdly specific question and am hoping my savior is here somewhere. If you a) have written a book b) are left-handed Can you please tell me what kind of pen you used to sign books? I have to sign a bunch soon and am terrified of smearing but want something bolder than ballpoint. :(
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View full threadwait are you??
- Yes!
- JFC, you're *also* left-handed? Enough!
- Maybe that’s true for CS, but it was definitely not the case for mechanical engineering, when I studied it (gulp) 20+ yrs ago. Many/most of the problem sets in our textbooks also supplied the answers, but all the credit you got for assignments came from showing your work to reach those answers.
- “Showing your work” is clearly part of what humanities professors are now trying as a means to cope with LLMs. But they’re not being naive or obtuse in suggesting that there are some key differences between l, say, a thermodynamics problem and an essay.
- This is true! But I would also argue that the good reasons we value education as adults are not readily accessible to all 12/16/18 year olds. And (crucially) not only because they’re poorly explained! It’s hard to understand some things until you’ve seen some things in life.
- One thing you discover very quickly as a parent is that there’s real wisdom in Aristotle’s suggestion that the way to learn how to do something good for the right reasons is to start by learning to do something good for the wrong reasons.
- I have a 12 and 10 year old, so obviously that NYMag article scares the shit out of me. One problem the article raises, which is also the problem with smartphones and social media, and which I cannot yet think my way through, is that you cannot just choose to opt out of these technologies.…
- If other people have phones and social media, then you’re going to be on those phones and on that social media even if you aren’t personally posting. If other people are using ChatGPT in class, then they’re going to set the expectations and averages for the class that you will have to answer to.…
- I get that this is not an unprecedented dynamic. Being a person in the world means that you’re always already involved in a lot of things you can’t opt out of. But I guess it’s the fact that LLMs are hollowing out education directly that makes the situation feel so dire.
- I swear I must have read a dozen near-future stories and novels in the early 2000s in which some version of this line was deployed as caustic satire. Now it’s a straightforward sales pitch. nymag.com/intelligence...
- Timberwolves have hit rock bottom offensively. Their defense is keeping them closer than they ought to be. But this is ugly.
- *beautiful
- I’ve read cogent and even convincing essays warning about the dangers of government funding for art—E. Weinberger in SULFUR comes to mind—but the cuts we’re seeing now are going to be disastrous for a generation or more of American writing. (Possibly the worst part: that’s what they’re meant to be.)
- Dang. What a game.
- Couldn’t care less about the Knicks or the Celtics but this is an amazing game.
- Can’t wait for the Trump Admin to start reporting the psychological wages of whiteness as an official government statistic.
- And for another 13 or so hours, you can enter to win one of 75 free copies of THE NIMBUS from @henryholtbooks.bsky.social and Goodreads here: www.goodreads.com/book/show/21... 💙📚
- Of the flogging of books there shall be no end, so how about 25% off THE NIMBUS at Tertulia?! Use coupon code NIMBUS at checkout. 📚💙
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- Yes!!! So well deserved. Congrats.
- Sitting outside, on a fine spring day, repeating “Venezuelan men who narrowly avoided being imprisoned by Trump in El Salvador without trial (saved by the Supreme Court) spelled out an SOS to a @reuters.com camera drone observing the Bluebonnet ICE facility” to make sure I understand where we’re at.
- What an image! Venezuelan men who narrowly avoided being imprisoned by Trump in El Salvador without trial (saved by the Supreme Court) spelled out an SOS to a @reuters.com camera drone observing the Bluebonnet ICE facility. 11 days ago, buses to the airport were turned around at the last second.
- It is a remarkable image. What’s hard to hold in the mind is the enormity that brought it into being.
- This is astute, though I’d also say that candidate recruitment and funding is a mechanism by which electoral strategy can get baked into sincere ideology. “We need to moderate *policy* to win swing districts” easily becomes “we need moderate *candidates* to win swing districts”….
- Which is to say that for Dem leadership, the question before them is always: how do we win back the majority? And the answer is always: win swing districts/states with moderation. I don’t think they particularly care whether that moderation is sincere or tactical, but very often it *is* sincere.
- Skyline fortuity.
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- Got it, thanks!
- That press release looks like it concerns $800+ goods. Is there something else that talks about the de minimis loophole?
- How it ought to be done: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmrE...
- Posting only a screenshot and not the video because this is some sick sick shit. But dear lord is this some sick sick shit.
- Truth is, there have probably been worse popes. But he’d give them a run for their miters.
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- I'm gonna go ahead and guess that your zero stars is worth 2-2.5 to me. Call it the celiac premium.
