(no subject)
Nov. 30th, 2025 09:10 pmTitle: Dive In
Fandom: Castle
Pairing: Castle/Beckett
Rating: Explicit/Adult
Summary: They take their first nap in the Hamptons.
Notes: 1843 words.
Title: Dive In
Fandom: Castle
Pairing: Castle/Beckett
Rating: Explicit/Adult
Summary: They take their first nap in the Hamptons.
Notes: 1843 words.
Finally committed to buying myself some solid gold flatback earrings that I can keep in, and got the Maison Miru pavé lightning bar pair, which are almost identical to the Mateo bypass studs, except not diamonds, and about 20% of the price. (Christ, when I bookmarked those earrings, they were almost a hundred dollars cheaper.) I have managed to get them into my ears all by myself (look, I didn't get my ears pierced until I was 30, and push pin flat backs are even harder), and I am pleased to report that they are delicate and sparkly and I look forward to wearing them for the foreseeable future.
It's a shame that Saturday is my long cardio session at the gym, because damn does my hair look great on Sundays, when it is clean but the curl has fallen out juuuuust enough that the ringlets don't look fake. (My natural curl texture in the front is, genuinely, Shirley Temple curls. It is absurd.)
I have made cranberry-apricot cake and poppyseed cake and am restraining myself from making a miso-maple cake. The cod with artichokes and saffron broth did defeat the bag of artichokes that had been in the freezer since the dawn of time, but I actually think the broth isn't great — oddly bitter? — and won't be making it again. (I have leftovers and will eat them, but I won't be happy about it. Thank goodness I didn't waste the second cod fillet on this.) The pesto + white beans, on the other hand, were delicious and will become a new staple.
Sir Tom Stoppard's death is extremely upsetting and I am watching "Shakespeare in Love," "Enigma," and "Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead" and reading Arcadia, The Invention of Love, and The Coast of Utopia about it. And re-reading the cricket bat speech from The Real Thing.
From The Mandarin: Santow tips the bucket on AI slop
In a landmark speech delivered to the Sir Vincent Fairfax Oration in Sydney on Thursday, former human rights commissioner and now sought-after ethical adviser and academic Ed Santow delivered a serious wake-up call to assorted artificial intelligence cheer squad leaders and positivity meme flunkies.
Santow is positive about AI but also highly aware of its impact on societal functions, governance, and culture.
In a tightly woven speech that planted a deep stake in the necessity of the retention of knowledge and memory, Santow argued that “history matters on its own terms”, and its interpretation is also powering the next version of what we know as language models dip into the well.
“As AI disrupts our economy, politics, society and environment, I will make three arguments today:
AI might seem like it comes from the future, but it learns from the past, and so it also anchors us to that past.
Our history — or rather our choices about the versions of history that are recorded and remembered — influences how AI takes shape.
It is not enough that we expose AI systems to a ‘more accurate’ view of history; we must also draw the right lessons from history if we are to avoid repeating the mistakes and injustices of the past,” Santow said.
Exposure of AI to better feedstock is a difficult topic because, in large part, it assumes that the quality of inputs will self-correct problematic outputs. Yeah nah.
“Throughout history, we have built machines that are born like Venus — fully formed. When a car rolls off the production line, all it needs is a twist of a key or the press of a button, and it will work as intended. This is not true of AI,” Santow argued.
“AI systems start as ignorant as a newborn — perhaps even more so. A baby will search for its mother’s breast even before the baby can see. An AI system possesses none of a baby’s genetic instincts. Nothing can be assumed. All knowledge must be learned. The process of teaching an AI system — known as ‘machine learning’ — involves exposing the machine to our world.”
There’s a further problem, too, and it’s a systemic one. As internet pioneers like Vint Cerf noted, the great tech behemoth has trouble retaining both memory and history.
“The regime that should be in place [is] one in which old software is preserved; hardware can be emulated in the files so we can run old operating systems and old software so we can actually do something with the digital objects that have been captured and stored,” Cerf said in 2018.
“Think of all the papers we read now, especially academic papers that have URL references. Think about what happens 10, 20, 50 years from now when those don’t resolve anymore because the domain names were abandoned or someone forgot to pay the rent.”
That’s now happening.
But the warnings are at least a decade old.

