Hot August Tabs
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, August 1, 2025
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14 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
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BlueSky.
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Re. Dershowitz:
First they came for the blinis…
Re, AI. Aside from the hack of adding -noai to search terms in Google, there’s this method for eliminating the AI overview altogether for Google search on Chrome.
I tried it on my home PC and it works.
I find using AI in search a bit useful when I’m looking for a particular data point, because it will present the thing I’m looking for rather than the link to where it can be found. Other than that, I prefer to do without AI summaries or overviews.
@Kathy: On the one hand, this is useful for people to know,
On the other hand, to quote something you will recognize: I fear that “The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.”
@Steven L. Taylor:
Absolutely. And problems like AI can’t be solved by individual action, anymore than pollution or climate change can. Besides, many of the pebbles would vote for the avalanche.
Still, as Descartes said, one can improve one’s home even if the town is falling to pieces.
I have said this before. Naming rights cost serious money. Carnegie gave a million dollars in 1891 when that was serious money to create Carnegie Hall. I am a part owner of the JFK center, i.e. an American citizen, and want serious financial consideration for a name change. Come on, Trump. Makes us a real offer, no chump change.
The defense is applications like one I linked to a few weeks ago, that block search engines from harvesting data unless they pay a toll in the form of a micro payment.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Well, that’s cheered me up no end. 🙁
The problem the current LLM “AI” models are going to face is if they destroy the economics of human produced content, with professional standards, what are they going to parasitize upon instead?
One prospect is leveraging political influence to compel publishers and academia to open their content to “AI” aggregation.
Given the evidenced icoherence and “information pollution” of the current LLM models, that is not an attractive prospect for professionals in those fields. To put it mildly.
It’s quite evident that getting anything coherent out of these models depends on massive amounts of “objectively true” human source material (eg in coding) or a very high level of rather hands-on editing/policing/censorship to prevent the idiot “AI” going off the rails.
Time for the benevolent dictatorship of the librarians, sez I!
(But then, I would, wouldn’t I? 🙂
Our rule will be harsh, yet fair. Well, fairish.)
@JohnSF:
You’ve got Luddite’s vote!
ETA and Luddite also supports the Oxford Period!
@JohnSF:
It depends. What’s your policy on overdue books?
@Kathy:
Our fines shall also be harsh, yet fair!
Actually, we’ve abandoned overdues fines, on the basis that they were more trouble then they were worth.
We just try to get them back at some point.
The shift to e-books for core course texts has had a major effect.
My colleagues in the Conservatoire Library are rather happy that massive orchestral sets can now be distributed by pdf files, so we don’t have to worry so much about them never all getting returned.
Also journals: we now have very few print journals at all, it’s now overwhelmingly online.
So no need to worry about issues going missing, etc.
(Or binding the wretched things.)
Which I think is in some respects regrettable: the serenditpity of actually browsing a print journal and discovering something by accident has almost vanished.
The focus tends to narrow with online research to what you are looking for, so you don’t so often come across what you are not.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Oddly enough, insistence on the “Oxford comma” is more an American, than British, thing.
I tend to favour it, being a pedantic bastard, but it’s certainly not required of student essays, or exam answers, these days.
(Also, I wonder if Cambridge ever objected to it on general principles? 😉 )
@JohnSF:
My reasons for supporting the OC include (a) I am a pendantic bastard, (b) a firm believer in swimming against the current, and (c) my being trained 60 years ago (on manual and electric typewriters) you always double space after a period, Mr. Luddite! (Sounds of paper being torn).
ETA
Funny how the training from The Sisters of the Immaculate Bruised Knuckles™ (SSD#1 division) stays with you, isn’t it ?
ETA 2
Besides a-c, it drives the younger paralegals and attorneys batty!
ETA 3
Oxford v Cambridge? You mean to tell me that there’s something the two of them don’t disagree on? Color me shocked.
@JohnSF:
I could support the idea on that basis alone.
@JohnSF:
100%
As much as I love the ability to do a lot of research from home, I miss the inevitable joy of finding something I wasn’t looking for in the stacks.