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Home » Open thread 9/22/2026

Open thread 9/22/2026

The New Neo Posted on by

Spring and Fall
– to a young child

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Comments

Open thread 9/22/2026 — 16 Comments

  4. neo:

    Delighted you think so. True to my internet handle, I was an English Lit major with a concentration in Irish literature, with a concentration in Yeats. Overall I regret having gone to college, but not the Irish Lit/Yeats part — well worth the experience and it has stood me in good stead in my writing career . . . and in my life entire, for that matter. I have on several occasions lingered long over the master’s grave in Drumcliff Churchyard in Sligo, and I have trekked to the top of Ben Bulben.

    “Cast a cold eye
    On life, on death.
    Horseman, pass by!”

    (Maybe someday we could do a poetry comment thread?)

  7. Trump has flummoxed and frustrated me at times, but this alone makes it all worthwhile. Anyone who thinks some cabal of “experts” is going to safely guide us through wherever AI is going is …well, I’m not supposed to use the word I’m thinking of.

  10. The latest post from DataRepublican is a prologue to a coming attraction.
    https://datarepublican.substack.com/p/i-mapped-25-gb-of-effective-altruism

    Why Effective Altruism should be banned from AI safety, policy-making, and governance.
    ….
    Tomorrow, I’m going to release my biggest DataRepublican project yet mapping out the Effective Altruism network. Tonight, I’m going to explain why this became my biggest project yet.

    On September 8, AI researcher Jacob Coxon came out with his hyper-viral X post – which received an astounding 170 million views and counting – announcing his resignation from Anthropic. In the post, he warned about the dangers of continuing AI research and called for a pause, going so far as to claim that “people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

    Almost immediately, the post was picked up and quoted by prominent Democratic figures, frontier AI corporate executives, and figures within the AI Safety movement. Many called for a slowdown or even a cessation to AI development, with some going as far to demand a multilateral solution.

    It did not take long for right-wing influencers within ? to question if this was all a campaign. Kevin Bass followed the money, and in doing so, pointed out the role of nonprofits such as METR. As more posters traced the money, a label kept popping up among the ringleaders of the calls to slow down AI development: Effective Altruism.

    What is Effective Altruism (EA), exactly? On its surface, it looks like a good philosophy: it advocates an objective, data-driven approach to charitable deeds and giving in order to maximize good.

    You might think – Effective Altruism (EA) just identifies how to help the most lives with the fewest resources. Isn’t that … common sense?

    But it includes a couple of important twists.

    RTWT

  11. Has anyone noticed?
    Been connecting the dots?

    “The Riots Never Came: Has The Protest Machine Stalled, Or Is It Regrouping”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/riots-never-came-has-protest-machine-stalled-or-it-regrouping

    Interesting graf:

    …The State Department has recently sanctioned the Cuban president, their intelligence service, ICAP, and ICAP’s president Fernando González. And since this has happened, the “calls for revolution” by the Singham network and the National Network on Cuba – over 60 organizations – have not stopped, but have gone unanswered. The actions against Cuba and ICAP appear to have disrupted the revolutionary pipeline….

  13. Poetry has never been among my more favored literary interests, being more of a non-fiction fan (biographies, history, Bible and commentaries) but I will say that GMH is undoubtedly among the best of our more contemporary poets. (I also like Frost and Kipling, but I’m afraid my interest in poetry is lacking.) But for what it’s worth, I must state that Trump’s speech to the UN was absolutely poetry to my ears. No rhyme nor meter, but the content was positively stirring!

  15. @ Steve > ” I must state that Trump’s speech to the UN was absolutely poetry to my ears. ”

    During Trump 45 (aka 1.0), someone gathered a selection of his rhetoric and published it as poetry — all it takes is a few strategic line breaks, according to the modern style.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33609015-bigly
    “Bigly: Donald Trump in Verse

    Rob Long
    3.78
    32 ratings4 reviews
    “I know words. I have the best words.” – Donald Trump

    He’s unpolished. He’s unfettered. He’s unconventional. But when President-Elect Donald Trump speaks, the world listens-and things happen. This hilarious collection of ultimate “Trumpisms” presents some of Trump’s most memorable lines from the campaign trail and early days in office as free verse to honor our new Commander-in-Chief for his wit, wisdom, and knack for verbal poetry.”

  16. Neo – your current feelings are loud and clear in the choice to post this.

    Hopkins and other were shunted aside by college professors who didn’t bother to hide their disdain for most metrical poetry.

    Interesting that he had a specific auditory concept and accented the text, but when Merchant actually set it, she ignored a lot of it.

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