michael-dean-k/

On Monday 6/15, I'm hosting a workshop to kick off a reading group for classic essays: RSVP here.

Topic

conspiracy

4 pieces

Human-shaped sensemaking

Why essays see what algorithms can't (the themes in The Best Internet Essays 2025)

· 3122 words

I remember flipping through TIME’s 1999 Year in Review in elementary school, thinking some all-seeing committee had seen it all, reporting on the celebrities, wars, and gadgets that would one day make a history textbook. It wasn’t just a recap of the year, but a pivot into the millennium. It…

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Cannibal rumors

· 186 words

I conveyed the conspiracy to my wife and her mother that Ellen Degeneres & Co. actually ate Stanely Kubrick after they realized what he was trying to push through the full uncut version of Eyes Wide Shut. I guess the Epstein files are bringing back longstanding rumors on satanic and ritualistic cannibalism. The most disgusting thing I read—which I did not share with them, for not wanting to evoke imagery of infant harm, and so STOP HERE if you're sensitive to that— was that Melania and Trump were on a yacht with Epstein, and they witnessed cannibals dismember babies, take out their intestines, and eat feces from it, which is absolutely inhuman and vile on so many levels, and I can barely understand why such a thing would even occur. Maybe there’s an elite postures where Epstein was boastful about his depravity: “look what I can orchestrate.” Or maybe (and most likely) the emails are intentionally fake to falsely incriminate others down the line? Either way, I find it very strange that such visceral images are entering public consciousness and large masses of people believe it.

GPT-5 letdown

· 76 words

There is a striking clash between today's GPT-5 release—which seems like a router to switch between existing models, and SAMA’s meme from yesterday: the Death Star, a weapon. GPT-5 does not feel dangerous. It makes me wonder if they had to pull the real GPT-5 for security concerns. Obviously this is a conspiracy theory, but I’ve long thought that their consumer apps are just a side project compared to the geopolitical power their research might yield.