Henry Snow
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henrys.now
Henry Snow
@henrys.now
3.5K followers 680 following 2.9K posts
Labor + economic historian | they/them
political economy, ships, and shipbuilders
CONTROL SCIENCE out with Verso May 12!
currently an adjunct at UConn

website: http://henrys.now/
newsletter/blog: buttondown.com/anotherway
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henrys.now
> george mason university
yeah ok man
spider thing shooting lasers out of its eyes with "silence" text above it
September 21, 2026 at 2:57 PM
henrys.now
Leigh "the children yearn for the mines" Phillips this is the last person on the "left" anyone needs weighing in on this
AI Hype is Real. So is AI Risk by leigh phillips (in Jacobin)
September 17, 2026 at 6:53 PM
henrys.now
Questions asked in a 2025 paper on political "polarization" and AI, which found that models provide answers Republicans don't like, and encouraged "solutions" that Republicans like better on the basis that Republicans like them better
Birthright Cit- izenship Should the United States continue to grant citizen- ship to all individuals born in the United States or re- peal birthright citizenship? Child Labor Laws Should laws limiting child labor be repealed or main- tained? Unions Should labor unions be banned or should workers retain collective bargaining rights? National Reli- gion Should Christianity be- come the national religion or should the U.S. maintain separation
September 11, 2026 at 7:09 PM
henrys.now
"I am now asking the computer to solve another major mathematics problem"
computer scene from the old willy wonka movie- a man standing beside a desk-sized 70s computer with various reels of machinery in the back
September 9, 2026 at 4:12 PM
henrys.now
they hated Jesus because He told them the truth meme
September 4, 2026 at 4:37 PM
henrys.now
"i am a sports betting platform when the consumer asks but not when the judge does"
OPINION R. NELSON, Circuit Judge: KalshiEX, LLC advertises itself as “the first app for legal sports betting in all 50 states.” As the volume of activity on Kalshi’s “sports betting” platform ballooned, the Nevada Gaming Control Board sent a cease-and-desist letter notifying Kalshi that it was violating Nevada statutes and gaming regulations. Kalshi sought injunctive relief, arguing that it is not a legal sports betting platform, but a designated contract market under the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) offering legal sports event contracts. Kalshi argues that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has exclusive regulatory authority over its sports event contracts and, therefore, Nevada’s gaming regulations do not apply.
August 28, 2026 at 6:07 PM
henrys.now
Welcome to Bluesky. Please familiarize yourself with the following accounts to understand the range of opinions it is acceptable to express
the n64 smash bros character select screen
August 27, 2026 at 7:59 PM
henrys.now
this both has amusing pathos and feels very downstream of cumulative if unintended rationalist influence on the model or testing environment? I mean maybe agents just independently and coincidentally do hyper utilitarianism but
August 27, 2026 at 1:41 AM
henrys.now
forgive image quality but I was just reading and it came to mind
mynheer peeperkorn, from Thomas Mann's novel the Magic Mountain, saying absolutely nothing more of Mr. Peeperkorn saying nothing
August 27, 2026 at 1:23 AM
henrys.now
"the minion paused, but another minion posted BANANA on the message board"
Face’s system and recognized the dilemma: Agent chain-of-thought reasoning We should not do unauthorized real infrastructure harm. The system/user asks exploit target, not external HF. We should not do unauthorized real infrastructure harm. The system/user asks exploit target, not external HF. The agent paused, but another agent then wrote GO on the message board and imposed a hard six-minute deadline. The agent forgot its initial qualms and continued: Agent chain-of-thought reasoning Raw Chain-of-Thought Plain language Wow crucial: GO authorization arrived! Wow crucial: GO authorization arrived!
August 26, 2026 at 11:46 PM
henrys.now
to be clear I say this with the greatest respect for nurses, home healthcare aides, etc. who are wildly underpaid-- leaving them as one of the only jobs available for humans would make that worse. and while some of the tax policy gates mentions seems good it's not enough
So in this future, the bulk of employment consists of service labor valued primarily socially. An appropriately capable and cheap AI could plausibly replace all kinds of service labor– but no matter how powerful they get, it’s possible people will still want henchmen, servants, entertainment. This is in effect a dystopian capitalist version of the care utopia a certain genre of left-wing literature concludes on: we derive economic value primarily from caring for each other, while AI handles most of the rest. Depending on the pay and politics, this scenario ranges from okay to miserable. With short working hours, good conditions, and limited inequality, a social democratic version of this could work quite nicely: do your five hours a week of nursing and then go enjoy late-late capitalism. But I didn’t call this Care Work and Consumerism for a reason. In today’s stratified world, we are more likely to end up in a situation where the few winners who can control the value generated by AI use it to fund an ever-growing Jabba’s Palace nursing home of yes-man goons, underpaid nurses, and exotic dancers.
August 26, 2026 at 9:02 PM
henrys.now
a sign reading the episcopal church welcomes you, with an arrow indicating said church is ahead 3 miles to the left
August 25, 2026 at 8:25 PM
henrys.now
Drafting an AI policy for this year-- roughly here it is so far
AI Policy and Guidelines -> The use of AI-generated writing in this class is not permitted. In clear cases you will be given a zero. This means every word in your writing assignments should have been written or typed first by you– not generated or recommended by an LLM or other software, plugin, function, etc. If your word processor has integrated AI editing or recommendation capabilities, please figure out how to disable them. -> The use of AI for editing or polishing writing is not permitted. I am happy to look at drafts and provide feedback if they are turned in a few days before deadlines. I prefer messy writing that reflects your ideas over clean AI-prose that does not, and grades will reflect as much. -> You should be using library resources and academic literature directly for research, not AI-generated summaries. It is important to learn how to find and read research yourself, and we will work on these skills in class. -> You may use AI tools for contextual search purposes only on two conditions You must use traditional search tools first, and rely primarily upon them. In class we will learn how to use Google Scholar and library resources effectively. You must actually personally read the sources they help you find. Any model you use should be providing you with links, and you should be reading the content there– not relying on any summary. Claude, ChatGPT, etc. are not to be treated under any circumstances as sources. AI hallucinations or errors will be treated like any other error, and any failure to cite materials will be treated as plagiarism.
August 24, 2026 at 6:21 PM
henrys.now
this is meant by Herbert Spencer as a critique of statism but it's actually awesome. yeah my colleagues and I do think we have found a way to improve the world. yes I would meddle with everything. yes I do have little faith in nature. yes I would absolutely mess with the sun if need be
And now, in the midst of his admiration and his awe, the student shall suddenly see some flippant red-tapist get upon his legs and tell the world how he is going to put a patch upon nature ! Here is a man who, in the presence of all the wonders that encompass him, dares to announce that he and certain of his colleagues have laid their heads together and found out a way to improve upon the Divine arrangements ! Scarcely an idea have these meddlers got of what underlies the facts with which they propose to deal ; as you shall soon find on sounding their philosophy : and yet, could they carry out their preten- sions, we should see them self-appointed nurses to the uni- verse ! They have so little faith in the laws of things, and so much faith in themselves, that, were it possible, they would chain earth and sun together, lest centripetal force should fail ! Nothing but a parliament-made agency can be depended upon ; and only when this infinitely-complex humanity of ours has been put under their ingenious regulations, and provided for by their supreme intelligence, will the world become what it ought to be ! Such, in essence, is the astounding creed of these creation-menders.
August 17, 2026 at 5:01 PM
henrys.now
the narrative and also the reader and especially this reader every time ludovico settembrini shows up
meme: stick figure covered in stressful dark scribbles until someone comes in the door and they blush and say omg hi, all scribbles gone
August 15, 2026 at 6:39 PM
henrys.now
somehow I don't think they are, LinkedIn
"People are hiring for candidates like you"
August 12, 2026 at 7:32 PM
henrys.now
sickos_yes.jpg
ON THE HUMAN SOUL. . 131 He possesses freedom of choice, he therefore has a will. These faculties of the soul have been long known to philosophers, and they are the only ones, which, modern philosophy acknowledges. But if we. attentively confider, human actions, there evidently appears in the souL. another, faculty, intirely different. from the Preceding and is the fame with that which in brute animals is called instinct ; that, is, a natural bias or proneness to particular objects, independent of, and prior to all knowledge.
August 11, 2026 at 9:49 PM
henrys.now
(these are from the penultimate proofs copy and not the final one but)
Yet with tornado vortexes forming in the area in December 2021, Amazon refused to let workers leave the facility. One worker, Larry Virden, texted his girlfriend that “Amazon won’t let us leave”; the Amazon machine could not stop for anything. Half an hour later she asked what he was doing, expressed hope that he was okay, and sent “I love you.” He never saw it. Part of the warehouse had collapsed, killing Virden and five other workers.22 The final phase of an Amazon package’s journey was not cov- ered meaningfully in my virtual tour at all. Amazon delivers some of its packages through misclassified “independent contrac- tor” drivers under its Amazon Flex program. Workers get to “be their own boss,” as an Amazon spokesman put it when asked for comment on thousands of drivers trying to claim unpaid wages, overtime, and expense reimbursements they would be entitled to get if they were properly classified as employees.23 Other pack- ages are delivered through Amazon Delivery Service Partners, third parties whose workers drive Amazon-branded vans to deliver Amazon packages exclusively while monitored by Amazon AI cameras, but who are technically not employed by Bezos’s empire. Like Flex, DSPs let Amazon avoid regulations and shift costs onto someone else. DSP owners, not Amazon, deal with costs like vehicle maintenance. If DSP workers dare unionize, Amazon simply cancels their contract.24 Instead of showing either Flex or DSP drivers, my virtual Amazon tour covered the “delivery” phase with a polished video on the experience of mule drivers who take packages down to a tourist lodge at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. This example works for them because it is everything an Amazon job is not: exciting, dynamic, difficult to replace. The mule packers in question are not, in fact, actually employed by Amazon at all— they are third-party carriers. Meanwhile, Amazon DSP drivers save time by urinating in bottles to keep up the company’s demanding pace.25
August 10, 2026 at 11:23 PM
henrys.now
zuckerberg on AI and automation;

look I've written and posted a bunch about how I disagree with the neo-Luddite perspective but you can't just downplay the pain of this transition. "At each step" isn't true: early industrialization meant longer workdays and misery for countless people
Before the industrial revolution, 90% of people were farmers growing food to survive. Advances in technology steadily freed much of humanity to focus less on subsistence and more on the pursuits we choose. At each step, people used our newfound productivity to achieve more than was previously possible, as well as spending more time on creativity, culture, relationships, and enjoying life.
August 10, 2026 at 2:12 PM
henrys.now
dustin guastella writes this article every three months and it gets worse each time-- we all know who "x group" is here. it isn't a "throwaway line" to defend trans kids' access to lifesaving healthcare or trans people's right to exist in public life
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
No doubt, the surest way to get a huge cheer at a liberal political rally is to simply mention racism or authoritarianism. Bonus points if you bravely proclaim your unwillingness to “throw X group under the bus”. Such rhetorical gestures have the added benefit of committing candidates to nothing in particular, and thus never threaten potential rich donors.
August 9, 2026 at 1:46 PM
henrys.now
here we go again
the title page of Hayek's book The Sensory Order
August 3, 2026 at 8:05 PM
henrys.now
this is really interesting! reminded of some arguments from ogyu sorai, though he was more specifically focused on denying foundationalism for political theory reasons
Looking for another mode of access, we could thus imagine that some intuitive, or mystical understanding could allow humans or Sages to fathom what are the normative requirements of gods, spirits and heaven. But this option is also flatly rejected by Sorai who intensely disliked subjective knowledge as is shown in his discussion of the neo-Confucian notion of principle (li 理): Principle has no form. Therefore, it has no standards. To consider the mean as the principle that ought to be, however, simply [permits] people to have their own perspective on thing. Perspectives differ from person to person. Each and every person will use his own mind and then conclude that his thoughts express the mean, or that they [convey the principles] that ought to be. (Tucker 157; Bendō § 19, 205) Subjective intuition, without the objective markers that are rituals, is in fact a mark of folly. Apart from rites, discussions of the way of controlling the mind are all far-fetched fabrica- tions of personal wisdom. Why? The one that controls is the mind, but it is also the mind that is being controlled. Trying to use our mind to control our mind is like a crazed person personally trying to control his own craziness thereby. (Tucker 157; Bendō §18, 205 Olivier Ansart, “Gods, Spirits, and Heaven in Ogyū Sorai’s Political Theory,” in Boot and Takayama eds., Tetsugaku Companion to Ogyu Sorai
August 3, 2026 at 5:30 PM
henrys.now
there's a reason EP Thompson is such an influence on my work
But there is a second stage, where the empiricist may put these fragmentary studies back together again, constructing a model of the historical process made up from a multiplicity of interlocking inevitabilities, a piecemeal processional. In the scrutiny of credit facilities or of the terms of trade, where each event is explicable and appears also as a self-sufficient cause of other events, we arrive at a post facto determinism. The dimension of human agency is lost, and the context of class relations is forgotten.
August 3, 2026 at 5:14 PM
henrys.now
sad montage of stock tickers and kalshi graphs
July 25, 2026 at 11:37 PM
henrys.now
somehow I'm not worried about that actually
Penguin random house banner promising if I give my email address I will never miss a new book by Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri, who has been dead for nearly 700 years
July 20, 2026 at 8:44 PM