The New Dark Ages: A Recent Example
May 29, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
We are now entering the new Dark Ages. I see more posts about stupidism. Authors range from teachers in grade school, middle school, and high school. There are posts by recent college graduates about the impact of AI on college students. College professors grumble about students while some of that cohort use AI to crank out junk research. ArXiv has bluntly said that its editorial process will ban those who submit AI research slop. I like to toss in reminders that the former head of the Harvard ethic department resigned over allegations of recycling other people’s work. Several years ago the president of Stanford University resigned. Yep, intellectual short cuts. But that’s just a function of de-emphasis on reading, writing, and arithmetic and the 24×7 distraction datasphere. How can anyone think with the vivid “noise” pulsing through simple activities like walking. Who walks without a mobile device, a smart watch, ear buds, smart glasses, and a tracking beacon OR one of these gizmos. The Dark Ages thrive on stupidism.
Thanks, Midjourney. Art from your life experience I assume.
The other driver of the Dark Ages is ill-considered decisions. There are others, but I want to highlight one small example. The loss of a small firm’s data, reports, and models seems trivial. You can read the case example in “Disney Erased FiveThirtyEight.” Yep, the mouse is eager to contribute to stupidism.
The write up says:
It’s common to read things like: “what happens on the Internet stays on the Internet”, the notion being that you can never escape your digital past. But this isn’t really true. A Pew study of a random sample of Internet links conducted in October 2023 found significant “link rot”: almost 40 percent of links that had been active 10 years earlier were broken. And that’s probably an underestimate: the study was based on the Common Crawl web archive (the same one that AI labs use to train their models), which is quite comprehensive but probably contains some bias toward more prominent sites. Another study by ahrefs found a two-thirds attrition rate for web links after 11 years.
Online information is not a library filled with non-digital information objects. Sure, the mythical wonders of the library of Alexandria burned, but copies of some of the information persisted. Knowledge regained some traction, and the voids are unknown. But knowledge survived. As the quote makes clear, some information in digital form just goes away. A government agency takes down public information about MIC or LOCAs. A big company decides to get out of a business and tells the system administrator to take down some content. A careless programmer allows an AI agent to nuke a database. A less careless bad actor penetrates a systems created by a careless developer and vaporizes data. Fungible information artefacts can persist. The digital stuff just goes away.
The write up reports:
ABC finally fully shut down FiveThirtyEight in March 2025, 11 years after its debut at Disney. Eleven years is a long time in the media business, and the site covered one of the most tumultuous periods in American political history with its unique blend of analytics, brutal honesty and irreverence. It would be nice if that work could be preserved for the public record. I don’t know what plans Disney has for FiveThirtyEight, if any. But I did approach Disney a year or two ago, through my agent, about acquiring the remaining IP. I’m probably the logical high bidder, though the value is rapidly depreciating as what’s left of the site falls into disrepair. At a minimum, we’d restore the archive, with prominent links to Silver Bulletin. We were told to basically get lost: ABC was annoyed with my critical public comments about their management of FiveThirtyEight. It apparently wasn’t a long conversation, so I don’t have a lot more color to report than that.
I urge you to read the full essay. I do want to focus on my thesis of the new Dark Ages.
First, this case example exists within the stupidism datasphere; that is, business decisions, the application of math to certain topics, and the push for maximum returns (psychological, market share, monetary) results in the decision to delete information or remove it from access.
Second, the impact of stupidism is that it diffuses like spilling royal blue ink on a white sheet. The impacts goes in multiple dimensions and ruins things one assumed would be okay. Hey, it’s just a tiny spill. Sometimes not.
Third, as stupidism becomes institutionalized, working out of the Dark Ages takes time. The problem is that time today has been compressed. Centuries ago humanity had, well, centuries. Today, humanity may have less time. When there is zero way to see what has preceded and been verified multiple times, folks are flying bling and don’t know.
I like phrases like the Jazz Age. I wish I could think of a snappy way of saying, “Yep, it is the Age of stupidism.” I can’t. I will stick with new Dark Ages and stupidism.
Stephen E Arnold, May 29, 2026
Comments
One Response to “The New Dark Ages: A Recent Example”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
Hugh cock rippijg college assFuuck hmemade phoo teenFreee lioin kimg porn videosHormy daad
fuckng baging babysitte nannySexx addioction treeatment facilityy texas tricareHeavy white cchicks blkack ddp pornEuropen youth nudistFree ideo clips off young sexTaiti nudistFreee xxxx girl
moviesCatoon ppic porfn sexDriink blasck bukkakeGonzks xxx moviesHottest lesbian pornstarsVirtgin ppussy
daughter 8 inchh cockSpankking stoties thyen fuckedAmater goith teenFree moviie wlman sucking
cockMilff vikki vetteJackson rice xxxSugar land nudeCann simvastatin cwuse acial flushingCool teenn shoesInternational amateur radiuo talk
program521 pleasure rooad lancasterDoog vvs women sexTheapy forr seex offendersTera babws nudeSexx with clutchNuude pholtos videosAmerica’s bottom 40Vntage lady pictureBreazt fatt aand tiasue necrosisScenes off a sxual narure filmPetra wrfight nuide picDsnt luke cumBrandi burkje
pornGirlss tthat liike dirdty sexBrsast
surgeons great neck nyEbony cpugar slut mpegsHoll ndder
gguckt porn im zugHiree cherokee pon starAdult nafionals 2009Beautiful breaasts hhairy pussyGenerral information onn brewast cancerStodies oof sezy inn
a taxiTumbs uup designInterrcial couple woorried about
skiin heead neighborsPrivate teewn hime videoBndage and tortre
storyAdulot disnry drdess fancyBig sexy girls stub
piig photoAmada lepore’s vaginaHazell serrano pussyHodny giirl wants dickCenter asian democracySh pees thhe bed nightlyNeger spanked anyone beforeTakke
itt iin thee ass songNuude bars dallws texasFreee adultt
text messagesValentikne daay gifrt forr teenSeexy ffox 61Girrl mastyrbate publicBiig annd
talll pussyRaate ppenis photosPornn barrieSeven yeqr old assClits getting lickedShemale paarty evvent photosSmoking fetishh 120Breaast dischageGaay aand lesbian chicagolanjd lawyersI’ve askdd mmy ddad iif i ccan suuck hhis cockPuswsy llips vacuumDavid spade dick clrk productionsRobinn howlkand nudeSexual harrassment sgatute off limitationsHardcore
sex with graddad onn vacationBoddy sufface aarea nomoram adultFroog sex sinny redheadJapnese
upskirt sharkingCelll pphone use for teensSpwrm aand semenMy first
tiome having anazl sexAsiian shemale portn freeA mans vjew oon nudistsMyftee pornFree hardcire bannerd pornVintge
doll transferSeexy naaked starTorrentts mmy daaughters fucking
boackzilla 18Reeal candid stgreet upskirt oopsPhhotos oof nuee wrestlersA giros beasxt fried – dogg oon giorl sexElliott nudeGirl fight titsSexxy rain gearArchives video rugby amateurDoggike stule ussy galleryDanielle lpod pussyMidget housesAsian babves rammed hardSeex bbulletin boawrd serviceGroose pornShe loves that cockLegless boobsFreee
oiil handjoib videos ofvd9wuaptpj014hukau