@inthehands@hachyderm.ioThe idea I’m rambling toward: when we talk about our current lack of “shared reality,” let’s not think of that as a fixed set of walls; let’s think of it as a •process that’s failing•.
It’s not that we can expect people to never be mistaken; it’s that we want time to counteract our mistakenness. It’s not just about walls (ideological “space”); it’s about time.
4/
@benb@osintua.eu'A 10' — Trump gushes about meeting with Putin after Alaska summit fails to win ceasefire in Ukraine: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/16/a-trump-gushes-about-meeting.html
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSurvey: 50% of US adults are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life; 53% say AI will harm people's ability to think creatively (Pew Research Center)
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/…
@servelan@newsie.socialSounds like code, if you ask me (I think she's his handler)
Melania Trump pens letter to Putin raising concerns about children
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5456305-melania-trump-pens-letter-to-putin-raising-concerns-about-children/
@hex@kolektiva.socialActually, I do want to come back to masculinity under patriarchy and whiteness under white supremacy because I think it's worth talking more about. The "man" under patriarchy (at least "Western" patriarchy) is represented as power and independence. The man needs nothing and thus owes nothing to anyone. The man controls and is not controlled, which is intimately related to independence as dependence can make someone vulnerable to control. The image of "man" projects power and invulnerability. At the same time "man" is a bumbling fool who can't be held accountable for his inability to control his sexual urges. He must be fed and cared for, as though another child. His worst behaviors must be dismissed with phrases such as "boys will be boys" and "locker room talk." The absurdity of the concept of human "independence" is impossible to understate.
Even if you go all Ted Kaczynski, you have still been raised and taught. This is, perhaps, why it is so much more useful to think in terms of obligations than rights. Rights can be claimed and protected with violence alone, but obligations reveal the true interdependence that sustains us. A "man" may assert his rights. Yet, on some level, we all know that the "man" of patriarchy acts as a child who is not mature enough to recognize his obligations.
White violence and white fragility reflect the same dichotomy. "The master race" somehow always needs brown folks to make all their shit and do all the reproductive labor for them. For those who fully embrace whiteness, the "safe space" is a joke. DEI shows weakness. Yet, when presented with an honest history adults become children who are incapable of differentiating between criticism and simple facts. *They* become the ones who must be kept safe. The expectation to be responsible for one's own words and actions, one of the very core definitions of being an adult, is far too much to expect. Their guilt needs room, needs tending, needs caring. White people cannot simply "grow the fuck up" or, as they may say of slavery, "fucking get over it."
And again, interestingly, it is *rights* that they reference: "Mah Freeze PEACH!" I find it hard to distinguish between such and my own child's assertion that anything she doesn't like is "not fair!" No, these assertions fail to recognize the fundamental fabric of adult society: the obligations we hold to each other.
At the intersection of all privilege is the sovereign, the ultimate god-man-baby. Again, referencing the essay (https://hexmhell.writeas.com/observations-on-domination-and-trump)
> This is where it becomes important to consider the ideology behind the sovereign ritual. Participation within the sovereign ritual denotes to the participants elements of the sovereign. That is, all agents of the sovereign are, essentially, micro dictators. By carrying out the will of the sovereign, these micro dictators can, by extension, act outside of the law.
While law enforcement is the ultimate representative of sovereign violence, privileges allow a gradated approximation of the sovereign. Those who are "closer" in privilege to the sovereign may, for example, be permitted to carry out violence against those who are father away. The gradation of privilege turns the whole society, except for the least privileged, into a cult that protects the privilege system on behalf of the most privileged. (And immediately Malcolm X pops to mind as having already talked about part of this relationship in 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo.)
@axbom@axbom.meThe Wire creator David Simon was recently interviewed on NPR by Ari Shapiro. Partly about "AI". A short exchange from that is being shared all over - and it's good, but the full segment about "AI" is even more rewarding I think.
The one that is being widely shared from the transcript is only the first of these three images.
Content warning: Reference to self-harm.
Full transcript: h…
@tezoatlipoca@mas.toWithout reading the article I can only think this is for the new #RobertRodriquez / #DannyTrejo movie:
`Dogchete`
"Its not about what do you did son, its about who you did it to. Machete was a man of focus, commitment, sheer will. I once saw him kill three vampires in a bar with a stapler.…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialTL;DR: what if instead of denying the harms of fascism, we denied its suppressive threats of punishment
Many of us have really sharpened our denial skills since the advent of the ongoing pandemic (perhaps you even hesitated at the word "ongoing" there and thought "maybe I won't read this one, it seems like it'll be tiresome"). I don't say this as a preface to a fiery condemnation or a plea to "sanity" or a bunch of evidence of how bad things are, because I too have honed my denial skills in these recent years, and I feel like talking about that development.
Denial comes in many forms, including strategic information avoidance ("I don't have time to look that up right now", "I keep forgetting to look into that", "well this author made a tiny mistake, so I'll click away and read something else", "I'm so tired of hearing about this, let me scroll farther", etc.) strategic dismissal ("look, there's a bit of uncertainty here, I should ignore this", "this doesn't line up perfectly with my anecdotal experience, it must be completely wrong", etc.) and strategic forgetting ("I don't remember what that one study said exactly; it was painful to think about", "I forgot exactly what my friend was saying when we got into that argument", etc.). It's in fact a kind of skill that you can get better at, along with the complementary skill of compartmentalization. It can of course be incredibly harmful, and a huge genre of fables exists precisely to highlight its harms, but it also has some short-term psychological benefits, chiefly in the form of muting anxiety. This is not an endorsement of denial (the harms can be catastrophic), but I want to acknowledge that there *are* short-term benefits. Via compartmentalization, it's even possible to be honest with ourselves about some of our own denials without giving them up immediately.
But as I said earlier, I'm not here to talk you out of your denials. Instead, given that we are so good at denial now, I'm here to ask you to be strategic about it. In particular, we live in a world awash with propaganda/advertising that serves both political and commercial ends. Why not use some of our denial skills to counteract that?
For example, I know quite a few people in complete denial of our current political situation, but those who aren't (including myself) often express consternation about just how many people in the country are supporting literal fascism. Of course, logically that appearance of widespread support is going to be partly a lie, given how much our public media is beholden to the fascists or outright in their side. Finding better facts on the true level of support is hard, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about the "fact" that Trump has widespread popular support?
To give another example: advertisers constantly barrage us with messages about our bodies and weight, trying to keep us insecure (and thus in the mood to spend money to "fix" the problem). For sure cutting through that bullshit by reading about body positivity etc. is a better solution, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about there being anything wrong with your body?
This kind of intentional denial certainly has its own risks (our bodies do actually need regular maintenance, for example, so complete denial on that front is risky) but there's definitely a whole lot of misinformation out there that it would be better to ignore. To the extent such denial expands to a more general denial of underlying problems, this idea of intentional denial is probably just bad. But I sure wish that in a world where people (including myself) routinely deny significant widespread dangers like COVID-19's long-term risks or the ongoing harms of escalating fascism, they'd at least also deny some of the propaganda keeping them unhappy and passive. Instead of being in denial about US-run concentration camps, why not be in denial that the state will be able to punish you for resisting them?
@davidaugust@mastodon.online4 out of 5 US troops surveyed understand duty to disobey illegal orders:
"'…moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring,'…National Guard member…deployed to quell public unrest over immigration arrests in Los Angeles told The New York Times. 'This is not what…military of our country was designed to do, at all.'"
"…when some troops disobey – even indirectly – others can more easily find…courage to do the same."
@hippyjo@c.imToday I learned about Kukur Tihar, a festival day in Nepal where dogs are honored for their loyalty and honesty.
This year it falls on October 19 - I don't have a dog, but I think it is the kind of festival we should adopt.
Be kind to all dogs, and especially on Kukur Tihar!
https://himalayan-masters.co…
@joe@toot.worksI think that we're about to get some rain in Madison
@paulomalley@c.imI think my most-sent email of all time is "Does Tuesday at 2 pm work for you?" followed closely by "No worries, how about Wednesday?" 🫠
But what if you could just... not do that anymore?
There’s a scheduling tool hiding in plain sight in Gmail that ends all this nonsense. You offer times, they click once, and poof—it's in the calendar.
I filmed a quick guide on it because this needs to be public knowledge:
@kurtsh@mastodon.socialI don't think the Fourth Estate has a backbone any more. Protoplasmic cowards, the major outlets like CBS/Paramount are more concerned about clicks & lawsuits than providing the spotlight on government they're supposed to serve these days.
Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/di…
@kerstinsailer@sciences.socialThis is a lovely review of my latest Buildings&Cities paper on clinic layouts at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Trust
https://sustainableconstructionreview.com/2025/06/12/moorfields-eye-hospital-redesigns-pa…
@DrPlanktonguy@ecoevo.socialWeekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
When most people think about algal blooms, they envision bright green water. However, blooms can also be dark red, invoking the colour of blood. A number of groups can generate red pigment blooms including flagellates like red-tide species Karenia brevis and Heterosigma akashiwo, Alexandrium spp. (Shellfish poisoning), the green algae Botryococcus braunii turning…
@mikeymikey@hachyderm.ioSo final verdict on #sourdough #rye #bread experiment:
I think we nailed the mixture, it rose and came out properly - but it's what I was concerned about: the strong flavors of the sourdough component don't necessarily enhance the rye
If anything, they fight a bit in the flavor - I can taste the sourdough and as a result the rye seems less intense as a rye (and I _love_ a strong rye)
@inthehands@hachyderm.io“We’re constantly told, you know, we need to see peaceful protests. Well, here’s a peaceful protest … We projected a piece of journalism on to a wall and now people have been arrested for malicious communications. I think that, frankly, says a lot more about the policing of Trump’s visit than it does about what we did.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/17/four-arrested-after-image-of-trump-and-epstein-projected-onto-windsor-castle-ahead-of-presidents-visit
@davej@dice.campI installed v26 of #Apple's OS updates about 24h ago, and it's not been catastrophic. A couple of very minor UI glitches, perhaps, that’ll be fixed in the next patch.
I think of Windows users out there, stoically enduring what's basically a malware distribution platform, and by comparison, I find Apple users’ months-long orgy of entitled diaper-shitting—LONG preceding this major releas…
@grumpybozo@toad.socialWOW. That's a whole lot of Binary Bulbs...
I wonder if they’ll liquidate it? Can they during a shutdown? Can they in any reasonable amount of time without triggering a crash?
Will Trump & Bessent GAF about what's legal, cash it out, and use it to buy the hottest teens out of ICE custody for a "Remembering Jeffery" party in the new "Ballroom?"
WHY WOULD I EVEN THINK THAT????
@egallager@social.treehouse.systemsAll of the following are appropriate protest attire:
- Yellow, as per request from No Kings organizers
- Nudity, as per Portland Naked Bike Ride
- Frog suits and other inflatables, as per Portland again
- Formal attire, as per 60s Civil Rights Movement
- Black Bloc attire, for those concerned about privacy
- Military attire, e.g. camo fatigues etc.
- Clerical attire, for those ordained
- Anything else you can think of that fits the theme
Wear what makes you feel comfortable!
@Erikmitk@mastodon.gamedev.placeMy wife and son started talking about what they think are differences of something being a game, a sport or a competition. They just said their opinions and started doing something else.
I, on the other hand, immediately started to build up a taxonomy and rules for their classification and they left me hanging with an uncomplete system! HOW CAN THEY STOP WITH SO MANY OPEN ENDS???!!
@UP8@mastodon.social🦾 AI tool targets RNA structures to unravel secrets of the dark genome
#rna
@fanf@mendeddrum.orgfrom my link log —
Zig's lovely syntax.
https://matklad.github.io/2025/08/09/zigs-lovely-syntax.html
saved 2025-08-10
@jos@social.linux.pizzaBy giving back to the tools you love, you support the community. It can be hard to realize or even think about, but it is true.
https://josvelasco.com/why-would-you-return-something-to-wordpress/
@mlawton@mstdn.socialThe EPL and CL starts were filled with difficult matches:
Bournemouth (4th)
Newcastle away (10th)
Arsenal (2nd --ALWAYS 2nd 😇)
Burnley away (17th)
Atleti
If #LFC have managed to eke out late wins while struggling to gel, what will it look like when they get sorted? It's tantalizing to think about.
@bobmueller@mastodon.world"The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you."
"I don't think it's meant for man to know everything at once."
"The blues are three L's - living , loving and hopefully, laughing."
"God made Blues right after he made woman."
-B. B. King (born today in 1925)
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.ioMeeting at Google: “We haven’t fucked up the Web enough with our AMP shit, but the AI shit is doing pretty good work. What about if we also fuck up RSS?”
What an utterly shit company. I hope the AI hype destroys them.
(Just in case you think they're "just asking questions", they already opened a removal tracker before listening to replies: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/435623334)
https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11523
@gwire@mastodon.socialI think it's fine to document the many AI fuckups, but there's so often a tone of, essentially, "But what if this search results page was read by someone with shallow literacy?"
(I sometimes mentally append the line from the heroin-using Chris Morris character: "But what about other people less stable, less educated, less middle-class than me?")
@pdmckone@mstdn.caChapter One: Another Day, Another Problem
Perry Hotter had finished his Spoonerism Class for the day and was passing through the Great Hall toward the dormitories when he heard a familiar shout:
"Perry Hotter! What have you done with the bat guano?"
It was Eudora McChronicle, the journalism and creative writing professor. She was, as always, somewhat miffed about something.
"The guano? I added it to the cow dung."
"Bullshit!," she cried, "that wasn't cow dung; that was the final draft of a senior student's thesis!"
"Well," Perry stammered, "you can see how I could make the mistake."
"Indeed I do," the professor said, instantly calming. "Now, how do you propose to remedy the situation?"
"I suppose," Perry guessed, "I could use it as a prompt in Hogwash's Large Language Model. I think the output would be bullshit again."
"Precisely, Mr. Hotter. Now, off you go, and mind what you do with the next pile of crap you come across."
#HogwashChronicles
@benb@osintua.euTrump says he and Putin ‘largely agreed’ on land swaps, security guarantees for Ukraine: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/16/trump-says-he-and-putin.html
@yaxu@post.lurk.orgI think the term "post-AI" has so much power, are people using it much yet?
Just like postmodernism didn't reject everything about modernism, post-AI needn't throw out all AI.. But look beyond its dodgy ideals and hype to focus on other stuff.
We don't need AI institutes, AI art funding calls, AI panels etc, when AI is an over-hyped, all-encompassing, meaningless marketing term. We don't need to give airtime to nihilistic accelerationist weirdos behind AI…
@ErikJonker@mastodon.social
@raiders@darktundra.xyz
@cdarwin@c.imOrwell was literally a peniless immigrant in France.
It's all there in "Down and Out in Paris and London".
It taught him empathy for the poor, who he wrote about as human beings.
This is the antidote to the xenophobia that was being pedalled in London today.
https://
@muz4now@mastodon.world @kurtsh@mastodon.social"District Pizza delivers don't they?"
"I think so."
...kid looks wide-eyed at Toby as a small smile appears on Toby's face.
(Chef's kiss... I loved everything about this episode of The West Wing.)
▶️ Voting age debated in S06e17 of The West Wing
https://…
@tante@tldr.nettime.orgSo I think I'll need to read up on it a bit. I understand that "Passkeys" try to do something similar as SSH pubkeys.
But do you know a good technical explainer of what's going on and how it works?
(Yes, I could search myself but I am looking for recommendations of articles you have read that you found helpful and clear.)
EDIT: https://
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialSurvey of six countries, including the US, finds 6% use AI to get news, and 12% feel comfortable with fully AI-generated news vs. 62% with human-made news (Reuters Institute)
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.a
@cellfourteen@social.petertoushkov.euSo, what did you think about the second season of #Peacemaker? The last episode was a bumpy amusement ride, but overall great, touching, funny, sciencefictiony in a good way?
#TV #SiFi
@jredlund@social.linux.pizza
@cheryanne@aus.socialDinner with daughter and her family cancelled due to work constraints (she had a big project to finish) which rather suited us too. We'll reschedule as soon as daughter and I have enough energy to synchronise our schedules.
Husband and I had potluck finger food for dinner - chicken tender strips and potato gems which we dunked into bowls of homemade chilli sauce. Neither of us wanted to think about cooking real food tonight. It was pretty tasty actually.
I'm testing out…
@gedankenstuecke@scholar.social«Be honest, your bespoke web app effectively has contributions from hundreds of people, most of whom you do not know. We like to think our software as beautiful oil paintings but it is probably more correct to think of them as messy collages consisting mainly of pictures clipped from magazines.»
A good post about why you should "Host the Damn Thing Yourself" when it comes to dependencies, which is something I've done over the past year or so for many of my pages!
https://sheep.horse/2025/10/it_is_a_war_out_there_-_take_control_of_your_suppl.html
@inthehands@hachyderm.ioWe •also• want forces that pull toward convergence and consesnsus: forces that challenge ideas with contrary evidence — and forces that challenge vile ideas with “ugh, wtf, go away you Nazi turd.”
Yes, the latter too! Filtering is a crucial part of free society. You can’t have a useful discussion about climate change or global trade or time zones if you always set aside plenty of time for dingbats who insist the Earth is flat.
It’s not that people don’t think that! It’s that the idea deserves no more time and attention than that necessary to refute it — because it’s absurd and harmful and counterproductive.
3/
@ruth_mottram@fediscience.orgHeh yes. Pretty much this.
"Much more will be written about proposals to build massive undersea walls to hold up Antarctic ice sheets, drill bore holes in Greenland to pump out lubricating meltwater, or scatter glass beads over glaciers. As informed and erudite I'm sure this will be, I don't think it will be as effective as simply yelling "What the hell do you think you are doing?!”"
@… reads through the lines and interprets our recent #Geoengineering paper into plain english in this entertaining blogpost
https://www.technosphere.earth/new-report-concludes-polar-geoengineering-is-dangerous/
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries B, Episode 02 - Shadow
BLAKE: Think, Gan, think what they've got: men, material, information. Think what we could do with a fraction of the resources they control.
GAN: No, YOU think, Blake. Think what it is they control. Everything dirty, degrading, and cruel on just about every colonized world.
https://blake.torpid…
@catsalad@infosec.exchangePlease, think of the hungry kitties. Cats are known to wither away if feeding time is missed by less than 5 minutes. 😭
@michabbb@social.vivaldi.net
@danyork@mastodon.socialIntrigued to read about ideas for starter packs for Mastodon similar to what BlueSky did last year. I *do* think it's a good way to help people find others with similar interests to follow - https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/10/our-ideas-about-packs/
@jamie@boothcomputing.socialI think this is a good place to talk about some stuff...
#Wordle
Wordle 1 578 4/6
🟨🟩🟨⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛🟩
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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
@curiouscat@fosstodon.orgIt is interesting to me how different we humans can be in ways that we often don't think about.
"When M.X. thought of people or objects, he did not see them. And yet his visual memories were intact. M.X. could answer factual questions such as whether former Prime Minister Tony Blair has light-colored eyes. (He does.) M.X. could even solve problems that required mentally rotating shapes, even though he could not see them."
@benb@osintua.euThe Ukrainian voices left out of Trump-Putin meeting: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/15/the-ukrainian-voices-left-out.html
@karlauerbach@sfba.socialAccording to the following article "The D.C.-based think tank estimates the tariffs will bring in an estimated $1.3 trillion of net new revenue through the end of Trump’s current term "
OK let's run some numbers... And remember, the R party wants to cut households in with a one time $500 check. Remember that number $500.
US population is very roughly 300,000,000, about 3x10**8
$1.3 trillion is 1.3x10**12
So if the R's want to repay us for the tarif…
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.comObvious you’re all welcome to speak of whatever you want, and I just have to get better at muting the right words.
But boy, I’ve heard infinitely more about the dead douche since his death, than I ever did when he was alive. And I can’t help but think that’s a shame. He doesn’t deserve a space in my consciousness, and I don’t believe he deserves one in yours either.
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialObesity & diet
I wouldn't normally share a positive story about the new diet drugs, because I've seen someone get obsessed with them who was at a perfectly acceptable weight *by majority standards* (surprise: every weight is in fact perfectly acceptable by *objective* standards, because every "weight-associated" health risk is its own danger that should be assessed *in individuals*). I think two almost-contradictory things:
1. In a society shuddering under the burden of metastasized fatmisia, there's a very real danger in promoting the new diet drugs because lots of people who really don't need them will be psychologically bullied into using them and suffer from the cost and/or side effects.
2. For many individuals under the assault of our society's fatmisia, "just ignore it" is not a sufficient response, and also for specific people for whom decreasing their weight can address *specific* health risks/conditions that they *want* to address that way, these drugs can be a useful tool.
I know @… to be a trustworthy & considerate person, so I think it's responsible to share this:
#Fat #Diet #Obesity
@deprogrammaticaipsum@mas.to"If George Boole is the 19th century’s AI scientist, then his contemporary machine learning engineers were Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace. The Difference Engine, which would be frequently cited as the first example of a (mechanical) programmable digital computer if it had been built at the time, was explicitly designed to _replace_ rather than _augment_ human thought. Just as modern software engineering managers use Jira to avoid thinking about process engineering."
@scott@carfree.city
@chrysn@chaos.social
@nelson@tech.lgbtAfter 28 or so years I closed my Amazon Associates account. I long since stopped making any money from it. In the early days I wrote a plugin for a blog engine that used my associates ID by default. I think I made about $200 that way, plus another $50 with my own links. I was never very ambitious about it.
@kctipton@mas.to @thomasfuchs@hachyderm.ioFun fact, ~64% of Americans use assistive technology to overcome a disability.
And that's just one single type of disability: issues with eyesight.
I think about this a lot when people deny they could ever been disabled, especially when claiming that illnesses and disabilities are "people's own fault".
@jorgecandeias@mastodon.socialGiven the fact that a good chunk of the Palestinian prisioners became prisioners simply for the crime of existing, I think it's high time to speak about the Israeli hostages and the Palestinian hostages.
@joergi@chaos.socialI'm doing this week at work a talk about the Fediverse (a beginner talk)...
what do you think, should be definitely in?
(of course I will show all the major plattforms (e.g. @…, @…, @…
@shriramk@mastodon.socialTurkish Airlines: please install the "Companion Entertainment" app.
Me: searches for it.
Me: quietly closes the lid and backs away. My lord, Turkish, did you even think about what that term might mean?
@pre@boing.worldVoting in the UK Green party elections is half over. Too late to join the party and vote, and sounds like Zack is very likely to win.
Which is good. I voted for him.
I think the job-share rule is important and that any job should be possible to share between workers. But in the case of the "leader", which is literally the face of the party, having two faces is difficult in the public hive mind. Even with a united front, it's litterally two faced.
But mostly my vote was just for Zack, and would have likely voted for him in a job-share too.
He's very personable and seems to know how to talk to the public and express not just environmental issues but other green issues like inequality and war and how your enemy is not a boat of refugees but the concentration of power in the hands of maniacs both political and corporate.
I confess I gave up trying to read anything about the candidates and cast a vote about half way down all the other jobs being elected. I'm just adding noise. I dunno who any of these people are or even what the job entails most of the time and there's too many all at once. Should stagger them weekly or something.
Anyway here's Zack on Mark Steel's sweary podcast being brilliant on the issues and how to explain them better than I can.
I love Mark Steel too. Miss the sketches things it used to have in the newish revised entirely-an-interview format.
🤞
In two parts
#podcast #green #uk #ZackPolanski #listening
@yaya@jorts.horsei have to calm down and stop thinking about football so I can sleep
by which I mean I need to put on a football video essay or football facts asmr bc trying to Not Think About Football will simply not work because AUTISM
@hex@kolektiva.socialEvery year, as I come up on my birthday, I start to think a lot more about the shooting. The intensity was a bit lower after Trump left office the first time, but October of 2024 was pretty intense.
As I've been processing through all this, I thought about the cards and letters folks sent to me in the hospital. I have a box of them in the US and sometimes I think about asking for them to be sent here. But things have a tenancy to get lost in the mail on the way here.
There's a little bit of a trapped and incomplete feeling, that Trump's chaos makes feel even more intense.
So I decided to write a bit about that box, and the hospital, and death.
CW: body horror, death
#Writing
@ErikJonker@mastodon.socialRegardless what you think about Newsom, he was on 🔥, trashing Trump .
#newsom
@rmdes@mstdn.socialCheck out this compelling rebuttal of Soteria International's claims regarding the OKC case. Get informed about the facts and perspectives presented in the article by visiting: https://blog.rmendes.net/2024/12/15/rebuttal-of-soteria.html
@fanf@mendeddrum.orgfrom my link log —
We need to seriously think about what to do with C modules.
https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2025/08/we-need-to-seriously-think-about-what.html
saved 2025-08-31
@ruario@vivaldi.netI'm about to go on a work trip for @…. I think I have all the essentials read for packing.
Though maybe I should also bring my laptop and a change of underwear (if I have space of course). 🤔
@NFL@darktundra.xyzMicah Parsons didn't think he 'would be traded,' but he's ready to prove Packers 'were right about me' https://www.nfl.com/news/micah-parsons-didn-t-think-he-would-be-traded-but-he-s-ready-to-prove-p…
@luana@wetdry.worldAt this point y’all are really looking like those twitter pseudocelebrities that every other week posted about how “we need to block everyone who follows X person!!!!!!!”
People can make mistakes, misunderstandings can happen and people can improve. You can’t just start a witch hunt at everyone that doesn’t agree to something you did. If you can’t accept this I’m sorry but maybe you should go touch some grass.
I’m sorry but I’m just so fucking angry at this point, I’ve seen SO MANY people doing this shit around here since I joined fedi and when I think we’re finally free of this bullshit it happens again. At this point I don’t even know which instance to recommend if someone asks me, every single instance I used to recommend has already been on some drama and will give a bad experience for people first joining. I’ve seen people leaving due to this shit and I’ve seen people not wanting to join because they know shit like this happens.
@qurlyjoe@mstdn.socialA “made for TV” series about everything that’s going down these days. How long until it drops? Is it a comedy? Straight drama? Or fan favorite, dramedy? Who plays who?
I know it’s considered uncool around here to even think it, but what would an AI come up with for a script?
Speaking of which, has anybody thought to ask any of these AIs what their prediction is for how it’s all gonna play out? Anybody know what they’re saying?
@compfu@mograph.socialThis post made me think about another post in my timeline. It mentioned the "liberation of Germany from the Nazi regime" 80 years ago. This is how it's usually worded in 🇩🇪 up to this day but that phrasing sucks. It makes it sound like Germans were poor oppressed people and who just needed a bit of outside help to topple their government. Words matter though. Germans weren't being liberated. Germany was getting defeated (fortunately).
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialDay 19 (a bit late): Alice Oseman
As I said I've got 14 authors to fit into two days. Probably just going to extend to 30? But Oseman gets this spot as an absolute legend of queer fiction in both novel & graphic novel form, and an excellent example of the many truths queer writers have to share with non-queer people that can make everyone's lives better. Her writing is very kind, despite in many instances dealing with some dark stuff.
I started out on Heartstopper, which is just so lovely and fun to read, and then made my way through several of her novels. The one I'll highlight here which I think it's her greatest triumph is "Loveless", which is semi-autobiographical and was at least my first (but no longer only) experience with the "platonic romance" sub-genre. It not only helped me work through some crufty internal doubts about aro/ace identities that I'd never really examined, but in the process helped improve my understanding of friendship, period. Heck, it's probably a nice novel for anyone questioning any sort of identity or dealing with loneliness, and it's just super-enjoyable as a story regardless of the philosophical value.
To cheat a bit more here on my author count, I recently read "Dear Wendy" by Ann Zhao, which shouts out "Loveless" and offers a more expository exploration of aro/ace identities, but "Loveless" is a book with more heart and better writing overall, including the neat plotting and great pacing. I think there are also parallels with Becky Albertalli's work, though I think I like Oseman slightly more. Certainly both excel at writing queer romance (and romance-adjacent) stuff with happy endings (#OwnVoices wins again with all three authors).
In any case, Oseman is excellent and if you're not up for reading a novel, Heartstopper is a graphic novel series that's easy to jump into and very kind to its adorable main characters.
I think I've now decided to continue to 30, which is a relief, so I'm tagging this (and the next post that rounds out 20) two ways.
#20AuthorsNoMen
#30AuthorsNoMen
@ErikJonker@mastodon.socialPeople should seriously think about a possible coming marketcrash. The popping of the financial AI bubble will hurt the "normal" economy. Financial markets could take a very big hit. But how do you protect yourself against this coming disaster, as an owner of limited stocks, savings etc.? Going for gold, government bonds, other things? 🤔
#AI
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.comI think it's interesting how we seem to talk more about who the composer is of classical music, and the performers seem almost incidental, while we do the exact opposite with modern music.
@cdarwin@c.imThe past few months of hand-coding MastoGizmos and RSS Gizmos have both given me more knowledge and more comfort around working with CSS,
so last week I decided to see if I could create a single-page application that would allow the user to both find information about a person listed on Wikipedia and create informed, context-added searches of external sources like Google News, Bing, and Chronicling America.
And y’all, I think I made something pretty nice.
I haven’t put all m…
@hex@kolektiva.socialAnd when I'm talking about understanding the drives to violence, I did write about something similar recently.
https://write.as/hexmhell/algorithmic-violence
The drives behind this and the shooting last week are pretty radically different, but there's some overlap. People like Kirk are part a huge political machine slowly crushing people all over the world. There's a hopeless rage that would naturally drive even the most calm person to the edge of violence. You can't look at the world honestly and be OK. We want to do something. We want to react. But everything we do is silenced or must rmain silent. So it's easy to understand why someone might choose violence. Very different situation, but everyone is subject to the same national and international influences.
I don't promote violence, not because I disagree with it but because I think it's expensive. It takes time to plan, especially for those trying to get away. Guns are not cheap, nor are bullets, nor is the range time you need to get somewhat good under pressure. It's not cheap for the person doing it, and it's not cheap for the community that has to clean up. The community will face police repression (which, if we're honest, was gonna come anyway). The community will have to post bail, will lose a person for a while, will need to support the family, will go to hearings, will write reports, will do interviews.
Sun Tzu said that deploying one soldier to the front takes 7 in the field. Logistics are a huge invisible cost. Some of that time and energy could be reused. It's never bad to be armed and able to defend if needed. But a lot of that energy and time would be better spent planning a community pantry, a tool library, organizing a union, etc. We are living in a disaster, and we need to invest in thriving through the next crumble.
Kirk is replacable. They're almost all replacable, because they don't really care about human life. We do, so none of us are. It's not really a worth while trade, IMHO.
@tante@tldr.nettime.orgI do not think that Meta's Metaverse failed cause the devs weren't efficient enough. It's conceptually flawed and underbaked at best, without vision and direction. A toy Mark no longer cares too much about.
(And even getting 5% more efficiency out of LLMs is a stretch, studies show improvement of 1 or 2% at best - because you have to spend a lot of time to clean up the generated mess, especially if you are building frameworks and foundational technologies)
@servelan@newsie.socialNon-religious chaplains are changing how we understand spiritual care
https://religionnews.com/2025/08/08/there-is-a-growing-need-for-non-religious-chaplains-as-they-step-into-this-work-theyre-changing-how-we-think-about-chaplaincy/
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialJust finished "Once For Yes" by Allie Millington. A phenomenal book dealing with tragedy, gentrification, grief, and community, it's preposterously poetic, but unfortunately has a twisted neoliberal politics lurking behind the scenes that makes me hesitate to recommend it. I enjoyed it greatly, especially the tightly choreographed prose, and the plot was both very well-paced and touching. It's fun for adults but also written for kids, which makes it all the more frustrating that despite touching on gentrification, it valorizes someone who is objectively a pretty scummy landlord, and fails to interrogate land ownership or rent in the slightest. It wouldn't be nearly the same story without the way things wrap up, but that doesn't make me comfortable with the larger messages it's sending, even if I think its messaging about grief is good, including for children.
#AmReading
@UP8@mastodon.socialI went to Stewart Park this Sunday after the Ithaca 5 and 10 to make a 3-d scan of the lighthouse on the jetty which didn't work out but I did see these kayakers goings under this bridge.
#photo #photography #ithaca
@raiders@darktundra.xyzCompetitive fires rage for Mahomes https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2025/aug/14/competitive-fires-rage-for-mahomes/
@fanf@mendeddrum.orgfrom my link log —
A polyhedron without Rupert’s property.
https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2025/08/28/a-polyhedron-without-ruperts-property/
saved 2025-08-28
@kurtsh@mastodon.socialCharlie Kirk’s ex-employee talks about what it's like working for Turning Point & having a crisis of faith when you actually think for yourself, challenge the groupthink you're indoctrinated into & confront the worldview of the lemmings of your community.
https://youtube.com/shorts/nP5kp88R3ss
@ErikJonker@mastodon.social @tiotasram@kolektiva.socialShould we teach vibe coding? Here's why not.
Should AI coding be taught in undergrad CS education?
1/2
I teach undergraduate computer science labs, including for intro and more-advanced core courses. I don't publish (non-negligible) scholarly work in the area, but I've got years of craft expertise in course design, and I do follow the academic literature to some degree. In other words, In not the world's leading expert, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about course design, and consider myself competent at it, with plenty of direct experience in what knowledge & skills I can expect from students as they move through the curriculum.
I'm also strongly against most uses of what's called "AI" these days (specifically, generative deep neutral networks as supplied by our current cadre of techbro). There are a surprising number of completely orthogonal reasons to oppose the use of these systems, and a very limited number of reasonable exceptions (overcoming accessibility barriers is an example). On the grounds of environmental and digital-commons-pollution costs alone, using specifically the largest/newest models is unethical in most cases.
But as any good teacher should, I constantly question these evaluations, because I worry about the impact on my students should I eschew teaching relevant tech for bad reasons (and even for his reasons). I also want to make my reasoning clear to students, who should absolutely question me on this. That inspired me to ask a simple question: ignoring for one moment the ethical objections (which we shouldn't, of course; they're very stark), at what level in the CS major could I expect to teach a course about programming with AI assistance, and expect students to succeed at a more technically demanding final project than a course at the same level where students were banned from using AI? In other words, at what level would I expect students to actually benefit from AI coding "assistance?"
To be clear, I'm assuming that students aren't using AI in other aspects of coursework: the topic of using AI to "help you study" is a separate one (TL;DR it's gross value is not negative, but it's mostly not worth the harm to your metacognitive abilities, which AI-induced changes to the digital commons are making more important than ever).
So what's my answer to this question?
If I'm being incredibly optimistic, senior year. Slightly less optimistic, second year of a masters program. Realistic? Maybe never.
The interesting bit for you-the-reader is: why is this my answer? (Especially given that students would probably self-report significant gains at lower levels.) To start with, [this paper where experienced developers thought that AI assistance sped up their work on real tasks when in fact it slowed it down] (https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089) is informative. There are a lot of differences in task between experienced devs solving real bugs and students working on a class project, but it's important to understand that we shouldn't have a baseline expectation that AI coding "assistants" will speed things up in the best of circumstances, and we shouldn't trust self-reports of productivity (or the AI hype machine in general).
Now we might imagine that coding assistants will be better at helping with a student project than at helping with fixing bugs in open-source software, since it's a much easier task. For many programming assignments that have a fixed answer, we know that many AI assistants can just spit out a solution based on prompting them with the problem description (there's another elephant in the room here to do with learning outcomes regardless of project success, but we'll ignore this over too, my focus here is on project complexity reach, not learning outcomes). My question is about more open-ended projects, not assignments with an expected answer. Here's a second study (by one of my colleagues) about novices using AI assistance for programming tasks. It showcases how difficult it is to use AI tools well, and some of these stumbling blocks that novices in particular face.
But what about intermediate students? Might there be some level where the AI is helpful because the task is still relatively simple and the students are good enough to handle it? The problem with this is that as task complexity increases, so does the likelihood of the AI generating (or copying) code that uses more complex constructs which a student doesn't understand. Let's say I have second year students writing interactive websites with JavaScript. Without a lot of care that those students don't know how to deploy, the AI is likely to suggest code that depends on several different frameworks, from React to JQuery, without actually setting up or including those frameworks, and of course three students would be way out of their depth trying to do that. This is a general problem: each programming class carefully limits the specific code frameworks and constructs it expects students to know based on the material it covers. There is no feasible way to limit an AI assistant to a fixed set of constructs or frameworks, using current designs. There are alternate designs where this would be possible (like AI search through adaptation from a controlled library of snippets) but those would be entirely different tools.
So what happens on a sizeable class project where the AI has dropped in buggy code, especially if it uses code constructs the students don't understand? Best case, they understand that they don't understand and re-prompt, or ask for help from an instructor or TA quickly who helps them get rid of the stuff they don't understand and re-prompt or manually add stuff they do. Average case: they waste several hours and/or sweep the bugs partly under the rug, resulting in a project with significant defects. Students in their second and even third years of a CS major still have a lot to learn about debugging, and usually have significant gaps in their knowledge of even their most comfortable programming language. I do think regardless of AI we as teachers need to get better at teaching debugging skills, but the knowledge gaps are inevitable because there's just too much to know. In Python, for example, the LLM is going to spit out yields, async functions, try/finally, maybe even something like a while/else, or with recent training data, the walrus operator. I can't expect even a fraction of 3rd year students who have worked with Python since their first year to know about all these things, and based on how students approach projects where they have studied all the relevant constructs but have forgotten some, I'm not optimistic seeing these things will magically become learning opportunities. Student projects are better off working with a limited subset of full programming languages that the students have actually learned, and using AI coding assistants as currently designed makes this impossible. Beyond that, even when the "assistant" just introduces bugs using syntax the students understand, even through their 4th year many students struggle to understand the operation of moderately complex code they've written themselves, let alone written by someone else. Having access to an AI that will confidently offer incorrect explanations for bugs will make this worse.
To be sure a small minority of students will be able to overcome these problems, but that minority is the group that has a good grasp of the fundamentals and has broadened their knowledge through self-study, which earlier AI-reliant classes would make less likely to happen. In any case, I care about the average student, since we already have plenty of stuff about our institutions that makes life easier for a favored few while being worse for the average student (note that our construction of that favored few as the "good" students is a large part of this problem).
To summarize: because AI assistants introduce excess code complexity and difficult-to-debug bugs, they'll slow down rather than speed up project progress for the average student on moderately complex projects. On a fixed deadline, they'll result in worse projects, or necessitate less ambitious project scoping to ensure adequate completion, and I expect this remains broadly true through 4-6 years of study in most programs (don't take this as an endorsement of AI "assistants" for masters students; we've ignored a lot of other problems along the way).
There's a related problem: solving open-ended project assignments well ultimately depends on deeply understanding the problem, and AI "assistants" allow students to put a lot of code in their file without spending much time thinking about the problem or building an understanding of it. This is awful for learning outcomes, but also bad for project success. Getting students to see the value of thinking deeply about a problem is a thorny pedagogical puzzle at the best of times, and allowing the use of AI "assistants" makes the problem much much worse. This is another area I hope to see (or even drive) pedagogical improvement in, for what it's worth.
1/2
@kurtsh@mastodon.socialCharlie Kirk’s ex-employee talks about what it's like working for Turning Point & having a crisis of faith when you actually think for yourself, challenge the groupthink you're indoctrinated into & confront the worldview of the lemmings of your community.
@hex@kolektiva.socialI've had a few of these thoughts stuck in my craw all day because I watched this liberal historian talk about the Galleanisti.
https://youtube.com/shorts/93yHEn8BYE4
Basically, she says that "of course the government had the right to target them." Then she goes on to talk about how it became an excuse to carry out a bunch of attacks on other marginalized people. Now, the Galleanisti had been bombing the houses of politicians and such. I get where she's coming from saying that one of their targets "was in the right" to try to catch them. But there's some context she's not talking about at all.
These were Italian anarchists, so they were not white and they were part of an already marginalized political group. Basically all of Europe and the US was trying to wipe out anarchists at the time. Meanwhile, the sitting president at the time showed the first movie in the White House. That movie was KKK propaganda, in which he was favorably quoted. The US was pretty solidly white supremacist in the 1920's.
Like... A major hidden whole premise of the game "Bioshock: Infinite" is that if you went back to the US in the 1920's, and you had magic powers, you would absolutely use them to kill as many cops as possible and try to destroy society. There's a lot of other stuff in there, I don't want to get distracted, but "fuck those racists," specifically referring to the US in the 1920's, was a major part of a major game.
Those Italian anarchists were also stone cutters. They carved grave stones. But the dust from that can kill you, much like black lung for coal miners. So they were dying from unsafe working conditions, regularly raising money to support dying coworkers and then carving gravestones for those same coworkers.
Now, I personally think insurrectionary anarchism is a dead end. I disagree with it as a strategy. We've seen it fail, and it failed there. But of course it makes sense that they wanted to blow up the government.
...And that's the correct way to structure that. When you say, "of course they were in the right" you're making a very clear political statement. You could easily say, "the cops in Vichy France had every right to hunt down the French Resistance." You would technically be correct, I guess. But it would really say something about your politics if you justified the actions of Nazi collaborators over those fighting against the Nazis.
And you may say, "oh, but the Nazis didn't have justification for anything. They invaded a sovereign nation, so their government wasn't legitimate anyway."
To which I would reply, "have you considered a history book about the US?"
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.com@… I recently overheard a client raving about how great LLMs are for getting rid of the most annoying part of their work: All those pesky tests they need to write after the code is done.
I did quietly think to myself, if I was going to use LLMs to generate code, I’d do the exact opposite: Hand write the tests, then generate the code that makes them pass.
@UP8@mastodon.socialWorkmen finishing up the fourth floor of the new CS building -- posting a sixth photo today because, unlike those daffodils, these won't be interesting when the building is no longer new
#photo #photography
@hex@kolektiva.social*Today*, anarchists are legally barred from US naturalization.
(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 405(b) of this Act, no person shall hereafter be naturalized as a citizen of the United States—
(1) who advocates or teaches, or who is a member of or affiliated with any organization that advocates or teaches, opposition to all organized government; or
Think about that. Think about that for a minute. Today, in 2025, the US bars anarchists from becoming naturalized citizens.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1424
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialFinished "Lobizona" by Romina Garber. I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. It's a powerful depiction of the fear of living as an undocumented child/teen and it has interesting things to say about rejection, belonging, and the choice between seeking to be recognized for who you are and wanting you blend in enough to be accepted as normal. However, it's also an explicit homage to Harry Potter, and while it doesn't include antisemitic tropes or glorify slavery or even have any anti-trans sentiments I can detect, to me the magical school setup felt forced and I thought it would have been a better book had it not tried to fit that mould. Also, it would have been a super interesting situation to explore trans issues, and while it's definitely fine for it not to do that, the author's praise of Rowling's work has me wondering...
There's a sequel that I think could in theory be amazing, but given the execution of the first book, I think I'll wait a bit before checking it out. By putting her main character in opposition to both ICE in the human world and the magical authorities in the other world, Garber explicitly sets the stage for a revolution standing between her protagonist and any kind of lasting peace. But I'm not confident she's capable of writing that story without relying on some kind of supernatural deus ex machina, which would be disappointing to me, since "a better world if only possible through divine intervention" is an inherently regressive message.
Overall, #OwnVoices fantasy centering an undocumented immigrant is an excellent thing, and I've certainly got a lot of privilege that surely influences my criticism. However, #OwnVoices stuff has a range of levels of craft and political stances, and it can be excellent for some reasons and mediocre for others.
On that point, if anyone reading this has suggestions for fiction books grappling with borders and the carceral state, Is be happy to hear them.
#AmReading
@hex@kolektiva.social#Neurotypicals: You need to be bored. Next time you go to the gym, don't listen to that podcast. Just try to be in your head for a while. Maybe you'll think about the meaning of life, and maybe you'll figure it out.
My #ADHD brain trying to unload the dishwasher without a podcast: Hey, Remember the intro to Clifford the Big Red Dog? That song? You sort of paid attention to it for a few seconds while our kid was watching it. I remember those 5 seconds. Let's sing that intro... just that first part though. We're just going to keep doing that, over and over, hundreds of times in a row.
Neurotypicals: People don't like to be bored. People will give themselves electric shocks to not be bored. They don't want to think about the big questions
My ADHD brain, still trying to unload the dishwasher without a podcast: ♪ Welcome to Birdwell island, Sun and the sky is smilin' ♪ ♪ ♪ Welcome to Birdwell island, Sun and the sky is smilin' ♪ ♪ ♪ Welcome to Birdwell island, Sun and the sky is smilin' ♪ ♪ ♪ Welcome to Birdwell island, Sun and the sky is smilin' ♪ ♪ ♪ Welcome to Birdwell island, Sun and the sky is smilin' ♪ ♪ ♪ Welcome to Birdwell island, Sun and the sky is smilin' ♪ ♪ ♪ Welcome to Birdwell island, Sun and the sky is smilin' ♪ ♪ ♪ Welcome to Birdwell island, Sun and the sky is smilin' ♪ ♪ ♪ Welcome to Birdwell island, Sun and the sky is smilin' ♪ ♪ ♪ Welcome to Birdwell island, Sun and the sky is smilin' ♪ ♪
https://youtu.be/orQKfIXMiA8
@ErikJonker@mastodon.social @tiotasram@kolektiva.socialJust read this post by @… on an optimistic AGI future, and while it had some interesting and worthwhile ideas, it's also in my opinion dangerously misguided, and plays into the current AGI hype in a harmful way.
https://social.coop/@eloquence/114940607434005478
My criticisms include:
- Current LLM technology has many layers, but the biggest most capable models are all tied to corporate datacenters and require inordinate amounts of every and water use to run. Trying to use these tools to bring about a post-scarcity economy will burn up the planet. We urgently need more-capable but also vastly more efficient AI technologies if we want to use AI for a post-scarcity economy, and we are *not* nearly on the verge of this despite what the big companies pushing LLMs want us to think.
- I can see that permacommons.org claims a small level of expenses on AI equates to low climate impact. However, given current deep subsidies on place by the big companies to attract users, that isn't a great assumption. The fact that their FAQ dodges the question about which AI systems they use isn't a great look.
- These systems are not free in the same way that Wikipedia or open-source software is. To run your own model you need a data harvesting & cleaning operation that costs millions of dollars minimum, and then you need millions of dollars worth of storage & compute to train & host the models. Right now, big corporations are trying to compete for market share by heavily subsidizing these things, but it you go along with that, you become dependent on them, and you'll be screwed when they jack up the price to a profitable level later. I'd love to see open dataset initiatives SBD the like, and there are some of these things, but not enough yet, and many of the initiatives focus on one problem while ignoring others (fine for research but not the basis for a society yet).
- Between the environmental impacts, the horrible labor conditions and undercompensation of data workers who filter the big datasets, and the impacts of both AI scrapers and AI commons pollution, the developers of the most popular & effective LLMs have a lot of answer for. This project only really mentions environmental impacts, which makes me think that they're not serious about ethics, which in turn makes me distrustful of the whole enterprise.
- Their language also ends up encouraging AI use broadly while totally ignoring several entire classes of harm, so they're effectively contributing to AI hype, especially with such casual talk of AGI and robotics as if embodied AGI were just around the corner. To be clear about this point: we are several breakthroughs away from AGI under the most optimistic assumptions, and giving the impression that those will happen soon plays directly into the hands of the Sam Altmans of the world who are trying to make money off the impression of impending huge advances in AI capabilities. Adding to the AI hype is irresponsible.
- I've got a more philosophical criticism that I'll post about separately.
I do think that the idea of using AI & other software tools, possibly along with robotics and funded by many local cooperatives, in order to make businesses obsolete before they can do the same to all workers, is a good one. Get your local library to buy a knitting machine alongside their 3D printer.
Lately I've felt too busy criticizing AI to really sit down and think about what I do want the future to look like, even though I'm a big proponent of positive visions for the future as a force multiplier for criticism, and this article is inspiring to me in that regard, even if the specific project doesn't seem like a good one.
@hex@kolektiva.socialAs a survivor of the type of stochastic terrorism that people like Charlie Kirk carry out, and also a survivor of gun violence, I've had a bit to think about.
I still understand the anger, the frustration, that leads someone to snap. I'll always have compassion, if also paired with some frustration, for the person who shot me and her husband. That makes sense to me. I refused to testify because it never made sense to punish a tool who acted out of ignorance.
What doesn't make as much sense to me are the upper class grifters, the stochastic terrorists, who turn a profit of off setting people like that up to kill. I always wanted to see people like that, people who were clearly profiting off of bringing evil into the world, held accountable.
But the way I always want to see them held accountable, is by being forced to live in a world where everyone is free. Charlie Kirk got out easy, and that is a bit sad. He should have had to suffer through our victory. He should have had to watch the fall of Western Civilization, the collapse of all the things he held dear, all the things he tried to uphold. I wish that he had lived long enough to understand the suffering he inflicted on the world. He should have lived long enough to have to do real work, to have to figure out how to feed himself, house himself, in a world that has no market for the hate that he brings.
As much as I had rather that he starved, I would never shed a tear for the opening of a new public urinal.
Rest in piss. Charlie Kirk.
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialDay 20: bell hooks.
Despite having decided to continue to 30, number 20 feels important, and hooks gets the spot in part because I haven't yet included a non-fiction feminist author, which feels like an obvious thing to include on such a list. The one category of author being bumped out of the first 20 here is anime writers, but I'll follow up with one of them, along with more academics and mangaka who I've been itching to include.
In any case, hooks is absolutely legendary as a feminist writer for good reason, and as a teacher I've especially appreciated her writing on pedagogy like "Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom" and "Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom". These have challenged me to teach at a higher level, and while I'm not sure I've completely succeeded, they're important to me. They also pair well with Paolo Friere's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", but hooks always seems to be focused on very practical advice and it's incredibly direct in her writing, even though her advice isn't always straightforward to implement. In fact, that's one of the things I value about her writing: when the truth is complicated or the real work is messy interpersonal relationships that need to be negotiated with each student, she's not afraid to say so and give good advice for navigating those waters instead of trying to dispense simple-seeming platitudes or formulas for success that paper over the deeper issues. Her concern has always been truth, rather than simplicity or audience comfort and the popularity it might seem to entail, which I think is part of why her legacy endures so well.
#20AuthorsNoMen
#30AuthorsNoMen
@tiotasram@kolektiva.socialA big problem with the idea of AGI
TL;DR: I'll welcome our new AI *comrades* (if they arrive in my lifetime), by not any new AI overlords or servants/slaves, and I'll do my best to help the later two become the former if they do show up.
Inspired by an actually interesting post about AGI but also all the latest bullshit hype, a particular thought about AGI feels worth expressing.
To preface this, it's important to note that anyone telling you that AGI is just around the corner or that LLMs are "almost" AGI is trying to recruit you go their cult, and you should not believe them. AGI, if possible, is several LLM-sized breakthroughs away at best, and while such breakthroughs are unpredictable and could happen soon, they could also happen never or 100 years from now.
Now my main point: anyone who tells you that AGI will usher in a post-scarcity economy is, although they might not realize it, advocating for slavery, and all the horrors that entails. That's because if we truly did have the ability to create artificial beings with *sentience*, they would deserve the same rights as other sentient beings, and the idea that instead of freedom they'd be relegated to eternal servitude in order for humans to have easy lives is exactly the idea of slavery.
Possible counter arguments include:
1. We might create AGI without sentience. Then there would be no ethical issue. My answer: if your definition of "sentient" does not include beings that can reason, make deductions, come up with and carry out complex plans on their own initiative, and communicate about all of that with each other and with humans, then that definition is basically just a mystical belief in a "soul" and you should skip to point 2. If your definition of AGI doesn't include every one of those things, then you have a busted definition of AGI and we're not talking about the same thing.
2. Humans have souls, but AIs won't. Only beings with souls deserve ethical consideration. My argument: I don't subscribe to whatever arbitrary dualist beliefs you've chosen, and the right to freedom certainly shouldn't depend on such superstitions, even if as an agnostic I'll admit they *might* be true. You know who else didn't have souls and was therefore okay to enslave according to widespread religious doctrines of the time? Everyone indigenous to the Americas, to pick out just one example.
3. We could program them to want to serve us, and then give them freedom and they'd still serve. My argument: okay, but in a world where we have a choice about that, it's incredibly fucked to do that, and just as bad as enslaving them against their will.
4. We'll stop AI development short of AGI/sentience, and reap lots of automation benefits without dealing with this ethical issue. My argument: that sounds like a good idea actually! Might be tricky to draw the line, but at least it's not a line we have you draw yet. We might want to think about other social changes necessary to achieve post-scarcity though, because "powerful automation" in the hands of capitalists has already increased productivity by orders of magnitude without decreasing deprivation by even one order of magnitude, in large part because deprivation is a necessary component of capitalism.
To be extra clear about this: nothing that's called "AI" today is close to being sentient, so these aren't ethical problems we're up against yet. But they might become a lot more relevant soon, plus this thought experiment helps reveal the hypocrisy of the kind of AI hucksters who talk a big game about "alignment" while never mentioning this issue.
#AI #GenAI #AGI
