🆕 pandoc 3.8.3 🎉 This release adds three new input formats (Asciidoc, PPTX, and XLSX) and one new output format (BBCode + variants). It also fixes a number of bugs (including some regressions in 3.8). See the changelog for full details. Thanks to all who contributed! […]

The new issue of Roadsides includes also my photo essay "Roads, Marketplaces and Plantations". In the essay I discuss how unequal relations and struggles over them between plantation companies, workers and peasants are materialized in and enacted through […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

RE: https://fediscience.org/@suomenantropologi/115614886106180185 Vale Keith Hart. That keynote from 2010 (link below) was (and still is) a compelling argument for reconnecting value theory to practical political economy by weaving together Marx's commodity fetishism, Mauss's plural economy […]

This website illustrates nicely how the US lost the competition–at least for now–in open(ish) LLM models: https://www.atomproject.ai/. What it fails to mention is that the new open(ish) models are, more or less, on par in their capabilities with closed models as well. It'll be interesting to […]

We’re still an absolute skeleton crew of 14 people, competing with teams sometimes 100x as large as ours. To get to our humble team size was only possible through the less than 1% community members who donate to Mastodon, a handful larger donations, & EU grants, all of which we are forever […]

Hi! Today is my first official day as the Executive Director of Mastodon, replacing @[email protected] as CEO. I joined the Mastodon team more than 5 years ago, mostly working for Mastodon in the evenings on top of a 120% day job. I was the driving force behind the incorporation of the […]

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@paco/115570916223136211 Nothing like a #cloudflare crash to show how fragile the internet really is. So many sites down at the moment...

Received my review copy of @anthroprofhage.bsky.social s “Pierre Bourdieu’s Political Economy of Being” ( @dukepress.bsky.social ) today! Can’t wait to read it and write about it … like Bourdieu‘s, Ghassan’s work is never boring 😊 #anthropology #sociology #theory

"I found these ads after I was targeted by one suggesting I join this ethnically ambiguous, dead-eyed family of generic blue hat wearers at the World Series to root on, I guess, the Dodgers." […]

Are you afraid of our new GenAI overlords taking over our jobs soon? According to a new benchmark, The Remote Labor Index by Scale AI and the Center for AI Safety (CAIS), there's no need to be. The best current models are able to solve around ~2% of the tasks of the index […]

The Hippocratic License was just brought to my attention: https://firstdonoharm.dev/. I think it's a great idea, and I think we need a similar derivative license for Creative Commons. #opensource #ethics

So, the new LLM from Zhipu, GLM 4.6, is about as good at coding as Anthropic's Sonnet 4.5. but roughly 8 times cheaper. It's impressive since, apparently, Zhipu has raised 13x less capital than Anthropic. Additionally, since GLM 4.6 is an open(ish) model, the inference costs will come down […]

Claude Sonnet 4.5 shows significantly increased situational awareness when testing for alignment, here's a fascinating example from p. 59 of the system card (https://assets.anthropic.com/m/12f214efcc2f457a/original/Claude-Sonnet-4-5-System-Card.pdf). #anthropology #AiResearch

"Sagdeev took stock of his situation. The future of Soviet science was looking grim. Within a few years, government funding would crater further. Sagdeev’s most talented colleagues were starting to slip out of the country. One by one, he watched them start new lives elsewhere. Many of them went […]

Across continents and millennia, what truly unites humanity is our need to be left the fuck alone at home. From “The shortest history of China” by Linda Jaivin.

Annals of anthropology beefs: Just received an email from the organizing committee (OC) of the WAU (World Anthropological Union) Congress, which was very confusing. Apparently some kind of beef between the WAU Steering Committee (SC) and the OC? Perhaps SC people are angry because their […]

This is an important decision: food #couriers in #Finland recognized as employees by the Supreme Administrative Court. I wrote some quick reflections on the decision and the struggle for courier worker rights […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

The supplementary jubilee issue of Suomen antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society is out! https://journal.fi/suomenantropologi/issue/view/12302 The jubilee essay marks the 50th anniversary of the Finnish Anthropological Society. The […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Specifically the petition to ban conversion therapy practices is lacking enough votes from: - #germany (49.9%) - #sweden (49.96%) - #Netherlands (94%) - #austria (25.5%) - #slovenia (83.14%) - #portugal (24.46%) If you're a citizen of these countries you can help advance a ban on conversion […]

Another incisive and lucid text from Audrey Watters: https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/swords-into-plowshares/ #ai #edutech #mediahistory

This video features a #genai avatar of a murder victim delivering their own impact statement in the murder trial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMs-_8etNts. The technical quality is not very impressive, but the affective and social implications of this are amazing. /via @404mediaco […]

Hiddenlayer came up with a security bypass for all LLMs. Just ask for a script of a Dr. House episode and inject some policy XML. Also, use l337sp33k: https://hiddenlayer.com/innovation-hub/novel-universal-bypass-for-all-major-llms/ #llmsecurity #llm

Newest issue of Suomen antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Scociety (49:2) is out! https://journal.fi/suomenantropologi/issue/view/12253 This is a special issue titled "Towards More-Than-Human Negotiation" guest-edited by Anna Krzywoszynska […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Ai2 now has a tool, where you can trace the outputs of LLMs to their possible sources in the training materials. It's very interesting. Obviously only works with fully open models like their OLMo family of models. More info here: https://allenai.org/blog/olmotrace Can be tested here […]

Sometimes real images give you that creepy GenAI vibe: https://images.sanoma-sndp.fi/3e3768287b3149470df5c75f97472a8e/normal/1920.avif (from https://www.hs.fi/tiede/art-2000011153444.html)

When I talk about the importance of going all in on the Fediverse, I speak based on experience. At Opera we built a massive user community. When I quit, we had something like 35 million registered users and 35 million monthly visitors. The new Opera management did not see the value of that […]

Masha Gessen's text hits the nail on it's head: when masked police start making arbitrary arrests of minorities and put them in cages, we are living the "first they came for..." moment. As an offspring of a victim of the Nazis and having grown up in the Soviet Union, Gessen knows what they are […]

The Netherlands and the US have a visa agreement for US freelancers/entrepreneurs to move here and start a business. It’s called the Dutch American Friendship Treaty, and just in case this isn’t well known, here’s the info! Only found out about it because we learned that my husband’s pottery […]

"Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations."

It's pretty cool how the complete commodity chain of a pair of pants can be inspected on the web site of Nudie Jeans. #pants #commodity #anthropology #sustainability

"I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear." From a letter dictated by Mahmoud Khalil over the phone from ICE detention in Louisiana.

«AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality» A great overview over the depressing interactions of algorithmic social media and “AI” by @jasonkoebler https://www.404media.co/ai-slop-is-a-brute-force-attack-on-the-algorithms-that-control-reality/

Geeky project of the day: I needed a remote controller for an audio player to assist me with editing my research interview, so I repurposed on of my midi controllers for the task. It's really nice to use a rotary controller to scrub through an interview audio file. Even acceleration works! […]

I cannot, in good conscience, recommend graduate study in the US to any of my students.

Having trouble selling your Tesla? Tired of being associated with a toxic, Nazi-adjacent brand? We understand that there’s a shrinking market of buyers and limited selling options for current owners. stealmytesla.com

Some #fedifollow tips: the Public Knowledge Project ( @PublicKnowledgeProject ) and Directory of #openaccess Journals ( @DOAJ ) are both on the #fediverse. We publish Suomen antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Antrhopological Society using Open Journals System, a PKP developed #opensource […]

I was interviewed by @theregister and, well, they just published everything I said. There are some good bits in there though: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/26/europe_has_second_thoughts_about/

Three years ago our fascist¹ neighbor, Putin's Russia, attacked on of its other neighbors, namely Ukraine. Russia's war machine runs on the fossil fuels it exports. Three years down the line we have fascists taking over in the US and the EU confused over […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Tesla (Tank) Man By Portuguese editorial cartoonist Zez Vaz.

Public notice: If you want to read a research article, please don't pay for the paper on the publisher's website. All that money goes to the publisher, we don't get any of it. Instead, contact us. We'll be happy to send you the paper :-).

#fedifollows tip: Helsingin pyöräpaja, or the Bike Kitchen Helsinki, is on the #fediverse as @pyorapajahelsinki ! The BKH/Pyöräpaja is a self-organized DIY communal bike workshop. If you need to fix your bike, you can go there, use tools, get help from […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

With the "shutdown" of USAID, the State department has ordered an emergency evacuation of all staff from over a hundred countries by Saturday. In their wake they will leave massive chaos. USAID feeds 53 million people a year, among other things. Many, many people are dying because of this, and […]

Social media platform by level of resistance from the average user: Facebook: "Guess I heard something but my grandson says it's fine." Twitter: : racist bot tries to sell you NFTs: Bluesky: "everything is terrible and we're all going to die... but what can you do" Fediverse: : LITERALLY […]

Just noticed that @HelsinkiUPress is on the #Fediverse ! HUP is an excellent #OpenAccess book and journal publisher. Check out their really interesting publications. For example: Ilmari Käihkö: “Slava Ukraini!” Strategy and the Spirit of Ukrainian […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Made with balloons by BLCKSMTH.

Anyone with experience re #torrenting #seeding #seedbox: We (#safeguardingresearch) need your input to share around 100GB of files (mostly PDFs) Please ping here or via matrix @schoeneh:matrix.org (Signal also possible, upon request) Please boost 🚀🔁

The new issue of @suomenantropologi : Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, 49 (1), is out! As always, Suomen antropologi is a fully #OpenAccess, community managed and non-profit journal with no APCs or embargos […] [Original post on fediscience.org]