OpenAI going after the ad business is a huge red flag. The only question is, is it just OpenAi that is in strife? Or is it a wider signal that this is as good as LLMs will ever get? Ie the tech has hit the wall and the impact is going to be gruesome.

It’s killing me people keep liking this since I somehow managed to misspell Cory’s first and last name *Cory Doctorow* you numbskull! (And the op turned off replies so I can‘t even correct in thread, sigh)

The way the US is degenerating? A significant % is down to covid and the poor government response that allowed 1m deaths. It would almost be more surprising if the US had stayed sane. Spanish flu may well have had a bigger influence on the rise of fascisim than we think.

I totally get why Aussies are currently giving the US the side eye and muttering about truly independent foreign policy. Unfortunately I can’t see any way that doesn’t imply an independent deterrence, ie nukes. Are we really gonna nuke up? Somehow I doubt it.

International Law cannot be both “lip service” and “powerless”.

The combination of the IKEA effect and #AI is truly cursed.

Trump would never think for a moment Venezuela gives China the green light in Taiwan. He is totally capable of invading any number of countries and then declaring any similar act by the Chinese illegal and outrageous. Call it the “Invasions for me but not for thee” rule.

Trump violating international law will not weaken it (more so than it already is). IL is backed by US hard power. China doesn’t care about lip service. But the Venezuela attack is a kind of moral/morale corrosive. If China attacks Taiwan those against intervention will remember Venezuela.

It’s amusing to me that the right are justifying Maduro’s capture because a lot of Venezuelans are cheering. Trump’s arrest would have half (or more) of the US out in the streets partying as well. So is that a good reason for the DoJ to bag and tag Trump? Yes, yes it is.

Congrats to England, but feeling a bit robbed of cricket. 2 day tests in Perth and Melbourne? Curators, wtf were you thinking? Mow it! Yes, wretched T20 brained batters don’t help, but whatever happened to a good old chairman of the board pitch? Sydney road ftw! #Ashes

Guns don’t kill people, people do. So, I can have my own 2 megaton nuke then? Nukes don’t kill people, people do. No? How about my own 155mm howitzer and a thousand rounds of HE for home defence? What, too much? Some napalm then? I could really defend the homestead with 50 barrels of napalm.

English cricket is the deepest vein of schadenfreude on the planet. And the Aussies are better at mining it than anyone else. #Ashes

Poms self destructed yes, Head was amazing, yes, but that Perth pitch. Underdone two years in a row. They need to let it cook an extra day before their next year’s test, thanks. #ashes

Aussies slow going but should be aiming to keep England in the field for 100 overs if they can. It’s a five test series. #ashes

Twitter has no politics. Everyone is just using politics as a platform from which to dunk. The dunking is the thing. No one is trying to change minds. It's not even performative. It's the pure dopamine hit from shoving the other guy's head under the water that fires people up.

Cool video, good take on the movie, but I don't understand all the heart burning about love. It's a mix of biology and sociology and...that's fine? Why does love have to be more than that? It's not real if it's not higher dimensional woo? Please.

My crank theory to explain the increase in autism (assuming it's not a diagnostic mirage): 1. Smart parents have more autistic kids (on avg). 2. Since the 1970s we've increasingly chosen brains over brawn or beauty in our mates. (Triumph of the Nerds). Result? See point 1.

Do you refrigerate your TimTams or are you a monster?

The problem with the "our emissions are so small they don't count" argument is that about a third of all emissions come from countries whose emissions are also "too small to count". If we all try and freeload we will all cook.

Time to showcase our brilliant internal art from Aurealis #184, our latest issue. Here’s Jimmy Spence’s moody and evocative illustration for 'The Sound Your Soul Makes When It's Happy' by Markus Wessel.

Time to showcase our brilliant internal art from Aurealis #184, our latest issue. Here’s Joel Bisaillon’s superb illustration for 'Goes the Way of the Seabird' by Mia Kelly.

The more I hear about Kirk's killer the more I'm thinking he did it for love? Which is the most fucked up reason yet.

The way drone strikes are creeping ever closer to home would worry me if I was American. How long before Donny does someone on home soil? If the CIA says you're a terrorist what's to stop him? Excuses will be given: they were cartel, not citizens, etc, but if he goes there the line won't hold.

I used to think nostalgia was utter bollocks. I agreed with Billy Connolly (what people actually miss is not some particular time or place, it's their youth). But recently I've been wondering if some small part of it isn't down to enshittification. Corey Doctorow described it as a process...

Trump has the chance to do the most hilarious thing once he gets Putin on US soil. He won’t of course, but damn it would be sweet to see Putin arrested and carted off in handcuffs for war crimes.

I'm still gobsmacked this happened twice. How could he have rated so badly during his first term but get reelected? Apparently people have the memory of sclerotic goldfish. I'd be tempted to say American voters deserves what they get, except that he looks hell bent on taking the rest of us with him.

Proprietary #AI as the new mall scam x100: When malls were big they'd lure in stores with low rent, then raise it every six months until they went bankrupt. Businesses who think AI = no wages are kidding themselves. Once you switch, OpenAI et al will just raise the rent until they own everyone.

It is cold and wet but at least you can get warm and comfortable with the latest issue of Aurelia’s. aurealis.com.au (Note - Reading conditions may vary according to location)

Design is a silly field. So many questions have the same answer. Client: we need to increase our female audience. Designer: more pictures of girls then. Client: we need to increase our male audience. Designer: more pictures of girls then.

AI on device translators are going to be painful. No more talking smack about gajin behind their backs. Sorry. No more "they were shocked I understood what they said" youtube videos. Sad. Babel fish "more and bloodier wars" here we come.

If everything about #AI was the same, but it'd come out of a gov't lab instead, would your attitude change either way? Is the visceral reaction (at least part of it, eg job loss would still be an issue) to AI more about tech bros owning it than the tech itself? Or is the tech inherently bad?

The comments on this seem delusional to me. The only way Aus could have truly independent nat sec is to spend $100s of billions developing WMD and delivery systems. If not we better kiss the CCP ring and get it over with. Or stick with the USA. Those are our choices. Sucky, but what can you do?

Kind of funny, but the dog is giving Musk too much credit. Musk wants everyone to say he’s the reason Tesla exists, he invented it all, owns it all, makes all the decisions, etc. When Musk is actually more like Tesla’s Ronald MacDonald. If Ron was South African. And obsessed with white genocide.

One reason #veo3 probably isn't a threat to hollywood (rather than another tool to use) is celebrity culture. People want to read about humans on celeb sites. You can't shake hands with an AI at Comicon (not yet, anyway), etc. Interpersonal, real life stuff will become more valuable, if anything.

AI will be the ultimate hapless nerd. It will be super smart at tech but run completely aground in real world situations. Even ASI will need decades of working with humans to get close to a world model that will let it ‘steal’ all the jobs. Edge cases, man, edge cases.

The thing that will kill the rush to super-intelligence stealing all the jobs (as discussed below) is a lack of world models. The depth of world model you need to say be able to build a new house is insane. To repair an old one? 10x it. ASI could be around a long time before humans are 'obsolete'.

Why has no one ever novelised the life of Mei Quong Tart? Fascinating story. Great source for an historical novel of 19th century Sydney. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mei_Quo...

Insane that there is still footdragging on getting these meds on the PBS. Yes they are expensive, but way less expensive than the alternatives. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

So does Trump not care about the possible consequences for all the <gestures widely>, you know, stuff he’s up to or does he know something about the US midterms he’s not telling?

Is "clear" prose dead? There's a desire for prose to get out of the way is some circles (eg US sci fi). But that's possibly the easiest style for AI to imitate. I don't think going purple is the answer either. AI will do purple. Idiosyncratic prose for the win? Stuff so weird it has to be human?

There's a big debate about real wages in the USA atm. Have gone up or not over the last few decades? I think it's clear that the evidence is yes, they have, but I don't think it feels that way. Why? Because the basket of goods you need to feel "credible" in Adam Smith's terms, has grown. Some...

Seeing my dog bark at nothing makes me wonder if this is one of the reasons a belief in ghosts/a spirit world developed. Animals reacting to things that are beyond our perception. It’s pretty odd, even scary, if you think about it from a prescientific standpoint.

Reality needs to up its game. There are two people (mother/daughter) named Dr Death working at my local hospital. The jurno currently on my radio is named Hater. I mean come on. Any writer that resorted to such cheap tricks would be laughed out of the room.

Ironically, it would have been much cheaper for Elon to hand over the measly billions he saved sacking people who'll mostly be rehired (here's hoping anyway) than to let whatever the hell this is happen. I still can't believe the other stockholders/board didn't drag his ass back to work by force.

Articles like this do make me wonder if the solution to low birth rates isn't Rosie the Robot after all. If more equal housework loads between mums and dads really is the reason birth rates are better in Western Europe than South Korea then housework robots should help?

People are saying they were mistaken to vote for trump, but did so believing trump 2 would be a repeat of trump 1…but for that to work you have to explain who you thought was going to restrain his worst impulses. It was clear the adults had long since been chased out. No one was going to stop him.

Let's talk great filters! My favourite is bromides. They are ~45x worse for the ozone layer than chlorines (eg CFCs). So if we'd leaned into bromide chemistries much more than we did (which I've heard said was down to luck) we might have burned the ozone layer off and died without ever knowing why.

I am a 2x Aurealis finalist! Great shortlist, well done @kaaronwarren.bsky.social @midnightmuser1.bsky.social @emmikhor.bsky.social @jsbreukelaar.bsky.social @tanaudel.bsky.social @birmo.bsky.social @nikkythewriter.com @tansyrr.bsky.social and everyone! aurealisawards.org