AI labs: “hey, what if we could take the Dunning-Kruger effect, bottle it in software, and sell it to every workplace, government office, and school on the planet? Now that’s innovation!”

One of the things I try hardest to teach students — and model myself — is saying “I don’t know” when I don’t know something. And being open to feedback. These are key skills for education and for improving at anything.

Every single fucking time the question “how did this get worse,” the answer is motherfucking private equity.”

Our ancestors created agriculture and refined it over generations into something unfathomably productive … and we let people starve because of arbitrary bullshit and a few people’s greed. It’s obscene.

A perfect microcosm of the “vibecession” debate: On a population level, Matt is right. It is a triumph. Historically, mankind has struggled not to starve. On a human level, Matt has clearly never experienced the overwhelming nauseating terror of being food insecure, or he’d be less blasé about it.

If you have to adopt republican policy to beat republicans, republicans still won. Glad I could clear that up for you.

I am endlessly fascinated by right wingers' obsession with Sparta. I can understand an initial vibes based appeal I guess - like if you opened the first page of a book on timocracy and were twelve. but the thing about history is you can find out what happened to those guys

Since “defunding the pillars of society in order to save money” and “giving all the money to police and wealthy pricks” are core tenets of conservatism, I think as a society we ought to consider “conservative” a dangerous indecent thing to be, and those who identify as such should pay a social cost.

The reason to not defund all the pillars of a functioning society to save money is that society collapses and no money is saved. The reason to not spend all the money on police and tax breaks for wealthy pricks is then the wealthy pricks have everything in a police state designed to protect them.

We had 6 years to adopt clean air standards We had 6 years to normalize masking Society chose denial instead Now as wildfires rage & the air turns to poison … people are left unprotected Covid cautious folks are still trying to protect those who’ve ignored them for years.

I know that most of our digital tools are controlled by awful billionaires and it's almost impossible for us to divest ourselves of all of them. But I think that X and Substack are so horribly toxic that everyone should avoid them as much as possible.

AI “training” is offering the illusion of control and mastery by displacing awareness of how it is being integrated into civic institutions to the disadvantage of people with an illusory self-awareness of “appropriate” use. It’s just a form of on-boarding. 3/n

We don’t need education about ethical *use* of AI; we need more education in how it is being *used on* and against us. 2/n

After a conversation with a colleague: if someone’s only experience of AI is chatbots and ambient exposure to the need for checking for accuracy or its ecological costs, they will be genuinely surprised by any further information you provide about its uses in government, policing, commerce etc 1/n

The message it sends to children when they don't even get a human teacher to care about them is that they don't matter enough for a human to be allocated to them.

I mean for fuck's sake, at the very least try this shit out on adults who can consent, not on children.

And how at the very goddamn least, human children should be taught by human adults.

Looking at this thread and thinking about how Monkey World in England puts so much effort into providing young non-human primates with care and affection and role models of their own species. And how orangutans who have had that experience take care of their babies instead of rejecting them.

> core logics of AI are the same as racism and sexism, which is why these issues pop up again and again in these systems: it involves taking the simple shallow features of things we see [&] moving to very flawed conclusions. There is something addictive to this form of sheer intellectual laziness.

They wrote down that their plan is to eliminate *legal* immigration from China and India. They wrote down that university and PhD programs are a big problem, because they create large numbers of legal non-white immigrants. Guess which two countries send the most international PhD students? 🇮🇳🇨🇳♥️🕊️

This stuff really does underscore how much it’s objectively speaking about xenophobia, racism, other bigotries as policy, because Trump had repeatedly campaigned on oh we still wanna let Good And Smart Ones in if they follow the Rules, but no, even those people get told immediately to fuck off

Pete Hegseth: "We need our warriors to embrace the Spartan mindset" U.S. Military: *suffers crushing defeat to the Persians*

As with so many things, it is critical to realize this is not bumbling or ineptitude or not thinking through policy implications. On the contrary: making it impossible for foreign students to do the doctorate here is THE WHOLE POINT. It’s about starving higher ed under the guise of America first.

really thinking about this tweet as i’ve been struggling to breathe through nausea for the last 5 hours

the best way to describe what tools like Suno are doing is they apply CEO logic to all art & cultural production - exploit others' labor on mass scale - replace actual creative processes w/ a series of vague executive directives (prompts) - extract all value/take credit for labor you didn't perform

This is primarily a cash-grab to hand money to his fellow antivax fraudsters. Even if we pretend the issue is unsettled (it's settled), it's simply not possible to allocate $5 billion towards legitimate study of the issue. The money will all go into the pockets of child-killers.

It means an environment of universal suspicion, a broad sense of being exempt/immune from said suspicion, and the normalization of widespread dehumanization. A bathroom ban means what would otherwise be HIPAA-protected now must be open to public scrutiny in order to use any public accommodation.

& for what they claim is a 'reasonable' concern abt bathrooms and sports, the only practical 'solution' is to give the most anti-social people the ability to summon genital inspectors on a whim to subject you and your children to an extreme violation of privacy If that is tolerated, anything can be

One of the reasons trans people represent one of the most idea targets for fascism, is that literally anyone can be seen as "obviously trans" while at the same time, many people do not want to consider that someone might think they are "obviously trans" and pointing this out is 'impolite'.

I am yet again getting on my soapbox to tell y’all about how my previous job (public library) received a grant once to keep branches in some neighborhoods open until midnight on Fri and Sat. The neighborhoods were picked specifically because of higher crime rates and lack of support services (1/ )

It shouldn’t matter that the people ICE killed weren’t “intended targets” They shouldn’t be killing ANYONE, undocumented or otherwise. They’re thugs who cover their faces and shoot people with no concern for consequences and no respect for life. They’re a danger to everyone.

This is a really useful post about what you need to know about Cyclospora. I learned things. You will too

Benoit Blanc (incredulous): Is this nominally august chamber even fully cognizant of how many of its number have slipped the veil?

To be a historian is to speak ill of the dead and the rest of you should take more history classes and join us.

Standing against

Voici le Comte de la Visage de Poubelle

I've held my breath for too long. Count is not a British title of nobility. Their equivalent is Earl. Binface is French!

This is going to be treated like a scandal because he “said the wrong words” when it should be a scandal because he’s sabotaged his job before he even has it. He’s added an additional layer of earned distrust in a system that requires openness and integrity to function. Racism is not hurt feelings.

Michigan has a lot of Black people in it! Will he represent their interests? Take their concerns seriously? When he proposes or co-sponsors legislation, will the structure of the policy integrate the interests and needs of Black communities? Can his Black colleagues trust him at all?

I find that explaining why something is racist is more meaningful and effective than simply ascribing the label. Like that white Michigan candidate was being racist, but the how of his racism is the real concern. He’s asking to go to Congress; how will he work with Black colleagues? Will he bother?

political candidates should be tripping over themselves to run on this message (and we know why they aren't)

feels like a real landmark of impunity that major corporations are making federal crimes part of the interview process

ONLY YOU can prevent DATA CENTERS 🔥🔥🔥 / BILLIONAIRES

I won't spoil the excellent and hard-hitting final sentence of this thread. But it's worth it, so read all the way through.

Periodic reminder that Al Franken had at least 8 accusers and that he stepped down the day they were going to begin the investigation he initially demanded. "What happened to Al Franken" is exactly the bare minimum that should have happened to Al Franken.

Like no sorry actually there are a lot of women in the working class and also a lot of men who are not fucking assholes. The working class is not the cultural and moral lowest common denominator and the fact that you imagine it as such tells us exactly what your politics actually are

It's yet another example of sniveling nepo baby white men imagining that their bigotry and misogyny is aligned with working class culture and not only justified but politically glamorous and righteous. And the bitches whining about it are just Karen from HR

What really enrages me about it is that it's meant to sound labor-coded. It's meant to sound like if you care about rape or sexual assault or your comrade calling you a cunt, you must be some corporate management bitch who hates workers. Because real working class solidarity means tolerating rape

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