Hey Vancouver, the auroras are out 😍 Photo taken tonight in Stanley Park

Started the day reading a LI post by a business prof I’d met who just learned that linguistics exists, used LLMs to generate research ideas for a field he knows nothing about, then threw them in an blog post for … discussion? Making content?

Thanks @thejuicemedia.com for making the connection between MAGA, Woodside and the shitshow unfolding in BC youtu.be/Lt6Hmp9ndkI?...

Reminder to self: get a VPL card, now that I’m actually a resident of the city of Vancouver

Trying to start my mornings with a quick walk along False Creek, but I just get distracted by wildlife.

“It is sort of gibberish, frankly,” Hoenig said. “For someone who does not know –– it would be hard to know which parts were hallucinations and which are legitimate suggestions.” restofworld.org/2025/ai-chat...

We're just a collective of Cassandras, knowing how this ends, and that it's going to be on the backs of working people, Black and brown people, and folks who are already being choked and parched by data center development.

Was looking up the pronunciation of the name Nopcsa, and Google AI decides to link a video about how to pronounce the word "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" #AISlop

Was dreading a thunderstorm. Much happier to see a double rainbow

Know thy enemies. www.authoritarian-stack.info

New awareness campaign

Are you ready for the annual eBird/Clements taxonomy update? Happening as soon as tomorrow! Details at ebird.org and explore the species on Birds of the World (birdsoftheworld.org). The site will be open access from 29 Oct-7 Nov. birdsoftheworld.org/bow/home

Halloween costume idea: Glinda, but in an AI bubble

Blending in with the foliage

“Well-meaning” people are using machine translation to write Wikipedia articles in languages that they don’t speak themselves, accelerating the degeneration in quality of the web corpus for several languages with relatively few native speakers. www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/25/1...

Balsam St in Kitsilano today #vancouver

Vancouver doesn’t do fall as brilliantly as places out east, but it’s always nice to see a few pockets of red and yellow here and there

Surveillance is bad enough, sh*tty predictive surveillance is something we need to push back against www.dexerto.com/entertainmen...

Sunset over False Creek #vancouver

Fall in Vancouver. You never know when you’ll see the sun next.

The word ‘to hear’ stems from the same root as ‘acoustic’. They’re completely different, so how can that be? ‘To hear’ was inherited from Proto-Germanic, while ‘acoustic’ comes from Ancient Greek. These languages have a common ancestor, but they developed very differently. Zoom in to learn more:

It’s “opt-in”, but how many people will just give Meta access to their whole camera reel without realizing what they’re doing. (Or you could just quit FB) www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

incredible stuff, no notes

We need to fight back www.cbc.ca/news/ai-data...

Right on Red = Wrong on Red! So happy this video exists.

So… let’s build another damn data centre? www.theguardian.com/environment/...

hoping to see my former coworkers' new publication, a nonprofit news co-op to replace the Glacier papers that closed earlier this year, flourish and help prove a different model for journalism www.freshetnews.ca/a-new-beginn...

New billboard in town 👀

Just donated, and you can too! Spite is a great motivator, no? (And I’m also speaking as someone who quit a high paying job to work for a more values-aligned non-profit org)

We know — from first principles — that LLMs can only create AI slop. Why do people keep needing empirical tests?

“Just scale your data”

“At its heart, birdwatching is an act of quiet rebellion. It is the gentle act of noticing – the willingness to see the world around you. And this simple act is, in itself, revolutionary.” www.theguardian.com/environment/... Happy belated October Big Day! I’d rather be birding than fighting AI hype

"In reality, the industry probably needs a revenue range that is closer to the $320 billion to $480 billion range, just to break even on the capex to be spent this year."

"When these capabilities are delegated to machines, we create a population that consumes and regurgitates information without actually processing or understanding it.” collectivefutures.blog/the-infrastr...

Watching this instead of reading about Sora 2 youtu.be/_zfN9wnPvU0?...

Being one of a handful of people crossing the Cambie Bridge in the drizzle was a good opportunity to practice belting out some songs.

“AI is undergoing ‘machine learning’” looks like a really bad paraphrase from CBC. It’s like saying the discipline of mathematics is learning arithmetic. Machine learning falls within the (too) broad umbrella notion of “AI” and it’s long been used to flag content and profiles before the GenAI hype.

Today’s view from Vancouver’s Fairview neighbourhood

I am a GenAI killjoy and I encourage you to be one too. Here’s how:

NVIDIA and OpenAi: Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“ @bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀 www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Crossing the Granville St Bridge on foot was a lot nicer with the wider pedestrian path, but I was very confused by the layout and entry and exit points

Happy Monday Vancouver

Mrs Bucket has kicked the Bouquet. Rip Dame Patricia Routledge www.bbc.com/news/article...

Today’s walk home #vancouver

@stephcampisi.bsky.social for your attention

Marge to Homer: Kids can be so cruel Bart (walking past): We can? Thanks Mom!

The @cla-acl.bsky.social has issued a press release "calling on the Government of Québec to reconsider its decree banning forms of gender-inclusive writing, specifically the inclusive pronoun 'iel', the word 'toustes' and the interpoint." cla-acl.ca/pdfs/Ecritur...

Rainbow from the Seabus. Best commute ever. I’m gonna miss it