Equating whatever GPT has trained on with knowledge in general excludes a lot of work that was not digitized in the first place. That's not a win for accessibility or democratization of knowledge. If anything, it privileges what was already most accessible, and excludes unique and marginal sources.

Every vote for Hilton was a vote against Gavin Newsom. Also, our recent redistricting vote energized right wingers to turn out and express themselves in what was an otherwise low turnout primary. Regardless Hilton's percentages won't be matched in a high turnout general election this Fall

"...function had nothing to do with human needs. It was simply to intimidate the people.... No Berliner could look anywhere in his city, Hitler hoped, without seeing that overpowering dome, those relentless colonnades" Time, "Art: Hitler as Architect," 1970

"C'mon let's go get a food in us. Otherwise it's buryingnour faces in this bag of chips in bed. That's home behavior, not vacation behavior."

the ghost of Morton Thiokol like "not so easy to build a rocket that doesn't suck shit, is it?"

Starbucks has been a shit company for decades. If it is actually leaving Seattle, that hardly surprises me.

Do I need to mute the word "bubble" now?

why are people arguing about bluesky this morning? it’s a rainy day. you could be out there getting drenched and falling ill

Social media was probably a mistake but at least I have parasocial relationships with dogs on four continents

If enshittification had a mascot.

Proof. Probably 80 proof, actually....

Grading is done. Sorrow drowning has begun.

"When people use this dull razor, they shave for longer!"

People in Star Trek love their jobs because they're only subjected to three minute meetings.

No, it’s not ‘normal’ for humans to be in competition all the time. It’s not normal to work for most of your waking hours of the day. It’s not normal to be stressed 24/7. Stop taking a few hundred years of capitalism and pretending that’s just how being human is. It’s not.

Whups. “In one recent NBC poll, AI’s net negative rating ranked below ICE, the disliked immigration enforcement agency.”

Researchers Find Crows Smart Enough Not To Let On How Smart They Really Are https://theonion.com/researchers-find-crows-smart-enough-not-to-let-on-how-s-1844081510/

Hey, if you think Christopher Nolan is deviating too far from the source material, just wait until you see Super Mario Odyssey.

"Imagine a gamer turning up the difficulty setting on FIFA and thinking they'd made their Playstation better at soccer."

I’m just floored by the contempt than many in tech have for the humanities. They don’t even try to understand or appreciate what it is we do before arrogantly assuming they can do it better with a non-human machine.

Wealth "unitially accumulated in SF" because it was a natural deepwater port near to a geographically locked extractive activity (mining), not dedication to "local investment." Even then much investment in the U.S. West was absentee foreign. Capital does not have loyalties, only encumberances

this would be a huge loss if they paid taxes

Apropos a text just now, this skeet is evergreen

The biggest difference between then and now is that there was no serious business case for the Metaverse, but "AI" feeds into long-standing CEO fantasies of eliminating labor. "Think! A machine customers put money into, physically makes nothing, and deposits pure profit into my bank account!"

Listening to philosophers talk about how LLMs can help us understand human language acquisition etc is redolent of of scientists c. 1950 talking about how studying nuclear weapons will yield a better understanding of physics

"Hey Stwong Bad! The old wowld is dying, and the new wowld stwuggles to be bown! I'm pwetty sure now is the time of monsters. Yep! Time of monsters. Isn't that gweat?"

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse Media and universities: AI is here to stay

You just can’t charge someone $150 for a brief train ride from NYC to New Jersey. At the end of that trip, they’ll be in New Jersey. That’s too high a price already!

It tastes like Monet's water lilies with notes of money and brand deals.

Man Who Threw Molotov Cocktail At Sam Altman’s Home Claims He Was Following ChatGPT Recipe For Risotto https://theonion.com/man-who-threw-molotov-cocktail-at-sam-altmans-home-claims-he-was-following-chatgpt-recipe-for-risotto/

I don't know how to explain to the people who pop up when creatives complain about "AI" to say there are legit uses for it just how much they sound like someone saying "Well actually fire is used to make bread" when people are talking about an organized arson ring burning down their fucking houses

Pretending that CVS is an immersive experience about extending carceral logics to toothpaste

I saw someone today noting engagement here on Bluesky was stagnating and I suspected it wasn't just here, and it looks like I wasn't far wrong. I'll note I haven't personally noted less engagement here, but I am a "big" account who is highly social and responsive, which probably mitigates.

I worked for NASA and the USGS. Also in planetariums and as a freelance writer. Anything is possible with a History degree. It's a degree in everything. Don't let anyone tell you different.

The singular "they" has been around longer than English has had codified grammar, so really, anyone who fumes about it can go fuck themself www.oed.com/discover/a-b...

TRUMP RUINED BAD TASTE John Waters at #NoKings in Provincetown (Pic via petermarietoto on X)

Those Amazon adverts where they show their employees being reasonably happy... That's our North Korean evening news, innit?

Modern suburban parents: if our child is going to play soccer, we want their team to have them on a serious professional track. Same parents: a BA in history is simply not practical

Deskilling students and devaluing intellectual work does not appeal more simply because we can now do it at scale

A point often made about critiques of genAI in the classroom (or the dissertation) is that the ills described—formulaic work, poor sourcing, plagiarism—are not new. This is true! What *is* new is the idea that a tool that automates them should make us “rethink” whether they’re bad. Why would it?

"But in education, the ultimate product is not your term paper or essay or [GPA]; it’s your self. You are supposed to emerge more informed, more capable of critical thinking, more competent in your field of study. The students who begin by cheating their professors end by cheating themselves."

It is human nature that the stupid,.if rich, will console themselves against every conceivable criticism by mooning over their bank statement, & not once stop to notice that they value their lives by imaginary tokens they are told that they own. We might pity them, were they not so venal & vampiric

We are definitely winning the war with the Gorn but our allies MUST HELP us escort cargo vessels through the Omega 47 minefield. We don't need their help but we deserve their help. We've already won the war so it should only last 8-10 more weeks. #StarTrek #Sisko197

Kudos to these brave architects for refusing to be complicit in Trump’s mass detention of immigrants: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

NEW: An insolvency judge in England tossed out testimony after discovering a witness was being coached on what to say in real time through a pair of smartglasses. When the voice of the coach started coming through the cellphone after it was disconnected from the glasses, the witness blamed ChatGPT.

"This new iteration of written science fiction isn’t quite the same as the old one, in ways both positive and, potentially, negative..." www.typebarmagazine.com/science-fict...

The whole "AI" industry is just based on the hope that they can deskill people fast enough that they'll have to rent back cognitive support systems. Forever. It's like Uber. Just that they don't try to break existing transportation infrastructures but your brain.

There will come soft rains....