FYI I'm at the stage of my lecture about LLMs where I must reference Ace of Base.

Can anyone recommend a reasonably neutral, basic explanation of how and LLM works? Want to provide a simple technical explainer, but not a sales pitch.

OH, I forgot to mention - I'm coming to you live from a fresh desk-and-computer assemblage in the new house. Things are coming together!

I personally don't think this has *anything* at all to do with content. It is about power, but the flex is more basic: decadent Americans are dancing in cages/on stages for the amusement of ascendant Saudi royalty.

New house, who dis?

I'm really not a military kind of guy, but this seems bad.

We're all just serfs cheering on our local count going to war with the next county over. www.axios.com/2025/09/30/d...

Yeah, look, I'm not jazzed about EA being sold to Kushner and the Saudis. Not that EA are a high watermark in terms of cultural production, especially now, but doing "art" that these guys will approve of will not be a good time.

Working on my last lecture for my Writing on the Web class.

Awful lot of discourse this morning. Do y'all not realise it's the King's Birthday today?? Time for a Pimms and tea or something.

I've been wondering what the next shiny object will be that will take over from AI to fuel the fantasy-speculation machine that is the American economy. I wonder if Elizabeth Holmes is doing anything.

Shot. (Nvidia using its own cash to prop up AI data center deployments.) www.theinformation.com/articles/jen...

Doing the final walk-through of our new house tomorrow morning. Settlement scheduled for next week. I feel like I've lived about a decade this year - just so much going on.

Same energy we really should have paid more attention to the first time around.

So, do Australians get Raptured early, or is it scheduled for US EST?

Ah, see I knew that autism was somehow womens' fault! /s www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

New season of Good Omens looks lit!

Sun is out! Spring is upon us! Let's light the whole countryside on fire!! (I know why prescribed burns are necessary but breathing smoke still sucks)

I have had too much caffeine this morning. I am now composed entirely of hummingbirds and electricity.

I wonder at what point Americans who want to travel overseas will have to carry proof of vaccination for basic stuff like measles. Is the rest of the world cool with reintroducing the plague for tourism?

Spiderman pointing and Spiderman .jpg

The non-zero but vague threat of what China might be able to do with TikTok is dwarfed by what the current American regime will attempt.

If you have an extra $10 a month to spare, here's a list of worker-owned cooperative news sites you might want to support: • 404 Media • Defector • The Flytrap • Flaming Hydra • The Appeal • Aftermath • Racket • Hell Gate • The 51st • The Colorado Sun • Range Media • Discourse Blog • Pop Heist

It's really a shame that the exact moment in history that digital technology and media blew up was the same moment regular people were no longer allowed to have money and had to pay for everything through ads, data mining, and mass surveillance.

1/At Macquarie Uni we are losing 50% of our units in my faculty. This is on top of cuts in 2020. We estimate by next year my faculty will be teaching 80% fewer subjects than pre Covid. Disciplines being cut do not have declining enrolments. @jennaprice.bsky.social @michaelwestbiz.bsky.social

We tried this once already, with tentative success. Then Google realised they could make money by selling its search engine results.

I gather that you Apple folks are now experiencing MacOS Vista?

I am/appear old enough that student government campaigners do not even make eye contact with me anymore. Carpe diem folks. You won't be young forever!

Starting to get the impression that Randy Pitchford is kind of a jerk. Anyone else?

I made a snarky shitpost about this earlier but it's stayed with me. The idea that these glasses will "significantly improve cognition" is so ridiculous it's hard to express. The additional cognitive stress/load of constant social media is already unbearable when it's in my pocket.

"One day, in the world of pure imagination, those who do not inject liquid chocolate into their veins may be at a serious cognitive disadvantage," Willy Wonka.

Pretty amazing what Big Ideas my brain is eager to spit out when what I actually need to do is grade student assignments.

Have had this conversation re: American gun owners. As a "hobby" it fulfills some legitimate psychosocial needs.

Doing a pair of WoW quests given by the same NPC, conducted in the same area. First is called "Sustainable Harvesting" and involves chopping up fallen logs into several pieces of wood each (gather 12).

Haven't had much time for music lately but I managed to release some anxiety into the old six strings tonight.

Perhaps the USA could administer this drug to SCOTUS and we'd be able to convict some obvious criminals too!

Oh yeah, humans all famously had the same opinion on everything, especially dead people, prior to 2004.

So what I read in that last paragraph is that the US economy is in fact in recession, but AI has skewed the Wall St type numbers as to mask the real-world situation for actual humans of the 98%.

I have an ever-increasing conviction that capitalism is a cult which has fundamentally warped our ability to think about human motivation, organization, or effort in any way other than profit-seeking.

I appear to have popped the cartilage in my ribs again (did it a month ago while sick as a dog) and I'm not having fun with that.

I know he worked in TV. So he's basically a sesame street character from hell? Target audience of exactly one diaper-wearing toddler-brained tyrant.

Uggh I've been reading about Big Tech and the economy again...

Hollow Knight / Team Cherry is AUSTRALIAN???? Guys how have I not known this? It's entirely not my kind of game but c'mon. Whoever is responsible for managing my games briefings is in trouble.

I know that Murderbots are ... well robots. But i absolutely read mine as feminine.

I really do sympathise with this stuff - it sucks that Aus universities are being gutted. But I just left the country where it would be the College Football Coach who is the highest paid state employee, not the University President.

Whether or not they were drug dealers or migrants, this should be a signal to Americans. This is what they do when they can. They will continue to blow people up closer and closer to home until it's you.

I need some examples of good 'feature articles' that are media, tech, culture, sport oriented. Something in the 2000ish word range? Who's written something they want to share? Who's read something they'd like more people to read?

There are three lights.

Ah man, this sucks. For me, a quiet, constant stable presence across a wide range of media.