doo doo doo, noodle emergency doo doo doo, noodle emergency

Hard to get around the fact that our media environment in the U.S. is beaming fash thought and personalities at the average person 24/7 and there's no specific, antifash counter programming that helps people know and identify what is happening to them.

my kid and I have t-shirts with art from some of my bluesky mutuals on them, and at the (inevitable) compliments, I always say oh, my friend designed it 😁

Why not make a regular books-I-read-that-aren't-regencies thread! A DISTANT MIRROR by Barbara Tuchman - I'm always ready for a medieval history spiral and am waiting for THE BRIGHT AGES to be ready again so I grabbed this one that's as old as me! A bit outdated but pretty engaging overall.

wat

No. I am not done. What is a ‘synthetic response’? Is this answering machines calling each other, what? WHAT THE F*CK

Jesus fucking Christ

ChatGPT should be called an LLM or chatbot for instance. Calling it AI is doing a lot of work for the industry, same as labeling errors as hallucinations.

This should extend to the use of “Artificial Intelligence” itself as an umbrella term as well. AI is itself just a marketing term.

All this is good, but also please make distinctions between automation (a thing we've had for a long time!), newer types of purpose-built machine learning models for things like figuring out all the ways you can fold a protein, and LLMs. Don't refer to them all as "AI" because they're not the same!

These products also don't "read," "understand," "create"...'altering' language launches the AI industry; Turing: ‘I believe that at the end of the century the use of words...will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.’

organizing gets the goods

7A.

Journalists, let’s be careful about the language we use when writing or talking about AI. Here’s a thread — @emilymbender.bsky.social, I know you pay attention to this, too, so feel free to chime in. (1/x)

The other day on the radio, I heard someone refer to “our” chatbots — as if we each have our own personal chatbots pals or assistants. But, of course, we don’t own the machinery behind these products — big tech companies do. (6/x)

Speaking of which — when AI chatbots make mistakes, call them that: mistakes, errors, inaccuracies. “Hallucinations” is an unnecessarily jargony term that anthropomorphizes the chatbots. (5/x)

Don’t ask AI chatbots about how they function and treat the output— or, worse, share it with readers — as fact; pose these questions to people with expertise and knowledge. Chatbots do not have self-awareness, and their output can be wrong. (4/x)

Speaking of which: Consider referring to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and so on, as ”products” or “apps” rather than “tools”; the latter tends to obscure their relationship to the companies behind them and makes it sound like they exist just to help us. (3/x)

People don’t “collaborate” with AI products any more than they collaborate with any other product — this is language that tech companies use, but we shouldn’t. (2/x)

WHAT is this image choice of "conventionally attractive woman maybe has a headache or is upset about something in expensive shirt"?? please can we be serious about visual language????

dear god PLEASE let this also lead to a wider acceptance that treatment needs to include *improving quality of life* and not just "how to make them have baby"

2/2 Framed by arches, interior of Antwerp's S. Carlo Borromeo church with my painting there above the high altar. By Wilhelm Schubert van Ehrenberg.

Today in the Iran War, weirdly: japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/business/com...

The data is clear: The mass deportation and incarceration of immigrants does not make communities safer. DHS has deported victims and witnesses before trials are completed, and immigrants are afraid to report crimes and help law enforcement. This makes us all less safe.

FIFA greed machine in action: numerous Football Associations that are competing at the 2026 World Cup have been hit by increased prices when buying tickets for their players’ family & friends. FIFA’s "dynamic pricing" model is wreaking havoc. www.theguardian.com/football/202...

In stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off mode these days so cycling through Murderbot on audio (2nd time), Lady Astronaut (1st time) on kindle and Mary Roach's Packing For Mars (hysterical non-fiction examination of the realities of space). Which actually go together quite well!

A little promo for this wonderful event Friday - papers by the fellows at the CNA and other junior scholars and a lecture by me on Dutch Suriname, glassware and colonial fragility ! My last 2 weeks of this fellowship and I’m so grateful for the time I’ve had here ! www.mfa.org/event/center...

yeah if you’re my mutual on here, I will almost certainly buy your book.

Very cool to give private companies the "opportunity" to make money off a financial safety net that many homeowners are required to have. I'm sure this won't result in premium rates skyrocketing and consumer protections plummeting. 🙃

I have bought so so so many books on the basis of Bluesky.

Bhumpa Gyal spent years helping build a #Tibetan language digital commons: supporting independent websites, digital literacy, & cultural preservation online. Arrested in 2020 & sentenced to 7 years in prison, his case reflects the risks faced by technologists & cultural workers under repression.

The Tapestry of Fate by @shannonchakraborty.bsky.social is a FANTASTIC follow up to the Adventure of Amina al-Sirafi. One of, if not THE, current ongoing series I am most excited about. Full ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review here: bit.ly/4sbSbqY

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Happy release day to @shannonchakraborty.bsky.social and @ada-hoffmann.bsky.social, two wonderful fun hopeful poignant important thought-provoking pirate books out today!!!

This is hilarious and also terrible. “I provide a lot of money to people who work for me” Oh? You pay them to do nothing? “…servers in restaurants…” …I see. I see.

"Take our art seriously!" Yeah, you first, bitches.

If AI "artists" want typing prompts into a computer to be taken seriously as an artistic endeavour, they could start by paying one tenth of the attention to detail that I put into the whereabouts of an absent fictional dog. and it is pretty fucking telling that they don't.

If you are a special edition person, the Kickstarter for the Historical Trailblazers collection is open! Features me with The Magpie Lord, along with all time greats Beverly Jenkins, Jeannie Lin, Loretta Chase and Lisa Kleypas.

Looking for office space for up to 3 Blacksky team members - In Brooklyn - Coworking is fine but need a private office - Guests allowed - Phone booths for calls - Accessible Any recommendations, send my way. Budget is flexible. Looking to move in within 1 month. Thanks.

Okay Version 1 (AKA The One Line) is complete! CHOO-CHOO!

all this discussion about the useless or usefulness of social media and book sales has me wondering: what was the last book you bought by a new-to-you author, and how did you find out about it?

[Me crying and feeling Big Emotions watching Orphan Black s02e10]: 🥹 Tatiyana Maslany and Kathryn Alexandre are really good actors 😭

hey did you know that MY FRIEND wrote a book about the supreme court that you can totally listen to even if you, like me, find anything law-adjacent totally overwhelming??? bsky.app/profile/audr...

this is an actual Bluesky Rule: if you have ever so much as exchanged a single like, you are required to hold up the book in the shop and say "hey my friend wrote this"

me, buying a book written by someone who I've never met but we sometimes like each other's posts on Bluesky: my friend wrote this

Here's a NICE shot of this Preactis anemone feeding on this yellow octocoral! South Africa www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Are you also frustrated trying to stay abreast of street changes coming to your neighborhood? I am so excited for the public launch of another of my projects with @bikeboston.bsky.social: a tracker for every micromobility project in the greater Boston area! bostoncyclistsunion.org/project-tracker

this is so antithetical to teaching. this gives me the creeps. if you're teaching because you want to be loved as the leader of a personality cult, then you're on the road to or already at abuse.