no, oh no, please, this cannot be, make it stop

Seems to me there's not enough of an account of the Adams/Dilbert phenomenon. Understanding both Project Trump and its popularity requires explaining how the person who skewers mainstream corporate life in a way so many identify with is also a nasty piece of work. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

"Don't make me think" was a dangerous slogan when the 'me' was 'users,' but now the 'me' seems to be 'designers.' What do these people think thinking is and why do they hate doing it?

ice takes out ICE again 😬 🧊

This is silly. Calling for the British govts to have a proper policy on universities is a fantasy. It. Will. Not. Happen. They're going to tiptoe away from the crash and hope they don't get the blame. That's all there is to it - no point commenting further. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“Lebensraum: is it prudent fiscal policy?” 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️ Again, one thing I was completely wrong about is that I believed there was a baseline level of professional pride & integrity below which supposedly serious journalists would not sink in the face of the far right authoritarianism.

let's maybe not be the allies of these war mongers

I think this post nails the actual problem, for researchers at least—AI hallucinations would simply not be a problem in academic work if we’d not normalized citation-as-signaling rather than actual engagement—you can only cite a fake paper if you’re not in the habit of reading the papers you cite

I have for the very first time in my life intentionally attempted to use a genAI system, and the result was far from intelligent

we can kill them all if we just work together and ✨believe💫

Thx friends @adamtooze.bsky.social, @astra.bsky.social, @mollycrabapple.bsky.social, @alybatt.bsky.social, @stefeich.bsky.social, @danielloick.bsky.social & others who signed condemning malicious cuts at The New School @newschoolaaup.bsky.social @aaup.org Join them! docs.google.com/document/d/1...

A blogpost I just found. FFS. genAI = inauthentic the they idle chatter! (& why does anyone do this: "here's what the TV said when I turned it on." "here's a quote from a random page of a book." "here's a song lyric." "here's the result of me clicking the middle word option suggested by Siri.")

this is a good clip:

What could go wrong? My @smh @theage cartoon.

There is still nowhere near enough focus, anger and material consequence heaped on real estate agents and the real estate industry for their role in worsening our ability to both eliminate fossil fuels and adapt to their consequences

A big day for space weather, with the BBC reporting that a Mexico-to-USA flight in October experienced a 'sudden drop in altitude', likely caused by *solar energetic particles* from the Sun. Here is an explanation and some thoughts as a solar astrophysicist (a thread): 1/8

A designer posted this and all I can see is the pile of short-life things people put on the kerb on household bulky waste clean-up day. A career in landfill.

On ABC Radio National, David numpty Littleproud saying battery projects are falling over when it is alt-Nationals making the complaints: reneweconomy.com.au/long-distanc...

the zero in "zero emissions nuclear power" has magical thinking powers

"The report.......substantiates claims the country's gas export industry could be hampering global efforts to decarbonise, according to climate and energy analysts" A leaked report confirms carpet-bombing other countries with fossil fuel exports actively stifles renewable energy development -->>>

Use AI to make traffic elsewhere - or, you know, you could take active/public transport

Has anyone got a historical account of when and why politicians started fronting media packs with two or three straight-faced people standing either side but just a little behind them? Is it as stupid as 'people stand behind what I am saying'?

“‘Tranches’?” [smokes cigarette] “…haven’t heard that term in a while.” — me, last laid off during the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis slash WGA strike

For the second time in my 25 year academic career, a Dean has aggressively accused me of being 'unhelpful.' So it's a Godspeed You! Black Emperor kind of day - which reminds me: web.archive.org/web/20030409...

There is something truly remarkable about Generative AI. Several years in this revolution, half of the US GDP dumped to make these tools free, and i can't think of a single generated artifact, text, image, sound, video that had a significant cultural impact.

It very appropriate that the company most excited about genAI is Canva. They are made for each other.

see also @jomc.bsky.social on @techwontsave.us

People moaning about academicese target social research not technoscience, jeering at Butler, Derrida, Foucault. None of them wrote for wide audiences. They wrote for their academic peers. Just because their books seem influential beyond those contexts does not mean they wrote for those contexts.

I was in a social design studio class for crits & every proposal that was digital (too many) had Figma'ed a use case that started with a 'create user account.' When I commented that in almost every case there was no need for that, the students were a bit dumbfounded, so normalised is it to have one.

At this point, what percentage of SSubstack newsletters are - people saying "I put this to, or into, some GenAI. and this is my commentary on that output" - entirely GenAI'ed text but with no admission about that - 'organic' brainfarts 30/40/30?

To be fair It’s hard to find the spare change for the CSIRO when you’re giving around half of Australia’s gas away royalty free to multinational gas export giants, and not making them pay PRRT. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Do the small thing. Start a conversation. Ask for help. Do things that matter because people want to matter.

bitch what

The jury is in. @albomp.bsky.social hates transparency. Loathes it! #FOI #auspol

An utterly shameful list of murderous, ecocidal, omnicidal acts by a government that loves to claim it cares The strategy of trying to get Labor and the bureaucracy to act is an abject failure. Government is a failed institution, most clearly when it comes to climate. Time to build the next system

Can you help us boost this signal? UTS colleagues are doing a governance project to talk back to the consultant led 'reform' of their university. Please repost!! UTS people please have your say! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

also: it's a shame the article does not even mention the effects of interaction design and the digital context, which have completely changed what the field of design is, the ways in which people encounter and use it in everyday life, and the corporate power structures that wield it as a tool

israel is a rogue state apnews.com/article/gaza...

What an unsurprising decision by corporations that desperately need to make money with AI. If every other company with a chatbot isn't already doing this, then expect them to be following Meta's lead soon. The chatbot is not your friend; it's a corporate listening device. www.ft.com/content/22f7...

Defeat fascism through joyful mass nonviolent street action

Watch Jason-MIA-Clare follow suit any day now...

The Design Team at @microsoft.com: do we care? we do not - let the shitshow continue

Whose yodeling do you like better?

This explains the popularity of LLMs, which can break a text down into keywords, and then the "reader" can say "oh yeah it is about these keywords" and get exactly the same benefit out of the text as if they themselves had read it ⸻ because they cannot draw conclusions with *or without* AI help.

I wrote about why it is imperative that we make fun of the maniacs who govern us and their billionaire friends app.thenewworld.co.uk?article=page...

Private consultants are taking control of how public universities are evaluated and run. My submission to the Senate university governance inquiry raises concerns about the impact of Nous Group and their dodgy UniForum data on our universities. www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStor... A thread

in memory of Redford, the incredible performances he got from the cast of his first film as Director: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK4-...

@paulgrahamraven.com just heard this use of 'world building' in the wild that I thought would be of interest: bsky.app/profile/benc...