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...

I feel the need to virtue signal: Because I try to no longer fly, I turned down an invitation to participate in some futures theatre in the Arabian Peninsular that involved business class flights and US$5k. Be like me if you can (but only in this regard, not in all aspects of petulant me).

BAU

I don't want to make light of authoritarian racists, but I can't look at Reform UK/anti-immigration rallies without seeing Tim Brooke-Taylor. Given the YouGov poll indicating its mostly young boomers & old Gen Xers, I'd have thought Goodies-based embarrassment would be a deterrent.

Great piece by Joan Wallach Scott about her father & others targeted by the McCarthy Inquisition, and - inevitably - the similarities of our institutions to today's right-wing moral panic. Highly recommended.

I teach Angela Nagle's _Kill All Normies_ archive.org/details/kill... to undergrad designers because it is not so media political theory heavy but also not merely descriptive. Anyone know of something equivalent about the nearly 10 years since?

How it started. How it’s going

Disgraceful. No govt that actually cares about climate change would do this. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

I know of no audience member whose attitudes have been changed as a result of a debate; but debating teaches you that it is ok to performatively assume a line of argumentation, and I have seen debaters, by winning or having to defend, adopt the attitude behind the position they performed.

so, Microsoft, you keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means - so give me a goddam way of making sure that your version of design never, ever again interrupts me - nothing is going to happen between now and when I restart your shitty program

Gaza West Bank Lebanon Yemen Syria Iran Iraq Tunisia Qatar All attacked and bombed by Israel in the past year. Insane. Rogue state.

I saw a thing the other day that basically said “no matter what prompt you give it, the question an LLM is answering is ‘what would a plausible response to this prompt look like?’”

Does anyone have any data on the political leanings of now-regular marijuana users? Was the legalization of marijuana a great way to chill opposition to fascism? Someone must have done a post about this on Nazi-promoting Substack? Just searching for explanations for ease-of-Trump-authoritarianism.

Good time to rewatch Peter Greenaway's _A Zed and Two Noughts_

UMMMMM!?!? Conflict of interest anyone?? #HigherEd #AustralianUnis #Academis

Glad to know that this dubious research was using @rufus-wainwright.bsky.social's version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah because not sure anyone is getting 'chills,' no matter what their political persuasion or religiosity, from Leonard's original version... www.psypost.org/surprising-l...

This incredible clip features the two founders of Substack and former ABC radio host Josh Szeps

They literally admit their product gets worse the more you use it. Car companies will at least wait until their backs are to the wall before they admit the car explodes. These chucklekfucks just said "yeah, any safeguards we have crumble like gingerbread in the tub at the slightest overuse."

Late capitalist modernity: When we humanise machines, dehumanise actual humans, and erase countless species.

@robhorning.bsky.social this kind of thing must have been on your radar already, but in case not: zaferbilda.substack.com/p/when-copyi...

LinkedIn: Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about Trump creating a 'Chief Design Officer.' Anyone who knows the least bit about government service design: A Chief Design Officer? LinkedIn: Yeah. Anyone: Let me tell you about Trump's 'Chief Design Officer.'

“This is a protection racket. The major parties in the Senate teamed up to protect one of their own and senior ANU leadership … rather than acting in the best interests of the staff and students who are crying out for support.” Senator @davidpocock.bsky.social www.afr.com/politics/fed...

This is why everything is "software as a service" now: you can lock you customers in on long term contracts billed per seat, rather than having to make a good product that people like to use

When the dust settles, and if universities have meaningfully survived, it will be worth asking how institutions usually so resistant to thoroughgoing change chose to leap with both feet into an untested technology they didn't understand and didn't know how to use.

People are reading AI-generated synopses of books and then claiming they read 100 books in a week. This is how the abolition of books began in Fahrenheit 451: classics were condensed into five-minute summaries for those too busy to do the reading. Later came the burnings.

That's a real website by the way.

I just received some really great career advice that I would like to share with you all: Take time out and join the fight against billionaire-backed fascism in all its guises; in a year or so, there'll be lots of very fulfilling work rebuilding society in more equitable and sustainable ways.

Me: *through sobs* you can't just say everything is agentic .... Please.... Kevin Roose: *points at seagull flying past* agentic

Tribal epistemology.

I asked this on another platform: if you are a teaching and/or researching academic at an Australian university, and not a Dean, have you ever interacted with any of the university council members that, supposedly, govern your workplace?

browser plugin that inserts into any prompt you give a genAI extruder the phrase 'something that merely looks like a': - Write me a summary of this paper = Write me something that merely looks like a summary - Photo of dog in a park = something that merely looks like a photo of a dog in a park

First of all, WHY CONSULTANTS!? I thought Labor was supposed to be weaning off them? You could've gotten academics or NGOs to do this research?? #AusPol #Childcare

So the Western Australia Museum Science Week open day, focusing on the marine environment is sponsored by Woodside, who are doing more than any other company in Australia to heat and acidify our oceans, and bleach our reefs. visit.museum.wa.gov.au/maritime/woo...

"AI agents can now book flights, send messages, and order groceries" because those are all really difficult things to do, things that people are suffering, pressing needs that least privileged in our society have. FFS infantilization

My feed is: - the thug below - Energy Secretary climate change denial - Health Secretary vaccine denial I do not understand why my North American colleagues are not on a general strike. Your country is an idiocracy.

Super cool how society just hands off the some of the most vulnerable to the most predatory.

If you're going to send me something written by an LLM then save us all time and resources and just send me your prompt instead. I'll value a text that says "Heartfelt condolence message with reference to a list of events" more, because this way I at least actually know what you were thinking

They can stop international journalists going into Gaza to bear witness but yesterday in Sydney there were 100000+ witnesses to counter their prescribed narrative.

... the countries that build public transit well, quickly, & cheaply all have something in common: most of the work is done by the government itself, using in-house expertise, rather than farming various parts out to private companies under the bullshit theory that private always = more efficient.

“These redundancies will not just deprive staff of their livelihoods, but also restrict what students can study.” ANU student Finnian Colwell said “We are demanding that the cuts stop, that Bell resign and that the government commit to full funding for universities” region.com.au/social-scien...

footnote on page 4 of the third edition of simon's the science of the artificial

"with an astonishing projected cost of $8.8 trillion, according to an internal audit presented to Neom’s board last summer. That’s more than 25 times Saudi Arabia’s annual budget..." (Report notes that McKinsey are doing well out of it. What a surprise redux.)