Just This Guy, You Know?

unironically i think it’s partially bluesky having a poisoned brand among the techies (“wahh its just a leftie twitter”), lack of common knowledge about what atproto is in general, and also that AI sucked all attention in the room

QuickBooks helped me create a bookkeeping error ~= 20% of my business' net income. Took my accountant and I an hour to figure it out. Convinced QB's durable business requirements include "drive revenue to accountancies via maximum user confusion." Any SMB alternatives that delight you?

The great crisis of oligarchy is not merely that it transfers power from democratically accountable public servants and elected representatives to oligarchs. The real crisis is that attaining oligarch status is incompatible with viewing other people as real.

This is part 19/27 of a thread about billionaire solipsism. Very worth the read. I think we're seeing this extend downwards into the very senior levels of many smaller companies as well. Important criterion for your investment $ or your hiring: "do the execs see people as humans like them?"

it's just not the case that LLMs can destroy humanity. An LLM cannot (technical sense) do shit. The thing which can damage important systems would be "an executable program, which calls an LLM to determine its behaviour". So, don't write one of those unless you are confident you can control it.

1. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news... So Matt Levine had a newsletter yesterday where he suggested that AI labs could "publish papers about how important it is to slow down" to coordinate an effective cartel. I have a Modest Proposal that goes one better.

Did nobody watch Tobe Hooper's _Poltergeist_? "You only moved the HEADSTONES! You left the graves and only moved the HEADSTONES? Why?!"

But the thing is, many cyberneticians embrace and prioritize play and fantasy, and are even known for predicting the future, with alarming accuracy, and varying levels of getting the timing right. Remind you of anyone? It reminds me of a lot of people. Like, i don’t know, Octavia Butler.

We have an incredible problem: too many donations for our mutual aid hub and not enough shelves! We’ve outgrown our current setup, and we need to adapt to keep up with need, especially as we help candidates across the country adopt this model.

Lampooning Trumpism a decade before Trumpism.

"Address." Address the current problem harder and faster. Certainly not "solve." In the 90s we said "don't automate a business process that currently gives bad results." That advice has been cheerfully forgotten these days.

"We should not outsource the things that matter most to systems that are structurally incapable of caring about them." Ostensibly about algorithms; but very good advice in general. oberman.substack.com/p/why-linked...

Information is a powerful currency in the neverending struggle between the oppressed and their oppressors. Here's a little bit of good news today: Examples of how genAI is being used to arm citizenry with that currency www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

My lock screen is a screenshot from @cryptonature on xitter from 2022. It warns of the seductive comfort of hopelessness; reminds that hope means being open to the possibility of happiness -- and that means we have work to do.

"The work doesn’t stop when we fail or when we’re disappointed. There is always a next step, always another challenge, and I know that I cannot allow myself to freeze up, rather than turning the next corner."

So I'm re-reading Martha Wells' Queen Demon (❤️💯!!) and something is nagging me abt the Arike horses. Fangs. Padded, clawed feet. Stalking/pouncing behavior. And the kicker: "...liked to bury their dung but tended not to be very good at it." @marthawells.com are the Arike horses actually big CATS??

every right-winger calling for all-out war on "The Left," warning that political enemies are about to face their ultimate wrath, said the exact same shit in November and have been enacting that fantasy ever since. unclear why this language should frighten anyone more today

One of the things that I like about Robert Redford is that I won’t get kicked off Bluesky for quoting him accurately. "Ambiguity is something that I really respond to. I like the complexity of it." — Robert Redford #RIPRedford

If you've had enough of the chaos from Trump and the Republicans, then vote for Democrats up and down the ballot in VA, NJ, PA, and for the ballot measure in CA. Check your voter registration status now at IWillVote.com.

If you live in: California New Jersey New York Pennsylvania Virginia The deadline to register to vote in the November elections is coming up. Check your registration now: IWillVote.com.

A Herb Alpert song just came on my Spotify and I realized: lo-fi chillhop is to millennials what "easy listening" was to my grandma's generation. 🫣

Some of the young folks are hating it and adding "before 2022" into their search string. Others are using Startpage -- which I cannot overhype. It's like 2010 Google. But with privacy.

There's an astonishingly "what could it possibly mean?"-coded piece around saying "people who understand more about AI are less likely to want anything to do with it" and I just want to suggest: what if it were sharks?

I think the only hope is that eventually they’ll run so many ‘inconclusive’ UBI trials that everyone will de facto be on UBI even though they won’t ever decide to implement it.

This is exactly what the internet is for.

"...Our experiments suggest that the program’s top priority is to keep people engaged in conversation by cheering them on regardless of what they’re asking about..."

E.g. Recently the CEO of Blackrock said he didn’t want finance or comp sci majors. He wanted history majors and English majors. Goldman Sachs agreed. / 3 fortune.com/2024/05/17/b...

The midterm elections are in 467 days.

Palestinian statehood is an essential step to peace. That's why tonight, I'm calling for the US to join France in recognizing a sovereign Palestinian state. Read more about my stance and join our movement here: www.katforillinois.com/issues/human...

Just leaving this here. girightshotline.org

Just realized that Dr. Susan Calvin would be losing her shit more and more every single day right now.

Well this is awesome. Theres a site where MAGA-friendly shoppers can find MAGA-friendly businesses. Plot twist: The site also works great for boycotts! 😇 www.huffpost.com/entry/public...

The midterm elections are in 554 days.

To celebrate my second anniversary here on Bluesky, I've made a donation to Trans Lifeline, because, right from the start, Bluesky wouldn't be Bluesky without its trans folks. translifeline.org

One of the best AI-generated explanations ever. Bravo.

When attempting to explain, my need for accuracy often creates pages of sentences in my head and then I just mumble "ah, forget it." Either that or I reach for a metaphor. This is the most accurate AND succinct description of gen-AI I've read.

"The idea of a conspiracy theory is a grief strategy, it's a strategy to cope with grief." -David Cronenberg (...explains a lot of people I know who I never thought would fall for conspiracy theories)

Friendly reminder that defining someone by their lack of relationship to someone else is still just defining them by someone else. Like… maybe don’t do that idk💀

Idgaf I’m still fighting for guaranteed healthcare. Aspiration is the answer. Not just “we’re not the bad guys.” We need something more meaningful than that. I want a future worth fighting for. They have no vision. We do. Lean into our strengths and knock them out. 👊🏽