Vaughan McAlley

I wrote a cantata, The lilies of the field, which is an Australian take on the Easter story with words by @katherinefirth.bsky.social. I’m pretty proud of it and hope that you enjoy it! youtube.com/watch?v=LX5e...

Still patiently waiting to be "left behind" by AI rather than it chasing me across every damn space like a slasher in a low budget flick.

Good news: he lost.

So funny watching the media try to write 2000's era Grand Theft Auto Outrage articles now that the whole country is a casino run by murderers.

If you’re going to do it, do it on speaker phone.

"Milo got arrested!" "That's good!" "By an unaccountable secret police force" "That's bad" "He supported them, though, so there's delicious irony at play." "That's good!" "But they came for him because fascist power has reached a point where petty infighting can lead to arrests" "That's bad"

This is the Hot Couch theory of the internet: We were better off when these ideas were coming to us from your friend's idiot brother who occasionally sold you weed while tending a menagerie of lizards and snakes, because you knew that guy was a dumbass, but now they've broken Hot Couch containment

Respect for weary bureaucrats.

Guys. Where are the posts reminding us not to speak ill of the dead? I'm not seeing them for some reason.

I get so sick of being told that there has been no gender-based prejudice against women musicians. So here are some genuine reviews written about women, between 1893 & 2021, with a couple words/letters changed to make them about men.

Local plumbers two steps ahead of every university administrator in america 👏

I just realised what AI image generators remind me of: Pin Impression Toys. They're diverting for a minute, you go 'yeah, that's fun', then you've basically seen it. And sure, you can keep pushing different shapes to make yet another shape, but that's all they actually do, it's profoundly empty.

When my fiancee and I were shopping around for wedding venues, the guy at one place said he used a 57-point checklist, so ever since, 57 hasbeen our slang for a very large number.

REMINDER: The Chris Rufo theory of academia, and today’s broader right-wing theory of politics and culture, is that most students—most people, really—crave far right ideas, but get more left-wing ones only because a small cadre of radical leftists captured all institutions and forced it on everyone.

AI breaking common, everyday things that used to work is why people fucking hate it! AI cluttering up things by offering to summarize 3-sentence emails is why people fucking hate it! It's obvious! It's in fucking plain view! I like it less every goddamned fucking day!

Gas Station Price Sign Using Scientific Notation

we are *nowhere near close* to *anything like* lossless translation of "the world" into "digital records," huge portions of the information economy revolve around maintaining different *absurdly* lossy compressions of reality in digital dimensions

They dared to dream of undoing the 20th century. It’s inspiration in the most perverse way. badfaithtimes.com/the-american...

Commiserations to Sir David Attenborough on his 100th birthday, as he is now too old to be allowed to play with LEGO.

Overpaid sweet summer child…

You have to weigh the good and the bad. People being able to make videos of their dog dancing the cha cha cha makes it worth it.

Palestrina, Gesualdo, Lassus.

When food banks are unfunded and everyday Aussies are going without, the need for a 25% tax on gas exports is crystal clear. Australian gas belongs to the Australian people, and they deserve to get a fair return. @davidpocock.bsky.social #auspol

👏 “The point of the indictment is to demonstrate that the United States Department of Justice is wholly an instrument of Donald Trump’s senescent pique, no more independent of him than a boil on his ass.”

THIS is the technology the people want. stop trying to summarize my emails for me and give me an in-home pasta printer

i'm not a hardcore anti-AI guy, but i cannot think of a single benefit of genAI that could possibly outweigh the harm it is doing to our social fabric, shared reality, and most basic abilities to parse information and learn.

The Guardian documented quadruple-tap by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. Three waves of ambulances were struck. Paramedics came for the injured. They were struck. Backup crews arrived. They were struck too In six weeks of war, Israel has killed at least 91 medical workers.

Man Who Threw Molotov Cocktail At Sam Altman’s Home Claims He Was Following ChatGPT Recipe For Risotto https://theonion.com/man-who-threw-molotov-cocktail-at-sam-altmans-home-claims-he-was-following-chatgpt-recipe-for-risotto/

Okay this isn’t really happening anymore so I can tell you how l had “internal ICE sources”: the 3000 very stir-crazy ICE agents were all going wild on Minneapolis Tinder. Local girls would match with them and string them along for intel. They loved to brag about what they were doing all day

Take a moment to remember how weird it is our president communicates with us through a bottom-tier social media site called Truth Social. It’s like if he governed from the comment section of a porn site.

“Ms. Rowling currently poses an extreme danger both to herself and the public, and we will not rest until she is apprehended,” said Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Matt Jukes

The civilisation that is dead is the American one.

AU$1.402 per litre.

There is so much to despise about Musk, but what he did to Twitter is what what makes me hate him most viscerally.

My alabaster milk child Teuton keeps asking for ranch dressing at the caviar factory, it is most epic. The fishmongers despise him.

You'll often hear how the gas industry is vital for Australia because it's so big. But really the only thing big about it is its profits.

This honestly explains a lot.

Calling the image on the right a "significant improvement" is so indicative of the whole AI ethos tbh

Generative AI has led to entirely new paradigms and unprecedented accelerations in the fields of fucking yourself over in public in the most embarrassing and humiliating way possible

I didn’t think it was possible, but maybe there actually is a US war too stupid for Australia not to enthusiastically sign up for.

Being an utter dipshit while playing with other people’s livelihoods might actually affect one’s own livelihood. Who knew? Not *this* utter dipshit obvs.

When you’re writing a piece about the Sistine Chapel ceiling and want to make a reference to Michelangelo comparing Haman to Christ (complicated reasons), it’s quite cool to realise that the famous bit of Allegri’s Miserere is the same as O Sacred Head Sore Wounded.