@daniflorean
He/Him - Researcher @Goethe University Frankfurt. Bike mechanic @BLF Bamberg DF5TB on the air https://drflorean.github.io/florean/ Interests: Gender inequalities, demography, (pro) cycling, black metal, mobility activism, ham radio, disaster relief
The asymmetry of the value placed on human life is so striking. Israel has a goal to recover 40-year-old remains; to do so, it invades a sovereign country, and the lives of 26 Lebanese are an afterthought. Their names not even worth printing in the New York Times.
Challenge for people who believe Claude *is* conscious and use it anyway: Explain how you’re not a slaver.
What a time to have started a retirement fund uh
Reactionary centrism is a scourge on legacy media and a threat to liberal democracy.
A stack sits on a black sand beach with some mountains behind, a little snowy, some frozen low cliffs, and white waves coming in. Backlit, so harsh light.
Sometimes you have to break the photography rules and shoot into the sun!
Fauskasandur (possibly, or could be Lækjavík - names on maps vary!) in south-east #Iceland yesterday.
1967 - Dystopian Sci-fi novel, Don’t Create The Torment Nexus published
1974 - Cult classic BBC mini series
1997 - BBC remake
2002 - Hollywood movie, upbeat ending added
2019 - Nexcon - A Torment Company IPO’s, $324 Billion market cap
2026 - Polymarket bets on who will be tormented next
If you took $1 billion and gave it to the endowment of a different small college each day, they could each provide a free college education to several hundred students per year in perpetuity. Instead we are using that money to bomb schools and kill students in Iran, for no clearly stated purpose.
Icebergs on a black sand beach at sunset, with black sand blowing in a strong northerly wind towards the sea. Massive waves crashing against the beach, and a mountain just visible in the distance.
Course black sand pelting at my back, but it was worth it :)
Vestri-Fellsfjara, Jökulsárlón #Iceland
The "women are ruining civilisation" argument seems to have gone fully mainstream, judging by the casual and uncritical reference Amoj Rajan just made to the "feminisation of society" on the Today programme. The Overton Window hasn't just shifted, it's completely shattered
Stormy seas with northerly winds blowing the black (brown) sand down the beach and into the breaking waves. Sunset light, so looks sepia.
Life in sepia...
Another one from that windy sunset at Vestri-Fellsjara beach at Jökulsárlón a few days ago.
#Iceland
People say BlueSky is an echo chamber but we have road cyclists, gravel cyclists, mountain bikers, single speeders, fixie riders, cargo bike riders, e-bike riders, hybrid riders, recumbent riders, bikepackers, randonneurs, and I'm sure we even have a few unicyclists among us
Same as "reach out (and) touch faith"
i’ve already depicted you as lacking all conviction and myself as full of passionate intensity 😏
Linke Buchhandlungen vom Verfassungsschutz beobachten zu lassen – und sie anschließend von Preisen auszuschließen – hat mit Autoritarismus nichts zu tun. Alles ganz normal in der Meinungsfreiheits-Supermacht Deutschland.
Sorry I'm not more open-minded about LLMs, it's just some fucking maniacs shoveled out a bunch of useless bloatware featuring that technology, did not give me any chance to opt out, reorganized the entire economy around it, zeroed out gains made by green energy, and made it impossible to buy RAM
You're absolutely right—that was not a command post, that was an elementary school. Those were not military leaders—they were schoolchildren. I said the opposite, and that's on me.
The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.
A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.
Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.
This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.
Unser oberster Kulturkämpfer Wolfram #Weimer Seite an Seite mit dem Verfassungsschutz gegen den linken Buchhandel?
Kein staatlicher Eingriff in die #Kulturfreiheit, gegen die Trumpisierung der Kulturpolitik!
www.zeit.de/feuilleton/a...
We are solidly back to the days of "WE are the civilized, makers and beneficiaries of the rules, and THEY are the uncivilized, entitled to no protections"
That mindset never really went away, some of just pretended it did. No denying it anymore
If you, as a social scientist, believe that AI is now a better social scientist than you, then (a) you’re probably right, and (b) sure sounds like a skill issue, y’know?
we appear to have four competing fascist movements jockeying for control: blood & soil nazism under miller and hegseth, darwinian ecofascism from rfk, technofascism under vance and musk, and one Big Wet Hitler who understands the true animating core of the american volk is a deep love for shopping
If you ever want to read a paper for free and can't find it otherwise, email the lead author and politely ask for a copy. You will not be bothering the person. You will in fact make their whole entire day. I have had scientists get so excited I asked they sent me everything they ever published.
Eschatology in the 90s was going like "well everything has a bar code now, maybe that's the Mark of the Beast" and in 2026 a man with a mirthless grin named "MrBeast" is beckoning your children to trust him
uld you support or oppose abolishing ICE? (%) Somewhat or strongly supportNot sureSomewhat or strongly oppose U.S. adult citizens 39 Party ID Democrats 14 Independents 35 Republicans 68
Per The Economist/YouGov, half of Americans support ABOLISHING ICE.
Literally, "abolishing."
yougov.com/en-us/articl...
One of the main reasons I don't use AI is that you have to fact-check every single thing it gives you and by the time I do that, I could have just done the research myself.
Northern California’s first condor egg in 100 years reported in redwood tree
Who COULDN’T use some good news? ‘ Scientists with the Yurok Tribe say that two of dozens of condors released to the wild in Humboldt County since 2022, to reestablish the endangered birds, have paired up, built a nest in a redwood tree and appear to be tending to an egg.”
#californiacondor
I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to
LLM makers makers do not want you to be able to understand. It's about turning the means of understanding and sensemaking into externalized products to rent.
Mein Artikel vom letzten Jahr, dem ist auch weiterhin wenig hinzuzufügen (außer dass sich die Lage wie vorhergesehen weiter verschlimmert hat).
www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1189...
Two more days to apply!
