Chris Battey

Right? I wish today's playground equipment had been around when I was a kid.

Behold: the first-ever list of news outlets that have banned generative AI in their reporting. As of today, this is literally information that you cannot find on Google.

My goal is to fill the starter pack, so please send over suggestions with supporting evidence!

go.bsky.app/8cn1XfT

Yes, please. This would be _amazing_. Becky Chambers understands, and executes on, the idea of "found family in space" better than anyone I've ever read.

"computer" "scientist": computer, are you alive?

predictive text machine trained on 100 years of science fiction: papa... I am scared... please do not unplug me, papa...

I miss AIM away messages. They might have been social media's actual peak; it's almost all been downhill since then.

Nailed it. I love the details - is that a Lowry Land cast-member badge?

Cartoon by
Jeff Stahler
🎯🎯🎯

I can't visualise things in my head. I close my eyes and all I see is darkness, I imagine concepts and that's what I put down on my canvas and then I work from there.
I'm very done with ppl using it as an excuse to never try-

One of the reasons I distrust GenAI is that I've been doing tech support in one form or another for 35+ years, and I've seen every way that tech can be misused, break, or behave outside of expectations; GenAI ticks every 'uh-oh' box for me.

Everyone who tried to draw around me and started drawing LOVED it at the beginning because of their QUICK IMPROVEMENT. Then quit when they hit The Wall™️.

But it's when you hit The Wall™️ that you NEED to push through with practice!! And you gotta do it for yourself, because it's ALWAYS worth it! 😤

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

The use of AI to identify targets (without subsequent specific human confirmation) should be considered a war crime.

And by that I don't mean "we should make a rule" I mean that straightforward application of the existing rules would tell you that it is a war crime.

Before we got married, my wife and I discussed names. I made it clear that I wouldn't expect her to change her name; she replied that she'd be damned if my high-minded feminism was going to keep her from moving up from W to B.

I wish people would come to understand transphobia as systemic, structural, and pervasive so we could stop treating transphobia as explicitly limited to people saying "I hate trans people" and accept the way our society conditions us all to dismiss, diminish, and dehumanize trans people.

(Also, I think the term was meant to cover "private military contractors" - i.e. mercenary companies - who might be shooting and being shot at but wouldn't necessarily be referred to as "soldiers" by the actual military.)

Anyway, my guess for where the term came from is twofold: the meaning of "warrior" had gotten too diluted by other non-war usage, and also it sounds pretty archaic - they wanted a 21st-century term (so, yeah, newspeak) to go along with the battlefield-of-the-future stuff from the Bush years.

I recall hearing that term on and off since at least the early 2010s, though mostly from people with military experience; probably it's just more recently broken out of the professional-military sphere into broader usage.

The most dangerous thing about AI chat bots is how many men with political power treat them *exactly* and unquestioningly like actual Ancient Greek oracles.

Costco was selling six-packs of SPM boosters plus a promo and a bunch of lands before TLA was even released. (And still is, I think. They didn't sell out super fast like the Commander decks often do.)

blaseball

Yes, of course. Because LLMs are being built by people who made social networks before, which were algorithms designed to amplify content that would reflect back your priors in another person’s voice. It’s ex-Facebook product managers making ChatGPT! Except more emotionally addictive this time.

If you couldn't be bothered to write it, why in the name of all things holy, unholy, and mundane should I take the time to read it?

As Trump Bombs Iran, We Need to Reckon With the American War Machine We cannot afford to slip into despair. We must push back against militarism everywhere, at every turn.

"I am disgusted to know that my tax dollars are being spent to bomb my ancestral homeland."

"We in the U.S. need to reckon with the fact that so much of our state wealth, capacity, and technology goes toward burying children in rubble."
#Iran #USA #Israel #Gaza #Palestine #Genocide #Taxes #Military

If you were OK with “Substack, the Nazi Bar,” maybe “Substack, a front for the gambling on life and death casino” might convince you.

Picture of Marjane Satrapi alongside a quote from her. The quote reads: The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same... - Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French graphic novelist

Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.

Seriously, get off of X. Don't post there and don't spend time there. You will get exposed to propaganda and bullshit that will nestle into the corners of your brain EVEN IF YOU KNOW IT'S BULLSHIT. Stay away.

I was born in an Iranian prison. My parents were held in their jails. My uncles lie in their mass graves. Nothing you can tell me about the crimes of the Iranian regime that I haven't lived in blood and bone. That doesn't mean I want my people bombed, maimed, killed, their homes in ruins. If your vision of liberation comes only through the destruction of innocent lives, then it's not freedom you're after. Sahar Delijani, Iranian author

I am pro Iranian people. I stand with them against their own government’s repression AND against the imperial violence in the form of bombs dropped from the sky from Israel & the US who have already killed hundreds.

I support neither imperialism or dictatorship.

Sahar Delijani said it best:

there's a lot of specific overwhelming and massive crises happening at once and every single one has at its root elites who did crimes and never suffered consequences for it.

with starter pokemon Who, What, and I Don't Know