This 1911 book shows that taking photos of cats and furnishing them with an amusing caption was a thing long before the internet publicdomainreview.tumblr.com/post/8243890...

Resurfacing online to mention: my book on the history of Speech Rec, NLP, and data-driven AI is coming out in a couple of weeks! Just got my author's copy from @uchicagopress.bsky.social and it finally feels real! press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Divination Engines

A revealing and surprising origin story, showing how attempts to render human speech and language computable led from the era of big data to today’s AI. Since the advent of computers, society has fant...

press.uchicago.edu

Two years ago, Minnesota rightfully returned the land of the Upper Sioux Agency State Park back to the Yellow Medicine People. Today, I had the distinct honor to run that land - Pezihutazizi Kapi, The Place Where They Dig For Yellow Medicine - with Chairman Jensvold.

You can/should read Emily Wilson's latest take on the Odyssey, but I'm logging on to convey my hairdresser's reaction. She was AGHAST that Nolan, with his million $ budget, gave Matt Damon ONLY 6 hair extensions. As a result, his hair did not blow around properly, & that ruined the film for her.

Brilliant letter from Stuart Thompson to Jeremy Clarkson about his comments that benefit claimants should write weekly thank you letters to tax payers detailing how they spend their benefits each week.

The Fauci hearing was a disgrace. Here are some reminders of how it really went down in 2020. Never forget.

The audience only wants films ▪️with superheroes ▪️without superheroes ▪️with incredible VFX ▪️with no "CGI" ▪️that help them escape from reality ▪️that are realistic and grounded ▪️that are good distractions ▪️that are thought-provoking Pick one for your post that will be invalidated in two weeks.

Everything about this is appalling. The girl on her way to church. The father told to come get her and then arrested by ICE too. The possibility that the girl will be raped in detention. The private prison company profiting from this. The officials & policies that enable this. The hypocrisy

Joaquin Castro@joaquincastrotx.bsky.social · 2w ago

16-year-old Emely Charloth Suaza Chambo was taken by ICE on her way to church. ICE told her dad Fernando Suaza Ortiz to come take her home or they’d send her out of state. When he showed up for his daughter they took him too.

Prisciliano Trejo Ricano came to the U.S. at 3yrs old. ICE took him this June. He was 29. He told his family he didn't feel right but ICE wouldn't give him medical attention. After a month, ICE finally moved him to a hospital Prisciliano died five days later enlacelatinonc.org/en/Young-Mex...

A young Mexican man living in Durham died in ICE custody.

News in Spanish about politics, immigration and community issues for Latinos in North Carolina.

enlacelatinonc.org

I'll defend AI's ability to scan books for training. BUT NOT DESTROY THEM. And this "rationale" is insane. It's not true, and it offers no defense for training.

Shiro Sirius@shirosiri.us · 2w ago

I don’t want to be too sensationalist about this but also I’m the least violent person in the world and I think if someone said this to my face I’d hit them

I think we're all ready for The Muppet Odyssey.

the sky above the port was the color of a wine-dark sea

can’t find a night when everyone’s reliably free for it, huh

IGN@ign.com · 2w ago

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves co-director Jonathan Goldstein says the script for a sequel already exists, but he's not expecting it to see the light of day any time soon. https://bit.ly/4bIsrNA #SDCC

Here is a quick test of Pangram, the AI Detection tool that Substack will be using to evaluate AI writing on the platform. I used an AI agent to generate the first 200 words of text, and then I rambled on myself with my human brain after. It concluded the entire block of text was 100% human.

Wired sets the frame that the model “escaped containment,” but from an accountability perspective, OpenAI left a door open by failing to properly isolate their system. Real headline: “OpenAI’s security failure leads to cyberattack against another AI company.”

This is a really important point. It's very easy to just point to the AI and blame it for your failures. This was OpenAI's model, and they designed the parameters of the tests.

Eryk Salvaggio@eryk.bsky.social · 3w ago

Wired sets the frame that the model “escaped containment,” but from an accountability perspective, OpenAI left a door open by failing to properly isolate their system. Real headline: “OpenAI’s security failure leads to cyberattack against another AI company.”

ICE is arresting relatives who come forward to take custody of migrant children in federal shelters

ICE arresting relatives trying to take custody of migrant kids

Attorneys say the federal agencies are using children as “bait” to detain sponsors, leaving kids waiting in shelters for months.

texastribune.org

Could Excel be conscious? We surveyed more than Jan 1 1900 people to find out.

6. When modern English speakers hear "epic poetry", they often think of a style like the grand, ornate, writerly neoclassicism of Alexander Pope's Iliad (which, to be clear, I adore). But Homer in Greek doesn't sound like that at all. It has a different sublimity.

Scoop: The AI music generator Suno was hacked. Hacker shared source code that shows how the tool was made and part of the music and podcasts that were scraped to create it. Decades worth of music, lyrics, and podcasts from YouTube, Deezer, Genius & more www.404media.co/hack-reveals...

atproto has one big idea: apps should be lenses rather than boxes this idea is still unknown to majority of internet users. even to the majority of web developers we’re still at a phase where, if you explain it to someone, you can literally see it clicking for them in real time

Modest proposal: For platform services I should have free access to my individual data via the same APIs offered to enterprise clients extracting and aggregating my data.

In case anyone missed my little X-Files point and click daydream

Important paper in Nature: "The Forest of Knowledge Under Global Change" studies the loss of Amazonian plants used in Indigenous biocultural heritage. Spiritual, sacred, and useful plants are extinct, nearly extinct, endangered, shifting, and more. What a loss. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The forest of knowledge under global change - Nature

The biocultural heritage of the Amazon, its plant species, plant services and cultures are at risk from climate change.

nature.com

anyone remember when gambling was illegal instead of the basis of the economy

Yes I know there are serious & important things happening in the world right now, but this is kind of great: just learned the Van Gogh Museum has made many of their publications, including collection catalogs, freely available on @archive.org. More museums should do this: archive.org/details/vang...