It's called the Lego tax, and I pay it every time they come up with a set perfectly targeted at my nostalgia centers.
Benjamin Harnett
@benjaminharnett.com
Sometime poet, historian, software engineer, novelist, union man. https://www.benjaminharnett.com https://thehappyvalleynovel.com
This is an obvious marker for totalitarianism. In totalitarian societies, anyone can be arrested at any time for reasons they don't understand and can't predict, and the resulting terror is very much an intended consequence.
remember when Sheryl invited a bunch of feminist bloggers to dinner and they all wrote nice things about her airport book being the future of feminism
Sarah Szalavitz💡@dearsarah.bsky.social · 22h agoLean In To Fascism
The entire Republican Party, and a chunk of the Democratic Party, have a direct interest in convincing you that conservative wins are a mandate and anything else is not.
So the US military killed everyone on a medevac plane by testing a GPS weapon. futurism.com/science-ener...
It Appears That the US Military Accidentally Killed Everybody on Board a Civilian Medevac Flight in New Mexico
A days-long electronic warfare drill was one of the causes behind the loss of a four-passenger medevac flight.
futurism.com
What do people call the management technique whereby if you email or meet about a problem, the person with power responds by telling you how much worse they have it? It's always been a thing but lately I'm meeting it more and more.
Like Loebs? Every fall semester, I like to remind people that while Perseus has many free Loebs sectioned up into book and chapter, if you want to download and read the public domain Loebs (277 of them) as PDFs or txt files, Duke U's very own Ryan Baumann created _Loebolus 📗📕_. ryanfb.xyz/loebolus/
Loebolus
ryanfb.xyz
I'm confused by all the people posting that every Flock camera contains 2–3 lbs of copper and 1–2 grams of gold, when in fact Flock cameras contain between three and four grams of gold. Are they teaching nothing in the schools these days?
bring back shame www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...
How Can We Live Together?
Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.
bostonreview.net
A.R. Moxon@juliusgoat.bsky.social · yesterdayEverywhere should be a hostile place for Republicans. They should not be able to find a friend anywhere. They should lose all their professional and familial relationships. They should be blocked from signing up to social media platforms, clubs, and yard sales. They should be ejected from fairs.
"Artificial intelligence is not just a market product or a scientific achievement. It is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy." connect the dots! Dr. McMillan Cottom has homework! go to the library, host a reading group, organize your neighbors www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/o...
Opinion | A Reading List for Our Age of A.I. (Gift Article)
A.I. is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy.
nytimes.com
The success of the AI industry amounts to the degradation of people’s lives, but the thirst among our representatives for this industry to succeed in that mission is intense. There is no shared prosperity here.
Elizabeth Warren@warren.senate.gov · 2d agoDo you use Instagram or Gmail? You could be helping to train AI. Big Tech has turned what all of us helped create into a trillion-dollar industry. It’s time to tax AI so you can share in its success.
Apparently DEI was the only thing standing between us and death lettuce
Reuters@reuters.com · 2d agoMichigan reports two deaths in ongoing cyclosporiasis outbreak reut.rs/4w4bd4E
I think the surest tell of the value of the GenAI boom is to ask, is the software that I use and interact with on a regular basis getting significantly better or not?
that specific feeling when u need to leave town for 2.5-3 days and find yourself going down on a mysterious older woman in her mansion so much you get brain damage from oxygen deprivation
LLM inference (the thing most users do with those things) is a statistical test and "agents" often perform many such inferences during a single task.
Æ.@aesthr.com · 2d agoIn statistics there's a really important thing called error multiplicity, aka the multiple testing problem. It describes how when you do multiple inferences, the error rates compound and p values in trials must be adjusted to compensate for this.
I’ve been reading more contemporary science fiction for *reasons* and the number one thing it lays bare is that all science fiction is actually fantasy and that a lot of people are suffering from this category error now in a way that is ruining the world.
For the good of humanity, every “hard” science fiction story has to have elves in it, now, as a reminder that none of it is ever gonna happen, so we should not try to base our society on trying to make it happen.
Benjamin Harnett@benjaminharnett.com · 2d agoI’ve been reading more contemporary science fiction for *reasons* and the number one thing it lays bare is that all science fiction is actually fantasy and that a lot of people are suffering from this category error now in a way that is ruining the world.
I’ve been reading more contemporary science fiction for *reasons* and the number one thing it lays bare is that all science fiction is actually fantasy and that a lot of people are suffering from this category error now in a way that is ruining the world.
Please stop saying “lockdowns.” There were never true lockdowns in the US, and it fuels far right narratives to repeat this inaccurate statement. You can say closures, you can say restrictions, or better, you can say public health measures which saved many lives.
Dr. Lucky Tran@luckytran.com · 6d agoPeople still complain about “lockdowns” but we had none in the US. We had stay-at-home orders, where although businesses were closed, you could still go outside whenever you wanted. Other countries had far stricter rules, and yet have been much more accepting of them as they saved many more lives.
For a while now my policy across all media has been I Don’t Want To Pay Money To Feel Bad and it’s been pretty great. Plenty of feeling bad for free/getting paid to feel bad for my job to be found elsewhere.
Erin Biba@erinbiba.bsky.social · 3d agoThese days I google the end of every single movie before I watch it to see if it’s sad because I just can’t handle that shit anymore. Happy endings only the real world is sad enough.
“A study for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration concluded that by 2035, debris from SpaceX satellites alone could kill or injure someone every two years.”
A Ton of Space Junk Tumbles Unpredictably to Earth Every Week (Gift Article)
Flaming chunks of metal crash into homes, farms and parking lots. Who’s to blame? And who pays for the damage?
nytimes.com
Heyyy we're up to 5005 signatures!!! Y'all are awesome! Please do keep on signing and sharing!
Greg Pak@gregpak.net · 4d agoThen sign the petition calling for a moratorium on "A.i." in the NYC public schools! Let's put this thing over 5000 signatures today, huh? Just 28 to go!!! actionnetwork.org/petitions/pl...
These people are like the Iraq-war supporters who when it predictably went to shit said well we were wrong for the right reasons. History shows if we are not careful these people will still dominate discussion and decision making in time to usher in the next catastrophe.
Benjamin Harnett@benjaminharnett.com · 4d agoThe AI mania is, like Trump, both a problem and a symptom of larger problems. Now when the problem is almost impossible to deny, you start to see many people implicated in the larger problem—hence the cause of the new problem—begin to criticize and agitate. You should doubt their proposed solutions.
The AI mania is, like Trump, both a problem and a symptom of larger problems. Now when the problem is almost impossible to deny, you start to see many people implicated in the larger problem—hence the cause of the new problem—begin to criticize and agitate. You should doubt their proposed solutions.