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Michael Harris

@davidmichaelharris.bsky.social

MA (Hons), MScR, FSA Scot Archaeologist. Adult Education Tutor. Editor & proofreader. Member: Friends of the Earth Scotland; Red Rope; Solidarity Federation-IWA

336 Posts252 Follower584 Folgt
Gaia Vince@wanderinggaia.bsky.social · 2d ago

Live your life in such a way that when you die people don’t have to remind the euphemists how hateful you were

Frances Ryan@francesryan.bsky.social · 2d ago

As Rod Liddle has died, I notice this column I wrote in 2019 about his attacks on people with M.E. is on the most read again. Rebekah Brooks, of News UK, described Liddle today as “provocative”. In reality, he spread lies about very sick people for cash. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Dan McQuillan@danmcquillan.bsky.social · 5d ago

AlphaFold was always bait-and-switch; now Google confirms it. A hyper-narrow bioinformatrics model with actual science bolted on whose guesses can be experimentally checked was never a licence for socially-applied slop at scale, but it's done its job. Effort transferred to LLMs.

Screenshot of Financial Times headline reading "Google DeepMind dismantles Nobel-winning AlphaFold team in strategy shift" with photo of Demis Hassabis & John Jumper
Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 4d ago

< dozens of people tell me "you can just tell it to turn that behavior off!" > Yeah that's really not the point of my complaint. I'm not asking for suggestions on how to make the system more pleasant for me to use; I'm pointing out that it has dark patterns built in that make it harmful by default.

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 4d ago

It’s bad enough that it tries to flatter you by telling you you’re asking such good and insightful questions. But desperately egging you on to try to make you spend more tokens is just gross. Like if every time you ran a mass spectrometer it tried to upsell you on some more advanced analysis.

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 4d ago

I’ve seen a lot of my colleagues’ interactions with Claude working on research problems & it would be easier for me to accept it as a serious scientific tool if it didn’t end every single response with the LLM equivalent of “you want fries with that?” — constantly trying to goad you into asking more

Rav@rvbdrm.com · last yr.

Karl Marx said it in theory. Dolly Parton said it in plain English. Same critique. Different century.

Image of a quote in white text and black background from Karl Marx. The quote reads: “The prolongation of the working-day beyond the point at which the labourer would have produced just an equivalent for the value of his labour-power, and the appropriation of that surplus-labour by capital, this is production of absolute surplus-value.”Image of a Dolly Parton quote from her song “9 to 5” on a textured soft pink background: “BARELY GETTIN’ BY, IT’S ALL TAKIN’ AND NO GIVIN’ THEY JUST USE YOUR MIND AND THEY NEVER GIVE YOU CREDIT”
jessamyn@librarian.bsky.social · 5d ago

I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful

An aircraft passenger oxygen mask: a drop down passenger mask with air bag and yellow plastic mouth and nose cover, oxygen tube has been cut; Demonstration model used by flight attendant crew for passenger instruction. Has text on the side indicating that it's non-functional.
Alison Fisk@alisonfisk.bsky.social · 5d ago

A rare and fragile survival from Viking-age York! A delicate silk cap made of hand-spun, undyed silk, c. AD 875-950 Silk was an exotic material imported via a vast network of Viking trade routes. Found during excavations at Coppergate in 1980. Yorkshire Museum 📷 by me #FindsFriday #Archaeology

My photo shows a hood-shaped silk cap from Viking Age York displayed on a thin metal stand against a dark display case background at the Yorkshire Museum. It is made from a rectangle of hand-spun, undyed silk, and shaped at the back by a centre seam. The pale silk is yellowy-gold in colour with a shiny lustre. The edges have been neatened with fine hems. According to the museum, it was probably worn with ties to fasten it to the head, as it includes the remains of two groups of stitches with which to attach ties. The museum says that the silk cap was likely worn by a female Anglo-Scandinavian resident of York. Also that “Silk was incredibly rare in the Viking North because it was not made locally. Silk-weaving is a Chinese technology, but by the 10th-century, the practice had reached the Arabian Peninsula, the Byzantine Empire, and parts of North Africa and Spain. Silk used to make the cap was imported from one of these places. The fine, pale-toned material would have been recognised in the town as a highly expensive and exotic fashion item”.
Natalia (娜塔莉)@nataliajagielska.bsky.social · 2w ago

Cool weird facts about the first Western palaeontologists. Did you know that the palaeontologist Henry De la Beche, is cited for being the first person to depict Earth as seen from space (1834)

Etching by De la Beche that appears in the beginning of his Researches in Theoretical Geology. A depiction of Earth as seen from space, on Afroeurasia
Natalia (娜塔莉)@nataliajagielska.bsky.social · 3w ago

What links Richard Owen and William Buckland (that's not dinosaurs) They got along with, then Prime Minister, Robert Peel, and both worked on modernising sewers and drainage systems, in Westminster (Buckland) and Lancaster (Owen).

Caricature of Owen
Jens Notroff@jensnotroff.com · 6d ago

The #BronzeAge #UptonLovellShaman​'s burial in Wiltshire has long been considered an important religious figure & metalworker. It's been barely questioned someone of such status must be male. But now #aDNA analysis revealed that the body is in fact: a woman. 🏺 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The Guardian view on ancient DNA: a female shaman exposes our flawed assumptions about the past | Editorial

Editorial: Thanks to new technology we are are acquiring insights into earlier times, and realising how little we truly know

theguardian.com

Mike Small@bellacaledonia.bsky.social · 6d ago

The ex-BNP ‘Christian patriot’ raising international funding for Scottish ‘vigilante’ night patrols www.theferret.scot/jim-dawson-f...

The ex-BNP ‘Christian patriot’ raising international funding for Scottish ‘vigilante’ night patrols

Far right organisation Knights Templar International, whose frontman Jim Dowson has a long history of involvement with extremist groups, is now supporting Scotland’s new wave of night patrols.

theferret.scot