@freakademic.bsky.social
I'm Muslim with an M.A. in the history of SWANA and East Africa. But I mostly post about lefty things and dungeons and dragons, these days.
Civil servants have generally traded a lower income for increased stability; without genuinely binding assurances of stability, the government is a much less attractive employer. That’s the aim for ideologues who often don’t know what the government does, but it’s not a good thing.
Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 14h agoThe idea that deep institutional damage can be easily rolled back seems like a very odd take for a conservative. The damage to the civil service system is huge, and legislation is needed to reassure future hires they won’t be fired on a whim.
If there is one piece of advice I can give to expectant parents it is this: do not buy baby furniture new. Cribs, playpens, high chairs, toddler towers, they’re all over Marketplace and Buy Nothing groups. Also, thrift stores have tons of baby clothes and toys in great condition
People: You can't just post one line from a song and expect everyone to know the song ME: North Carolina!
Kingfisher & Wombat@tkingfisher.com · 9h agoPeople: You can't just post one line from a song and expect everyone to know the song ME: Oh MY god, Becky
(This actually shows the majority ARE voting.) Setting that aside, I'm convinced that 38% of people staying home is intentional. I think Democrats are well aware they could improve turnout if they unanimously fought for a strong social safety net and human and civil rights. But they don't.
@RexDoctor@rexdoctor.bsky.social · 11h agoBut the majority do not vote every election. It's why the odds are that Dems will not take Congress 🙄, because of gerrymandering, voting acts, and nihilism.
exactly 💯 on LLMs: they simulate the output we call language, not the cognitive capacity we call language!
Dr Katie Twomey@k2mey.eurosky.social · 2d agoArguing that LLMs are anything more than a load of numbers going into a complicated mathematical function and spitting some more numbers out. Yes they simulate. But they simulate *language*. They do not simulate the cognitive processes underlying communication.
The older I get, the more I think people have to solve their own problems, in almost every case. We can give them perspective if they seem open to listening. We can give them a place to stay for a while, or other resources. But they still have to fix things themselves, almost always.
We need to have to have a reckoning with the fact that our media class is mostly just dull as fuck driving gloves Tory 65 year olds who think behaving like an insufferable cunt is cool and funny
2- Righteousness. People do have legitimate needs, often unmet needs, and the synthetic text extruding machines can *look like* a solution. But just because the problems are real doesn't mean the solution is beneficial, effective, or worth (not always externalized) costs. >>
A phenomenon I've noticed recently is people trying to occupy some untenable middleground wrt to the use of systems sold as "AI" -- this is a position where people try to recognize the harms of this tech but also hold space for "responsible" or "ethical" use. 🧵>>
Thinking about this again, in the context of a review of our book that wished we'd given advice on "responsible use" in the final chapter, instead of what we did write about resistance, refusal, asking good questions about automation, and ridicule as praxis. >>
Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 2mo agoA phenomenon I've noticed recently is people trying to occupy some untenable middleground wrt to the use of systems sold as "AI" -- this is a position where people try to recognize the harms of this tech but also hold space for "responsible" or "ethical" use. 🧵>>
I was struck by the extent to which this reviewer (and many other people, I'm afraid) have lost sight of the possibility of refusal. And so I want to reaffirm: There is no responsible use without the possibility of refusal. >>
Relatedly, any organization that claims to be taking a "human-centered" approach, but is only asking "How do we use [whatever tech] responsibly?" and not "Should we use [tech] at all" is in fact centering the tech, and not the people. >>
holy shit we have raised over $50K last week!! as promised, I have refreshed the list with the next group of 9 candidates, with a focus on including the Michigan swing district candidates who just won their primaries last week! 🧵thread on all the new candidates below:
Donate to the candidates on the front lines of the fight against MAGA gerrymandering
These are anti-MAGA state candidates in *extremely* close races
secure.actblue.com
Sam@samd.bsky.social · last wk.I love Talarico and hope he wins. But he’s already raised $70M On the flipside, control of critical state legislatures will come down to seats where candidates raise 0.1% of that. I’ve researched the highest leverage swing district candidates you should donate to secure.actblue.com/donate/donat...
Callback to recent data center discourse - why don't people want them in the community? Because of shit like this: futurism.com/artificial-i...
Google Data Center Announces Plans to Pave Over Protected Wetlands
Google is requesting authorization to fill in a chunk of precious wetlands to build three data center buildings in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
futurism.com
El-Sayed: I don't want to fund a foreign military that does genocide, apartheid, or has taken us to a war we don't need to fight. [...] My responsibility as the next senator from Michigan is children in Michigan rather than thinking about what's in the interest of a foreign government."
"Wealthy" nations can and have absolutely launched themselves into death spirals by neglecting infrastructure; the mundane, unglamorous work of maintaining things, instead of the glory of building them.
the media in this country treats bigotry coming from a place of fear as a valid public position. eventually this leads you to the ludicrous place where “the muslim mayor of new york city shouldn’t attend the 25th anniversary commemoration of 9/11” is treated as newsworthy opinion
CNN@cnn.com · 2d agoTwenty-five years after the mayor of New York City became the champion of America's grief and resilience at the time of the 9/11 attacks, families of those killed are split on whether the current mayor should attend the annual remembrance. https://cnn.it/4zkKYdc
This is like Rowling saying that being assaulted in a bathroom (by a cis man) is why she's a TERF. That sucked and it shouldn't have happened but you're taking it out on people who aren't responsible because you're a bigot who can't separate.
CNN@cnn.com · 2d agoTwenty-five years after the mayor of New York City became the champion of America's grief and resilience at the time of the 9/11 attacks, families of those killed are split on whether the current mayor should attend the annual remembrance. https://cnn.it/4zkKYdc
"(Person) isn't perfect either, so they're exactly the same as (objectively worse Person)" is a dumb ass take and always has been. It's stupid when you're talking about a person you know in real life. It's stupid when you're talking about a political leader or theorist. It's always stupid.
Hard to look at the stupid “USAID invented hiphop to dumb down middle America” and not see Henry Ford’s “the international Jew invented jazz to destroy traditional values.” At the racist root is the denial Black independence and brilliance. blavity.com/usaid-didnt-...
No, USAID Didn't Fund Rap Music — Despite What This Viral Right-Wing Theory Claims About Its Chart Decline - Blavity
A bizarre conspiracy theory circulating online has combined two popular targets of right-wing hatred: rap music and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The wild theory accuses the US govern...
blavity.com
Basically discriminative "AI" is legitimate, generative "AI" is a scamslop
The legitimate uses of "AI", which are medical and data research, don't even use anything that resembles the kind of "AI" that everyone else is using. They're custom built algorithms, basically. And the only reason they get conflated is that people trying to sell "AI" know this helps their cause.
One great irony of the white conservative backlash against DEI or whatever they want to call it is that it frames itself as a critique of identity politics and yet people like Ross Douthat don't have their jobs because they're good at what they do, they have them because of who they are