SCOOP: 404 Media placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it. What did we find? It ended up at an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books. Yes. This is literally the logo outside the Amazon warehouse door. Read now:

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.

404media.co

What is your second favorite Norman Greenbaum song? And why is it "Canned Ham"?

I don’t often get my orchids to bloom, but when i do … 🤯

Day three with no power and I am at this stage:

Toddler's Mud Puddle Playtime & Mud Drink

Alt: Toddler's Mud Puddle Playtime & Mud Drink

static.klipy.com

Two days without power and I’m already eating ice cream out of the carton while walking the dogs. Speaking of which, I told my wife it was a thing everyone was doing on Bsky, so if she asks back me up, ok?

Me: Bluesky has been more fun lately. Wonder what changed? Headline: Bluesky hemorrhaging post-election users. Ah! ♥️

Power is out for the next couple of days after massive storm ripped through. Time to level up my booknook skills to flashlight difficulty

The potential benefits of setting me on fire turn out to be outweighed by the benefits of NOT setting me on fire, determined by careful study of what happens when you set me on fire.

Jared Gardner@guttergeek.bsky.social · 6d ago

The study and headline grantsfar too much to the moguls' sociopathic perversion of effective altruism logic. There is 0 evidence that AI will solve climate change and devastating evidence that it is, right now and right here, making it much worse.

The study and headline grantsfar too much to the moguls' sociopathic perversion of effective altruism logic. There is 0 evidence that AI will solve climate change and devastating evidence that it is, right now and right here, making it much worse.

AI’s potential climate benefits outweighed by role in boosting fossil fuels, study finds

Modelling finds AI-driven productivity gains in coal, oil and gas enable more emissions than applications in renewables avoid

theguardian.com

Researching far right writing is traumatizing, but also challenging as much of the periodical material is not digitized by the academic archives that house them and is only available through really loathsome sites. Anyone working in this space got any tips for a newcomer to these dark caverns?

Man Walks Towards Dark Nature Tunnel

ALT: Man Walks Towards Dark Nature Tunnel

static.klipy.com

The 70s sucked but I had some amazing clothes

Jared Gardner@guttergeek.bsky.social · last wk.

Post you from a different era in your life

Post you from a different era in your life

TwoSense@twosense.bsky.social · last wk.

Post you from a different era in your life

Library funding is tied to usage.

I finally got this whole living thing down and then looked at my watch and realized I am way old 🤕

So, as far as I can tell, all LLM's are basically just Reddit search engines now?

I don’t want to work on my syllabus or answer emails. Anyone wanna hang out and chat?

What is a university to do when they've committed to going "all in on AI" before they had any idea what they were getting themselves into ... or whether their students even wanted it. Some thoughts on the growing disconnect between business and university leaders and their employees and students.

All-In

The greatest trick the AI overlords ever pulled was convincing the world that AI replacing human labor and creativity was inevitable.

campus-novel.ghost.io

Woah! According to this museum display, people read books before cellphones— including an edition of Octavia Butler from library of America that came out in 2021

Stephanie Porras@periodeye.bsky.social · 2w ago

This is a triggering image of a museum display in the natural history museum in DC about life before smartphones. Me and a fellow 40+ person were laughing at how we are now LITERAL MUSEUM PIECES. MY teen was like did you have a clear phone? An address book? A book of maps. Yes, yes I did. 🫠🫠🫠

HT @mlmcgill.bsky.social for pointing to this sharp, nuanced take on the current state of AI discourse—I especially appreciate its read of students—“One of the biggest mistakes commentators make is assuming that, because many students do use AI to complete coursework, they are true believers”

Jared Gardner@guttergeek.bsky.social · 2w ago

I had to wrangle a lot of screaming in my brain into sociable sentences for this new piece in CAMPUS NOVEL. In the end, the sentences are quite companionable and the screaming in my brain is moderately diminished for the moment.

I am fascinated by LLMs and despise AI, Inc. I hate with a white-hot passion the silicon valley moguls & the version of AI they are forcing upon society. That is not what AI could be or should be. AI can be human-scale and human-aligned, but only if we take it back from these inhuman monsters.

I had to wrangle a lot of screaming in my brain into sociable sentences for this new piece in CAMPUS NOVEL. In the end, the sentences are quite companionable and the screaming in my brain is moderately diminished for the moment.

All-In

The greatest trick the AI overlords ever pulled was convincing the world that AI replacing human labor and creativity was inevitable.

campus-novel.ghost.io

Please know how awesome you are and how lucky we are to have you still at it doing this madness with us. It would be so much harder without you

We are about six months away from the point at which the only people left who are unambivalently “all in” on AI are tech lords dreaming of a post-human future and their acolytes hoping for a utility closet in the tech lords’ bunker

If you see this, quote the energy you bring to Bluesky

Kid's Shovel Fail

ALT: Kid's Shovel Fail

static.klipy.com

motel california@motelporn.bsky.social · 2w ago

If you see this, quote the energy you bring to Bluesky.

In “Archives, Collectors, and the New Media Work of Comics,” Jared Gardner effectively argues that comics, comics culture, and comics readers are all, to some degree, archival in nature – that comics speak to the very concept of archiving quite innately. #comicsstudies 1/9

Please, please, please … make this stop 😭

Can’t decide which historical pop culture research to do next. Help me choose (ill share what i find): 1. Transistor radios 2. 3-D print pop culture from 19th century stereoscopes to 3D comics in the 50s 3. Drive ins 4. Dance marathons 5. Something else folks are curious about?

About to have 5 billion dollar movies for the year after only 7 months. And two are not franchise movies. So much for the death of Hollywood, which has been prophesied for going on a century now

Finally saw DISCLOSURE DAY, well worth watching for Blunt and O’Connor. Blunt did everything she could to energize a thin script shaped by an old man’s nostalgia for his own movies. But John Williams score almost ruined it. It felt like it was from another age and for an entirely different movie 📽️