my most pronounced small-c conservative conviction is that a society worth living cannot survive without some meaningful conception of virtue in the classical sense, and for that reason anti-virtue sociopolitical edgelordism of the sort that has come from Musk et al needs to be punished

[Christopher M. Federico]@chrispps.bsky.social · 3d ago

Men (and I say 'men' intentionally here) like Musk have severely damaged the moral order with their actions -- and the rest of society (esp other elites) has damaged it further by indulging them. They must be held to account in order to restore it and end the corrosive fact of elite impunity.

Meet the most famous living residents of Green-Wood cemetery. This is the story of Green-Wood’s Monk Parakeets and the New Yorkers they share a city with. Watch the full documentary on our YouTube (@nycmayor).

The one thing I've taken from the reaction of deaths of Dolly Parton and Patrick Stewart is how much love there is towards people who represent goodness, and how much meaning they bring to people's lives, shaping the idea of the world they want to live in, giving them ideals to strive for.

He was our Captain because he was the best vision of what a good person is, not perfect but always kind. “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom: If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.” youtube.com/shorts/3Gbt9...

Sir Patrick Stewart recites Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

YouTube video by Southbank Centre

youtube.com

damn, i should've written a podcast about that in like 2019

jamelle@jamellebouie.net · last wk.

i think one problem is that when americans think "civil war" they think our unusually orderly one (which even that is overstated, see: missouri) and not the typical experience of civil conflict which is largely just random murder

Anyways, I expect dramatic but not exponential shifts in the world, because things take time and mistakes will be made. Of course it is much faster and easier to make things worse then better, which seems relevant when we consider regulations and who to imprison for what…

False Clownfish@juliuswanders.bsky.social · 2w ago

At some point huge investments might go into data - cameras and sensors everywhere, rain gauges, total surveillance. Then you could really apply processing power but there I think humanity limits how fast you scale. Would you trade a camera in your toilet for a cure for cancer?

At some point huge investments might go into data - cameras and sensors everywhere, rain gauges, total surveillance. Then you could really apply processing power but there I think humanity limits how fast you scale. Would you trade a camera in your toilet for a cure for cancer?

False Clownfish@juliuswanders.bsky.social · 2w ago

We assign numbers - like GDP or “how many kids die of cancer” - to give us a sense of certainty, but I promise you if you look under the hood it’s a mess. Outside of a small set of engineering issues, any problem worth solving is unimaginably complex and we devote ~0 resources to understanding 3/4

We assign numbers - like GDP or “how many kids die of cancer” - to give us a sense of certainty, but I promise you if you look under the hood it’s a mess. Outside of a small set of engineering issues, any problem worth solving is unimaginably complex and we devote ~0 resources to understanding 3/4

False Clownfish@juliuswanders.bsky.social · 2w ago

To any degree of accuracy, we don’t know how many people live where, we don’t know the population breakdown, who makes how much, we can’t really agree on things like mortality rates - “how many people died of x disease” or anything you care about is going to be a very rough guess... 2/3

To any degree of accuracy, we don’t know how many people live where, we don’t know the population breakdown, who makes how much, we can’t really agree on things like mortality rates - “how many people died of x disease” or anything you care about is going to be a very rough guess... 2/3

False Clownfish@juliuswanders.bsky.social · 2w ago

This is at the essence of what I think the limits of AIs impact on the real world are - instantly accessing the sum total of human knowledge still makes you pretty dumb Years of testing, collecting info, making and dumb luck…1/2

This is at the essence of what I think the limits of AIs impact on the real world are - instantly accessing the sum total of human knowledge still makes you pretty dumb Years of testing, collecting info, making and dumb luck…1/2

Rebecca Montacute@beckymontacute.bsky.social · 3w ago

In another life (about a decade ago) I was a lab scientist - this is a great explainer on why you should be (at least for now) relatively sceptical re AI allowing us to suddenly cure all diseases (or even a lot of them) - we don't have the info to give an AI. ahalflife.substack.com/p/why-are-so...

In another life (about a decade ago) I was a lab scientist - this is a great explainer on why you should be (at least for now) relatively sceptical re AI allowing us to suddenly cure all diseases (or even a lot of them) - we don't have the info to give an AI. ahalflife.substack.com/p/why-are-so...

Why are so many AI kingpins moving toward drug discovery?

Do they know something we don’t, or is it the other way around?

ahalflife.substack.com

Three years ago, my dad said that all fish are the same shape. Out of spite, I decided to draw all 478 families of bony fish listed in Nelson 2016. There's still some stuff I need to edit and some fish I want to redraw but, after 985 days, I finished my big dumb fish project last night.

The best SF story I’ve read on the question of AI consciousness is Ted Chiang’s “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” - it is incredibly thoughtful in posing its questions and is just generally brilliant writing. Feels like it should be referenced more often in these discussions!

False Clownfish@juliuswanders.bsky.social · 3w ago

In other words Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

El Niño is here: breaking all the wrong records, compounding and accelerating. Disasters over the past weeks are part of same trend: a climate emergency hitting most vulnerable hardest and fastest, destroying homes and livelihoods, and displacing families and communities.

Melon Husk coming out as a a full-blown Nazi also pretty clearly marked the point where Twitter became functionally useless for the things I used it for professionally - tracking and triangulating data on emergencies. So not only the morally right thing to not use it, but for professional integrity

Adam Serwer@adamserwer.bsky.social · 4w ago

I left x despite having a large following bc I don’t want to make free content for the world’s wealthiest racist. It’s not worth it to me.

I double-checked this on a couple of Xitter stat sites and it's true. Average views of the main AfD account dropped 90% and average engagement dropped by 60%. This is commercial social media for you: bots, damn bots and Russian bots.

Angry@angrystaffer.bsky.social · 4w ago

We’ve been talking about this for years. None of these far-right movements are organic.

“Intelligence” doesn’t solve implementation and reality reacts back in complex ways. Invent a new antibiotic, get novel bacteria. new drug, novel side effects. Cure one problem, get a new one - cheap food leads to obesity. Reality is dumb and random, positive change is boring and driven by luck.

False Clownfish@juliuswanders.bsky.social · last mo.

This is the essence of why “intelligence” isn’t that important! Getting data from the real world, knowing what is missing, is incredibly hard. We don’t have enough rain gauges, no perfect map of the human body, gravity wut?. Reality is mostly just a black box we are asking machines to guess about.

The secret ingredient is a half teaspoon of rosewater. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/cardamom PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

A brief history of Effective Altruism: 1951: The US eradicates malaria. 2007: insanely rich Americans realize it would be cheap to eradicate malaria in other places and save babies (but don’t) 2026: if I make a trillion dollars killing babies a man 200k years from now’s kids get free healthcare

False Clownfish@juliuswanders.bsky.social · last mo.

exactly a problem with the EA side is they take a number of very questionable positions as given - like there is a meaningful metric for “cost efficiency” in alleviating suffering. It begins in health where reductions in say disease prevalence are easier to cost and measure then slowly goes insane..

“The first step to doing good in an effective manner is to be honest about our cognitive limitations—and to take seriously the ever-present danger that even the most well-meaning and thoroughly “researched” interventions may prove to be counterproductive.”

The Problem with Effective Altruism

A partial defense.

persuasion.community

If consciousness is an emergent property of electrochemical processes then trees, slime molds, jellyfish and probably have it. Extend that to complex inorganic systems, then sure AI might be conscious. But proving trees are conscious won’t change the pencil industry - no one cares!

Vituperative Erb@vituperativeerb.bsky.social · last mo.

Either consciousness is an emergent phenomenon of the electrochemical processes of Brain, or you’re doing dualism If it’s the first thing, it’s not clear why Brain is the only possible medium for the phenomenon

Either consciousness is an emergent phenomenon of the electrochemical processes of Brain, or you’re doing dualism If it’s the first thing, it’s not clear why Brain is the only possible medium for the phenomenon

cee@cee.wtf · last mo.

rare X -> bsky crosspost

Water shortages - probably the single most existential challenge facing humanity - are in most of the developed world an extremely dull agricultural policy question and this makes people irrationally angry (but not at alfalfa farmers weirdly).

Sam@samd.bsky.social · last mo.

we could solve the western water crisis overnight by simply charging alfalfa farmers market rates for water

Official trailer for "#Musk" documentary - boingboing.net/2026/09/25/o... this is the film they don't want you to see (social media refusing to carry ads for it...)

Official trailer for "Musk" documentary

If you haven't figured out the deal with Elon Musk, yet, a blockbuster documentary is on its way to explain it in detail. Filmed by Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest…

boingboing.net

This comes up a lot with snark but there is a clear definition. An expat is a non-citizen resident of a foreign country with no intention of establishing residency in that country. An immigrant is someone planning on establishing permanent resident or citizenship. Expats include migrant workers.

Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈@maxdubler.com · 2mo ago

What’s the difference between immigrants and expats?

“AGI” is actually used to mean “Artificial Godlike Intelligence” and is a purely religious concept closer to American Millenarian cults than any science. With their other weird eugenics and fascist ideas, focusing on the problem of the specific hyper-influential cultists in charge is rational.

Faine Greenwood@faineg.com · 2mo ago

Why talk about how nuts the AI rationalist sex cult is, and not just focus on the (very real) risks and harms of AI? Well, when we're discussing "who should get to regulate AI, and how," I think it's VERY relevant to talk about the antisocial, unsettling ways many people running US AI think.

Why talk about how nuts the AI rationalist sex cult is, and not just focus on the (very real) risks and harms of AI? Well, when we're discussing "who should get to regulate AI, and how," I think it's VERY relevant to talk about the antisocial, unsettling ways many people running US AI think.

Armed groups are intentionally choosing to murder obvious civilians - kids, old people - with small, cheap drones at vastly higher rates than we’ve ever seen before. In my latest with Nathaniel Raymond of @hrl-yalesph.bsky.social, we talk about what we must do to protect those people:

Civilians Need Better Protections in the Drone Age

Hunting noncombatants from the sky is growing disturbingly common.

foreignpolicy.com