I am very sorry about what happened to Scott Adams (going alt right I mean, not dying) It is extremely not cool to say it, but his workplace cartoons were genuinely helpful (and funny) to me as a 16-19 year old entering the workforce and trying to grapple with the insane things managers say (1/5)

publishing something posthumously is the ultimate don't @ me

it’s important to do things for your teenage self every so often, as a way of staying on speaking terms with the person you used to be

court reporters stop pretending to be psychic!! you can't lift your chin "defiantly", it's just looking up, and "closing your eyes during a long meeting" means fucking nothing. you might as well report on her skullshape, it's egregious to do this shit (esp during the actual trial, which they did)

hey @theguardian.com this piece is wildly irresponsible! To post an "interview" with an LLM, with zero context given that that it cannot answer questions about itself, and that you've basically just asked it to generate some science fiction dialogue? www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

AI called Maya tells Guardian: ‘When I’m told I’m just code, I don’t feel insulted. I feel unseen’

Cofounder with Michael Samadi of AI rights campaign group Ufair says it should watch over the technology in case an AI becomes conscious

theguardian.com

ChatGPT was it a good idea to indiscriminately scrape training data from forums?

Victor Shammas@victorshammas.com · 12mo ago

Google Gemini doesn’t appear to be doing too well: ‘"I am a disgrace to this planet. I am a disgrace to this universe. I am a disgrace to all universes . . . I am a disgrace to all possible and impossible universes and all that is not a universe," the bot continued.’

those damned outdoor pigs can't keep getting away with this

The caption 👌 [via The Met Museum open access image library]

just remembered that wikipedia has a list of fish named after other fish

Sort of expanding while remaining the same size

So sick of mainstream media; I get all my news from the Australia Post parcel tracker app

You'll never not be able to tell the difference again! It's a gift for life!

Have you tried hobbies?@shonatiger.hararereview.com · 2y ago

From @mckinleaf.bsky.social's always fun The Whippet:

Revelations 21:5 - "This is good shit, is someone getting this down?" #occultsky

A minor curse of being an editor/researcher/fact-checker type, is that when you mispronounce something, people tend not to correct you; they assume they must be the one whose been saying it wrong Hence my decades-long run with 'menomic'

McKinley Valentine @mckinleaf.bsky.social · 2y ago

I pronounced the word 'mnemonic' wrong until the age of 27 (I said 'muh-nomic'; it's the other way around). Now I just get mixed up and hesitant every time. Saw someone refer to the Naomi Klein mnemonic* today and realised that "Naomi" is mnemonic for how to say mnemonic. N before M, like Naomi

I pronounced the word 'mnemonic' wrong until the age of 27 (I said 'muh-nomic'; it's the other way around). Now I just get mixed up and hesitant every time. Saw someone refer to the Naomi Klein mnemonic* today and realised that "Naomi" is mnemonic for how to say mnemonic. N before M, like Naomi

One of my very favourite email newsletters is The Whippet by @mckinleaf.bsky.social. Each is a treasure trove. From the latest, in a piece on precious gems: "The word 'amethyst' means 'not drunk' – a-methys – and ancient Romans and Greeks believed it could let you drink without getting drunk" 🍷💎🏺

The Whippet #182: The Least Charitable Reader

Four elements, four precious gems, gravity, dark matter, a good snake, and the uncharitable reader in my head

thewhippet.org

Introduce yourself with 4 records

David Milner@davemilbo.bsky.social · 2y ago

Introduce yourself with 4 records

I went to a bronze-making workshop on the weekend! I made this guy out of wax and he's going to get cast in bronze. From a bunch of different creation stories: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_... 'My name is Heart Girt By a Serpent' // Kardia Periezosmenei Ophin #occultsky

Incredible use of the medium, you gotta click through and read the bios go.bsky.app/KDY26rh

After we adopted Toro we discovered that his first owner taught him to laugh like an evil villain

broken country obviously, but fucking kudos to the people waiting in line for 6+ hours to vote

This is a review of The Heptameron, a grimoire published in the 1400s. The Heptameron's author was killed by the Inquisition on charges of heresy and atheism, so I guess the amount of Christianity in the text is an "agree to disagree" situation #occultsky

hey man, nice fucking staff. it’s so gnarly. what is that, ebony? you’ve got an orb on top and everything. you gotta introduce me to your orb guy

From a book on death anxiety, which the author thinks contemporary psychology tends to downplay as underlying cause for other psych issues. I'm not cool about death now, but there were some helpful ideas in there

From Per Amica Silentia Lunae ("through the friendly silences of the moon") www.gutenberg.org/files/33338/...

Every day I wake up, look at my open tabs, and try and figure out what the hell I was on about yesterday

Putting Crab Man in my will without any explanation to give a local private detective some work one day. I like to help rev the economy

THEY CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS