Michel Lind
@michel-slm.name
#Meta production engineer working on #Linux userspace, longtime #Fedora contributor, #Debian maintainer #Midwest #USA transplant, lay monastic, mostly harmless avatar: bespectacled man wearing a CentOS T-shirt background: Fedora 39 GNOME night wallpaper
Former IMF deputy Gita Gopinath: ‘It’s straight-out protectionism’ ft.trib.al/d5m8XTE
Former IMF deputy Gita Gopinath: ‘It’s straight-out protectionism’
The economist on Trump’s tariffs, looming threats to the dollar — and why we’re living through a ‘great gamble’
ft.trib.al
I will never know if this administration *wants* to delegitimize the US census, but they sure are doing a fantastic job of it. The amazing Gillian Tett offers a portrait of what's happening: giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
Who counts in Trump’s America?
Gillian Tett on the president’s bid to reform the 10-year census, and the explosive politics behind who gets included and who gets to decide
giftarticle.ft.com
The unified theory of fanfic evil remains unbeaten.
Butt teeth! Butt teeth! Butt teeth!@panic.gay · last wk.Everyone on here is filled with a fresh batch or loathing for JK Rowling, so it seems like a good time to bring up that a shockingly large number of leaders within the AI world know each other because they were all part of a niche fandom that centered around a pretentious Harry Potter fanfic.
As you can tell from this short thread, Korte is a pro, and some national MSM outlet ought to pick her up and get her back in print, pronto. You'd get a lot of great stories, and you'd drive Hegseth bananas.
Nicholas Slayton@nslayton.bsky.social · last wk.Lara Korte, who was just fired from Stars & Stripes, has been covering the relocation of personnel from Bahrain for months and did a great piece today on 1,300 Navy family members displaced from Bahrain who are stuck in limbo given the damage to the Bahrain base. www.stripes.com/branches/nav...
So we know AI helped a negligible number of students. But how many did it harm? I've crunched the raw data provided by the lead researcher, and what I've found is that ~9,500 students using AI studied less than even the *least* studious, non-AI using student. This should shock the conscience.
Benjamin Riley@benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 2w agoBoth the Economist and others suggest this study demonstrates that AI can help students. So I contacted the lead researcher to figure out how many. Answer: Out of ~26,000 kids, a total of 20. And five months after starting to use AI, only four continued to spend 65 minutes on homework. Four.
Both the Economist and others suggest this study demonstrates that AI can help students. So I contacted the lead researcher to figure out how many. Answer: Out of ~26,000 kids, a total of 20. And five months after starting to use AI, only four continued to spend 65 minutes on homework. Four.
Benjamin Riley@benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 2w agoI mean, c'mon. What this data shows is (a) there's a huge number of students using AI and not studying for very long compared to peers; and (b) negligible "benefits" for students who did study for comparable time periods and used AI.
I now post over at mastoart.social/@thatwritere... due to BlueSky leaders' apparent #slop addiction - But regarding slop, the 🇩🇪 #book distributors #Tredition + #epubli (aka #selfpublishing corps), are apparently eager to feed US #AI all manuscripts. No opt out. #noai #llm #books #reading #writing
Rolled your eyes at an out-of-office message? This is the guide for you. You may think that these automated emails show your colleagues as lazy, slacking off while you toil through the long summer, but they are so much more. My FT column translates: www.ft.com/content/46ca...
What your out-of-office really means
An email translator for the summer holidays
ft.com
Out today: @mjhaugen.bsky.social, our Energy and Planning Manager, appeared on @techwontsave.us to discuss our latest research on AI with @parismarx.com youtu.be/bk6q6qIL7SU
Great to have @mjhaugen.bsky.social on the show! We dig into the many ways government enables all the harms we’re seeing from generative AI and hyperscale data centers by crafting policy that helps the companies behind them.
Tech Won’t Save Us@techwontsave.us · 2w agoThe AI boom isn’t just being pushing by major tech companies; it’s enabled by a suite of government policy. This week @mjhaugen.bsky.social joins @parismarx.com to discuss how government is putting AI before people and the planet. Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/341_...
"LLM-generated patches did not resolve the vulnerability, added a new vulnerability, or both, an average 53.9% of the time." 👁️👄👁️ 1password.com/blog/why-ai-...
More than 10,000 excess deaths were recorded across Europe in recent heatwaves. Wildfires are raging across the continent, and here at home. Climate change is here. The govt cannot afford to ignore or roll back from their climate commitments, especially during Ireland's term in the EU Presidency.
Important piece on London and data centres in the FT. Include's Foxglove's call for concrete conditions to ensure local water and energy supplies, or the environment, are not endangered. If not, developers shouldn’t be allowed to build. www.ft.com/content/67db...
Data centres vs housing: how London became a central battleground
The city has become the largest hub for AI power centres across Europe, competing with homes for energy, space and water. Its priorities are being called into question
ft.com
BREAKING: Google has rolled back its tool less than a day after it launched. Updated story coming soon.
ANTHROPIC: Our son loves humanity and for the low price of trillions and trillions of dollars will usher in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity! OPENAI: Our horrible oafish son is hacking web sites without our permission. ANTHROPIC: (eyes narrowing) Our son is also evil
to a product owner, every single step between having the idea and shipping it is a burdensome waste of time
Geoff Brumfiel@gbrumfiel.bsky.social · last mo.BREAKING: Google has rolled back its tool less than a day after it launched. Updated story coming soon.
I used to do some work on the ethical use of satellite and drone imagery for aid and disaster response, and it is genuinely hard to express in words what a dangerous, stupid thing Google is doing by making it easy to use GenAI to create faked satellite imagery:
How to plant a nuclear plant in Iran
The question is: what on earth is Google doing?
digitaldigging.org
Just in case you still use any Basecamp products, DHH is crashing out about his AI product gently pointing out that it’s bad for him to have extermination fantasies about the Roma people.
As a young journalist, I was taught that it is highly unethical to let a source buy you a cup of coffee. What, then, is this strange business model in which journalism is a big lucrative circle-jerk with billionaires?
I think most economists wouldn’t find it that amazing. Most of the late 19th and 20th century saw a massive redistribution of wealth. But Kristian’s chart tells us little about wealth inequality: it’s looking at wealth *concentration*. You need to look at the less wealthy majority too.
"This uncertainty about the human provenance of text is an incalculable loss"
Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky.com · 2mo agoThis is a very good essay that advances a broadly humanist position on AI. Liberals, conservatives, socialists, and others should all agree that we must not sacrifice our moral agency in search of a mere facsimile of human understanding. www.compactmag.com/article/the-...
I'm pleased to share this new paper, "The myth of 'catch-up' development". The paper assesses trends in core-periphery inequality since 1960, and draws several main conclusions: 🧵https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563467.2026.2659076
The myth of catch-up development: trends in core–periphery inequality from 1960 to 2023
The conventional narrative in international development holds that poorer countries are “catching up” with richer countries through the process of capitalist growth. This paper assesses this claim ...
tandfonline.com
Good morning. This is fascism. This is the US Govt creating thought crimes. It’s not about who they are arresting today, it’s about how this vague and threatening pursuit will be used against dissenters. ✨EVERY✨ fascist govt to date, has taken this step. www.state.gov/releases/off...
Remarks at the Opening of the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism - United States Department of State
DEPUTY SECRETARY LANDAU: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the State Department. It’s an honor and a privilege to have you here. For those of us who grew up in the 1970s, the topic that ...
state.gov
Under which conditions do AI tools save researchers’ time and effort? And at what cost? Alex Mussgnug and I just published a philosophical analysis of #Convenience in #AI #philsci Paywalled: link.springer.com/article/10.1... Preprint: philsci-archive.pitt.edu/29890/
Convenience AI - Erkenntnis
This paper considers cases where AI is used to automate tasks perceived to be “mere routine” and inconvenient to researchers. We term such uses “Convenience AI” and characterise the set of assumptions...
link.springer.com
Your Print Copies of The Reconstruction Papers Are On Their Way! www.liberalcurrents.com/your-print-c...
Your Print Copies of The Reconstruction Papers Are On Their Way!
Yesterday, the company that will be handling the shipping of The Reconstruction Papers in the US picked up all of the copies from our printer. They began processing people's orders, and should have ev...
liberalcurrents.com
"French control of Algerian territory launched a period of unparalleled misery… The one million or so Muslim Algerians who died in the mid-1860s perished precisely because the new land policies imposed by the French government destroyed the ability of locals to lead self-sustaining lives."
The Blood Circle
Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill were part of a small but blood-soaked circle of liberal thinkers who embraced the murderous logic of empire.
liberalcurrents.com
Marco Rubio announced a “campaign to dismantle” the International Criminal Court, the Hague-based tribunal tasked with investigating war crimes and more. Rubio accused the court of “waging a war against our country — not with bullets or missiles, but with the force of so-called international law.”
Marco Rubio Threatens to “Teach” the ICC the “Full Meaning of American Resolve”
The secretary of state announced what he characterized as a “campaign to dismantle” the International Criminal Court.
buff.ly
A report on the ground from the ICE shooting in Biddeford that should make every parent in this country lose their minds:
