The one gen AI product I would never disable and would probably pay money for is a browser plugin that draws Dracula Flow hair on every photo of Andrew Tate I have to look at
Travis Brown
@travisbrown.dev
Software developer living in Berlin https://travisbrown.dev for contact info
How are there so many beloved BBC journalists who look exactly like this and are also wildly racist pedophiles? At least I only have to learn about them when they die, but that seems to happen every couple of months now.
Substack has started withholding a small number of Nazi accounts in Germany, which is good, I guess! What’s not so good is that you can still view the publications that these Nazi accounts own, you can find them in search, and you can even subscribe to them.
Paris Marx@parismarx.com · yesterdaygetting tired of people on the left still launching substack newsletters after all the reporting on that company in recent years
there are a lot of things about our current cultural moment that are extremely depressing but the extent to which the right tried to canonize charlie kirk and managed only to turn him into a meme (derogatory) is genuinely encouraging
The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2w agoNew York sculptor spent $100,000 to make a Charlie Kirk statue no one wants to buy
Just deleted a post because I don’t want to contribute to the spread of disinformation in any way, but fingers crossed the event at issue will actually happen soon and we can celebrate properly.
The best part: the old screen name is available for anyone interested in impersonating a federal agency (I just checked).
Travis Brown@travisbrown.dev · 3w agoIf you want to get mad about some shit the US government did that isn’t murderous or fascist but is just nonsensical and fucking stupid, the National Labor Relations Board account on X recently changed its handle from “@NLRB” (which it had had since 2009) to “@NLRB_Board”.
If you want to get mad about some shit the US government did that isn’t murderous or fascist but is just nonsensical and fucking stupid, the National Labor Relations Board account on X recently changed its handle from “@NLRB” (which it had had since 2009) to “@NLRB_Board”.
In general I find it annoying to run into Americans in Berlin, but last night I saw some Waschbären here for the first time, and I felt really proud of these little guys, just climbing around on abandoned buildings, not really assimilating, causing problems for our German hosts
I’ve listened to a few Ashley St. Clair interviews, and IMO the one Brian Reed did last month is by far the most responsible, even though Reed is a normie journalist I often disagree with. I don’t know why leftists in media default to deference so often when talking to formers, but it’s a problem.
perhaps we should view nazi tattoos as disqualifying from here on out. i kind of assumed we'd already view them as disqualifying but was unpleasantly surprised so maybe from here we could all agree not to downplay nazi tattoos since they seem pretty indicative of broad disregard for human dignity
Productive morning in Berlin: picked up my new Aufenthaltserlaubnis at the Ausländerbehörde and happened to ride past a burned out car (the first really good one I’ve seen in a year or two).
I would learn German and get my German citizenship solely to be able to vote for a politician who would pledge to get these fucking vehicles out of our bike lanes and off of our sidewalks. Fuck Amazon, obviously, but also fuck every other company doing this shit.
I'm gonna get on my high horse. Civil society folks with huge followings – lawyers, academics, think tank staff – follow & share random, anon accounts that *solely* steal video and text. ICE car crash. Date? Location? Source? None of it? It's decontextualized. Making it 10x harder to follow-up!
Travis is raising an aspect of what I'll call "news rot"– pseudo news dressing itself up as journalism. Is text/video stolen? (Lifted and de facto claiming authorship.) Screenshots are too often altered. People pester y'all to post sources and links not to be cops but to make content checkable.
Travis Brown@travisbrown.dev · 2mo agoWe need a labeler for every account on here that has ever posted BREAKING on a tweet screenshot.
We need a labeler for every account on here that has ever posted BREAKING on a tweet screenshot.
Travis Brown@travisbrown.dev · 2mo agoJust saw a reskeet of some Substacker asshole I’ve never heard of (Timothy McBride) posting “BREAKING” on top of a screenshot of a tweet from yesterday by some podcaster I’ve never heard of posting something “BREAKING” about Iran with no clear source. What the fuck is this? How did we get here?
Just saw a reskeet of some Substacker asshole I’ve never heard of (Timothy McBride) posting “BREAKING” on top of a screenshot of a tweet from yesterday by some podcaster I’ve never heard of posting something “BREAKING” about Iran with no clear source. What the fuck is this? How did we get here?
This is why I prefer Bluesky, your home for artisanal clout farming engagement bait screenshotted from Twitter by real humans
R.C. Brougham@captainruck.bsky.social · 2mo agowent back to Threads for the one thing I use it for, looking for funny dril replies, and I can't get over how about 80% of the accounts on there seem LLM-generated to post High Engagement Topics sourced from Twitter
I just identified this “Dux Vul” guy and guess what, he’s a name in the European tech startup scene and has had C-suite jobs at companies you’ve heard of.
Justin@sitkaworldsfair.bsky.social · 2mo agoElon Musk is still going and I don’t know what to say. Unhinged racism and unmoored violent fantasies. I would say his site should be blocked, but thanks to Starlink he’s beyond reach (which is point of Starlink). Also note that the original post was 12 hours before he found it and replied.
We need a big comprehensive compilation of people praising / defending Platner. I’ve hated every second I’ve had to spend learning about this guy but at least he could give us a list of people nobody ever needs to listen to again.
Not really the point but social media post screenshot culture is such a fucking plague. If someone did this on one of my repos I would block them on the spot.
Please Do Not Vibe Fuck Up This Software · Issue #929 · RsyncProject/rsync
github.com
This is the most frustrating thing about German immigration as well. Will your residence permit get extended for one, two, three, or zero years? Will the officer immediately switch to English or yell at you for your shitty German? It’s all 100% a lottery based on how their morning is going.
Charybdis Goatse@ass.golf · 2mo agoAnd the thing about Canadian immigration is that it ultimately comes down to ***whatever the specific immigration officer you are dealing with feels like at the time***
These are two extremely annoying men who sometimes individually make something beautiful more or less by accident. They shouldn’t be allowed to talk to each other and they definitely shouldn’t be allowed to use AI.
Eurogamer@eurogamer.bsky.social · 2mo agoHideo Kojima and Nicolas Winding Refn have teamed up for a Prada mode event teaser exploring "new creative possibilities through AI technology" www.eurogamer.net/hideo-kojima...
Finally got a response from @github.com on my impersonation report. Unfortunately it’s useless garbage that says that GitHub Trust and Safety doesn’t care if someone uses my email address and name and avatar to promote their AI project.
Travis Brown@travisbrown.dev · 4mo agoIf anyone has a couple minutes to waste, you could report this GitHub account and the X account downthread for impersonation. I’m not too worried about either, but I am curious about whether the platforms will do anything.
Massie is a Nazi weirdo who happens to be right about a couple of things and it’s cool actually that he lost to the stupidest motherfucker Trump was able to buy.
As usual I did an extremely bad job at this and as usual that didn’t matter.
Travis Brown@travisbrown.dev · 3mo agoToday is that day that happens every couple years when I have to pretend to know German.
Today is that day that happens every couple years when I have to pretend to know German.
“The Post could not independently determine who is behind XFreeze.” Hmmm in three minutes I found a SoundCloud account with a different alias that uses the same email address as this guy, and in another five minutes I had a personal Facebook, phone number, and birthday.
Elon Musk’s anonymous online BFF spreads his ideas and attacks his enemies
The Tesla CEO regularly amplifies a fan account called XFreeze that sings his praises and criticizes opponents in his lawsuit against OpenAI.
washingtonpost.com
I especially like how “Flex Platform” makes this sound like a feature instead of a symptom of the collision of two flavors of capitalism that are almost equally stupid.
Travis Brown@travisbrown.dev · 3mo agoGoogle Maps in Japan: go to platform X and use train car Y for fastest access to exit Z at your destination Google Maps in Germany: Flex Platform
Google Maps in Japan: go to platform X and use train car Y for fastest access to exit Z at your destination Google Maps in Germany: Flex Platform