i don't like to police genre, but it's not dark academia unless somebody gets squished in one of these bad boys

It’s worth noting that Taco Bell identified the source before the FDA did, and promptly pulled it from their stores. The FDA didn’t even name the source until Taylor Farms outed themselves, and hasn’t issued a recall. Basically, Taco Bell is now a more reliable authority than the FDA.

Forbes@forbes.com · 3w ago

Taylor Farms, which supplies major fast food and grocery chains, was identified as the possible source of the cyclosporiasis outbreak Thursday.

At a junior league baseball game and all I can think about is how in tablet XII Gilgamesh drops his bat and ball into the underworld and Enkidu has to go retrieve it for him I mean how long have we been at this game…

But what we're *actually* doing is defunding cancer research (especially any research into "systemic" cancer because studying systemic things is "woke") to free up fiscal space so we can build data-centers and make Musk into a trillionaire. 21/

The true risk is: "an AI salesman will exploit your boss's infinite horniness for replacing mouthy workers with pliable machines to sell him a chatbot that *can't* do your job, and then your boss will fire you and replace you with that inept, defective chatbot." 17/

You don’t have to do this to yourself. There are non-Google options. Kagi is one of rude best search engines I have ever used: kagi.com

Kagi - Reclaim the Web & Restore Your Privacy

Reclaim the web from clutter. Get ad-free search, private browsing, and powerful tools that respect your data.

kagi.com

TechCrunch@techcrunch.com · 3mo ago

Google is transforming Search from a list of links into an AI-powered experience filled with conversational answers, autonomous agents, and interactive interfaces — a shift that could further reduce traffic to publishers across the web.

this chart is bananas

Hey babes—poets of Durham gathering tonight. Come join us 💜📚🔥💜📚🔥

Everything is ontology

Robert Zubek@rzubek.bsky.social · 3mo ago

It's amazing how much of game design is really ontology

Ada Palmer may just be the most bewilderingly talented person I know: a genius sf writer, incredible librettist and singer, wildly innovative educator, *and* a leading historian of the Renaissance. 1/

Everybody testing AI like picking up a blowtorch and looking directly into the barrel

Excellent thread. I'm not even joking when I say that Trump has done more for global decarbonization than any democrat ever has.

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 4mo ago

There aren't a lot of things I agree with Mark Carney about, but there's one area where he and I are in *total* accord: the old, US-dominated, "rules-based international order" was total bullshit: www.weforum.org/stories/2026... 1/

Even if you believed AI could do this, why would your default takeaway be "30% unemployment" vs "3-day workweeks for all"? Capitalists so brain-wormed they can sooner envision the end of society as we know it than sharing some of the benefits of new tech with their employees.

Downtown Josh Brown@downtownjoshbrown.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Dan Schulman is the new CEO of Verizon and he is predicting 20 to 30% unemployment within the next 2 to 5 years due to AI. Not a typo. He thinks 1/3 of people currently employed will lose their jobs by 2030.

Oh NICE. Fencing is awesome but super boring to watch on TV.

Jetset@jet-set.bsky.social · 4mo ago

The First WORLD FENCING LEAGUE is happening April 25th!!! I'M GEEKING!!! Japanese engineers developed this "Sword Tip Visualisation" tracking technology specifically for this event that will make it so much easier for the average person to see what's going on! I MUST WATCH THIS ENTIRE TOURNAMENT

Agentic LLM development tools make software feel like clay in my hands -- I can move it around, effortlessly. It's also shitty crumbly clay.

And he's right.

Paul Renfro@renfro.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Apparently the Pope has read Baudrillard.

Look, for my money the absolute game changer technologies right now are batteries and biosciences, not statistically modeling a mid conversation, but you do you.

Fix your hearts or die.

Jonathan Edward Durham@thisone0verhere.bsky.social · 4mo ago

What’s your favorite Bible verse? (Wrong answers only)

This is a must-read series of articles, and I think Kyle is very much correct. The comparison to the adoption of automobiles is apt, and something I've thought about before as well. Just because a technology can be useful doesn't mean it will have positive effects on society.

École des Bro-Arts@aphyr.woof.group.ap.brid.gy · 4mo ago

I’ve thought about this a lot over the last few years, and I think the best response is to stop. https://aphyr.com/posts/420-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess-where-do-we-go-from-here

Yeah what’s funny is there are actually a thousand years of “just war theory” and Trump is in the wrong according to all of them.

Shoe@shoe.bsky.social · 4mo ago

"The Pope is incorrect on matters of theology" is excommunication time. H/t @jumulojimbus.bsky.social

Seeing a fascist get democratically defeated after 16 years (despite doing their best to consolidate power) is immensely hopeful. All is not lost. All is never lost.

It's really important to keep in mind that for any output, a LLM would just as happily say exactly the opposite given different inputs. To me, this is pretty strong evidence that while they are capable language machines, they are not "intelligent."

Luke VanderHart@vanderhart.net · 4mo ago

So that's good (because sycophancy is cognitively hazardous) but it doesn't ultimately solve the problem. My ideal "thought partner" agrees or disagrees because it has opinions and ideas of its own, not varying levels of RHLF for different styles of response.

BREAKING: Following the American threat of an “Avignon Papacy,” Robert Kennedy has begun a Diet of Worms

🚨New preprint and our results are rather concerning.. We find the "boiling frog" equivalent of AI use. Using large-scale RCTs, we provide *casual* evidence that AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance. And these effects emerge after just 10–15 minutes of AI use! 1/

“Most large companies are spending more time strategizing against their employees than against their competitors.” 🖐️🎤

Anil Dash@anildash.com · 4mo ago

One of the biggest lies that media keeps repeating from right-wing commentators & politicians is “people don’t want to work anymore”. Actually, people *love* to work hard — if the work is meaningful and workers are respected. It’s a management skill issue. anildash.com/2026/04/06/p...

The ATmosphere, however, is growing.

James Ball@jamesrball.com · 4mo ago

I tend to get dogpiled every time I say this but: as someone *who likes bluesky and benefits from being here* we have a problem. The network is shrinking, not growing. It's shrinking a lot: only about 1.1m people a day even like a post. This time last year it was 1.6m.

This, 100%. And I say this as someone who does use LLMs for some aspects of my technical work -- I'm not categorically opposed to the technology. But if I -- a human -- want to communicate with other humans... Using a LLM just gets in the way, let alone how profoundly disrespectful it is.

John Scalzi@scalzi.com · 4mo ago

Why would I use "AI," I actually know how to fucking write

I hope that more techies start getting into philosophy and not just for a random quote to use at conferences by some writer you’ve never read any work from, but to start thinking more broadly about the social impact of new technologies.

Sentence. Carriage return, carriage return. Sentence. Carriage return, carriage return. Sentence. Carriage return, carriage return. These people think their writing style is so badass and emphatic, when even their cadence is a cliche. I'm so sick and tired of this tired format.