ABrockwell @aebrockwell@qoto.org

Some words about Mastodon moderation:

1. It’s hard. No decision is easy and there’s lots of gray area even with explicit rules.
2. We’ll sometimes debate for a long time on a single post. We do our best to make the right call.
3. Even so, we sometimes make mistakes. We’re willing to accept appeals when that happens.
4. We get a lot of things right. You can’t even imagine some of the traumatic things we see.

1/5

#Mastodon #Moderation #Admin #Kindness #Empathy #Hate #Safety #MastoAdmin

My million dollar idea I want someone to steal and do, so I can be a customer.

"Dumb Stuff" we sell electronic appliances that aren't Internet connected. That's all.

That's it. That's the pitch. I would buy the <bleep> out of this company if their electronic gadgets were even half way decent, and repairable.

Electronic, no wifi, regular screws to open it up. That's it. Do those three things, and you can be sold by this store.

I will pay this business to curate and find these devices for me.

I just saw a post that referred to ChatGPT as "Mansplaining as a service", and it is so wonderfully correct - instant generation of superficially plausible yet totally fabricated nonsense presented with unflagging confidence, regardless of topic, without concern, regard, or even awareness of the expertise of its audience :D #chatgpt #mansplaining #GenerativeAiIsGoingGreat

So when an owl rotates their head 270 degrees and regurgitates rodent bones it's cool, but when I do it I'm possessed by a legion of chthonic fiends?

Seeing intelligence in software is the new seeing Jesus in toast.

@alter_kaker "At our company we follow BEST practices. What do you do at YOUR firm?"

What the hell are "best practices"?

There are good and bad ways of doing things. There are trade-offs, there are fads, there are better ideas.

What standards body certified these "best practices", and why would anyone want to be limited to obsolete and bureaucratic stuff. Oh, there IS no standard‽‽ It's all just meaningless puffery? We added the word "best" to what we were already doing? Grrr.

#BestPractices

#Meaning #AI

Can we please use the term "AI" again for expert systems, ontologies, discussions about the Turing test, programming in Lisp, spiking network models, re-inforcement learning and the like?

And not use it as a term that exlusively means the currently popular auto-text generators?

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” — Carl Sagan

The reason Ukraine is running out of artillery shells and other critically important supplies is, Speaker Mike Johnson in his clean suit on the left thinks, the weapons support to the Ukrainian soldier on the right can wait.

So Mike Johnson is now going home to celebrate Christmas with his family, while this soldier is trying to fight the Russian invasion with even less weapons.

The US deserves better politicians.

#Fascism isn’t an ancient relic or an outdated term; it has returned as a living, breathing process transforming and weaponizing the state against its people.

Few remain from the generation that watched the #ideology take hold and mutate and unfold its horrors the first time, and without that living memory, we are challenged to explain what fascism was and how it worked.

@gothamgirlblue must read column for us today.

#Democracy #politics

https://www.damemagazine.com/2023/12/19/the-failed-promise-of-never-again/

Genuinely remarkable live views right now of a large "effusive" volcanic eruption in southwestern #Iceland (just north of the town of Grindavik), with lava fountains that appear to be hundreds of feet tall. This eruption has been anticipated for weeks. https://t.co/i98erGGgJv https://t.co/rI0jiQ6ftM

We have reached a truly bizarre place in our political discourse when supposedly serious people want us to believe that the party of Trump, “Jewish space lasers,” QAnon, and “Great Replacement” theory is the bulwark against antisemitism in America. 2/

The #Bidenimpeachment is all about theater. It gives #Republicans the ability to make false allegations public during an election year. Since there is no proof, no witnesses, no first-hand account, the most likely justification is to publicly malign a sitting #President in retaliation for exposing #Trump for being a #coward, #criminal and #conman

#FollowFriday

Renowned publication, Australian Geographic, are on the Fediverse and leading the way on Newsmast for knowledge sharing!

Follow @ausgeo if you're interested in the natural beauty of Australia and want to learn more about the wildlife, culture, and people who make the country such a wonderful place. Or, get involved at https://newsmast.org/communities/status/environment

#newsmast #newsmastfoundation #mastodon #environment #ausgeo

It makes me depressed to read people saying it makes no difference whether Biden or Trump is President, when I know what horrible things Trump is planning to do to women, trans people, queer people in general, immigrants, attempts to combat the climate emergency, and so on. As a trans woman, the consequences for me could be dire.

We have a long way to go to get to the kind of society we want. Not trying means not only not getting closer: it means going in the opposite direction.

“The evidence of Trump’s impeachable offenses was overwhelming and Trump was impeached…

“And in 2023, Donald Trump is once again seeking illicit help in his campaign, this time by badgering Republicans to impeach Joe Biden

“Even with no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, Republicans are all too willing to do it.”

Adam Schiff isn’t wrong

So why won’t the media say exactly this?

History has much to teach us about modern politics. In my latest piece, I examine how we can make sense of QAnon through the prism of the bizarre story of a French king who thought he was made of glass—and the fascinating history of delusions. https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/from-the-glass-king-to-qanon

So in Texas, a woman's healthcare decisions are between the woman and her doctor, an indicted Republican criminal defendant who was separately impeached but not convicted, and 9 Republican state supreme court justices, none of whom are doctors? Got it.