ABrockwell @aebrockwell@qoto.org

Yes I realize I am creating a bubble by blocking fascists, nazis, racists, misogynists, white supremacists, maga, trumpists, assholes, and idiots. However in my defense it is a bubble without fascists, nazis, racists, misogynists, white supremacists, maga, trumpists, assholes, and idiots.

I am usually wary of "slippery slope" arguments, but with AI, I see us going downhill fast. AI-generated content is going to show up in people's searches, much of it indistinguishable from legitimate research. There will be AI-powered sites that auto-generate content people want to read, in order to gain clicks from search engines.

It will bring us further into a dystopian realm where, in the words of Hannah Arendt, "Everything is possible and nothing is true."

#AI #ChatGPT #research

The fascist right-wing provocateur’s greatest ally is a leftist or liberal who reposts what the fascist says thinking they are dunking on them, when in reality the message is amplified and the fascist ends up with more exposure and people looking them up and algorithms suggesting them. Ad infinitum.

Pay attention to how the media frames this election. They say we’re “deeply divided” but miss the big picture. One side would throw the rules of democracy out entirely! That’s not just “divided.” That’s wanting to end our country as we know it by putting a strongman in charge.

After Jan 6, GOP megadonor Nelson Peltz called it a “disgrace” and apologized for backing Trump.

But after breakfast with Trump this month, Peltz now says he'll "probably" vote for him.

Never underestimate how quickly billionaires will sell out our democracy for tax cuts.

If someone had told me 10 years ago, US politics would fall apart because a spray tanned criminal, who swears, rapes, and engages in extramarital sex, would manage to convince religious voters, he was chosen by God…

… I would have thought they were insane.

One of the key facts here keeps getting sidestepped by a mixture of scam marketing and common language usage out there.

LLMs don't *sometimes* make shit up, they *always* make shit up.

That's what an LLM *is*: a piece of software that makes up plausible sounding shit.

What's impressive about this is the extent of improvement in the plausibility.

What's horrifying about it is the extent to which so many people don't care to distinguish between plausibility and correctness.

Tell me a silly/funny childhood story!

I'll start:

One time in Sunday School, the teacher was talking about the difference between humans and animals, and mentioned that Animals had Tails and humans didn't. I let her know this was not true, because my Dad had a tail, just in the front, instead of the back. The teacher was silent for several seconds, and tried to correct me in a church appropriate way, but I doubled down, and insisted that my little brothers also had front tails too. This got so heated that the teacher had to go get my parents to take me out of Sunday School.

So the World Central Kitchen convoy a) cleared its route with the IDF beforehand, b) traveler on an approved route, and c) departed at an approved time, so d) the IDF knew exactly who it was killing when it struck the convoy three (3) times.

It was so obviously deliberate, and so deliberately cruel—not just to murder these people, but to terrorize other aid workers into abandoning the Palestinians to be starved to death. To prove the IDF’s impunity and reach, and to compel the IDF’s defenders into apologizing for yet another unforgivable atrocity.

151) Almost all the American veterans who fought in WWII are gone. They are no longer here to tell us about the price paid in defeating #facism in Europe

Those very few left must shudder when they hear the #fascist language used by #Trump and the sycophantic support chorus that is the #GOP

#Election2024 will be about preserving the #democracy that they saved 80 years ago.

#Politics #USPolitics #Election2024 #AmericanFascism

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/30/2232110/-Cartoon-Fighting-fascism

Increasingly finding that #AI-generated images on a blog post lowers my opinion of the author — not (just) because of a principled anti-AI stance but also simply because it’s rubbish.

If you’re happy decorating your work with generated garbage I’m just going to assume your standards are that low for everything you do.

My final draft ended up at 123,600 words.

You know what that means: I have to cut precisely 144 words.

#WritingCommunity

It's endlessly amazing -- or maybe not, since it keeps happening -- that Big Journalism treats Trump like their assignment editor and even copy editor.

The NY Times, for example, headlines its story today about the Trump criminal trial in NY "a case related to hush money paid to a porn star."

No, it's about (among other things) falsifying financial records to keep the public in the dark before the 2016 election.

@jenniferplusplus
Tangential thought:

The current LLM craze reminds me a •lot• of late-19C-early-20C spiritualism (attempts to communicate with the dead, seances and all that). There’s a deep hunger for it to be real. And it almost seems possible! And smart, famous people keep buying in (Arthur Conan Doyle, Mr. Logic)! And there’s obvious reason to doubt, but…tantalizing pieces of evidence keep surfacing! And yes, one thing after another keeps turning out to be smoke and mirrors, but…but but….

The safety of medications is precisely not within the purview of the Supreme Court of the United States. It is decided by FDA, an arm of the Executive branch. SCOTUS has no business debating or considering the safety of mifepristone — that was decided by FDA decades ago. If you hear safety, studies, adverse events, or any other discussion of clinical data in front of SCOTUS, it is someone playing politics to cover for abysmal judicial activism. We know it’s safe.

You won't be surprised that one of the Trump era's most ardent and prolific liars, and key election denier, has been hired by NBC "News" -- because that's how Big Journalism rolls these days. https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/22/media/ronna-mcdaniel-nbc/index.html

Dear New York Times et al,

He was never a successful businessman.

1. He inherited 400 million dollars and turned that into zero dollars.
2. He went bankrupt 7 times.
3. Some of those bankruptcies were casinos, literally a licence to print money which he couldn't manage.
4. He conned kids with cancer out of money once. That's why he can't run a charity anymore.
5. The following business ventures no longer exist or are insolvent:
a. Trump Steaks
b. Trump University
c. Trump Mortgage
d. Trump Vodka
e. Trump: The Game
f. Trump Ice
g. GoTrump.com
h. Trump Magazine
i. The New Jersey Generals
j. Trump Airlines
k. Trump Entertainment Resorts (filed for bankruptcy FOUR TIMES)
l. Trump Tower Tampa
m. Trump Taj Mahal
n. The Trump Plaza
o. Trump Castle
p. Plaza Hotel
q. Trump Media and Technology Group
r. Truth Social
s. Trump Shuttle, Inc
t. Trump Fire
u. Trump Power
v. Trump's American Pale Ale
w. Trump Marina
x. Trump Casino, Indiana
y. Trump Style
z. Trump World Magazine
aa. Trumpnet, LLC
ab. Trump Entrepreneur Initiative
ac. Trump Fragrances
ad. Empire by Trump
ae. Trump Mattress
af. Tour de Trump
ag. Trump Network
ah. Trumped!
ai. Trump Menswear
aj. Trump Home
ak. Success by Trump
al. Trump Hotel Bedding Line
am. Donald J. Trump Eyeglasses
an. Donald Trump Regency Lighting
ao. Select by Trump Coffee
6. Of the 16 companies that were manufacturing Trump-branded products in 2015, only 2 remain in business less than 10 years later. Neither of those companies are American. One is located in Panama and the other is located in Turkey.

Stop saying "successful businessman". My little company founded in 2014 has been in business longer, employs more people, and makes more income than 99% of his ventures. The difference between him and me is access to capital, which means he gets unlimited bites at the apple, and I get just this one if I'm lucky.

Me, an idiot: “So, kids, by setting the thermostat a little lower and eating less meat, we’re doing our part to make the world more sustainable”

VCs, very smart: “We just raised $100 billion dollars from the sovereign wealth funds of three petrostates to build the world’s largest AI supercomputer. It uses as much power and water as Guatemala and the primary use case is for management consultants to autogenerate powerpoints for justifying mass layoffs.”

I'll be looking for a job some time near the back end of the year. But as a technical writer I suspect that everyone will have transition to AI.
So in the spirit of the modern age I have retrained to be an AI editor. Basically that means I look at the generated output of the AI, have a good laugh and rewrite what you want from scratch so that your customers don't think you're completely incompetent.
#AI

Tik-Tok's privacy invading data collection practices and their algorithmic manipulation of users are both terrible, and completely emblematic of every major US-based social media company, all of which do the same thing.

Bringing Tik-Tok under American control does absolutely nothing to solve the problem.

#tiktok