Ambulocetus @ambulocetus@qoto.org

Did you know Charles Dickens worked for two midlands newspapers?

It was the Bicester Times, it was the Worcester Times.

Oh NOOOOO! 6 giant African snails intercepted in baggage in Detroit. These are banned in the USA as an agricultural pest, and also carry human parasites that can cause meningitis 😱🐌 https://www.capitalpress.com/nation_world/nation/african-land-snails-found-in-luggage-at-michigan-airport/article_832708c1-518d-55a6-8ffc-5ad00415b093.html

@ct_bergstrom It's the information analogue of the "Grey Goo" scenario.

@ct_bergstrom With so much hype, one might wonder if it's an attempt by the marketing department to goose the stock price for a failing investment before the flaws are common knowledge.

The confluence of this technology with the information ecosystem that we described in our paper from a couple of years could be an epistemic catastrophe.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025764118

I’m coming to think that releasing these tools was a reckless act with the potential to generate negative externalities we have barely started to imagine.

The threat isn’t rogue superintelligence. It’s bullshit at unprecedented scale, reflected back upon itself and iteratively amplified.

Since Amazon doesn’t let DRM-free audiobooks into Audible, @pluralistic is self publishing his own audiobooks through Kickstarter for a while. Since I’m a really big fan of Cory and want to support his fight against DRM, I support his Kickstarter each time. (Although I usually go for ebooks, because I'm not good with audiobooks.)

If you want to support Cory and buy his latest book “Red Team Blues" in hardcover, DRM-free ebook or audiobook, here's the link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell?ref=thanks-copy

The patriarchy is the reason you know the names Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk, but you've never even once heard the name Evelyn Berezin.

On March 25, 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire took the lives of 146 workers, most of them immigrant women and girls, and galvanized a movement for social and economic justice.

Each year since 2004, on the anniversary of the infamous blaze, we fan out across NYC to inscribe in chalk the names and ages of the Triangle dead in front of their former homes.

Still looking for a few more chalkers for Brownsville + the LES

#TriangleFire

Bankers get bailed out, and the biggest banks do even better.

Meanwhile, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

Is it any wonder that so many see the system as rigged against them?

Is it surprising that some become susceptible to snake-oil peddled by dangerous demagogues?

I do really like this -- but also wonder how many wrecks it might cause 🤔 https://bc.ctvnews.ca/giant-spider-sculpture-on-skytrain-route-shocks-vancouver-commuters-1.6316282

We were in the neighborhood, so we stopped by the vacant lot that once held The Demon House in Gary, Indiana. Legend has it that there is a portal to Hell under this tree. We didn't see any portals, but perhaps it wasn't business hours. https://skepticalinquirer.org/2014/05/the-200-demons-house-a-skeptical-demonologists-report/

Carl Sagan's "two rules" of science:
1: There are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined.
2: Whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is & not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.