Dave T-W @davoloid@qoto.org

Every time I do tech support for my family I get very angry about people who whine about lacking "tech literacy".

90% of the stuff I have to teach them is how to navigate manipulative software and dark patterns. This has nothing to do with tech, but with capitalism. Tech is not complicated, it is just made maximally confusing on purpose to remove agency.

Better tech ed won't fix this.

I'd seen the last partial eclipse, and while it was fun and interesting, I truly wondered what all the fuss was, regarding a total eclipse. A total eclipse is like a partial eclipse, just more of the same... right?

Three minutes of totality was hardly enough time to process what I was seeing, hearing, feeling.

From my human-on-a-planet perspective, I experience myself as moving very fast, and the planet as frozen in place. Even the moon and the sun seem sluggish in their movements compared to the speed with which I walk. But as the moon and sun crossed paths and slipped in and then out of totality, I was aware in a visceral way of just how fast these celestial bodies move through space.

It was electrifying.

It was also, literally, dizzying. In the gray light just before totality, several of our small group experienced vertigo. It felt like some odd combination of morning sickness and the sudden drop when you're in an elevator going down. The sort where if you move your eyes too quickly from side to side, you're likely to get queasy or the world will suddenly tilt at a very wrong angle.

At first, I thought it was just me. But when I awkwardly blurted out, "Vertigo!" several other folks nodded in wordless agreement.

The gulls over the water went mad, shrieking and pinwheeling. The frogs in the creek joined in the chorus. I like to imagine they felt it, too.

Another sensation as the light and color dimmed was the chill from the temperature dropping rapidly. It went from a beautiful sunny day, 60 or 65 degrees, down to 45 or 50. I started in my shirtsleeves; close to totality I had to run inside and get a coat! My nose and fingers turned to ice.

Milliseconds before full coverage, I saw pink flashes around the edge of the sun! Even with my viewing glasses on!

Then – in an instant the sun was gone, replaced by a glowing, sparking ring in the sky. We all yelled and cheered and clapped our hands together. I felt a chill down my spine that had nothing to do with the chill in the air.

There's no doubt, some ancient part of my DNA knows that it is completely wrong to steal the sun and that my very survival depends on its light and warmth.

I ripped my glasses off to gaze long and lovingly, directly at the sun for the first time in my life! I could see a solar prominence, a pink loop of fire, a loop of plasma so big that it was visible to my bare naked eyes from eighty three million miles away.

I remembered that I had brought binoculars outside, and so I snatched them up, held them to my face, and gasped. No wonder the sun has been worshipped as a god. I wanted nothing more than to spend all three minutes looking through the binoculars, but I also desperately wanted everyone else to see what I was seeing. I shrieked, "Look! Here! You have to look through the binoculars! Look and pass them around! Quick! It's unbelievable!" and probably other mad frantic exclamations, as I shoved them into the hands of the person next to me. "Hurry!"

Once I'd handed off the binoculars, I took a moment to look around. It was a difficult choice to have to make. I mean, I've seen the landscape around where we live. I see it every day – but never during an eclipse. And I might never get to see the sun like this again. Which to look at?

I'd never seen the landscape – or the rest of the sky for that matter – quite like this. Everything immediately around me drained of color yet perfectly visible. The horizon on all sides glowing golden and blue, as if it were sunrise or sunset 360° around us. The sky above turned violet-gray. High atmospheric clouds shimmering like fish scales against it. A sprinkling of stars, and the planet Venus. The faces of my comrades slack with wonder.

I wished in the moment that it could last for hours.

When even the tiniest sliver of sun re-emerged, even that barest hint of Sol instantly swept away the eery gloom and lit the whole world back up. We all shouted, as loudly as when the sun had disappeared, and reflexively turned our faces away to shield our eyes.
#storytelling #eclipse

@davoloid it is said that nearly half of what Tajikistan's gdp is worth comes from remittances. Really hard for families to make a living without... millions of families. BTW we are looking into this in the upcoming episode of #TheGlobalJigsaw

"a candidate who appears to have no love for the city she aspires to lead.”
And even confuses it (London) with NYC.

@actuallyautistic @neurodivergence My fellow neurodivergent folks, tell me the ableist requirements you've seen in job descriptions. Let's give folks some insight into the stuff that contributes to systemic ableism in the workplace. I know there are way more examples than the few I've already listed.

What do you wish AI, machine learning, or LLMs could do? What's missing from the current picture? What do existing systems get wrong, or fail to do at all? I'm trying to put together a wish list, for a startup oriented towards explainability, responsibility, and a focus on centering human society and human values.

#AI
#ML
#LLMs
#ExplainableAI
#Bias
#Humanism
#Startup
#ArtificialIntelligence
#MachineLearning
#NaturalLanguage
#ResponsibleAI

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.”

@lowqualityfacts

Trump has ON MORE DAY....

FRIDAY

That's the very last day he can ask for bankruptcy. It's the last business day of the week until Monday when seizure of all his properties begins.

Trump doesnt have a week.
Trump has ONE DAY.

Trump has less than a week to arrange a $454 million bond. There are 331.9 million US citizens. If each American spends only $1.37, then we can all buy a cheap chocolate bar to enjoy while we watch the State of New York seize Trump's properties.