Guido Wolf Reichert ⚛️ @gwr@qoto.org

Man muss ja auch mal gute Nachrichten posten.

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/dokument-in-schwachkopf-affare-veroffentlicht-staatsanwaltschaft-ermittelt-gegen-julian-reichelts-nius-13306474.html

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/badenwuerttemberg/swr-amokfahrt-von-mannheim-oberbuergermeister-dankt-mutigem-taxifahrer-102.html

A BILL

To authorize the President to enter into negotiations to
acquire Greenland and to rename Greenland as ‘‘Red, White, and Blueland’’.

https://buddycarter.house.gov/uploadedfiles/redwhitebluelandact.pdf

Mobbing in der Schule fängt nicht an, wenn ein Schüler auf dem Boden liegt und von anderen getreten wird.

Es fängt an:

• wenn ein Schüler sagt: „Boah, nee. Mit der Komischen will ich nicht in einer Mannschaft sein“
• die Sportlehrkraft es mitbekommt
• und NICHTS unternimmt

Weil Kirchen ihn ständig kritisieren: Söder beschließt Kruzifix-Verbot in bayerischen Behörden und Schulen https://www.der-postillon.com/2025/02/kruzifix-verbot-bayern.html

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?

Jevin West and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take.

https://thebullshitmachines.com

This is not a computer science course.

It’s a humanities course about how to learn and work and thrive in an AI world.

Neither instructor nor students need a technical background. Our instructor guide provides a choice of activities for each lesson that will easily fill an hour-long class.

The entire course is available freely online. Our 18 online lessons each take 5-10 minutes; each illuminates one core principle. They are suitable for self-study, but have been tailored for teaching in a flipped classroom.

The course is a sequel of sorts to our course (and book) Calling Bullshit. We hope that like its predecessor, it will be widely adopted worldwide.

Large language models are both powerful tools, and mindless—even dangerous—bullshit machines. We want students to explore how to resolve this dialectic.

Here's a trippy way to see a park, or your backyard, at night

get a UV flashlight

shine it on the plants

The science behind it all in item #5 of my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-30-greyscale-gelato-the-ott-derivimeter/

I always struggle to pay attention to the metrics, but it looks like #Mastodon for Android downloads are up 455% recently. This tracks with how many new people I've been seeing on the explore page recently. Don't know if it's a coincidence but I think your help in fixing our app's rating might have had a hand in this...

CSU klaut Wahlplakate. Priceless https://www.noz.de/deutschland-welt/politik/artikel/nach-strafanzeige-soeders-csu-des-plakatklaus-beschuldigt-48261662

Wir schließen unseren Twitter Account, eine Plattform, die wir nicht länger unterstützen können und wollen.

Danke, dass ihr uns nach Mastodon gefolgt seid. Bitte macht eure Bekannten und Follower:innen darauf aufmerksam, dass wir hier sind. 🙏

Bald gibt’s GROSSE News bzgl. unserer aktuellen Kampagne. 💚

Turns out Donald Trump isn't the only world leader with a tech billionaire "first buddy" who gets to serve as an unaccountable, self-interested de facto business regulator. UK PM Keir Starmer has just handed the keys to the British economy over to Jeff Bezos.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/22/autocrats-of-trade/#dingo-babysitter

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