GVDub

"Nowhere are prejudices more mistaken for truth, passion for reason, and invective for documentation than in politics."
John Mason Brown, Through These Men, 1952

Brown, a renowned American journalist in his time, is largely unknown today, but his insightful commentary on humanity shouldn't be.

"Ideas are indeed the most dangerous weapons in the world. Our ideas of freedom are the most powerful political weapons man has ever forged."
Justice William O. Douglas, An Almanac of Liberty

It seems like a good day to share a couple of my rotating email signature quotes with y'all. I find that these semi-mirrored sentiments reflect the dissonance in American society.

As fires rage about us here in L.A. and many friends have had to evacuate their homes, I find myself wondering what actions we can take to gain a better balance with what has been the natural order (wildfires rushing to the sea) for ages, and humans trying to impose their will on complex ecosystems.

By default, capital will matter more than ever after AGI — LessWrong • Edited to add: The main takeaway of this post is meant to be: Labour-replacing AI will shift the relative importance of human v non-human factors…

As someone who's been dabbling in the world of AI for a bit and has a local server running several large language models, I find it fascinating to see, but also a bit concerning. This recent article on potential risks of AGI (and beyond) is troubling: www.lesswrong.com/posts/KFFaKu...

Looking around, I've come to the conclusion that our biggest problem as a society is that we've given up on the concept of consequences. From crossing the double yellow to drive in opposing traffic lanes because you want to make that left turn lane to voting for an adjudicated rapist. There you go.

In 57 years of playing guitar there have been a statistically insignificant number of solos that I've tried to learn. Oh, I may hear a lick here and there that makes me say, "Huh, let's figure that one out," but, for the most part, that's not why I play. Music, it's not what I do, It's who I am.

Not worried about AI sentience so much as over reliance on a predictive text system by people who don't understand what the tool actually does. Or that GIGO still applies.

Sure does. My wife and I were talking about this last night and how we owe it to every WWII veteran to resist in whatever way we can.

The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide This text was published in social media in January 2017 in a series of improvised, spontaneous tweets, which reached 3 million views within one month. Their common element was their trademark signatur...

We all need to study this assiduously:
verfassungsblog.de/the-authorit...

Thanksgiving: The one day a year you can be assured to hear from everybody you’ve ever bought anything from.

It was one of our favorite getaways. Then, it was taken over by a national chain, and now the rooms are pedestrian — generic "motel." In such times as these, one of the most important things we can do is continue to let our freak flags fly. To hell with "normal," keep the weird. Save the quirk!

Once upon a time, there was a small motel in Yucca Valley, CA called "The Oasis of Eden." It was family owned, by a family with a sense of whimsy, and they had multiple theme rooms, some slightly decadent, some just whimsical, like the '50s room, where the bed frame was a Cadillac convertible.

Anybody who's been following Gibson for the past several decades would have seen that coming. That said, my first electric guitar was a pre-lawsuit Univox Les Paul copy, which was pretty decent.

3D printing plus microprocessors plus LEDs are the new equivalent of a Lava Lamp.

Don't forget the use of LLMs to generate bad pR0n. I have a local AI server running Ollama and Open WebUI with multiple models to help with research, but in the various AI subreddits, I come across a lot of incel-types who are looking for virtual girlfriends.

Parkinson's Law variant: Data expands to fill the space allowed for its storage.

Just a side note, but I'm old enough to remember when Wonder Bread went from "Helps build strong bodies 8 ways!" to "Helps build strong bodies 12 ways." strictly because the federal standards for nutrition in bread went up. Do the minimum, corporate America.

I've been on here since the beta invites first happened, yet I've barely posted. I'm also posting less everywhere else. Part of it is that I spend all day writing stuff for my day job, and then looking at writing more stuff is somehow less appealing, even if it's stuff for me, not someone else.

Get up, not over — that's my life slogan. And these days, that can be a hard slog, with so many flipping the idea.

Rick Nielsen credits his version of that guitar with a lifetime of back issues. So, geekily cool, but take care.

As the son of a teacher, I think I object more to Linda McMahon's nomination as Secretary of Education than I do to Mehmet Oz as Medicaid/Medicare overlord. She has zero education background, so can't possibly make informed decisions about what she's supposed to be overseeing.

From what I'm seeing on all my friend's various feeds, Mehmet should just change his first name to "Fucking," Can't say I disagree.

Just a note: "Idiocracy" wasn't supposed to be a documentary.

Well, they did say that the goal was not to have anybody who thought they knew more than DJT, so that makes it a lot harder.

The problem I'm struggling: what is likely to be effective resistance against a government stripped of every kinder, gentler impulse and seeming to have rejected compassion for the less fortunate in favor of hoping that they die quickly so the rich can harvest their money and organs.

I suppose it depends on how energetically I'm defenestrated.

Russian ballet star who critizied Ukraine invasion dies in "fall" from building Vladimir Shklyarov, 39, is a Russian ballet star who was publicly critical of the country's invasion of Ukraine: "Friends!

After January 20th, I'm staying on the ground floor as much as humanly possible.

premium.boingboing.net/p/russian-ba...

I would have gone with "Idiocracy," which was not supposed to be a documentary.

Social media elitism is real. I see a bunch of folks over on Mastodon trashing Bluesky and maintaining that they're the only "true" decentralized social media. Dudes, we're all just trying to find someplace safer with less intrusion from commercial interests. Chill.

Frankenstein's creature confronts its creator in his lab.

Messing with the HueForge app and my 3D printer, did this print of one of my favorite pieces of artwork (we own a signed print of this):one of Bernie Wrightson's illustrations from a Marvel edition of Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_.