Josh's harp

People here just really hate adding alt text huh

Slop-Free Club Rejecting AI and slop crammed into every single app and site.

Doesn't it piss you off that companies keep cramming "AI" features into every damn app? I'm so tired of it. I wanted a way to show that we don't and won't do that with Hello Code stuff, and I thought other folks might like to be a part of it.

Introducing... Slop-Free Club.
slopfree.club

Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory An intensive international study was coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC

Yet again, we can't afford to let LLMs become a source of epistemic grounding for society.

people playing music/videos on their phone speakers in public is more than just mildly annoying and is instead a leading indicator of the decline of community and empath

But the problem is (as the thread also points out) most users treat this as "Twitter, but no Nazis", and expect central moderation to enforce that.

Honestly if you want Twitter, but with communities that have norms and moderation, your best bet is to find a good Mastodon instance.

Well put and I wholeheartedly agree. Happy birthday!

United Nations Declaration of Universal No Yanks On The Thread

The thing about living in a human society is you either decide that everyone (except those for whom it would be medically dangerous) has to take VACCINES into their bodies or everyone (with no exceptions at all) has to take VIRULENT PATHOGENS in from those around them and, look, the first is better.

X is a nasty janky website full of Nazis and I can't understand why anyone voluntarily uses it. On the other hand the people who run this place are not your friends and they will rug pull everyone here in a second if it suits them. Why are people stanning any of these companies.

A screenshot of a graph from an article in the Age. The graph headline is 'What we think CEOs earn vs what they really get'. It shows Australia's believe CEOs get 7.1 times the pay of an average worker, that the 'preferred difference' is 3.3 times the pay, and that the actual difference is 103 times the pay.

Inequality is much worse in Australia than most people think it is. "The average chief executive officer of companies listed on the ASX earns more than 100 times as much as the average full-time worker - but people think they earn just seven times as much".

Our 2025 redesign

What have I been up to? Thank you for asking. Just making a whole new android app for tracking stuff about your life. I know, it took a lot of effort, thank you, you're too kind
exist.io/blog/exist-2...

I really and truly need people to understand that a chatbot does not and cannot know anything. Like, I need them to understand that in their bones. It is very good at looking like it knows something, but it does not and cannot know anything.

We live in an increasingly individualised, atomised, lonely society — technologies are offered as solutions to societal problems caused by neoliberalism. Loneliness is commoditised by these corporations. Let’s not get too busy making fun of each other to see it’s our tech overlords profiting off us

"AI-munted" is a beautiful turn of phrase

I really wish you'd stop using chatgpt to make the illustrations for your newsletter, it bums me out

Writing is hard work, but don't underestimate the motivating power of annoyance.

Mainstream media doesn't really talk about how "AI" tools actually work under the chat interface and why you can never trust them to be correct. I've finally finished writing a non-technical explainer and I'd really appreciate you sharing it if you find it useful.

joshsharp.com.au/blog/how-to-...

Australian content and engagement is much better on Mastodon than Bluesky (my experience). Sign up to aus.social if you don't want constant America crap.

I am just so, so tired of having to hear or think about anything to do with the United States of America.

Anyway time to log on to Bluesky and see what's up

That's fucked, I'm sorry

everything's computer

🚨First day CO₂ at Mauna Loa >430 ppm🚨

This is:
-Much higher than ever in the past 800,000 years.
-Likely not seen in >3 million years (mid-pliocene warm period).
-A CO₂ forcing equal to 2.5-4°C of warming and a 5-25 meters higher global sea level!

Sorry, I was talking about Michelle. My folks are in Albury.

Fwiw, my parents spoke admiringly of their new independent candidate who really cared about the community, and we all agreed it was a good thing. But when I asked, they couldn't name a single policy. So I'm curious too.

Neoliberal capitalism is that form that is utterly obsessed with ensuring that it seems that, as Margaret Thatcher so famously declared in the 1980s,“there is no alternative.” . In other words, it (neo-liberalism) has largely given up on any serious effort to argue that the current economic order is actually a good order and given up trying to prove it can create a world in which most human beings feel prosperous, safe, and free to spend any significant portion of their life pursuing those things they consider genuinely important. . Rather, it is a terrible system, in which even the very richest countries cannot guarantee access to such basic needs as health and education to the majority of their citizens. Yes they say it works badly - but they want you to believe no other system could possibly work at all! . - David Graeber

In 2011, David Graeber wrote: Revolutions in Reverse

This is an extract!

This was really good, thanks for sharing it

Australia leads the world in arresting climate and environment protesters A new study shows more than 20 per cent of climate and environment protests in Australia lead to arrests, more than in the UK, Norway, and the United States.

A new study shows more than 20 per cent of climate and environment protests in Australia lead to arrests, more than in the UK, Norway, and the United States.

Anyway I can’t recommend bsky to anyone anymore. I think you’re better off managing to find a fedi instance that takes their responsibility to moderate seriously

I’ll prob only stick around here for the artists and the occasional reply. But this isn’t a safe place for me. Thanks @aaron.bsky.team

Poster of a child and the caption “Israel has murdered one Palestinian child every 39 min since October 2023

Maybe Bluesky has “won” November has sucked so far. One upside of the terrible nonsense is that more people are fleeing X. Many are choosing Bluesky. I’ve seen a bunch of takes about this recently, but I keep seeing things I...

Bluesky is not decentralised, and not really federated. At some point that might change but for now, it's all controlled by Bluesky Social, PBC.
anderegg.ca/2024/11/15/m...