Matt Pfeffer

How do you weigh the risk that bigoted elected officials will support harmful policies? Does that factor into this analysis, or is it more part of a distinct question?

A screenshot of my Bluesky feed showing two consecutive posts, one a link to a Gizmodo article about big tech firms funding seminars for teachers to learn how to use AI to make lesson plans, and the second from Seth Cotlar commenting on RFK Jr saying we to stop trusting experts.

A serendipitous, perfect encapsulation of the future that certain entrenched powers want. LLM as teacher is the embodiment of the notion that actual insight and comprehension are valueless -- what better way to rob the next generation of the ability to discern the difference.

It's like how the large poker platforms now have bots playing on the virtual tables to give people the illusion of other people to play against

+1 to this. Investors like to think they're unusually smart, but they fall for compelling narratives. Founders and their boards inevitably become invested (figuratively as well as literally) in those stories. And it's in their interest to propagate them in order to grow

His Family Voted to Support Trump’s Deportation Plan. That Includes Him. (Gift Article) His friends and family members in Rome, Ga., voted to support mass deportation. Now he’s scrambling to stay in the country.

A plainly reported, human, and quietly heartbreaking story (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2024/12/15/u...

But he is in Mollick's ear often enough, apparently

Logan ... doesn't seem like a very disciplined thinker (no surprise)

I suspect this may be useless without gobs of missing context but share it in the hopes it offers a path to an insight or inspiration. I'd also be happy to discuss further if that seems useful

Realizing this is a ridiculous response to throw into a skeet, FHIR is an open source standard for health data and it describes an approach for a similar challenge here: www.hl7.org/fhir/R4/term...

This -- which resonates with me, especially thinking about a particular friend, a former Democrat who feels betrayed by the party and voted for Trump -- is also a point of emphasis in @naomiaklein.bsky.social 's latest book, Doppelganger.

I really agree with this. If anything, the party that rode a massive wave that would have carried any reasonable candidate to victory and yet nominated a mentally decaying kleptocrat is the one that deserves a closer examination.

this is just to say
I shot the poet
in that apartment building
with my tank

that's his arm
over there

forgive me
the targeting system is so sweet
and it was all lit up

👨🏻‍🍳💋

That class kicked my butt, but the experience was amazing. I had the strangest dreams that year

I once put a note at the top of a partial answer on a take-home abstract algebra exam saying that it represented my best effort but did not contain the required proof. I remember that my professor (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_B...) commented favorably on my candor, at least....

Lifehack: wash your towels inside out

Unfortunately, it's not actually funny

We're gonna have the best graveyards, they're gonna be perfect graveyards, first-class, they're gonna be so perfect you're not gonna believe it. We're gonna gold-plate the tombstones. And we're gonna fill them with enemies, so many enemies, you're not gonna be able to count all the enemies

Do you think there's a good future for Threads? Meta's track record is damning. Not that any social media platform is likely to scale safely, or that BlueSky's creators have a good track record either, but there is a vision of something different here, and some potential in that (right?)

Nor was that limited to NY of course. The CEO of my SF-based employer outright told me in 1999 he didn't care about users, just potential investors and buyers. (The context was me drafting the copy for an updated company website.)

Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you the wall of the Landsdowne Hotel in Belfast. From a sarcastic meme about pub wall tat, to a framed place on a real pub's wall.

We gazed too long at the abyss and Chomsky gazed right back.

The internet is, truly, an elephant that never forgets.

It's good to see this happening more. I'm glad you've been working on shifting coverage in this direction.

I don't know the answer, but the timidity that the national press has shown so far in covering Musk's apparent views (the NYT for example: bsky.app/profile/atta... ) makes it that much more doubtful.

If only this worked for us humans, too

ok by popular demand (Mara) I’m going to talk a little about one of my favorite subjects: Greek and Roman curse tablets

(and maybe a couple other favorite letters etc too)

Dang, what did Linda do wrong now?

This is like the opposite of an artist selling out

Is Apple connected to that too? Otherwise, if they see less risk in overlooking the issue with X than in removing it now, that would be enough to explain their behavior here so far

As I understand it, it's worse. They don't need a memorandum because they all know their business models break if they are accountable for the content on their or their customers' platforms

I think this is right, and I wonder sometimes when other folks seem more optimistic about the long term here. But social media platforms don't scale gracefully, and the only significant new factor I can see with BS is customized algorithms. What are the odds that they will make the difference?