MsDWrites

All the GoBs albums are in dire need of stand-alone releases (and IMO the band has been poorly served in this regard). Big thumbs up for the remix of this, as Andrew says

Good point. We’ve had our language dictated by a bunch of flimflam artists, and I fear the snake oil poisoning will get worse before things get better.

Agree. And it has nowhere near the negative environmental effects. I’m being really careful to distinguish between the two when I talk about AI

James Lovell dies at 97. He commanded the troubled Apollo 13 spacecraft and was played by Tom Hanks in a Hollywood film.

He was one of my childhood heroes. I grew up in that exciting Apollo/NASA era...and had lots of astronaut related toy stuff.

RIP, Commander Lovell.

its either this or universal healthcare

It sounds as though that is an extractive AI model, not generative, is that right? It would be wrong to assume people have the same level of hate/suspicion/derision for both.

Noooo you must carefully engineer your prompt in a way that properly accommodates the properties of the token-based model space, the better to manage the quasi-aliasing that happens at token boundaries; moreover the probabilistic character of model outputs makes the tool a poor choice for the evaluation of certain deterministic world-knowledge topics; furthermo 34% 34% I don't trust this fucken thing I don't trust this fucken thing 14% 14% 0.1% Ю score 55 2% 2% 0.1% 70 85 100 115 130 145

Look, these tools are amazing in lots of ways. But if you’re gonna pitch and sell or foist them on the world by saying “This is your PhD level genius expert buddy you can ask things in natural language”, don’t get all pissy when it comically bombs tasks people reasonably think of as trivial.

This, but also I am not convinced gen AI is or can be amazing at all. Extractive AI is a genuine boon and its analytical speed and comparatively low power draw makes it worthwhile. Generative AI relies on its inputs: almost guaranteed to be an average of the mid, with added copyright violations.

The best tech equivalent for AI is the microwave oven. Bold promises about steaks and cakes, but now 90% used by people who can't be arsed and the rest for a couple of specific tasks. It'll be ubiquitous but unloved and a distant choice from anything done properly or done by a professional.

AI slop is basically every 'Mexican' restaurant and roadhouse pie in Australia in the 80s.

Okay, I may have burned down a hectare of rainforest to ask spicy autocorrect about From Software games and Theory, but... actually it isn't worth it because this is all quite basic. Sorry to the tribe whose sacred forest I destroyed UwU

From what I gather, someone weaponised the moderation system here and reported a trans author on the day of her book release for having supported Palestinians trying to survive genocide.

If I was paying $1350 per week I’d probably want a kitchen that wasn’t in the bathroom as a bare minimum

This is a bit too on the nose for those of us saying the US is like the 1930s Germany

Arts and media groups demand Labor take a stand against ‘rampant theft’ of Australian content to train AI Productivity Commission report raises possible exemption for ‘text and data mining’ and expanding fair dealing rules, prompting fierce pushback

Thank you @joshbutler.bsky.social for this comprehensive wrap: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

ASA opposes Productivity Commission proposal for copyright exception - Australian Society of Authors The ASA is dismayed by a Productivity Commission report raising the prospect of a text and data mining exception to Australia’s Copyright Act.

“A text and data mining exception will effectively give away the intellectual property of Australian creators allowing tech giants to entrench their dominant positions… A fair market requires a fair exchange.” Here's the @asauthors.bsky.social strong rejection: www.asauthors.org.au/news/asa-opp...

Australian publishers oppose AI exemptions to copyright The Australian Publishers Association (APA) is deeply concerned by proposals outlined by the Productivity Commission for a text and data mining (TDM) exception to the Copyright Act.

This "would dismantle the legal and commercial frameworks that sustain Australian publishing, and undermine the National Cultural Policy’s commitments to the work and livelihoods of Australian creators." Equally strong, the Australian Publishers Association: www.publishers.asn.au/Web/Latest/I...

'Fundamentally concerning': Ombudsman finds agencies unlawfully cancelled welfare payments A second report will pursue the issue further.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman has found two government agencies unlawfully cancelled income support payments to more than 900 people, and then waited nearly a year to intervene in the faulty system www.canberratimes.com.au/story/903371... cc. @squigglyrick.bsky.social @maximumwelfare.bsky.social

Improperly cutting off someone's social security entitlement should be a criminal offence

The actual Luddites’ concerns were in fact spot on for this occasion.

This reflects the most profound, spectacular and bizarre misunderstanding of what historians do and are for.

They say unicorns bow to virgin maidens, but they don’t say what happens after they kneel. They don’t say what the horn is for. They say they are gentle, but only in the way a trap is gentle when it waits.

I am still haunted by this poem, "The Myth Was Never The Unicorn," written by one of the teens who participated in the creative writing program at the museum this summer. A reminder that girls are always aware.

Read the full piece and listen to the author recite it: journey75.org/2025/the-myt...

Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose The Trump administration has asked NASA staffers to draw up plans to end at least two satellite missions that measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to current and former NASA employees.

If we don’t test for covid there’ll be no covid.

When public media disappears, so do the stories that bring us together.

With federal funding eliminated, millions may lose their last trusted source of news and connection.

If that matters to you, now’s the time to act. Donate: n.pr/458sOhq

When the cryptocurrency entrepreneur Eric Schiermeyer heard that President Trump was holding small group dinners with major donors, he saw opportunity. Mr. Schiermeyer reached out to a lobbyist with connections in Mr. Trump’s orbit, who arranged for him to attend a dinner with the president at his private Mar-a-Lago club on March 1 in exchange for donations to a pro-Trump PAC called MAGA Inc. totaling $1 million. The personal and corporate donations were among dozens of seven- and eight-figure contributions to MAGA Inc. from crypto and other interests revealed in a campaign finance filing on Thursday night that hinted at the access Mr. Trump accords those willing to pay. At the dinner, Mr. Schiermeyer, who had never given a federal political donation before, presented an idea for a cryptocurrency called “U.S.A. Token” that would be distributed to every citizen, according to interviews and a flier he distributed to attendees that sets out details of the proposal. He hoped it could be su

Cryptocurrency interests, which have benefited from the Trump administration’s dismantling of a yearslong government crackdown and from the Trump family’s financial interest in the industry, appear to have been the most generous industry, accounting for nearly $45 million in donations to MAGA Inc.An affiliate of the exchange Crypto.com gave $10 million, while the crypto services company Blockchain.com donated $5 million. The venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who are heavily invested in crypto, gave $3 million each. Ondo Finance, which has a partnership with the Trump family’s crypto company, donated $2.1 million to MAGA Inc., on top of $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

The scale of Trump's pay-for-access scheme outlined by the @nytimes.com is mindblowing. Crypto contributions resulting in business deals with the Trump family crypto businesses, oil companies buying influence and later reaping benefits from friendly policies, and a $1 million pardon.

60,000 Gazans have been killed. 18,500 were children. These are their names. Palestinian children have been killed at a rate of more than one per hour since the war began.

www.washingtonpost.com/world/intera...

This interview is so clear & quietly devastating. Public media as we understand it is over.

This is not about the end of NPR & PBS. They might be able to find ways to continue to make programs. Instead of content, this is about the capacity to broadcast at all - antennae, transmitters, licenses. 🧵

A subway style map on a parchment background. The map's title reads: "Narnia Transit Map: Talking Beasts Ride Free." The map has seven keys, one for each of the seven books in C.S. Lewis's Narinia series. The main movements of characters and action in each book are traced by colored lines, like a subway map. Locations in each book are marked out as stops in the lines. There is a drawing of a lion above the title of the map, and in the lower right corner there is a compass rose.

Recently, I shared a Lord of the Rings subway map, & I had a bunch of people asking me to do a Narnia version. Well...here you go!

It's covers all 7 books, so it's a lot more complicated the the LoTR ones. And if you like it, it's available to buy on my Etsy store:
www.etsy.com/shop/Surpris...