Mastodon Feed: Posts

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

It's Sunday, here, have a cat.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

A lot of #liberals are celebrating but completely lost on them that so much of the egregious shit coming from the #MAGA movement is foreign influence.

I'm *not* saying MAGA are the good guys here, but maybe, just maybe, there are more poor people who were simply desperate for change so they voted for the only guy offering it (even though it was a lie), than we want to believe

Because if that's true, then #Democrats really fucked up with the "we're not Trump" strategy

https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-maga-influencers-accidentally-unmasked-as-foreign-actors/

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
peter@thepit.social ("Peter") wrote:

you're **not actually having a back-and-forth conversation** you are feeding **the entire chat** into the model each time you prompt it, and the model just plays along by finishing the last bit. that's why it's called a chat completion model.

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
peter@thepit.social ("Peter") wrote:

that's not how LLMs work. they are stateless. their "minds" are born fresh and new in this world with each prompt and cease to exist as soon as they stop generating. they don't think because they don't "exist" in the sense that a being with a brain that functions over time exists. Sam Altman wants people to **think** the LLM is "out there" somewhere, waiting to hear from you. it's a lie.

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
SHODAN@mas.to ("SHODAN :nonbinary:") wrote:

@pluralistic I will never forgive the Lib Dem/Tory coalition parties who agreed to privatise our national postal service. This is all on them.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

Real life targeted ads are diabolical

isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:") wrote:

Wrote about what kept me busy for the past few weeks, gratuitously overanalyzing grocery shopping.

https://softwaremaniacs.org/blog/2025/11/23/pet-project-restart/

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

got that? swastikas & nooses are just fine to this administration.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/us/politics/coast-guard-hate-crimes.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

kornel ("Kornel") wrote:

@henrisimons encoding_rs needs some maintainer attention

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

“By rewarding Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine based on his obsession with making it part of Mother Russia, the U.S. will be putting the whole European Union under Putin’s thumb. Trump’s message to our allies will be clear: Don’t provoke Putin, because as long as I am commander in chief, the United States will pay no price and we will bear no burden in the defense of your freedom.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/22/opinion/ukraine-russia-negotiations-trump-deal.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.3U8.LhEX.cR30%5FQo2lyAW&smid=nytcore-ios-share

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

Savannah, I’m here. Made great time. Stopped to pee only once. I have the whole day to get into trouble.

First stop, the coffee shop across from the Savannah Theatre. Hope to get some writing done while I munch on this blueberry scone. All of this is my happy place—vibes, sweets, prose, I love it. https://galleryespresso.com/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

So Safari on the iPad randomly and unpredictably reorders all its tabs and I can’t figure out when or why it does it. It’s incredibly annoying

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

Not every nurse is Ratched.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/11/23/republicans-must-hate-nurses/

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
DarthPutinKGB@mastodon.world ("Darth Putin") wrote:

OTD in 2006 Alexander Litvinenko died from complications of saying Vladimir Putin is a corrupt peadophile ☕️ 🍣

One of the witnesses at the inquest later 'committed suicide by stabbing himself several times'

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
JulietEMcKenna@wandering.shop ("Juliet E McKenna") wrote:

UK folk, please vote in local elections whenever possible. Hereabouts, a Tory (formerly UKIP) County Councillor, elected with a 19 vote majority on a 42.7% turn-out, has been sharing quotes from Enoch Powell on social media, seemingly as valid points for discussion.

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

an incredible resource for studying the spread of tech as well

https://mastodon.scot/@tompearce49/115593695964514767

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
tompearce49@mastodon.scot ("Just Tom...") wrote:

"All roads lead to Rome"? - well, according to this, they didn't even in the heyday of the Roman Empire... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03626-z

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
UniversalCompendium wrote:

An entire family of falcons watches from their house, keeping tabs on all who pass by.

https://universalcompendium.com/gen%5Fimages/ucg/1animals/falcons-family-photography.htm

#photography #birds #wildlife #falcons

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

“It is generally not a good idea, career-wise, to refuse illegal orders. It’s a better idea to find a way around them... But sometimes you don’t have a choice… a superior officer told me to stop signing up members of my platoon who had families for food stamps. It was legal for soldiers to receive food stamps. They qualified because of their very low pay, which put many of them below the federal poverty line. I refused that order”

https://open.substack.com/pub/luciantruscott/p/the-bill-of-rights-for-soldiers

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
AAronL1968@shakedown.social ("AAron Leckinger") wrote:

Reuters has confirmed that President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and his special envoy Steve Witkoff held a private meeting in Miami with a sanctioned Kremlin proxy to help shape the new "peace plan" for Ukraine. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/trump-officials-meeting-with-russian-miami-spurs-questions-about-latest-ukraine-2025-11-22/

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

brazen

“Paul Ingrassia, told senior DHS officials to return electronic devices seized from the Tate brothers when they arrived in the U.S. in February. Ingrassia made clear the request was coming from the White House…

The Tates are facing sex trafficking accusations in three countries. Ingrassia, who has served as White House Liaison to DHS and to the Department of Justice, was part of a legal team that represented the pair before he joined the White House.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/paul-ingrassia-probe-andrew-tate-investigation

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

everything about our in-migration system is broken at this point

https://www.propublica.org/article/ice-bop-federal-prisons-corrections-officers

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

Not leaving soon enough, MTG.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/11/23/mtg-jumping-ship/

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

Okay, but you know that just makes it worse, right?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g95x50kdyo

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

(This is part of why I’ve been writing less. Mostly I’m just sitting back and hoping things won’t be as bad as I think they might get.)

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Trump's economic policies have made the US dollar more vulnerable and the overall finance system more opaque.

The US federal infrastructure is weak, limiting its capability at containing the damage.

The zeal many governments have for "AI" means they're likely to delay taking action at critical moments in the immediate aftermath of a bubble pop.

There's a non-zero chance we might be heading into a perfect storm of an economic crisis.

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

“Desire to Pop”

https://tante.cc/2025/11/23/desire-to-pop/

> I love the abstraction of the “AI” bubble popping. But the very probably effects haunt me.

Been having similar concerns. Except I think things are genuinely worse than most expect. The usual suspects are clearly trying to position LLMs as something being sabotaged by the bubble not its cause and the overall prospects are pretty dire …

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Idly remembering the time I recommended “Just Enough Research” where I worked, a book so good I keep buying it again and again, and the only chapter my coworkers read was the one on how to do a minimally harmful survey, because they were dead-set on doing a survey, no matter what

isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:") wrote:

Did you sign the #Starbucks #union pledge? It's easy, and it increments the counter. Businesses eventually react to numbers.

https://www.nocontractnocoffee.org/

Boosted by jwz:
matthewfacciani.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("Matthew Facciani") wrote:

There’s a lot of political commentary about Marjorie Taylor Greene resigning, but one important point is this: she entered Congress in 2021 with an estimated net worth of about $700,000, and is leaving in 2025 with a net worth of roughly $25 million.