istewart @ istewart @awful.systems

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12 mo. ago

I’m farting harder, and it must be praxis if it feels this good. Can anybody help me get set up on ActBlue?

HQ sez the grift is pivoting back to puritanical virtue ethics, we need to have cleansing struggle memes ready by next week so we can hit it hard over the holidays. Did you not get the memo?

bwahahaha "most reasonable operationalizations; conditional upon being e/acc." Why does this person make me think of nasal, vaguely whiny prequel Spock?

On the other hand, bombing foreign data centers, likely located in densely populated urban areas, would be justified and morally upstanding if it seems like they might be incarnating the imaginary computer god! I'm glad we have such a nuanced thinker guiding our modern morality.

"Tensor Templar" lmao. Hey buddy, what did the Knights Templar do, besides banking?

Anybody remember when they were writing off unsold dolls and hauling them straight to the landfill? That has to be a few years ago now.

My dog took a kudu on the sidewalk and I had to clean it up before somebody stepped in it

I sharply disagree, but this is a subtlety that's lost on a lot of people. The tech industry's success since at least the 1990s, up until the mid-2010s, was about making technology easier for the individual user, a more accessible and (potentially) more efficient means for accomplishing many routine interactions. Tech devices existed as tools in service of the will of the end user, and if you were really willing to drink the kool-aid, extensions of the user themselves, Jobs' "bicycle for the mind."

The expectations being cultivated for AI now set it up as an entirely separate entity from the end user, and one that is potentially more capable at some point in the ill-defined future. This opens the door toward resources being reallocated towards this nebulously powerful entity, and the allocation of shared resources is at the very core of politics. This is a hard pivot away from how technology was designed before! You and I know it's a load of complete hogwash, but that doesn't prevent the potential bamboozlement of the lagging generation of policy-makers. Even someone as relatively young as Kamala Harris or her likely successor Gavin Newsom could be roped into this bullshit, if only because they know where their biggest donation checks come from.

The future in which the current crop of AI retailers enjoy a successful political program is no longer one where a rising tide lifts all boats. But, for the time being, it can still be pitched as such due to deeply embedded cultural expectations.

"My heavens, our self-regarding supremacist ideology can't possibly imply violence... can it???"

"The Fancy Induced Burger" is what you nickname your baby if your pregnancy goes past the due date

"Nerniacular framen, dude!" - Bart Simpson

I was happier when I had no idea who Patrick Soon-Shiong was, but Patrick Soon-Shiong was much happier still

LOTR fans stay losing

Strong suspicion that the "interim co-CEOs" bit is leading to an attempted sell-off/spin-off of the chip fabs (which are the part of the company getting the nice juicy government subsidies)

But we suspect Extropic is just burning through the $14 million and will go broke within a year or two, if that. We look forward to Verdon’s “our fabulous journey” post.

This guy seems like the type to totally skip that, embezzle the last million or two, and go straight for "messianic cult in the woods." Possibly with a side order of "amateur experimental stimulant laboratory"

It is a peculiar sort of faith movement, where the central devotional practice is wandering around pulling made-up probability estimates out of one's ass

The eventual war crimes trials will very likely reveal that "AI targeting" has already been used as an accountability sink for a premeditated ethnic cleansing policy in Gaza.

If you asked people what they wanted, they would say a car that drives itself

Two posts in two weeks about professors using ChatGPT has me questioning my desire to go back to school

all your barsk are belong to us