Jackson Mostoller

@xgranade I think it really says something—and I wish I knew a source that delved into this!—about a fundamental and inescapably human role of aesthetics in society. I sincerely think people are ok cosplaying literal space Nazis because the space Nazis look cool. And fascism strikes me as a deeply superficial ideology, so there’s this zone where any time a fictional work has cool-looking authoritarians, real-life authoritarian-minded people glob on to that no matter how much the work as a whole tries to *say* they’re evil. I’ve idly wondered for a while whether there’s a way to reverse that phenomenon at some kind of “literal culture war” level…

@hailey They also completely discount the *nature* of the technologies. How, exactly, is a system that outputs a bunch of intentionally human-sounding text on-demand remotely similar to writing symbols down to record information? I’d argue that, of any familiar technology, LLMs are probably most similar to algorithmic social media—a vast and faceless maelstrom of hyper-available information controlled by unseen powers that’s wired directly into our natural social proclivities. And we all agree algorithmic social media is an unmitigated benefit to society…right? I would love to know how “ostensible digital maven” is enough like a writing desk to handwave away all criticism.

@SnoopJ@hachyderm.io Pouring one out for my formative 2012 Maths [sic] YouTube days. Those whimsical times have come and hexaflexagone 😔

@grimalkina@mastodon.social Not sure if you watch Adventuring Academy on Dropout, but Oscar Montoya had a *great* articulation of this the other week. I hadn’t realized how easily I fall into the “cynical == smart” trap all the time

@randomgeek@masto.hackers.town wait wait wait…is “carcineria” on purpose, or did you just accidentally drop an all-timer “carceral”/“carniceria” portmanteau about your job?

To reiterate: fuck these lying scumbags. Their platform is fossil fuels and data centers and backdoor deals with monopolies. “Dark money groups are spending heavily…”—you mean you, you grubby quisling little fuckers? The gall to plaster solar panels on this ad and claim to offer a “cleaner energy future,” and to projectively scare-monger about funding sources. Every Phoenician should be personally offended by this, they think you’re rubes. Eligible voters, please don’t prove them right. #vote #Phoenix #azpolitics #azpol #arizona #SRP #SRPElection

Also I guess the drop box location is closed over the weekend lol, so don’t be a fool like me showing up today/tomorrow trying to drop it off 😅 Opens Monday 8:30am – 5:00pm or Tuesday 6:00am – 7:00pm (and after that voting is over!)

@gimblll@mastodon.gamedev.place @runevision@mastodon.gamedev.place Hey now, a good game is a good game!

Wild that Kagi’s head of ML having a relatively low-hype take on LLMs gets them points from me, but that’s the world we’re in right now I guess. (Maybe Mozilla could take some notes?) https://blog.kagi.com/llms

@budududuroiu Insightful read so far, thanks for recording and sharing it!

@tainome@mastodon.design Gorgeous!

@mwichary@mastodon.online ooh, these are lovely photos, too. The way the yellow bounces off the grey…