Strange New Words (Adam)

There's a character in Galápagos, the 1985 novel by Kurt Vonnegut, who has created a computer called the Mandarax that can understand natural language, translate languages, and answer questions on many topics -- it's basically an LLM. His wife does ikebana (Japanese flower arrangements) and she discovers that his machine can do it as well as her because he's tape recorded her classes and fed the data into the computer. She says to him,

"You, Doctor Hiroguchi, think that everybody but yourself is just taking up space on this planet, and we make too much noise and waste valuable natural resources and have too many children and leave garbage around. So it would be a much nicer place if the few stupid services we are able to perform for the the likes of you were taken over by machinery. That wonderful Mandarax you're scratching your ear with now: what is that but an excuse for a mean-spirited egomaniac never to pay or even thank any human being with a knowledge of languages or mathematics or history or medicine or literature or ikebana or anything?"

I read that on the bus this afternoon.

#Books #Tech #AI

My hope is that Star Trek will be stuck in development hell for the next few years, during which time the AI bubble will pop, Oracle will go bankrupt, and Paramount will get a new owner. That's the best case scenario.

#StarTrek #StarTrekStarfleetAcademy

I see the #Firefox "block AI" setting has arrived. It's clearly labeled and easy to find in Settings.

It would be even better if #AI were deactivated by default, but I give #Mozilla credit for listening to the criticism. It's still a million percent better than Google Chrome.

My company's HR routinely sends us e-mails with links we're supposed to click to take surveys, do performance reviews, sign up for benefits, etc. Then my company's #InfoSec team sends sting e-mails to see if we can pick up the subtle difference between HR e-mails and phishing e-mails pretending to be HR e-mails. I guess some of us can't tell the difference, because they keep testing us.

Here's my question: Why doesn't Security just tell HR they aren't allowed to send us e-mails with links? Then we would know if we got an e-mail with a link that it was a phishing e-mail and we shouldn't click it. I mean, are they actually trying to stop phishing or not?

@NickGates@friendsofdesoto.social First you will get overwhelmed because a bunch of weirdos are tripping over themselves to give you advice. Fight the panic!

You should use Ubuntu, Mint or Fedora, and whichever choice you make it will be the right one, because it doesn't matter.

Next you will download an ISO file from the distro's website. It's a disk image of the operating system.

You will flash that ISO onto a USB stick. You can google how to do this.

You can boot your computer from the USB stick and use Linux without installing it. Try it out. Kick the tires.

Maybe watch some videos on a Youtube channel called The Linux Experiment at this point.

When you're ready, and your files are backed up, you will install it on your computer.

If you're not sure you're ready, you can install Linux on that old laptop in your closet. If it's a PC less than 15 years old, it will work well. A Mac with an Intel processor will work too. If your closet is empty, a virtual machine is also a good way to take an extended test drive.

Anyway, when you're ready, install the OS. Installing an OS is one of those things that is scary and turns out to be easy.

For the most part, everything is going to work. If you're unlucky, something non-crucial like the webcam might not work at first. You will fix it by installing a driver.

If there isn't a Linux version of a piece of software, look on AlternativeTo.net for an alternative. However, if it isn't made by Microsoft or Adobe, there usually is a Linux version. If there's some particular thing you absolutely need that they don't make, you can usually get the Windows version working.

When you have a question, you will post it on Mastodon and you will get ten more answers than you need.

It's been a while since I've read an original criticism of AI, but LLMs as Stepford Wives is a pretty amazing one. I'm never going to be able to unsee it.

https://abiawomosu.substack.com/p/they-built-stepford-ai-and-called

#AI

I'm watching Star Trek: First Contact and it's really jumping out at me that they forgot to do make-up on the hands of this Borg extra. #NitpickersGuide

#StarTrek

RIP Nicholas Brendon.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/nicholas-brendon-dead-buffy-the-vampire-slayer-1236543090/

TIL that annual AI spending in the US is exceeding US annual spending for World War II when adjusted for inflation.

US AI spending in 2025: $1.5 trillion

US cost of World War II over 4 years (Dec 1941 - Aug 1945), adjusted for inflation: $4.1 trillion

The Apollo program, by contrast, was a steal at a mere $300 billion, adjusted.

#AI #Tech #TIL

Bluesky: Tax the rich!

#Mastodon: Keep the guillotine a little dull so it hurts more.

Any comment on this six-fingered hand in SFA comic book, @virtualbri@mastodon.online ? I know it's not your department but the rumor mill's really spinning. It'd be nice to get a denial and the name of the human artist soon....

#StarTrek #StarTrekStarfleetAcademy

Amen to this! I loved #Firefly but it's over. Let the Lost Cause die.

https://buttondown.com/charliejane/archive/let-firefly-stay-dead/

Ce vendredi je lis une petite biographie de Proust écrite par Edmund White. C'est un petit tome mignon d'à peu près 150 pages, probablement je le terminerai ce soir.

#VendrediLecture

Tiger Woods' short game is amazing, but he needs to work on his driving.

#TigerWoods

Je lis La Princesse de Clèves, par Madame de la Fayette. Intrigue romantique à la cour d'Henri II! Les rôles des mean girls seront joués par Catherine de Médicis et Mary Queen of Scots. #VendrediLecture

TLDR: The SFA comic book is not AI, a human artist drew it.

https://trekmovie.com/2026/02/17/confirmed-comic-book-from-star-trek-starfleet-academy-ep-6-was-not-created-with-ai/

#StarTrek #StarTrekStarfleetAcademy

Fellow Californians, don't sign the sneaky billionaire petition!

https://goldenstatereport.substack.com/p/welcome-to-election-deception-season

#USPol

You *know* AI doomerism is just a marketing strategy, but knowing it and seeing them get caught red-handed are two different things...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9o0eFvqOOU

#AI #Tech

Another day, another disgusting development involving AI.

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/is-spotify-enabling-massive-impersonation

#Music #Jazz #Tech #AI

@devans143@phpc.social I might have to try this.

Anisha Mir was really a Sarah Manning last week, but she's more of an Allison Hendrix this week.

#StarTrek #StarTrekStarfleetAcademy

@Lizette603_23@mastodon.social @pluralistic@mamot.fr My pleasure.

The other day I was trying to remember what English Lit I read in high school in the US, and something occurred to me for the first time: ALL of it was American.

Well, okay, I admit we read one Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, and one Dickens, Great Expectations. But everything else. We read To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, The Scarlet Letter, The Bluest Eye, Huckleberry Finn, Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Great Gatsby, The Old Man and the Sea, Invisible Man, Catch-22, Walden, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Red Badge of Courage. Even the short stories we were assigned were American: The Lottery, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Fall of the House of Usher, Barn Burning, Sonny's Blues, Everything That Rises Must Converge, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. What little poetry we did also: Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson.

None of this occurred to me at the time or for many years, but in retrospect it seems like to such a totally bizarre way to teach English literature, Do people from other English-speaking countries experience the same thing? Do Australians, for example, read Australian literature to the exclusion of everything else?

#Books #Literature #Education