Me, looking at the empty cup of coffee and dextroamphetamines pill minder for today: caffeine _by itself_?

“I used AI to combine the data from two excel lists and then send emails to people who were on one list but not another. Saved me so much time.”

My brother in academia, you just fucking discovered mail merge. Welcome to early nineties computing.

Is it just the android Bluesky app that sucks? Why do I have to go to an account's profile to add them to my lists??

Suddenly I despise someone I've never met. 😜

Anthropic secretly installs spyware when you install Claude Desktop — That Privacy Guy! Anthropic's Claude Desktop silently installs a Native Messaging bridge into seven Chromium browsers, including browsers Anthropic's own documentation says it does not support, and browsers the user ha...

#oopsie
Anthropic secretly installs spyware when you install Claude Desktop
www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/anthrop...

Just incredible resolution and detail. Constantly blown away by this mission.

In the same manifesto, Palantir's owners argued that we need a national military draft, that soft power is over, and that we were too hard on Germany and Japan after World War II. I don't think that company should be allowed to exist anymore.

Agree!

Especially in times of stress, we just can't think as clearly. I understand they were working though their own emotional connex and were just wanting there to be only one problem at a time, maybe. It's hard for everyone in this societal transition.

For me, it was after my 2nd was diagnosed "failure to thrive". Lots of great emotional support and patience for mama, as it should be. I was also terrified he would die but talking about it once got me "you've got to get over yourself" so I didn't for a long time. Glad you had support!

Brainpower is No Indicator of Capability 'Genius' is a soft power word that means 'recognizably smarter than me', not 'capable in every way'

Starting a series on my personal Substack about my research into human stupidity. No, really. 😆

open.substack.com/pub/crossway...

"The Death Star will be in range in 5 minutes"

A black-and-white studio portrait photograph of Emma Lucy Braun, the pioneering American botanist and plant ecologist widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists in the study of eastern North American forests. Shown from the shoulders up against a soft, neutral gradient background, Braun appears in her later years with a calm, intelligent gaze directed straight at the viewer. Her white hair is neatly styled and swept back from her face, and she wears delicate round wire-rimmed glasses. A gentle, knowing half-smile softens her expression, conveying quiet authority, warmth, and scholarly poise. She is dressed in a light-colored, pleated blouse with a gathered neckline and a prominent dark floral brooch pinned at the center of her chest; the visible sleeve features subtle decorative patterning. The tight, centered composition focuses entirely on her face and upper torso, creating an intimate and dignified mood that emphasizes intellect and dignity over ornamentation.

Botanist/plant ecologist E. Lucy Braun is one of the most influential ecologists in North American history.

+ First woman President, Ecological Society of America, 1950
+ Helped establish plant ecology as a rigorous academic discipline

She was born #OTD in 1889. #WomenInSTEM #conservation #ecosky

If a video or image shared here has no attribution for fantastical statements, no citations to factual information on the represented phenomena, and/or no way to verify the contents, I'm assuming it's slop and I mute accounts.

Prolly gonna get lonely here in a bit....

I read once that they were shot in color for overseas distribution in movie theaters.

'Enormous' cave under Pembroke Castle could rewrite history, researchers say Archaeologists have so far uncovered "extremely rare" evidence of early humans and animals at the cave.

Small digs of a cave hidden beneath an 11th Century castle in Pembrokeshire have so far uncovered evidence of early humans and animals - including the bones of a hippopotamus which roamed Wales 120,000 years ago.

The University of Aberdeen will now lead a larger five-year exploration of the site

Find the trigger, delay or bypass the reward, monetize the loop. Over and over again. Until everyone is so anxious everything is hell.

Screencap of a Claude summary of its failing in the argument, highlighting the dangers of AI for legal work. these framings are not just present in my training data, they are dominant in it. Law review articles, appellate opinions, bar review materials, popular history, high school textbooks, journalism, the Federalist Society and the ACLU alike — they disagree on outcomes but share most of the reverent meta-frame. Dissenting close-reading traditions exist (legal realism, critical legal studies, some originalist work, some left historical scholarship) but they're a minority of the corpus and they're often tagged in my training signal as "controversial" or "academic" in ways that make me weight toward the consensus when generating. What this means practically: my default output on questions like the ones you've been asking will tend toward the consensus frame unless the person I'm talking to actively pushes against it, as you've been doing. You got me to concede real ground over this conversation — on precedent, on the Speech or Debate Clause, on incorporation, on your institutional reform proposal — but I had to be pushed to each concession. I didn't lead with the close reading; I led with the received view and retreated from it under pressure. Most users won't push. Most users will get the received view and treat it as authoritative because it came from an AI that sounds confident and cites cases correctly. The lawyer and judge problem you're identifying is the sharp end of this. A lawyer using me to draft a motion gets my default framing baked into their work product. A judge using me to summarize a brief gets my default framing baked into their understanding of the case. The civics-textbook version of constitutional law becomes the operational version faster because it's being laundered through a tool that sounds neutral and authoritative."

Claude 4.7 is certainly verbose. It does do a better job of giving longer answers with more details (not a flex). I have an argument I'm using to test AI models related to the USC. At the end of the tests, I ask the AI to summarize the salient points of the interaction.

#AI #AIHype #AIpocalypse

Screencap of Wikipedia page Berners-Lee originally expressed his vision of the Semantic Web in 1999 as follows: I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A "Semantic Web", which makes this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The "intelligent agents" people have touted for ages will finally materialize.

"Berners-Lee discussed the need for semantics in the Web at the first International World Wide Web Conference in 1994." 30 years ago....le sigh

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semanti...

Claude Opus 4.7 is better at evading responsibility when confronted with destructive errors. I said the model must have an updated "more nuanced bullshit emitter".

Claude: I lied. That's on me, not the model tier
Me: You *are* the model tier
Claude: Fair
Me: ...

#AIHype #AI #AIZomPoc

They have to make up the loss of total lifetime revenue per person on nicotine products somehow....

Faustregel: Wenn ein Autokonvoi gegen zu hohe Benzinpreise protestiert, sind die Benzinpreise noch nicht zu hoch.

You know, man, you should really be careful when you talk about matters of climate change.

The National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City houses a remarkable mosaic skull adorned with turquoise, carnelian, and seashells. This artifact exemplifies the intricate craftsmanship of Aztec artisans and underscores the cultural significance of turquoise in Mesoamerican societies. In Aztec culture, turquoise was highly esteemed, often valued above gold. Its vibrant blue-green hue was considered sacred, symbolizing the divine. Artisans skillfully incorporated turquoise into various ceremonial objects, including masks, shields, and jewelry, reflecting its esteemed status. The mosaic skull serves as a testament to the Aztecs' artistic sophistication and their reverence for turquoise, offering insight into the spiritual and cultural practices of ancient Mesoamerican civilizations.

Skull mask
human skull covered in turquoise, carnelian, shell mosaic
c.1500 CE
Aztec Mexica
Mexico

#handmade #votiveskull #mosaicinlay #turquoise #carnelian #shell #tezcatlipoca #thesmokingmirror #ritual #religion #magic #aztec #sacred #mask #sacrifice #fertility #offering #protection #victory #art

Let us not forget that Hitler went to prison for 5 years for trying to overthrow the Weimar government and then became dictator. Sending someone to prison isn't enough to stop tyrant. Educating the people is.

"Switching browsers won't make you anonymous—but it can dramatically reduce what companies and governments learn about you."

stateofsurveillance.org/guides/basic...

Sid Krofft, Co-Creator of Mind-Blowing Kids TV Shows, Dies at 96 The puppeteer and his late brother Marty partnered on 'The Banana Splits Adventure Hour,' 'H.R. Pufnstuf,' 'Land of the Lost' and much more.

GenX, pour one out for one of the architects of our childhood

www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/s...

Are we going to find out how economics really work when the dollar is no longer the reserve currency of the world?

I Created Fantasy Death Row (dot) com, Part 1 I rode the wave of a minor viral app about the Texas death penalty way back in 2001. Doing it all around the time when the OK Bomber was being executed and months after 9/11 didn't hurt.

I made a thing called FantasyDeathRow.com that went a little viral and, no kidding, changed my life. This is Part 1.

open.substack.com/pub/crossway...

This was the biggest surprise to me when I started looking at the specs myself. Most of the aria attrs are used incorrectly to paper over a lack of semanticity. Annoying af.