Winter Aconite blooms emerging though other vegetation.

Winter Aconite reporting for fake spring duty 🌱

Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day in Fascist Busytown? Welcome to Fascist Busytown. My, what a compliant, orderly town! In Fascist Busytown, everyone works. Working is important. Work makes everything r...

"Adults are workers. Children are workers too. Children are especially good workers because they are small. They can fit into places where adults cannot go, like factories with narrow gaps, crawl spaces under warehouses, and air vents where important listening happens."

LLMs can only be as “good” as their source material and training choices. Which means they can be a great vector for mass manipulation through changes to those things once they’ve gained a critical mass of adoption and trust.

I know nothing about anything, but it sounds like he should release the mod for free, but the mod should rely on 2 pieces of commercial software. One is the game, the second is whatever is magic VR thing that doesn’t rely on the game at all. That seems like it would meet CDPR’s guidelines.

Have those people not seen the covers on the previous albums? The new one seems on brand to me.

I think it’s part of a quid pro quo with municipal politicians that are trying to maintain the status quo in cities. Ie support all the service businesses that have suffered greatly from people not coming into the business areas of big cities.

I’d be happy to have a look, though may be of no help at all.

Specifically what doesn’t exist yet? What might be functionality of existing platforms? How and where do auctions run assuming they still happen?

I’d love to hear some brainstorming about what a programmatic ad stack that could actually exist and solve all the problems that you listed in the middle of the piece. In particular I think the publisher being able to choose to whitelist advertisers would go a long way, but at significant cost

In other electoral systems, MAGA might
be a third, or fourth, or fifth party which the majority of Americans would not support. Is exploring this something worthy of an episode?

I am not sure if Americans realize how significant the role of the electoral system is, and how it has led to the evolution of the GOP over the last 20 years from the tea party into MAGA.

There is a moment in this episode where Jon and Mike are talking about Japan and Germany and the rise of ultra right wing parties there. Mike notes that they don’t run the country and Jon adds a “yet”. This made me think about how the US electoral system has led to where things are now.

I am suspicious that a lot of people are buying up tickets to resell, now that that has become very easy to do.

Sounds like the plot of a Joe Hill book.

Is it possible to remove fraud from adtech when most of the middlemen in the industry make their money from the impressions that flow through them? It doesn’t seem like that model will ever incentivize quality over quantity.

What percentage of people using LLMs are using them to learn? I have no idea. I think the idea is somewhat reasonable, but I think that the intersection of “without access to education”, “with access and funds to use LLMs”, and “using LLMs to learn” is not likely to be very large.

It’s snowing sideways #onstorm

Vive le Canada

Excited to see tour dates when they come.

The bug that changed so much.

There are a couple of apps to play online. They have decent on-boarding into how to play. I’d give that a try.

That’s how you create the ministry of truth, isn’t it?

The Weekly Anthropocene Interviews: Jason Pargin, Cosmic Satirist of Hope Jason Pargin is an acclaimed novelist, satirist, and social commentator.

This interview with @jasonkpargin.bsky.social has very little to do with his books, but is well worth a read. Particularly today.

youvechangedrecords.com/product/apol...

3 sounds fun but how do you see this crackdown happening? A lot of people profit beyond bad actors through bad behaviour in adtech and as a result seem to turn a blind eye to it.

Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming Nick Hanauer is a rich guy, an unrepentant capitalist — and he has something to say to his fellow plutocrats: Wake up! Growing inequality is about to push our societies into conditions resembling pre-...

Possibly related

www.ted.com/talks/nick_h...

Navigating whatever happens next

Prequel : an American fight against Fascism Prequel : an American fight against Fascism, Rachel Maddow. 9780593444511, Toronto Public Library

Maybe this too: www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?E...

There might be a fair bit of overlap.

I wonder if Trudeau regrets not following through on his promise on electoral reform from his first term.

Meowing into the Abyss - Episode 13 - Transistor Sound and Lighting Co. YouTube video by Gummie Worm Podcasts

I love this band, and I wish they had released more music. This interview is fun, and I love how open Jay and Dino are with this conversation. They even mention the cassette I added to discogs a while ago. I bought it off the stage at the horseshoe, in ‘96 or ‘97.