(I had remembered thinking "man I gotta get a picture of this feast" about 30 seconds before everyone descended on it like locusts)

3 lonely calamari rings and a sliced slab of medium rare top round

The tiniest remnants of grilled veggies and mashed taters. They did not survive long after the photo was taken

Cooked 2# of fried calamari, 2.5# of steak, a raft of stuffed peppers and stuffed portabellas and zucchini, plus mashed taters. Family dinner for 8 tonight, love a nice day off!

Pictured: only the aftermath, because I am not fast enough to take plating photos. 😀

Perhaps there's something in there about the difference between striving for communal understanding versus reaching only for maximum productivity - and accumulation of info capital to oneself rather than a sharing with others that enriches and empowers us all.

Perhaps not. I've been wrong before.

Every moment you spend talking to or listening to an LLM is one you could have shared with a fellow human instead to do the same thing, and you're both poorer for not having that moment of sharing.

So, hooray for local news! I will always choose to invest my resources into learning from and educating my fellow humans over attempting to extract meaning from an algorithmic engine.

Think of it as the knowledge equivalent of buying from a local store instead of ordering from amazon.

Add to this that by turning to an AI engine to do the very human function of understanding and relaying information, we are feeding resources into a machine instead of into our fellow humans. We are actively depriving ourselves and others of human interactions that build community when we do.

"invisible bias" that can lead to uncritical acceptance by a reader, and a failure to ask what was excluded... as well as a failure to realize that the "why" may algo bias or just a basic failure of transcription.

But we know our fellow humans have biases and we can learn those and take them into account when we read a human recount of current events.

AI? The worst of them (grok) have clear and changing biases that we can see, but ALL truncations are making choices about what to include, and thats a kind of

2) We are conditioned to believe the "summary" b/c it mimics the way reporters of this generation have been killed to report "just the facts", but just like human reporters these engines make mistakes and have algorithmic biases!

(This is also my beef with modern reporting style in major outlets.)

We don't necessarily expect a machine to make mistakes, but they do! Especially these messy LLMs.

Reporters? Sometimes they get it wrong. And then they LEARN from that and grow. LLMs simply do not do this, and there's also no way to hold an LLM accountable either. Yet.

1) every "summary" makes mistakes, just like people do. Sometimes it misquotes b/c of mishearing, or mistakes meaning b/c an AI engine never "understands" or truly "summarizes" material, it just truncates and regurgitates.

Lets face it, you know many of my biases by now and take it into account when you hear me pass along news. We do this with ALL of our friend humans, all the time!

But this illustrates 2 huge misunderstandings that I think lead people to make grave mistakes with AI "reporting":

To me, the importance of the Editorial isn't the value of the Editors opinion as much as it tells me what kind of HUMAN the filter between me and the facts of the news in that paper is! It's like a peek into their "algorithm", and provides context to even their driest factual reporting.

When we lost the Somerville Times and the Somerville Journal we lost the very quirky, very local, very HUMAN kind of reporting and editorial that AI summaries could never replace.

The CS Indie appears to be leaning back into the humanity of reporting, and I'm delighted by it.

Put it in my veins

Feels important to uplift Rep Pressley's leadership. She puts in a lot of work on issues that others often don't see as a priority. I've appreciated her anti-criminalization work over the years. She's a worker.

Whoa this was done by discharge petition, which means the House bypassed the speaker via signatures - it also means the shittier Dems and a few republicans (not sure the exact number - maybe just to get simple majority?) had to agree. Excellent Congresspersoning on behalf of Rep Pressley

*love* is not the word I'd use

The points made in his thread are also good, but I'm staying focused on "we have too many cops and not enough $ going to helping residents and providing services"

Anyway, we need police oversight - right the fuck now. This thing is out of control.

5/5

Counterpoint: we do not in fact need to increase the police budget, and we have over 2 decades worth of staffing studies that say we have too many cops already

(We do not, for example, have any studies showing that we have too many teachers or too much housing or too many DPW workers or...)

neighborhood cleanup neighbors of all ages welcome! Saturday april 25 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. find your ward cleanup at SOMERVILLEMA.GOV/neighbor

Neighborhood cleanups are back! Join elected officials, neighbors, and community groups from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturday, April 25 to help to spruce up streets, parks, and public spaces — and to get to know the people you share them with. 🧵

So, not for nothing, why are we being asked to consider spending $$$$ on Body Cameras in 2026? The only people asking for these are cops.

I am reminded that in 2020 and again in 2021, Just Us Somerville demanded a whole raft of changes to the Somerville Police.

Civilian Oversight was top of the list.

Body cameras weren't even mentioned.

We've had decades of studies about how to "reform" our police, and the city did none of it.

It’s going to become increasingly harder and harder for people to separate mass deportation from policing and Mullin and the administration are quite sure there’s no appetite for addressing policing.

MA rabbis' concerns with state antisemitism recommendations:

1. Flawed data
2. Establishment of IHRA definition
3. Limiting teaching and learning
4. Increased police involvement in schools
5. Isolating Jews instead of supporting diverse democratic spaces

drive.google.com/file/d/1MYJq...

i don’t want my appliances to be smart or connect to the internet. i want them to do one mechanical task for 100 years

Thanks to @unlikelywords.bsky.social for the Gracie's ice cream, perfect pairing w a HONK band for the kids

Also, credit to @mayorjakewilson.bsky.social for stopping by too

For a ward 4 guy, he really does get around! ;-)

It's marching band season again here in Somerville!

Oooh, solidly underrated skeet