For the AI literacy point

bsky.app/profile/oliv...

Thanks for this which I find validating.
From an embodied cognition pov, I keep thinking this stuff is problematic partly because learning to use a tool requires the tool to have invariants/groundedness.
You get better at hammering bc the hammer’s form is consistent.

“Self-evolving AI systems…optimise… internal components in response to changing tasks, environments, or resources’…even those who built the AI system do not know how they might ‘behave’ once leaving the lab…AI is a ‘moving target’ virtually impossible to pin down and analyse.”

yeah I was feeling these vibes yesterday — every tech person I see post about the utility they’re finding in this tech makes me wonder why they think they can separate that from the context of its emergence
bsky.app/profile/andr...

Btw there was a good @iwriteok.bsky.social / Behind the Bastards multi-episode focus on this topic of authoritarian parenting a while back — in the context of Nazi Germany. First episode here: pca.st/episode/f362...

No amount of AI literacy can protect us because the problem isn’t knowledge, or how to use the system, it’s that the system exists in a culture that has been radically structured around white supremacy and patriarchy and your precious autocomplete incorporates it into its operations.

Oh. Has it been that long since I saw a recent photo of him? Blissfully, I guess so?

Figure showing number of competitive grants mentioning women from 2015-2025. The number was rising until recently, with a precipitous drop in the last year.

At the end of 2024, the National Academies put out a report concluding the NIH has woefully underfunded women’s health research, and they suggested $15 B should be invested over the next 5 years.

Here’s what’s happened instead. Hard to study women’s health if you can’t say “women.”

wapo.st/4euUt1c

Happy "GoPuff is experiencing delays" holiday for all those who celebrate

Btw there was a good @iwriteok.bsky.social / Behind the Bastards multi-episode focus on this topic of authoritarian parenting a while back — in the context of Nazi Germany. First episode here: pca.st/episode/f362...

Just beneath the surface, all these guys are scared, hurt, tender little boys, children who desperately need a hug, and because they've been socialized to hate their own need, their own vulnerability, they end up hating themselves & endlessly seeking scapegoats to displace that hate onto, to abuse.

These guys are told from the day they are born that vulnerability is feminine, so they dedicate themselves to being (or at least appearing) invulnerable, complete unto themselves, but of course that's profoundly anti-human, so what results is a bunch of weird dysfunctional behaviors.

Fear & concern are coded feminine, so they get translated into anger, which feels more tough.

Hurt & disappointment are coded feminine, so they get translated into outrage & aggrievement.

The simple human need for love & affirmation is coded feminine, so it gets translated into demands & control.

We are all Wilhelm Reich now

Not to mention a form of forced polygamy and enslavement of their own offspring, all while proclaiming the gospel.

it might be "woke" to say but surely there is some connection between modern reactionary beliefs and the fact that for most of the history of English settlement in North America a large portion of the polity was engaged in the brutal domination and sexual exploitation of millions of people.

Guys Win: Andrew Tate, Rape Politics, and the Authoritarian Right Misogyny is a preeminent feature of authoritarian politics.

At the risk of being a parody of myself I think the roots to the "new" misogyny lie in the theology of slavery and the rationalization of mass rape for centuries by people who thought of themselves as the most devout people in the country www.liberalcurrents.com/guys-win-and...

I missed this exchange between Jamelle & @adamserwer.bsky.social last year (ht to @miniver.bsky.social for surfacing it)

And yeah — I’m increasingly convinced the whole culture has had rotten foundations for centuries. Including the authoritarian parenting & nuclear-family norms.

This Is Just To Say

I have turned off
the AI features
that were in
the update

and which
you were probably
hoping
to monetize

Fuck you
they were stupid
so unnecessary
and so annoying

As a former StoryCorps facilitator, this is fucking disgusting.

End the project already, Dave.

You created a good model: you encouraged people to sit and do oral history for 20 yrs.

Turning StoryCorps into a surveillance capitalism nightmare is not worth the money to keep the project going.

We all understand psychedelics are nonspecific amplifiers, that's why set & setting matters, can we get over this fairytale that they have some innate moral or political alignment? For every libertarian on MDMA who realised other people have feelings there's one who decided everyone else is an NPC

"Hey don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"

"Ok but what I am telling you is that is a monsterbaby that gestated in a bath of monster-making fluids and it wants to eat us."

I am forever saying that if refusal isn't a live option in any decision making process about "AI", then no ethical practice is possible. You've got to be able to stop if the thing is unacceptable.

At Long Last, InfoWars Is Ours By Bryce P. Tetraeder, CEO, Global Tetrahedron

We have a deal. theonion.com/at-long-last...

I can’t think of anyone more suited to take on the Alex Jones parody role than @timheidecker.bsky.social

This past weekend I finished my read of "Practical Ethnography" by @sladner.bsky.social, which was terrific.

She said "The researcher is the instrument." This is a pithy, direct way to get at the essential nature of position (in quant and qual work) that resonated.

www.practicalethnography.com

And what flavor of “AI”???

The New Deal brought power to the American South, gave my grandfather a job with the CCC (which is how he met my grandmother), and established the TVA where my mom worked until she retired, but please, do tell me how terrible FDR was.

It is bizarre how our culture drapes an aura of sagacious wisdom around anybody with a CEO title.
The role is inherently extremely biased because the system it exists in requires it to be.