There's more work to do, but it's enough that your input is super valuable. Another round and I'll post to codeberg.
Feel free to share with anyone with informed opinions, and no worries if you're busy/sick/uninterested/whatever - absolutely no obligation to join in 🤓
@benpate@mastodon.social I'm envisioning a sort of "DNS-like" endorsements flow where I as a server want to know whether this "Ben Pate" fellow is trustworthy, so:
My software asks the only person it trusts, activitypub.social, who responds with "no clue, but I trust fosstodon.org, so ask there"
So it asks fosstodon.org, who says "no clue, but I trust mastodon.social and someothersite.social, so ask them"
So it asks mastodon.social and it says "yes I know Ben Pate, he's a pretty cool fellow"
#OtD 28 Jul 1925 Polish Jewish shoemaker and communist Naftali Botwin assassinated a secret police agent who had infiltrated the Communist Party in Lviv, Ukraine. Botwin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death and executed on Aug 6. Learn more: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10017/naftali-botwin-attentat
I would bet at least 80% of people who say they read every line of code their AI agents write, don't. I'm not saying I do or that this is a problem with today's models, I'm just saying it out loud because I feel like it's a thing and a lot of people feel like they can't say it, even if it's true.
Med anledning av Martin Kraghs bortgång kom jag att tänka på den olustiga klappjakten på honom som bedrevs av vissa personer för snart tio år sedan. Då skrev jag detta.
Detta påminner förresten inte så lite om de rapporter om ryska medier som jag skrev när jag jobbade på ambassaden i Moskva och sedan i Kiev 2018-2019.
Polanski has been foolish here. He must surely know that the corporate media are absolutely gunning for him.
He needs to check every single word and every single photo of anything he boosts on social media. Sure, I'm sure it was a genuine oversight and he didn't mean to boost the photo, but he has to be so careful. The slightest mis-step and the corporate media will be all over him like a rash.
#OtD 28 Jul 1879 Lucy Burns, suffragist and women's rights advocate, was born. While living in the UK she joined the Women's Social and Political Union, and later in the US she and Alice Paul formed the radical Congressional Union for Women's Suffrage https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10013/lucy-burns-born
David Gerard, the creator of Pivot to AI, joined Kim Crawley to discuss how we can recover after Gen AI.
And the aftermath is soon, no matter how often fools and bootlickers say "AI is here to stay, get used to it!"
David concluded from data that the horrific financial bubble will pop by 2027, perhaps when SoftBank and venture capitalists quit desperately propping it up with more billions of dollars despite the expenses being orders of magnitude greater than revenue from consumers and business clients.
I add that research from people at MIT, the United Nations, and Harvard Science Review's meta analysis concludes that Gen AI datacentres are literally unsustainable according to the laws of physics. I link to that research on my Kickstarter page.
And there's model collapse, which is like Mad Cow disease for data.
What will we do about the immense environmental destruction, psychological damage, societal harms, economic destruction, power grid damage, and tech debt in its wake?
That's what we discussed.
Webinar is to promote Recovering After Gen AI, the book. Kickstarter campaign ends on August 5th, 2026: Get link in video description, or from stopgenai dot com
And please check out and support David Gerard and Pivot to AI: pivot-to-ai dot com
Claude users are creating public share links, but probably don't realize that means their chats are now ending up in Google searches where anyone can dig through them.
#OtD 26 Jul 1937 British authorities in Barbados secretly deported Clement Payne, a worker who was trying to start a trade union, to Trinidad, where police were waiting to arrest him for possessing prohibited literature. More info here: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e75-76-trinidad-general-strike/
In a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, scientific miracles, and spiritual transformations, State of Wonder presents a world of stunning surprise and danger, rich in emotional resonance and moral complexity.
As Dr. Marina Singh embarks upon an uncertain odyssey into the insect-infested Amazon, she’s forced to surrender herself to the lush but forbidding world that awaits within the jungle. Charged with finding her former mentor Dr. Annick Swenson, a researcher who has disappeared while working on a valuable new drug, she will have to confront her own memories of tragedy and sacrifice as she journeys into the unforgiving heart of darkness.
Stirring and luminous, State of Wonder is a world unto itself, where unlikely beauty stands beside unimaginable loss beneath the rain forest’s jeweled canopy. Patchett delivers a gripping adventure story and a profound look at the difficult choices we make in the name of discovery and love.
@hipsterelectron I'm going to have to go with the classic moment, the blinding of Polyphemus. Polyphemus is a mythical giant and cares little for humans, and eats a few of Odysseus's men. It seems justified that they should kill him or do anything necessary to escape. But what Odysseus does is at first cowardly and cruel, and then prideful and boastful, having the aspect of what Melanie Klein (a very good psychoanalyst) would call contempt and triumph, qua the manic defenses.
He tricks Polyphemus in to getting blackout drunk, then he and his men drive a hot poker into his eye, blinding him. To add insult to injury, he reveals his true name to the giant, boasting "I did this to you and hear this is my name!" Before this, he'd said his name was "nobody", to protect himself (because, in the Greek civic and religious schematic, much like ours, knowing a person's name gives you the power to affect their legal person), but he decided "I'm so much better than you that I don't need protection from your crippled ass" basically.
Of course, Polyphemus, now knowing his name, pled for the gods to retaliate on his behalf, so even though Odysseus was able to escape with his men, this brought a terrible curse on them. The reason I like this so much is because it directly connects pathological contempt with not only hubris, but also shows how it connects and completes the cycle of violence. "And I'm not sorry!" While they were treated as food, an animal need, they treated him with hatred, and that hatred, being abstract had the memetic power to reproduce itself as a neverending cycle of further violence. This haunts him and his men for the rest of the story!
From crypto bans to shadow fleet seizures, EU gets creative with Russia sanctions
Despite a long and difficult birth, EU countries passed the bloc’s 21st package of sanctions against Russia on July 23, and the measures that made it through show that the EU is not lacking in creativity when it comes to restricting Russia’s war efforts.
5 killed, 15 injured as Russian forcesbombard Slovianskwith glide bombs. Two air-dropped bombs were used in the morning attack, said regional governor Vadym Filashkin, repeating calls for the remaining residents of the city to evacuate to safer areas.
General Staff: Russia has lost1,436,100 troopsin Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022. The figure includes 1,410 personnel losses recorded over the past day.
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German approval ofRussia-linked nuclear venturesparks warnings over espionage, Kremlin influence. The venture, approved on July 22, will see French company Framatome manufacture nuclear fuel rods and fuel assemblies designed by TVEL, Rosatom’s fuel subsidiary, at a factory in Lingen, Lower Saxony.
America keeps losing the thread on Russia’s kidnapping of Ukraine’s children
“This is not a story we should let sink from our collective consciousness. Ukraine’s fight to recover its children is not a peripheral humanitarian footnote to the war; it sits close to the center of what the war is about,” writes filmmaker Benjamin Patton.
Image: Roman Pilipey / AFP / Getty Images
Syrskyi is out. Can Drapatyi fix Ukraine’s army?
Meet the collection inspired by Kyiv’s embroidery
Two collaborations, one enduring Ukrainian tradition. Created so you can carry a piece of Kyiv with you, wherever you go.
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