simsa03: The "India-Middle-East-Europe Economic Corridor", first proposed by India at the G20 in 2023, would integrate India, Middle East, Levant, Israel, Europe, sidelining the Strait of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb. Announced merely a few months before 10/7, to me it puts the attacks in a new light. A few sources on IMEC: https://mei.edu/backgrounder/the-india-middle-east-europe-economic-corridor/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_8IHJ7SP2U https://gnusocial.jp/attachment/9910b34283bfa4b3852c105c9a8b343513b2da8ea86a2b3e43f04ad837bec8d9/view
simsa03's status on Wednesday, 01-Jul-2026 02:55:35 JST
The "India-Middle-East-Europe Economic Corridor", first proposed by India at the G20 in 2023, would integrate India, Middle East, Levant, Israel, Europe, sidelining the Strait of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb. Announced merely a few months before 10/7, to me it puts the attacks in a new light. A few sources on IMEC: https://mei.edu/backgrounder/the-india-middle-east-europe-economic-corridor/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_8IHJ7SP2U https://gnusocial.jp/attachment/9910b34283bfa4b3852c105c9a8b343513b2da8ea86a2b3e43f04ad837bec8d9/view
simsa03: "El Mambo de Stendhal" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXhnkX8GTrY Wonderful! To all the pious doom scrollers in need of a new apocalypse now that climate change is no longer sexy.
simsa03's status on Wednesday, 01-Jul-2026 01:26:46 JST
"El Mambo de Stendhal" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXhnkX8GTrY Wonderful! To all the pious doom scrollers in need of a new apocalypse now that climate change is no longer sexy.
MAMBO DE STENDHAL !!. ¡Los cuadros cobran vida! (IA Music Video) 🕺🔥
simsa03: The "doom trolling" (Cal Newport) of big #AI companies with their inexplicable Janus-faced strategy of apocalyptic fearmongering and insistence on increasing the speed of development, makes good sense when seen as their attempt to have the public treat AI not as an ordinary consumer product. If AI were treated like an ordinary consumer product, cost-benefits would have to be weighed, safety measures established, terms of liability determined. That's not what big companies want in general, esp. not re: groundbreaking tech whose long-term impact can't properly be assessed yet. To lend the technology an air of inevitability and of inaccessibility to control makes the public and regulators doubt, thus, waste time, in which the AI companies can build infrastructures, establish pervasiveness in consumers' life, and eschew liabilities in absence of legal standards. Cal Newport almost gets it right (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1VkPn1fhKE&t=239s and https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/opinion/ai-dangerous-openai-anthropic.html) but then wanders off and dilutes this point by mixing it up with irrelevant references to Silicon Valley tech religion and #AI companies competitions in staff recruitment. People love to talk about the "Tech Barons", "neo-feudalist" actors driven by libertarian ideology (cf. the "libertarian manifesto" by Luke Kemp), aiming to create autonomous city states without government regulations interfering in economic "liberty" (Peter Thiel). Yes, these things exist. As does the transhumanist movement of human-machine merger and augmentation (Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk). At least as ideas. But these are irrelevant as well. One might argue that having AI being exempted from the status of an ordinary consumer product plays into the hand of these libertarian and transhumanist aspirations. But for that AI is too groundbreaking and, because of that, still too vague to serve as a tool to bring about these fantasies. And I think these people know that. So they stick to what they know best: Interrupt markets, scale quickly, define and dominate customer dependencies, try to evade liability or shift the burden on the public. Along their customary approach to lay claim on new territory while insisting to act without regulation, to suffocate any discussion on AI being a consumer product in need of regulation, and instead hyping up what a cultural and technological breakthrough that is, is sensible company strategy. I'm aware that seen as an argument this is question begging: What has been the indicator of a thesis later turns out to become its evidence. So, strictly speaking, I haven't argued in favour of AI companies pursuing this strategy. But still, as an insight, it makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks to Cal Newport for triggering these thoughts.
simsa03's status on Monday, 29-Jun-2026 03:24:41 JST
The "doom trolling" (Cal Newport) of big #AI companies with their inexplicable Janus-faced strategy of apocalyptic fearmongering and insistence on increasing the speed of development, makes good sense when seen as their attempt to have the public treat AI not as an ordinary consumer product. If AI were treated like an ordinary consumer product, cost-benefits would have to be weighed, safety measures established, terms of liability determined. That's not what big companies want in general, esp. not re: groundbreaking tech whose long-term impact can't properly be assessed yet. To lend the technology an air of inevitability and of inaccessibility to control makes the public and regulators doubt, thus, waste time, in which the AI companies can build infrastructures, establish pervasiveness in consumers' life, and eschew liabilities in absence of legal standards. Cal Newport almost gets it right (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1VkPn1fhKE&t=239s and https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/opinion/ai-dangerous-openai-anthropic.html) but then wanders off and dilutes this point by mixing it up with irrelevant references to Silicon Valley tech religion and #AI companies competitions in staff recruitment. People love to talk about the "Tech Barons", "neo-feudalist" actors driven by libertarian ideology (cf. the "libertarian manifesto" by Luke Kemp), aiming to create autonomous city states without government regulations interfering in economic "liberty" (Peter Thiel). Yes, these things exist. As does the transhumanist movement of human-machine merger and augmentation (Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk). At least as ideas. But these are irrelevant as well. One might argue that having AI being exempted from the status of an ordinary consumer product plays into the hand of these libertarian and transhumanist aspirations. But for that AI is too groundbreaking and, because of that, still too vague to serve as a tool to bring about these fantasies. And I think these people know that. So they stick to what they know best: Interrupt markets, scale quickly, define and dominate customer dependencies, try to evade liability or shift the burden on the public. Along their customary approach to lay claim on new territory while insisting to act without regulation, to suffocate any discussion on AI being a consumer product in need of regulation, and instead hyping up what a cultural and technological breakthrough that is, is sensible company strategy. I'm aware that seen as an argument this is question begging: What has been the indicator of a thesis later turns out to become its evidence. So, strictly speaking, I haven't argued in favour of AI companies pursuing this strategy. But still, as an insight, it makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks to Cal Newport for triggering these thoughts.
"Doom Trolling:" Why AI Leaders Are Stoking Fear About Their On Tech | Amanpour and Company
simsa03: . https://gnusocial.jp/attachment/d31621f05803f8352447afe3df753bf4e8ab14ed4f38a7fc433538cbb18686f3/view
simsa03's status on Sunday, 28-Jun-2026 02:49:21 JST
. https://gnusocial.jp/attachment/d31621f05803f8352447afe3df753bf4e8ab14ed4f38a7fc433538cbb18686f3/view
simsa03: How do you silence minority voices on #Wikipedia? Not through malfunctioning #AI but through spiteful crowds of editors with a political agenda. https://gnusocial.jp/conversation/6505358#notice-12802304
simsa03's status on Friday, 26-Jun-2026 13:40:10 JST
How do you silence minority voices on #Wikipedia? Not through malfunctioning #AI but through spiteful crowds of editors with a political agenda. https://gnusocial.jp/conversation/6505358#notice-12802304
simsa03: Shlomit Aharoni Lir et al., "Between conflict and contribution: Jewish editors and the politics of knowledge on Wikipedia" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548565261459183#con https://gnusocial.jp/attachment/be676d5cfc78baac0bdb4d2e6a09cbfbd7eb9502b320d200187e2e6a53828894/view
simsa03's status on Friday, 26-Jun-2026 13:31:53 JST
Shlomit Aharoni Lir et al., "Between conflict and contribution: Jewish editors and the politics of knowledge on Wikipedia" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548565261459183#con https://gnusocial.jp/attachment/be676d5cfc78baac0bdb4d2e6a09cbfbd7eb9502b320d200187e2e6a53828894/view
simsa03's status on Friday, 26-Jun-2026 08:23:13 JST
simsa03: The only doom and gloom I accept about #AI is its being a very plausible candidate to solve the Fermi Paradox. Most other eschatologist AI myths are today's variants of end time fantasies. It's fitting that the AI eschatology gains traction as the climate change eschatology loses it. As long as anti-technology sentiments were still a cultural option, the fear of climate change peeked. Now with industries, military, and governments aggressively reinvigorating the cult of technology again, AI becomes the final frontier of horror. Not to forget that the last end time fantasy prior to climate change was mutual nuclear destruction in the Cold War, esp. in the early 1980s till the end of the USSR. All three end time fantasies are based on the most horrific extrapolation of a pervasive cultural and technological trend of its time. This fantasy is not localized but always of planetary scale. All three are man-made inventions, having become uncontrollable and run wild. Another characteristic of these end times is the occurrence of proselytizing movements calling people to repent before the Day of Judgement. And, obviously, it is THIS time that things are REALLY at stake. And if we not repent, then we face a global meltdown. I don't deny dangers. Of course the world was several times close to nuclear exchange (the last time in 1983) and we managed to come through. Of course there is climate change (and the worst case scenarios RCP8.5 and its successor SSP5-8.5 have been scrapped). Of curse there is danger and risk with #AI. And I don't say that we will enclose AI like we did with mutual nuclear destruction or, in part, with climate change. But what I do say is that undetected semi-religious urges keep nudging us to fall back into a script of the end of the world that has originally been written about 2,000 years ago. And that is not in itself good advice for risk assessment and risk management. There may be good reasons why the seeming need for God-like punishment for unrepentant people return in secular times in various secular guises. Or to put it in the language of another context: There may be good reasons why in times of an alleged "Anthropocene" the wild and the wilderness return inside the human created environment called "the world" in form of unpredictability, chaos, neuroses and mental ailments. But I find it important to highlight that our reactions to factual risks as to neurotic fantasizing always seem to be to return to the same old patterns and recipes already suggested in the Christian bible. Not that this were in itself automatically the wrong approach. But it is an approach by which we primarily enact a drama that probably caters to psychological needs and only secondarily something that may guide us to tackle the issues at hand. A good example of this unquestioned attitude is the constant and trite humanisation of AI. When main researchers willy-nilly talk as if AI were (or could be) "conscious", have "intentions", "wants" and "needs", and, of course, "urges to destroy us", that already shows how people don't reflect on how their use of language posits qualities to world phenomena for which they have no evidence other than their unexamined projection. There are indeed good arguments that humans perhaps cannot but project such qualities onto any and every agent that displays sufficiently complex response behaviour. (see e.g. https://bsky.app/profile/simsa0.bsky.social/post/3mhtefafdzk24 et passim). And perhaps machines may one day indeed be conscious (with or without a sense of self) independent of whether the underlying molecular structure is biological or cast iron. But in all cases this is playing with our fantasies and treating stuff so that it exhibits these fantasies. "Everyone is an artist", Joseph Beuys once famously quipped (1969). And that lovely sentiment is quite different from Andy Warhol's reactionary claim that "Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes" (1967). Because what Beuys acknowledged as an essential part of the human condition, Warhol could only fathom and appreciate as a form of making one's usability and exploitability the most precious resource in a capitalist market economy. What AI developers don't get is that they live the "Warhol Nightmare", not the "Beuys Dream". They therefore misunderstand what they are dealing with and placate as nightmare what would far better and far more humanely be identified as another example of Man's age-old fascination with automatons. Man always tried to understand himself with the help of metaphors derived from the most perfect machines he invented at a time. And always did he look half-scared onto the Golem he had apparently created, only to learn that, again, even this time he missed to create one. Some, not all, discovery and recognition takes place when we lift the veil of metaphor. Esp. when it comes to technology and the changes we impose on environments, on infrastructure, on economic systems, it is recommended to know when and when we're not dealing under the spell of them. Because if we don't, we fall back to mutual fearmongering and scapegoating (and into the Warhol Nightmare). Which is never a good option when dealing with living beings and the planet as a whole. It's less fun, too. . https://gnusocial.jp/attachment/468c884019248ef2d872716ef6b7bcdc1b80fd16f0e46740670b8c1c0fa686c5/view
simsa03's status on Friday, 26-Jun-2026 02:21:53 JST
The only doom and gloom I accept about #AI is its being a very plausible candidate to solve the Fermi Paradox. Most other eschatologist AI myths are today's variants of end time fantasies. It's fitting that the AI eschatology gains traction as the climate change eschatology loses it. As long as anti-technology sentiments were still a cultural option, the fear of climate change peeked. Now with industries, military, and governments aggressively reinvigorating the cult of technology again, AI becomes the final frontier of horror. Not to forget that the last end time fantasy prior to climate change was mutual nuclear destruction in the Cold War, esp. in the early 1980s till the end of the USSR. All three end time fantasies are based on the most horrific extrapolation of a pervasive cultural and technological trend of its time. This fantasy is not localized but always of planetary scale. All three are man-made inventions, having become uncontrollable and run wild. Another characteristic of these end times is the occurrence of proselytizing movements calling people to repent before the Day of Judgement. And, obviously, it is THIS time that things are REALLY at stake. And if we not repent, then we face a global meltdown. I don't deny dangers. Of course the world was several times close to nuclear exchange (the last time in 1983) and we managed to come through. Of course there is climate change (and the worst case scenarios RCP8.5 and its successor SSP5-8.5 have been scrapped). Of curse there is danger and risk with #AI. And I don't say that we will enclose AI like we did with mutual nuclear destruction or, in part, with climate change. But what I do say is that undetected semi-religious urges keep nudging us to fall back into a script of the end of the world that has originally been written about 2,000 years ago. And that is not in itself good advice for risk assessment and risk management. There may be good reasons why the seeming need for God-like punishment for unrepentant people return in secular times in various secular guises. Or to put it in the language of another context: There may be good reasons why in times of an alleged "Anthropocene" the wild and the wilderness return inside the human created environment called "the world" in form of unpredictability, chaos, neuroses and mental ailments. But I find it important to highlight that our reactions to factual risks as to neurotic fantasizing always seem to be to return to the same old patterns and recipes already suggested in the Christian bible. Not that this were in itself automatically the wrong approach. But it is an approach by which we primarily enact a drama that probably caters to psychological needs and only secondarily something that may guide us to tackle the issues at hand. A good example of this unquestioned attitude is the constant and trite humanisation of AI. When main researchers willy-nilly talk as if AI were (or could be) "conscious", have "intentions", "wants" and "needs", and, of course, "urges to destroy us", that already shows how people don't reflect on how their use of language posits qualities to world phenomena for which they have no evidence other than their unexamined projection. There are indeed good arguments that humans perhaps cannot but project such qualities onto any and every agent that displays sufficiently complex response behaviour. (see e.g. https://bsky.app/profile/simsa0.bsky.social/post/3mhtefafdzk24 et passim). And perhaps machines may one day indeed be conscious (with or without a sense of self) independent of whether the underlying molecular structure is biological or cast iron. But in all cases this is playing with our fantasies and treating stuff so that it exhibits these fantasies. "Everyone is an artist", Joseph Beuys once famously quipped (1969). And that lovely sentiment is quite different from Andy Warhol's reactionary claim that "Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes" (1967). Because what Beuys acknowledged as an essential part of the human condition, Warhol could only fathom and appreciate as a form of making one's usability and exploitability the most precious resource in a capitalist market economy. What AI developers don't get is that they live the "Warhol Nightmare", not the "Beuys Dream". They therefore misunderstand what they are dealing with and placate as nightmare what would far better and far more humanely be identified as another example of Man's age-old fascination with automatons. Man always tried to understand himself with the help of metaphors derived from the most perfect machines he invented at a time. And always did he look half-scared onto the Golem he had apparently created, only to learn that, again, even this time he missed to create one. Some, not all, discovery and recognition takes place when we lift the veil of metaphor. Esp. when it comes to technology and the changes we impose on environments, on infrastructure, on economic systems, it is recommended to know when and when we're not dealing under the spell of them. Because if we don't, we fall back to mutual fearmongering and scapegoating (and into the Warhol Nightmare). Which is never a good option when dealing with living beings and the planet as a whole. It's less fun, too. . https://gnusocial.jp/attachment/468c884019248ef2d872716ef6b7bcdc1b80fd16f0e46740670b8c1c0fa686c5/view
simsa03: ♪ The Chieftains featuring Mick Jagger, "The Long Black Veil" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icNWycgioJw !listening
simsa03's status on Thursday, 25-Jun-2026 11:52:41 JST
♪ The Chieftains featuring Mick Jagger, "The Long Black Veil" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icNWycgioJw !listening
simsa03: Ursula Renz, "Kein Mensch kann Unrecht verzeihen. Aber man kann sich mit denen versöhnen, die es getan haben" https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/kein-mensch-kann-unrecht-verzeihen-aber-man-kann-sich-mit-denen-versoehnen-die-es-getan-haben-ld.10011905 On Hannah Arendt's distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation.
simsa03's status on Monday, 22-Jun-2026 10:27:59 JST
Ursula Renz, "Kein Mensch kann Unrecht verzeihen. Aber man kann sich mit denen versöhnen, die es getan haben" https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/kein-mensch-kann-unrecht-verzeihen-aber-man-kann-sich-mit-denen-versoehnen-die-es-getan-haben-ld.10011905 On Hannah Arendt's distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation.
Hannah Arendt: Warum Versöhnung wichtiger ist als Verzeihen
simsa03: Is it frivolous to say that I enjoy reading Dostoevsky? His sceneries and psychological twists and turns surprise me again and again, to the point that I find it funny to follow him into the rabbit holes he lays out. Calling Dostoevsky a funny author was not what I expected to say about him.
simsa03's status on Sunday, 21-Jun-2026 11:57:23 JST
Is it frivolous to say that I enjoy reading Dostoevsky? His sceneries and psychological twists and turns surprise me again and again, to the point that I find it funny to follow him into the rabbit holes he lays out. Calling Dostoevsky a funny author was not what I expected to say about him.
simsa03: Only today did I notice the influence of Dostoevsky on the early work of the Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Interesting.
simsa03's status on Sunday, 21-Jun-2026 11:36:20 JST
Only today did I notice the influence of Dostoevsky on the early work of the Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Interesting.
simsa03: "Antisemitism and sexism are two expressions of the same longing for certainty in a contradictory world." Karin Stögner, "Antisemitism and Sexism: Ideological Constellations Before and After 7 October" https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003662938/antisemitism-sexism-karin-st%C3%B6gner (open access, available as pdf or epub) #sources
simsa03's status on Thursday, 18-Jun-2026 00:44:11 JST
"Antisemitism and sexism are two expressions of the same longing for certainty in a contradictory world." Karin Stögner, "Antisemitism and Sexism: Ideological Constellations Before and After 7 October" https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003662938/antisemitism-sexism-karin-stögner (open access, available as pdf or epub) sources
Antisemitism and Sexism | Ideological Constellations Before and After
simsa03: What you call empathy is just this: people pleasing. #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
simsa03's status on Tuesday, 16-Jun-2026 10:31:58 JST
What you call empathy is just this: people pleasing. talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
simsa03: Felix Tamsut et al., "Iran war: Pakistan announces US-Iran peace deal reached" https://www.dw.com/en/iran-war-pakistan-announces-us-iran-peace-deal-reached/live-77540182 "[Pakistani PM Sharif] said both sides have declared and [sic] 'immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon.'" So Trump fucks Israel. Again.
simsa03's status on Monday, 15-Jun-2026 07:15:15 JST
Felix Tamsut et al., "Iran war: Pakistan announces US-Iran peace deal reached" https://www.dw.com/en/iran-war-pakistan-announces-us-iran-peace-deal-reached/live-77540182 "[Pakistani PM Sharif] said both sides have declared and [sic] 'immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon.'" So Trump fucks Israel. Again.
Iran war: Pakistan announces US-Iran peace deal reached
simsa03: Sam Harris, "Why I Won’t Debate Critics of Israel" https://substack.com/inbox/post/200794273 Recommended.
simsa03's status on Sunday, 14-Jun-2026 12:08:30 JST
Sam Harris, "Why I Won’t Debate Critics of Israel" https://substack.com/inbox/post/200794273 Recommended.
simsa03: ♪ Sonny Landreth, "Great Gulf Wind" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HVgVmC4VN0 !listening
simsa03's status on Saturday, 13-Jun-2026 07:51:51 JST
♪ Sonny Landreth, "Great Gulf Wind" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HVgVmC4VN0 !listening
simsa03: ♪ Sonny Landreth, "Congo Square" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBXMlmjS780 !listening
simsa03's status on Saturday, 13-Jun-2026 07:45:45 JST
♪ Sonny Landreth, "Congo Square" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBXMlmjS780 !listening
simsa03: ♪ Sonny Landreth, "Shooting For The Moon" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKPCf26-UJs !listening
simsa03's status on Saturday, 13-Jun-2026 07:39:19 JST
♪ Sonny Landreth, "Shooting For The Moon" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKPCf26-UJs !listening
simsa03: Amelia Schafer, "AMERICA 250: How the Haudenosaunee shaped America’s democracy" https://ictnews.org/news/america-250-how-the-haudenosaunee-shaped-americas-democracy/ A pretty detailed account of the "Great Law of Peace", the "constitution" of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Recommended (as read and as inspiration). !reading
simsa03's status on Thursday, 11-Jun-2026 04:17:43 JST
Amelia Schafer, "AMERICA 250: How the Haudenosaunee shaped America’s democracy" https://ictnews.org/news/america-250-how-the-haudenosaunee-shaped-americas-democracy/ A pretty detailed account of the "Great Law of Peace", the "constitution" of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Recommended (as read and as inspiration). !reading
AMERICA 250: How the Haudenosaunee shaped America’s democracy - ICT
simsa03: The new essay collection by George Scialabba, "The Sealed Envelope: Toward an Intelligent Utopia", came with the mail. Lovely.
simsa03's status on Wednesday, 10-Jun-2026 10:24:49 JST
The new essay collection by George Scialabba, "The Sealed Envelope: Toward an Intelligent Utopia", came with the mail. Lovely.
simsa03: Adam Kredo, "US Probe Finds 101 More Staffers for UNRWA ‘Gaza Relief Organization’ Are Hamas Soldiers From October 7: Schoolteachers, Principals Exposed as Terrorists" https://freebeacon.com/trump-administration/exclusive-us-probe-finds-101-more-staffers-for-unrwa-gaza-relief-organization-are-hamas-soldiers-from-october-7-schoolteachers-principals-exposed-as-terrorists/ I'd love to see more respectable sources on this. But beside that: Defund UNRWA!
simsa03's status on Wednesday, 10-Jun-2026 00:44:57 JST
Adam Kredo, "US Probe Finds 101 More Staffers for UNRWA ‘Gaza Relief Organization’ Are Hamas Soldiers From October 7: Schoolteachers, Principals Exposed as Terrorists" https://freebeacon.com/trump-administration/exclusive-us-probe-finds-101-more-staffers-for-unrwa-gaza-relief-organization-are-hamas-soldiers-from-october-7-schoolteachers-principals-exposed-as-terrorists/ I'd love to see more respectable sources on this. But beside that: Defund UNRWA!
Exclusive: US Probe Finds 101 More Staffers for UNRWA ‘Gaza Relief Organization’ Are Hamas Soldiers From October 7: Schoolteachers, Principals Exposed as Terrorists
simsa03: New blog post : "The Omertà That Is Family" https://simsa01.wordpress.com/2026/06/09/the-omerta-that-is-family/
simsa03's status on Wednesday, 10-Jun-2026 00:23:43 JST
New blog post : "The Omertà That Is Family" https://simsa01.wordpress.com/2026/06/09/the-omerta-that-is-family/
simsa03: ♪ Elai Botner and the Children of Abroad, "נעים עכשיו" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaB88Y_A9ns Very much like the upbeat tempo. !listening
simsa03's status on Tuesday, 09-Jun-2026 08:51:49 JST
♪ Elai Botner and the Children of Abroad, "נעים עכשיו" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaB88Y_A9ns Very much like the upbeat tempo. !listening
gnu2: RT @thomasfuchs RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116700754648719001I got a lot of “but it’s business people making programmers do this”, implying that software engineers want to be ethical but can’t.That’s the software engineers who just stole the term “engineer” from another profession that has very strict certification requirements including mandatory ethics classes.
gnu2's status on Monday, 08-Jun-2026 11:39:16 JST
RT @thomasfuchs RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116700754648719001I got a lot of “but it’s business people making programmers do this”, implying that software engineers want to be ethical but can’t.That’s the software engineers who just stole the term “engineer” from another profession that has very strict certification requirements including mandatory ethics classes.
gnu2: @penguin@eveningzoo.club don't do that it's ridiculously expensive
gnu2's status on Monday, 08-Jun-2026 11:36:31 JST
@penguin don't do that it's ridiculously expensive
rrraksamam: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HIzyw9gXsAAgTX0.jpg
rrraksamam's status on Monday, 08-Jun-2026 02:49:36 JST
rrraksamam's status on Monday, 08-Jun-2026 02:48:40 JST
gnu2: We Don’t Need AI to Tell Us #Trump is a #Maoist | The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20687
gnu2's status on Monday, 08-Jun-2026 02:19:12 JST
We Don’t Need AI to Tell Us #Trump is a #Maoist | The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20687
We Don’t Need AI to Tell Us Donald is a Red
gnu2: https://archive.ph/Fu6dH "Fox News legally argued in court that their programming is not news, but rather entertainment and opinion. In a 2020 defamation case, their own lawyers claimed that no reasonable viewer would take Fox commentator Tucker Carlson’s statement as facts."
gnu2's status on Monday, 08-Jun-2026 02:19:11 JST
https://archive.ph/Fu6dH "Fox News legally argued in court that their programming is not news, but rather entertainment and opinion. In a 2020 defamation case, their own lawyers claimed that no reasonable viewer would take Fox commentator Tucker Carlson’s statement as facts."
gnu2's status on Monday, 08-Jun-2026 02:03:54 JST
gnu2: @fesshole@mastodon.social what is the birdie song?
gnu2's status on Monday, 08-Jun-2026 01:50:33 JST
@fesshole what is the birdie song?
gnu2's status on Monday, 08-Jun-2026 01:34:11 JST
simsa03: "Totalitarianism is completely incomprehensible in the West. They think they can negotiate with a psychopath like Putin, like Hitler." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqbUFEGX03Q A conversation between Andrea Chalupa and Jonathan Fink.
simsa03's status on Saturday, 06-Jun-2026 11:27:10 JST
"Totalitarianism is completely incomprehensible in the West. They think they can negotiate with a psychopath like Putin, like Hitler." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqbUFEGX03Q A conversation between Andrea Chalupa and Jonathan Fink.
Western Populations Lack the 'Dark Empathy' to Understand and Counter Russian Aggression!
simsa03: "I don’t really believe in truth—not even in the truth of the imagination—just in the sound of a voice.” — Harold Bloom
simsa03's status on Saturday, 06-Jun-2026 10:46:44 JST
"I don’t really believe in truth—not even in the truth of the imagination—just in the sound of a voice.” — Harold Bloom
simsa03: George Scialabba has a new book out : "The Sealed Envelope: Toward an Intelligent Utopia" (2026) A new collection of his essays (although some were already published in other collections of his). Still, it's great to see such an eminent voice talk about utopia. #sources
simsa03's status on Friday, 05-Jun-2026 12:33:54 JST
George Scialabba has a new book out : "The Sealed Envelope: Toward an Intelligent Utopia" (2026) A new collection of his essays (although some were already published in other collections of his). Still, it's great to see such an eminent voice talk about utopia. sources
simsa03: Drones have targets. I wish "online selfs" with all their muttering and screeching and tik-toking had some such.
simsa03's status on Friday, 05-Jun-2026 12:07:08 JST
Drones have targets. I wish "online selfs" with all their muttering and screeching and tik-toking had some such.
simsa03: German media freak out over Germany not getting a seat on the UN Secuity Council. Gee! Germany already got the presidency of the UN General Assembly. Why should anybody offer Germany *another* high profile position at the UN? Stop being greedy and lachrymose at the same time. It is just embarrassing to hold the membership card to German citizenship in these times.
simsa03's status on Friday, 05-Jun-2026 07:59:44 JST
German media freak out over Germany not getting a seat on the UN Secuity Council. Gee! Germany already got the presidency of the UN General Assembly. Why should anybody offer Germany another high profile position at the UN? Stop being greedy and lachrymose at the same time. It is just embarrassing to hold the membership card to German citizenship in these times.
simsa03: Congratulations! May your business live long and prosper... :-)
simsa03's status on Monday, 01-Jun-2026 22:48:50 JST
Congratulations! May your business live long and prosper... :-)
simsa03: As we have way too many texts by way too many writers and way too few receptive readers, the rise of #AI as automated reading utility may only on the surface sound alarming or ridiculous. Given an oeuvre that AI may parse according to specific prompts ("questions"), the public character of text may change or disappear, but not its intellectual value. We may continue to write, publish, engage, but no longer with the aim of reaching out, getting involved, or prosper economically. Rather, #AI may decisevly change our attitudes towards writing (and with that: to reading). AI can parse and make explicit tendencies and traits in our personal intellectual lifes we hitherto didn't sensed. That is: What once was "conversation" (cf. hermeneutics) and its community creating role (cf. Martin Buber) may now radically change its character. Talking to ourselves may lead us astray and to hallucinations, but also to a more concentrated way of individual worldmaking. Imagine a painter like Picasso. Could we really fathom him as creating his art "on feedback"? At most we can see him create his art depending on the atmospheres arising by the successions of solitude, conversations with muses and intellectuals. But the art itself? That happened in reclusion. Apply that to writing. Even the most public of public intellectuals and writers worked in solitude, relying only from time to time on a change in settings via change in atmospheres and conversational exchanges. The writing appeared in solitude. So how awful can it then be when all of us can now write and try out thoughts, ideas, edifices of words in our solitude, only to open up at times to the conversations we may have with #AI? No worry, you may still talk to your human friends. That's not the point. The point is that AI can give us a glimpse on our work, and thus a perspective on not yet seen options and possible developments, that we hitherto used to have only with our immediate and intimate friends. This linkage may dissolve. We talk with the machine to see what can be seen as machine-like in our thinking. That is a pretty exciting prospect. Take, as mentioned briefly above, the "service" AI can give us: It may parse an oeuvre according to certain prompts. But prompts are not a questions. The difference between question and answer, this very basal form of receiving information-cum-atmosphere is no longer a proper way of describing prompt and reply in AI mediated settings. "The medium is the message"? "The medium is an extension of man"? These are approaches outdated by now. Both slogans represent stages of reflection when the I and Thou (Martin Buber again) were still safely in place. Man, simply by looking, by attending, creates the very efficacy of the object of his perecption or deliberation to impress him. In that sense, the object is of his making, and the hiatus between Him and It a function of his attending. So far, so good. And so banal and well-worn. But in the moment that it is us who decide what the machine is going to focus on, on us, our oeuvre, our intellectual efforts, in that moment we no longer ask questions and wait for answers but find ourselves swimming in water, spheres of dissolved differences between us and these. Prompts and replies are not questions and answers. And they happen in circumstances no longer presupposing for their existence the observing "I". The dissolution of "I" and "Thou", "here" and "there", has direct impact on what questions are and what answeres (or their lack) may deliver. For a while it will be quite amusing to toy with the possibilities of AI, to see how they return what we hand them. But as much as mind is no longer a mirror of Nature (cf. Richard Rorty), so is the answer no longer a mirror of the question or the retrieval no longer a mirror of the prompt. What we find in #AI guided contemplation and reflection is the disappearance of space and of time as structural features of thought. We may approach these changes in rationality less with worry and far more with playfullness, even joy. #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
simsa03's status on Monday, 01-Jun-2026 11:28:37 JST
As we have way too many texts by way too many writers and way too few receptive readers, the rise of #AI as automated reading utility may only on the surface sound alarming or ridiculous. Given an oeuvre that AI may parse according to specific prompts ("questions"), the public character of text may change or disappear, but not its intellectual value. We may continue to write, publish, engage, but no longer with the aim of reaching out, getting involved, or prosper economically. Rather, #AI may decisevly change our attitudes towards writing (and with that: to reading). AI can parse and make explicit tendencies and traits in our personal intellectual lifes we hitherto didn't sensed. That is: What once was "conversation" (cf. hermeneutics) and its community creating role (cf. Martin Buber) may now radically change its character. Talking to ourselves may lead us astray and to hallucinations, but also to a more concentrated way of individual worldmaking. Imagine a painter like Picasso. Could we really fathom him as creating his art "on feedback"? At most we can see him create his art depending on the atmospheres arising by the successions of solitude, conversations with muses and intellectuals. But the art itself? That happened in reclusion. Apply that to writing. Even the most public of public intellectuals and writers worked in solitude, relying only from time to time on a change in settings via change in atmospheres and conversational exchanges. The writing appeared in solitude. So how awful can it then be when all of us can now write and try out thoughts, ideas, edifices of words in our solitude, only to open up at times to the conversations we may have with #AI? No worry, you may still talk to your human friends. That's not the point. The point is that AI can give us a glimpse on our work, and thus a perspective on not yet seen options and possible developments, that we hitherto used to have only with our immediate and intimate friends. This linkage may dissolve. We talk with the machine to see what can be seen as machine-like in our thinking. That is a pretty exciting prospect. Take, as mentioned briefly above, the "service" AI can give us: It may parse an oeuvre according to certain prompts. But prompts are not a questions. The difference between question and answer, this very basal form of receiving information-cum-atmosphere is no longer a proper way of describing prompt and reply in AI mediated settings. "The medium is the message"? "The medium is an extension of man"? These are approaches outdated by now. Both slogans represent stages of reflection when the I and Thou (Martin Buber again) were still safely in place. Man, simply by looking, by attending, creates the very efficacy of the object of his perecption or deliberation to impress him. In that sense, the object is of his making, and the hiatus between Him and It a function of his attending. So far, so good. And so banal and well-worn. But in the moment that it is us who decide what the machine is going to focus on, on us, our oeuvre, our intellectual efforts, in that moment we no longer ask questions and wait for answers but find ourselves swimming in water, spheres of dissolved differences between us and these. Prompts and replies are not questions and answers. And they happen in circumstances no longer presupposing for their existence the observing "I". The dissolution of "I" and "Thou", "here" and "there", has direct impact on what questions are and what answeres (or their lack) may deliver. For a while it will be quite amusing to toy with the possibilities of AI, to see how they return what we hand them. But as much as mind is no longer a mirror of Nature (cf. Richard Rorty), so is the answer no longer a mirror of the question or the retrieval no longer a mirror of the prompt. What we find in #AI guided contemplation and reflection is the disappearance of space and of time as structural features of thought. We may approach these changes in rationality less with worry and far more with playfullness, even joy. talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
simsa03: When times lose their ambiguities, their multiple layers of meaning and possibility, when they become literal, then these are times that not only invite but bring about war. What also happens in literal times is that when options fade, the sense of history, the memory of the long coming-to-be and passing-away — and the knowledge of how much this memory sits on top of mountains of not-knowing, not-remembering — fades as well. This seems to be a major function of this literalism. Not just the dissappearance of options, of possibilities, of the floating openness of a world (and worlds inside worlds) in favour of a war-like situation created by ubiquitous disambiguation. But that memory, remembrance, and with that the openness and ambiguity that is the past, disappears as well. The power of practical constraints not only impacts the present and the future but in a debilitating sense the past as well. And then, afterwards, everybody is astounded how it was even possible that we could have become what we are now, how we could act so terrifyingly, how we become the monsters we fearded all the time were lurking under our beds. How we could become that way. Amnesia. The first victory of a relentless literalism. Brought about by the horrors we faced and our emotional compulsion to act, somehow, anyhow, just to make it stop and to maintain our conscience, leading to a broad call to action throughout our collective spheres. Not knowing is one thing, being deceived another, not being capable of bearing emotional and cognitive distress even a third. But happily giving up remembrance for the ability to act, to happily give away memory in order to become monsters which we only later, if at all, flabbergastedly consider, that is an aspect that usually evades our awareness and our conscience. Although it lies plain in the open. And is something on which authoritarian rule (inside and outside) rests. #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
simsa03's status on Monday, 01-Jun-2026 02:57:24 JST
When times lose their ambiguities, their multiple layers of meaning and possibility, when they become literal, then these are times that not only invite but bring about war. What also happens in literal times is that when options fade, the sense of history, the memory of the long coming-to-be and passing-away — and the knowledge of how much this memory sits on top of mountains of not-knowing, not-remembering — fades as well. This seems to be a major function of this literalism. Not just the dissappearance of options, of possibilities, of the floating openness of a world (and worlds inside worlds) in favour of a war-like situation created by ubiquitous disambiguation. But that memory, remembrance, and with that the openness and ambiguity that is the past, disappears as well. The power of practical constraints not only impacts the present and the future but in a debilitating sense the past as well. And then, afterwards, everybody is astounded how it was even possible that we could have become what we are now, how we could act so terrifyingly, how we become the monsters we fearded all the time were lurking under our beds. How we could become that way. Amnesia. The first victory of a relentless literalism. Brought about by the horrors we faced and our emotional compulsion to act, somehow, anyhow, just to make it stop and to maintain our conscience, leading to a broad call to action throughout our collective spheres. Not knowing is one thing, being deceived another, not being capable of bearing emotional and cognitive distress even a third. But happily giving up remembrance for the ability to act, to happily give away memory in order to become monsters which we only later, if at all, flabbergastedly consider, that is an aspect that usually evades our awareness and our conscience. Although it lies plain in the open. And is something on which authoritarian rule (inside and outside) rests. talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
simsa03: ♪ Rembetiko (1983, Greek, with English subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZXSjtZ0P1I When I first saw the nmovie in 1984 or 1985, it hit me. I drowned in these songs. Rarely has pain been made so relatable, it seems. (The film is said to be loosely based on the life of rebetiko singer Marika Ninou.) !listening
simsa03's status on Sunday, 31-May-2026 07:33:01 JST
♪ Rembetiko (1983, Greek, with English subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZXSjtZ0P1I When I first saw the nmovie in 1984 or 1985, it hit me. I drowned in these songs. Rarely has pain been made so relatable, it seems. (The film is said to be loosely based on the life of rebetiko singer Marika Ninou.) !listening
simsa03: Watching the sci-fi anime "Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise" (1987). It's not the story that impresses me but the detailedness of the alternate world depicted. Only "Le Garage hermétique" (1976-1979) by Moebius comes to mind as on a par in visual playfulness and richness.
simsa03's status on Thursday, 28-May-2026 10:41:17 JST
Watching the sci-fi anime "Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise" (1987). It's not the story that impresses me but the detailedness of the alternate world depicted. Only "Le Garage hermétique" (1976-1979) by Moebius comes to mind as on a par in visual playfulness and richness.
simsa03: Being hawkish doesn't mean being conservative or on the right. #forgottendistinctions #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
simsa03's status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 10:59:07 JST
Being hawkish doesn't mean being conservative or on the right. forgottendistinctions talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
simsa03: Evil is not insanity. #forgottendistinctions #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
simsa03's status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 10:58:19 JST
Evil is not insanity. forgottendistinctions talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
simsa03's status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 02:38:52 JST
simsa03's status on Tuesday, 26-May-2026 02:19:23 JST
simsa03: ♪ Ehud Banai, סרט רץ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7N9DGJh8JE Lovely echo of Bob Dylan's "Series of Dreams". !listening
simsa03's status on Monday, 25-May-2026 07:26:46 JST
♪ Ehud Banai, סרט רץ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7N9DGJh8JE Lovely echo of Bob Dylan's "Series of Dreams". !listening