Notices by GeePawHill (geepawhill@mastodon.social)

Anyway, setting aside the ethical, environmental, exploitative, and efficacy issues, setting aside the ethical, environmental, exploitative, and efficacy issues is the exact fucking problem.

@Gargron Udabomb!

@Gargron It's hard to resist the notion that, at some point, "class" will always out.

Wife & daughter off to a brewery w/a designated driver.

She says, "C'mon, it's just 6 to 9, how much trouble could we really get in to?"

Dear reader, one helluva lot.

Soon I will be free to revel in my own Sunday night bacchanalia: eating deviled eggs, drinking beer, & playing Oxygen Not Included and/or Stalker 2.

I'll have to pace myself, cuz when they get home, there's every chance that one or both of them want to party the night away.

Always worrisome when *I* have to be the stable one.

@bmacDonald94 Baldwin is one of the writers who most greatly changed *my* world.

Above all else, he taught me that it was possible to be angry and kind at the same time.

The question isn't "What's in the program?"

The question isn't even "What's in the person?"

The question is "How can we create a world in which every human's lived experience is already one containing safety and trust?"

And I don't believe the answer to that question lies in making more cheap simulacra.

Anti-LLM folks, and I'm one, ask over and over again, why do so many people, like his secretary, need the LLMs as safe and trusted confidants?

It's not cuz the program is a safe or trustable confidant.

It's not cuz they're stupid.

It's cuz their lived experience in the world has robbed them of any belief in safety and trust, and the program, no matter how silly, apes that experience.

...

Oh, he noticed it. He coined the "ELIZA effect", he told the story over and over again, usually with a chuckle. But he only looked for answers in the program.

He never seriously wondered if the answers were in her lived experience in the world. And above all, he never asked if he might try to change that experience.

...

Weizenbaum's ELIZA raised so many interesting questions, but the one he never really asked, never even thought to ask, is still there now, and is all around us today.

What, in his secretary's life -- not in that silly little program, but in her life -- made her feel the profound need for a safe and trusted confidant?

...

Wow. Silver's Trump approval just finally broke -19% today, at -19.1 as of 4pm Eastern.

Before you throw your massively worse or modestly better number at me, please bear in mind:

The Silver model moves more slowly than others, cuz it's a running average, and it's neither as positive nor as negative as some of its contributing polls are, cuz it's a composite model. I value both features.

-19.1% in that model is the worst approval rating of any president since numbers became available.

Wow, so many news stories going on right now.

* The Epstein Fury War
* The Epstein UFO Dump
* The Epstein Illegal Memorial Pool contract
* The Epstein Tariff Illegality
* The Epstein Gerrymandering War
* The Epstein "Narco-Terrorist" Attacks
* The Epstein Medicare/Medicaid Fraud

Hard to keep them all straight. You'd think they'd come up with different keywords other than "Epstein". (It's like looking up the programming language "go" on the internet).

*Everything* is Epstein these days.

Had an archetypal fedi experience today, one of the reasons I love it so much:

A follow of mine, a friend, known to me as a computer geek and (I think) a hobbyist furniture-maker, boosted a video.

The video was about -- wait for it -- the Toyota hybrid drive train.

Now. My friends. I am not a car guy in any way, shape or form.

But I *am* a poly-dork, and it was from my friend, so I said, "Fuck it, let's have a look!"

*Excellent* and *fascinating* video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnUFH5GX_fI

There's no algorithm on earth that could have predicted that I would really enjoy this video about *hybrid* *drivetrains* in *cars*.

And here, the algorithm is just you and who you follow. Me, and who *I* follow. And I am *very* good at following cool and interesting people.

This kinda thing, one of my follows talking about something that isn't our special shared interest, is what makes the fedi world go around.

This is not a rare experience for me. It happens *frequently*.

So. Advice time, two parts:

1) Follow cool and interesting people, and follow the cool and interesting people *they* like, too.

2) Talk about and share *anything* you think is cool and interesting, regardless of whether or not it's your main thing.

Eliminate 100% of all Medicare/Medicaid fraud with this one simple trick!

Adopt universal health care.

(You'll also be starting to tackle homelessness and welfare fraud, too!)

Sometimes, like today, I get 180 boosts and a dozen or two positive responses, and that one fucking guy.

I have, over the last decade, increasingly realized how useless it is to engage with such people, so I have simply stopped. I ignore them.

Others sometimes jump in to explain or argue with such a person.

I am glad I've learned not to bother. I wish I could also learn not to be bothered by it, tho.

I do wish y'all wouldn't use gen-AI graphics for your memes.

It's not a "setback" to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it's a complete destruction of it.

It's fucking Jim Crow, and every one of these batshit crazy GOP fuckwits knows it and wants it.

Please be sure you get it: they *want* this. They are *choosing* it. They are doing so *consciously*. This is their *desire*.

Next stop: the chattel slavery the oligarchs have always dreamt of bringing back.

The one straightforward and extremely well-documented fact about kid's safety on the internet:

The *overwhelming* majority of child sexual predators, in the high 90s percent-wise, are right in your community. They're not on the Internet. They're at your church, your school, your kid's clubs, your sports activities, and -- sadly -- your family gatherings.

Whatever else age verification is, it's not got anything to do with protecting children.

Okay, listen, you radical leftists, I *live* in Virginia, and I just want to share with you my views about our history, heritage, and the Lost Cause.

Fuck the motherfucking Confederacy.

Its history, its heritage, and its cause is chattel slavery.

That's all it ever was. That's all it ever is.

Fuck the motherfucking confederacy, burn everything down that you don't put in a museum dedicated to documenting this horrific nightmare.