Notices by Saethelred the Unsteady (sethrudy@c18.masto.host)

What people should be angry about: robber barons exist

What people are angry about: not being robber barons

Improbably Optimistic Hot Take: I suppose one way to finally teach people how government works is to make huge portions of it suddenly stop working.

I’m the son of Boomer Jews, which means I grew up with a very WWII, Holocaust-centric Judaism in which “never forget” was a central mantra. So I never forgot. And here we are, and a lot of that generation now is explaining how our fears are overblown and administrations come and go. They won so hard they can’t understand losing.

@notroot ack! Get him off me! Get him off me!!

People fleeing for platforms with more users…why are you doing that? You don’t need two hundred million or whatever users. Humans are supposed to know like a hundred people and not talk to eighty of them. Good humans try not to talk to ninety.

“Only I can save you from the violence I’m deliberately inciting so that I can say only I can save you from it.”

Spreading rumors about big celebrity guests coming is how you wind up at Kenneth’s last party. #dnc

I’m with a group of about 25 scholars discussing AI, and while many of the humanists and social scientists are like “how can we integrate this revolutionary technology that will change all our lives,” one of the clearest voices saying “I don’t want to use it in the classroom and I’m really not sure it’s revolutionary” is from a prof in CS.

Walz represents a version of American masculinity that we all forgot was an available option

The director of Project 2025 has stepped down, indicating that they they’re aware it’s political poison and think you’ll think this means the end of it and will stop paying attention despite the fact that one jackass taking the fall means absolutely nothing because it’s just symbolic bullshit and fascism is still very much obviously the plan.

When they kick Vance off the ticket they’re going to say it’s so he can spend more time with his furniture

Due to low enrollment, we are asking full-time faculty to assist the administration with stripping the copper wiring out of all offices in humanities departments

Thinking about AI again.

Yesterday, the AI-powered bird-ID thing my mom gave me detected what it identified as a scarlet ibis.

Now I have a couple options. I can say, hey, this AI has seen a lot more birds than I have, so if it says one of the two national birds of Trinidad and Tobago stopped to eat in my backyard, so be it. Or I can look at the photo and say, well that there’s a cardinal.

You have to already know stuff to know the AI is wrong. But no one is going to treat it that way.

Everybody thinks about poor Prometheus stuck to the mountain but no one spares a thought for the eagle who is also trapped in this relationship and is probably thinking “ugh, liver? Again?!”

My thoughts and prayers go out to #voyager1, which after journeying for half a century to reach interstellar space is still expected to answer fucking work emails

If we don’t rapidly integrate AI into all academic curricula, students will not be able to compete in the marketplace for the very few jobs and potable water left as a result of rapidly integrating AI into all academic curricula

Embarrassed that it took me until just now to understand that a lot of tech people think of reading literature as a problem to be solved.

I don’t like to think of myself as “losing a follower” so much as “gaining a silence.”

Daughter: *doesn’t eat dinner*
Me: *grumbles*
Daughter: can I have dessert?
Me: if you eat some dinner
Daughter: I want cake
Me: cake’s for closers

I think future Republican Speakers owe McCarthy a huge thanks, because as a result of his service none will have “first to be removed in history” in every bio written about them