Notices by Mx Amber Alex (she/it) (amberage@eldritch.cafe)

@kirby

• is on a pleroma instance with no rules that blocks no instances, not even the worst nazi ones
• objects to pleroma being called nazi software

flawless logic indeed

@kirby ah yes pleroma the nazi software, absolutely stellar standard to measure the abuse potential of features against. 10/10 no notes

@renchap fuck that shit. Why we putting Twitter's worst harassment tool into the supposedly better social media site?

Mastodon needs to stop chasing Twitter and start having an identity of its own, and replicating the hellsite 1:1 and hoping it will just magically be better clearly ain't working.

@annika going down the rabbithole of articles about LLM psychosis (they all so helpfully link to one another!) and 😬 yikes

@annika though almost equally distressing is the constant low levle anthropomorphisation of ChatGPT etc. throughout these articles. Saying that "AI" (air quotes mine) should "detect and recognise" (or words to that effect) signs of mental health crises is absurd – ChatGPT can't recognise anything.

Everything ChatGPT supposedly does, other than spew words, like saying it doesn't do dirty words or instructions for bombs? Those are almost certainly filters OpenAI programmed that exist separately from the model itself (or query–response pairs it's been trained on), it has no idea (because it can't) what any of that is about.

Even the most critical journalism that most bluntly and extensively addresses LLM downsides still credits these models with more sentience than they have or ever can have.

I hate the seasonal nature of modern fashion. Dare I say, fast fashion, because tbh even pricey, big, mainstream brands are fast fashion now tbh.

I see a cute piece of clothing. I bookmark it in my browser. A year later, I click on the bookmark.

Sold out. Out of production. Out of stock. Not available anymore.

What is this shit?

You know what makes a good brand in my opinion?

Realiability.

Producing the same items, to the same specifications, in the same quality, unerringly, unchangingly, year after year after year after year. With as little price increase as possible.

I want to buy a pair of socks, like them, buy ten more half a year later when I'm satisfied they don't shrink or tear easily, and then keep buying replacement pairs every couple of years, for the rest of my life.

I don't want to go looking for new socks every year, compare dozens of products all over each year, hope that same brand + same model + same price still means they're the same socks and they haven't quietly switched manufacturers and the cotton is half as good now and they will get patchy within six months.

I want reliability. I want stability. I want something I can plan with.

Two years ago, I bought some neat cotton-linen houndstooth trousers. There was a matching suit jacket available, but I wasn't into whole suits at the time, more slacks and odd jackets, so I didn't get the jacket. A year and some later, that had changed, and I figured having the matching jacket would be nice.

No longer available.

They made that jacket and trouser combo for one summer. Something like six months.

That is... idek what to call it. "Sick" or "perverse" doesn't do it justice; most sick and perverted people I know are much nicer and more reasonable and generally way better human beings than fashion executives.

It's wrong, it's fucked up, it's unsustainable, inconsiderate, greedy, and just fucking SHITE.

I don't want innovations. I don't want trends. I don't want limitless possibilities. I want things that I know I can still use, replace, or get a second one of ten years down the road.

#AmberVsMenswear

And as for trends, that one gets my blood boiling especially.

You don't have to remove the entire article of clothing from your product offerings. Not everyone follows trends. Not everyone knows trends.

That tie you sold in 7 cm width two years ago? That you're now selling in 8.5 cm? That you probably sold at 5 cm ten years ago (lol, as if they would be so consistent)?

Just make three versions of it: 5, 7, 8.5.

Or, if that's not profitable enough, at least make the link to the old version redirect to the new one, put a little "you have been redirected to the current version" notice up, instead of making me search the entire website for it.

But you don't do that. Because I lied. You don't offer that tie any more. You have a new, slightly different one in 8.5 cm. The pattern is slightly different. The material is slightly different; a few % less of this and more of that.

Why?

Has the red tie with white and blue stripes, a neckwear staple so classic, I see dozens of them in the thrift shops, changed so drastically over the last 12 months that you needed to make the stripes 1 mm narrower and space them 0.5 mm further apart?

You fucking clowns. I hate you with all of my soul. May it be your executive offices that burn down instead of your sweatshops.

#AmberVsMenswear

And don't get me started on cars!! The sheer amount of engineering manpower that's wasted on developing new cars from scratch every decade...

Why does the 2010 model have different tyres than the 2005 model? Why does the 2020 model need tyres that are 2" larger?

Why re-design the steering wheel and turn signal levers, when steering and turning haven't changed at all since the invention of the car? Turning right and putting the lever up still means you drive and signal right.

You know what I want in a car manufacturer? Surprise, it's reliability and stability.

I want a company that offers three cars: small, medium, and large.

I want those three models to use the same respective tyres year after year, generation after generation. I want to be able to take the radio out of the small one and plug it into the same slot in the medium. I want the doors to be interchangeable between them, the bulbs for the headlights. I want to learn repairing the medium and be able to apply the same knowledge with minimal changes to the small.

I want cars that aren't changed and re-designed unless necessary to comply with new regulation. I want to drive a Fictional Company Small Car for fifteen years until it breaks down, buy a new one, and not have to re-learn how to use the radio or the A/C, and not need a degree in computer science to read the speedometer.

What I'm saying is I want a fucking Trabi. But modern.

I want "innovation", "fashion", "trend", and "modern" to become four letter words so nasty that any marketing department using them is immediately pelted with tomatoes.

@GreenSkyOverMe @weit_im_westen "Der Artikel ist nicht verfügbar" :c

Kennt irgendwer aktuell eine Bezugsquelle für VirX-Nasenspray? Meins ist leer, ich brauche dringend welches, und es ist inzwischen auch bei Amazon (wo es das zuletzt als einzige noch gab) nicht mehr lieferbar 😬

#CovidIsNotOver #VirX #CovidConscious #CovidCautious

@annika add "Adorable Weird Sluts" underneath

@jessew their motto used to be "Sie kennen unsere Pferde. Erleben Sie unsere Stärken." (you know our horses, experience our powers/strong suits)

@davidgerard jesus christ, what a trainwreck that piece is. From basic misinformation (no, GPT didn't ace the bar exam; later research found it failed disastrously), to conflating nice-sounding text with intelligence, to using quotes from deeply interest-conflicted people (like Google AI "researchers") as implicit evidence that "AI" is advancing, to glossing over well-known facts (Keith Starmer can't be replaced by AI? Tech billionnaires want to remove governments!) and facts that anyone writing about "AI" should know (such as the pseudoreligious, cult-like structures among these billionnaires, like their absurd but steadfast belief in Roko's Basilisk and other cyber-esoteric garbage).

And then, at the end, it turns out the author works for what is essentially an "AI" greenwashing scheme.

What a trainwreck. Subpar even by the Guardian's standards.

WHALES ARE UNGULATES?!

Montana has no fucking business being so large. wdym that place is larger than Germany?? You don't even have two million people!

@lanodan @codl nah, if I turn the heat up, the solder just burns at the tip of the iron. It's caked in burnt residue by now; I used to regularly try to get it up (unsuccessfully) and eventually gave up.

The rare times I solder, I just use leaded solder. It just works.

@codl I'm "why does the solder just stick to the iron and refuse to stick to the contacts"

@annika ok follow up, I have never seen a three-ring binder. I only know ones with two rings.

@annika I have no idea what a three hole punch is :o