Notices by myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win), page 28

… and the stupid wind took my hat. I didn’t even have it on I was holding it worried about the wind — pulled it right out of my hand. How did people live wearing hats all the time!?

Maybe the MTA people have some kind of grabber??

Everyone relax! I got the hat back. The MTA PD does have grabbers. (they said mostly they use them to grab air pods) It’s worse than those carnival games. We all took turns. The guy on the right managed to get it. The day is saved! hurrah!

(this is one of the most busy tracks in the country going down there is just *not* going to happen. I’m glad I didn’t get the rather expensive hat I was considering— but now this cheap hat is even better since I got it back)

I have never been more disappointed by a spelling error:

https://dp.la/item/9383481d7c3b1a327cbdf34ba6255d14

Can anyone help me tell these two images apart? I'm having a lot of trouble.

I’m crying on the bus (again) because some middle school kids decided that for their “design challenge” they’d envision an emergency food delivery drone that could fly high enough and fast enough that no one could shoot it down. And no one asked why someone would want to shoot down a food delivery drone— or why you couldn’t just drive a truck.

@clacke @tersenurse

Oh. Well, can't help ya'll with that one. Sorry.

@tersenurse

Why are they concerned about "survival" ?

I could understand if you are directly in Trump's orbit, if you were a fake elector, or at Jan. 6. The idea that these things were criminal would be scary.

But, that's not the majority of his supporters.

I can understand why trans people, and those with immigrants in their family, and even anyone who could get pregnant might talk about "survival" under Trump.

But, what threat do ordinary Trump supporters face?

@tersenurse

I suppose it's "the border" --I have such a hard time processing those lies. I guess they must think that scary immigrants will get them?

Or maybe it's that idea they float about "Christians being persecuted" -- which is beyond wild in the US. This is a de facto 'Christian Nation' not only is it the majority religion, but most institutions and companies cater to the needs of Christians above all others.

But there really are people who feel... attacked.

@TCatInReality @GatekeepKen

I think this is a comforting fiction we tell ourselves. No, these kinds of things really do numbers on facebook... and not all of the comments are bots. Some of them are people's moms and uncles!

There are all kinds of people in the world who see things in all kinds of different ways.

(US pol/ Trump tw)

I've largely dismissed the strain of AI alarmism based on the notion the a computer will be so smart that the danger it poses to humanity is outsmarting us.

There are real dangers in AI, most of them relate to people using these technologies in improper ways due to having a poor understanding of what they really are... and most important the exploitation & degradation of the human body of knowledge creativity represented by publicly available digital information. 1/

But some people still talk about the risk of AI being too smart, tricking us-- or simply not delivering what we expect, or using any power it is given in ways that result in manipulation more sophisticated than what we could ever anticipate.

Do all of the people who have these fears buy-in to that silly bootstrapping theory of AI advancement? (This is the idea that once an GI AI becomes "smart" enough to redesign itself, it will spiral off to become... well a god basically.)

2/

This idea is an excellent and very fun sci-fi plot. (And sci-fi should never be ignored)

But is there any evidence that such a thing could even happen? I suppose the "evolved" algorithms used to program some motors to help robots walk show that there is some possibly. But those algorithm generators were not as simple as they were described in the press. There was a lot more scaffolding.

It wasn't just "we wrote a program to try random motor movement and then it evolved a way to move" 3/

A self modifying intelligence would need metrics to tell if it was improving or not.

This would require huge sets of data...and a way to compare them. We can do that, but it's not efficient at all.

In the 80s I thought a computer doing face recognition was impossible: a photo is just too much data to process.

We've solved this problem in the least exciting way. A kind of brute force. Throw more servers at it. Yes some of the algorithms are nice... but it's not exactly magic. 4/

The human brain has a stupendous number of cells. It's the most energy intensive organ in your body using 20% of the calories you consume despite being a much smaller portion of your body mass. This is why so few organisms have complex brains. Intelligence is an excellent strategy but it is also expensive. Even in nature.

LLMS are less efficient than your brain.

Thinking, organizing information is real work that requires energy.

(we really are getting to basics here) 5/

The fantasy of a machine that makes itself smarter to infinity and beyond, is a kind of perpetual motion chimera IMO.

We have a lot of work to do to understand the human mind, and the minds of other thinking creatures. We can only *then* apply those lessons to design new minds.

We don't get to just magically skip The Work.

Why not start with ants? They are smarter than they have any right to be.

Tell me how the mind of the smallest ant works: I will believe in your thinking machines. 6/6

Today on #CPBBD they discuss how, if you don't have ant mound in your prairie restoration, you're doing it wrong.

Hey. I could have told you that.

Anything without ants is "doing it wrong" IMO

(But, seriously, I didn't know that ants that lived in grasslands even made mounds. They survive fires inside of them! Ants are the best. )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP0xuMtuLFI

"9 Steps for the no make-up look"

(steps include 8 kinds of make-up)

Beauty magazines are information warfare.

Does anyone make (or have printouts)for the card game set but with more colors shapes shades and numbers?

I thought such decks existed but can’t find them. #set #games #boardgames

@jawarajabbi

“What’s the point of voting if they all still get away with everything?”

A well founded, unfortunately highly relevant but ultimately destructive question.

“What’s the point if they will just change the rules at the last minute? If even winning the most votes doesn’t really mean you win? If the people you have to vote for aren’t perfect, if even they have done some harm?”

I think there are a fair number of people alienated from voting in this way.