Notices by JP (jplebreton@mastodon.social), page 2

really good far-ranging conversation on neoliberalism as a kind of counterrevolution: https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/against-the-people

incredible that the "Waymo Democrats" have voluntarily named themselves that: a ludicrously expensive machine that constantly overpromises and underdelivers, in reality has an army of people working behind the scenes attempting with mixed success to correct its constant fuckups, and every time it encounters a real world situation where its capabilities are totally inadequate it just sits there uselessly, causing gridlock and pissing everyone off, claims it's getting better but isn't, and won't.

bumper sticker: "I bought a status symbol without fully understanding the Status"

centrism is a political position whose most fundamental values are the psychological comfort, the public image of reasonableness, of the already-comfortable. and right now one thing you'll notice is that every centrist has at least one fascist in their follows, their contacts, their circle of friends. it is not hard to see through these people.

LB: I don't agree with 100% of the points made in that piece but it's revealing how many peoples' first reaction is to be defensive or claim that none of those things are actually problems. https://v.cx/2025/04/mastodon-exit-interview

when a country creates a gestapo and multiple administrations let it continue existing (because they insist there is some actual legitimate, just use for it) it is inevitably going to start saying this kind of very overt nazi shit

@clarity yeah i'm genuinely concerned that it will put stink on the basic concept of "not constantly sacrificing humans into the maw of capital", which of course is the opposite of their goal.

@clarity exactly yeah, the problem is the lack of context and systems awareness and willingness to engage on that basis.

@clarity right now probably nearly every elected feels like telling people they can't have infinite treats forever is electoral suicide, and an important early step is reminding them what order "think of a better world and how to get there" and "think about what promises will get you elected" are supposed to go in.

Fated by the god Apollo to utter only true prophecy but never to be believed, Cassandra correctly predicted that in the 00s minivans would largely be supplanted in the automotive market by crossover SUVs.

@clarity yeah. and the cults that are centered around Being the Most Intelligent are this massive source of validation telling people their neurodiversity makes them a kind of elite

never forget how this cult, exceptional only in its extremity, embodied the poisonously misguided conventional thinking of our current age, by elevating to godhood a man that many of us already knew was a fraud and a fool, and many more know now. never forget how much people equate wealth with intelligence and worthiness and how deeply that harms our society.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211026235448/https://medium.com/@zoecurzi/my-experience-with-leverage-research-17e96a8e540b

the primary function of state violence is to protect capital

Don't let them have "generative art". People have been writing code to make interesting images for about as long as computers have existed.
To combat the current awfulness, why not reply to this with a project of yours, or one you admire, that uses code to embody a specific creative intention.

My interpretation of Miyazaki's "this is an insult to life itself" comment was that he feels that to depict a particular human experience you need to engage with it via your own humanity, and empathy is a nigh-unavoidable response during that process, and if you engage in some other way (eg treating it as a mathematical phenomenon) you will likely be doing so without empathy or thus humanity. So while his comment predates the current LLM etc craze, it addresses its essence.

everyone super impressed by "X, but with a different art style" is hereby sentenced to a year of art history classes to understand why that is an inane, jingling-keys-ass thing to want

RIP. unbelievable amount of engagement on this, most of it useless or actively bad. who the fuck is out there on here with such a huge following they can shit up someone's mentions this thoroughly? did Eugen boost it? god, this platform needs boost controls like yesterday.

going viral on mastodon sucks so bad. i am going to delete that post.

something platforms like this (that started by wholesale copying a decent % of twitter's patterns) really need is "show me a list of who boosted this post, sorted by how many followers they have". when a random person's post suddenly gets a lot of attention it is imperative you help them know where all the attention is coming from. i wasn't being harassed or anything, but people in other cases absolutely will be.

the image is from this post from 2020: https://www.theverge.com/21298762/face-depixelizer-ai-machine-learning-tool-pulse-stylegan-obama-bias
the code used to generate it: https://github.com/tg-bomze/Face-Depixelizer