Notices by Shriram Krishnamurthi (shriramk@mastodon.social)

In The Economist:

Setting aside copyright/commercial/other aspects, a thought about writing blog posts that LLMs train on. When people write posts, they (a) feel good about helping others, and (b) hope to get some credit and visibility for doing so.

When mediated through LLMs, no longer the satisfaction that your consumer is a human (who might comment, thank, share, etc.); nor the cred that comes from people remembering the author, posting on HN, etc.

That is, it totally destroys the incentive structure.

@cwebber Yeah, I enjoyed the book! Too bad the Racket version didn't work fast enough for you, but glad you got that working.

The number and breadth of extremely mainstream businesses who aren't afraid to participate in Rhode Island PrideFest is wonderful, given the way companies have been targeted just for acknowledging basic human rights. Nice to live here.

What we all really want to know: does this idea have legs?

Gitto's famous painting of (I)NVIDIA, showing a large money bag while GenAI trains on its own output and heats up the world. #Italy25

Might as well be my office door.

(Actually, an exhibit at the Venice Architecture Biennale.)

#Italy25

1/ One of the lesser masterpieces in Padova is the Ovetari chapel at the Eremitani church. One of its notable weaknesses is that much of it was blown away by Allied bombs in WW2! What's left is still wonderful. But first: Andrea Mantegna! #Italy25 ↵

5/ As I said, the church itself was bombed, and has been painstakingly reconstructed. It's an awe-inspiringly large space, with the Ovetari to the front and right of the main church. ↵

4/ This is relevant because the key paintings in the Ovetari are by Padova's own Mantegna, then still a young, rising star. The Ovetari has cycles on the lives of St. James and St. Christopher, and Mantegna painted several of the panels, including the three best ones. ↵

3/ Then, in 2001, I happened to be in Milan's gem, the Brera. I rounded a corner, and saw it in the flesh (to so speak), and was blown away. It's difficult to explain that feeling of having your breath taken away, but I vividly remember and thrill to that moment to this day. ↵

2/ I first heard of Mantegna in some art history class for his late-Renaissance "Lamentations over the Dead Christ". It's a technically virtuoso piece, for sure, but didn't register very much beyond that. ↵

6/ After the bombs fell, citizens rushed to rescue what bits they could of the frescoes. Some panels had been moved elsewhere for unrelated the reasons. They had b&w photographs of the walls. So the result combines all of these: ↵

@tealeg @GossiTheDog Yep, saw and shared this on bsky…

@tealeg I'm pretty close to giving up on X and maybe also Mastodon. (-:

Take out food coloring and half the things sold will look inedible. Cheetos sales will go to zero. Will totally tank the economy.

My physiotherapist this morning got confused between QR codes and URLs (this particular one was a QR code pointing to a URL) and called it "QRL", and honestly this is brilliant and we should just all adopt it.

TIL that "golconda" is a word in the English dictionary ("a source of wealth, advantages, or happiness"). Text from
https://casetext.com/case/limone-v-us-3?et_rid=1039201653&s_campaign=rhodemap:newsletter

To: hr@opm.gov
From: Me

RE: What did you do last week?

1. I let freedom come my way
2. I started out of town
3. I saw Sheriff John Brown
4. I shot the sheriff
5. I went back and shot the deputy too, because he seemed woke

Sincerely,

@ahfrom A sequence of miserable little characters.