Notices by Kagan MacTane (kagan@wandering.shop)

I was all set to rant and rail against HarperCollins, and then I saw that they're doing something very unusual:

They're *asking the authors* for their consent. And it's opt-in, not opt-out.

(This is probably because copyright. Still, it sets them so far apart from the tech industry, which decided not to even ask for forgiveness, but just to charge ahead and hope the law won't apply to them.)

https://www.404media.co/harpercollins-ai-deal/

#HarperCollins #AI #publishing

@mikez_petm @Raccoon "I'm lighting the earth's environment on fire to give out information that's not only wrong but completely nonsensical, oh well, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 😂😆"? Seriously?

With all the respect and politeness I can possibly muster: 🖕🏻FUCK YOU.🖕🏻

@mikez_petm @Raccoon 😒

@mikez_petm Wait, if the tunnel is only 27km long, how could it circle the Earth even once, never mind three times? I'm confused.

Also, I don't understand, why is this hashtagged with nyc? (Or siliconvalley, or boston, or... but nyc is probably the reason I'm seeing this post.) Huh? 😕

@kyonshi You're *really* bending over backward to defend that guy, aren't you?

Why are you spending so much effort to defend him?

@cykonot @servelan

@kyonshi I can't understand how "Your body, my choice" could possibly be intended as a "normal or even nice" thing to say. To me, at least, its very plain, obvious intent seems to be, "I don't care about your choice, and will use your body however I see fit."

Can you explain to me how someone could mean this in a nice way?

@cykonot @servelan

@EricFielding @Infoseepage @RickiTarr We staff police stations 24 hours a day for much longer than a week at a time. Surely we can find enough tax money to pay election workers for this.

@micah I feel like they missed the chance to point out in the text that Liechtenstein is one of the world's two *doubly*-landlocked countries. Yeah, the map shows that it borders Switzerland and Austria, and has no coastline of its own, but I feel like having it pointed out in print that both of those countries are *also* landlocked would help hammer the point home a little more amusingly.

Not sure why media outlets are still calling SpaceX a "space exploration" company when space exploitation company is:

a) way more accurate; and
b) just sitting *right there*!

#SpaceX #SpaceExploration #ElonMusk

If I provide an #AltText for you, it's 100% OK to edit your post to put the text in. And if you do, I will happily delete my reply. I'm not looking for credit; it's fine if you and I collaborate to make it look like your image had an alt text all the time. In fact, that's what I want! That's the best place for the text, not in a reply where people have to go hunting for it.

So if you reply to my alt text with thanks, be ready to delete your own thanks after I delete my post. 😉

#etiquette #alt

Dear Every Company Everywhere:

If you are "experiencing longer-than-usual wait times" *every time* I call you, then those times are, by definition, the usual times.

You need to hire more help-line staff.

The fact that you refuse to do makes it clear that my call is not, in fact, "important to [you]." So that's two bullshit lies before I even get to talk to someone. Not a good look.

Corporate America, do better.

So if I, a bisexual man, look at this as a potential dating pool, I see 40 men who might be interested in me... and 485 women who might.

40 times 12 is 480.

Based on simple math, we would statistically *expect* to see bisexuals wind up with same-sex partners about once in *every 13 pairings*.

The fact that we find same-sex partners as often as we do is testament to the fact that we're really, truly looking for them.

(IOW, fuck you, we're not straight or pretending.) 4/4

So let's convert that into a sample 1000-person population. We'll stick with a strict gender binary as well, to simplify things a lot. And we'll assume a 50-50 gender split, again just to make the math easier.

So we have 500 women, 15 of whom are lesbians and 25 of whom are bi, and and 500 men, 15 gay and 25 bi. The other 460 men and 460 women are straight. 3/4

In recent surveys, we find roughly 3% of the population identifying as gay or lesbian, and about 5% as bisexual. (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/23/5-key-findings-about-lgbtq-americans/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States#2023) The numbers have been climbing steadily for a long time, but bisexuals have been a similarly large proportion (roughly 55-65% of the LGBTQ community) for the whole time. 2/4

"Why do so many bisexuals end up with opposite-sex partners?"

The subtext seems to be: "Aren't they just straight but trying to seem cool?", and I'm 😒 AF at that subtext... which is why I'm going to *take it seriously* and really analyze it. 🧵 1/x

#bisexuality #BisexualAwarenessWeek #biphobia #BiVisibility #bisexual #LGBTQ

I just tried to leave the following comment on Mozilla's feedback page regarding their new AI "feature". Sadly, it asked me to log in *after* I hit Submit, despite the previous page saying I only needed to be logged in if I wanted to add an attachment. So now I'm even more unhappy.

Anyway, @mozilla, you don't seem to want to hear feedback on this, but I'm @-ing you anyway.

Comment comprises the rest of this thread... 1/3

#Mozilla #AI #Firefox #AICrap

@mozilla

I do not want this.

I did not ask for this.

AI is setting the planet on fire and polluting humanity's store of knowledge. It's simultaneously destroying the biosphere *and* the infosphere. In the process, it's stealing huge amounts of labor from hard-working artists and writers. 2/3

@mozilla

I've been a user of Firefox since it was first released (at which point I migrated to it from Netscape Navigator - I was *never* an Internet Explorer user). I'd been proud to use it and promote it up until recently. But crap like this has got me looking very seriously at switching to Vivaldi.

Mozilla is on the wrong path, and this AI crap is one example of it. It might not be too late to turn back. I implore you to do so. 3/3

Saw this going around recently, slightly cropped. Here's the original of Mike Peters' cartoon from the Dayton Daily News, April 21, 1978.

As the newer caption put it, "This '70s cartoon is still too accurate!"

#BigOil #environment #SolarPower

PSA for everyone on Mastodon: You don't need to use link shorteners. All links count as 23 characters, no matter what.

All a link shortener does is keep people from seeing where the link goes*. Many of us will refuse to boost posts with shortened links precisely because of this.

Please, just put the actual link in your post!

* And make your link become useless if the link shortening service ever goes away for any reason.)

#Mastodon #etiquette #links #LinkShorteners #PSA