Notices by Kagan MacTane (he/him) (kagan@wandering.shop)

I've been writing using em dashes since the 1990s. The reason AI uses em dashes is because it was trained on my writing, and that of countless other humans like me.

#AI #AICrap #EmDashes #typography #writing #FuckAI

Reposted with alt text

#TaxBillionaires #WealthInequality #UniversalBasicIncome #UBI #IncomeInequality

@tess

Student: But if I take all the time to read, review, and understand the code the LLM gives me, it won't save me any time at all versus just writing it myself!

Master: *nods sagely* Indeed. It will not.

And in that moment, the student was enlightened.

Do you need a measles booster? Could very well be!

Ganked to provide alt text.

#VaccinesSaveLives #GetVaccinated #measles #vaccine #GetVaxxed

@zodiepupper @dalias @Cosmix @zkat @bl00dy If Shinigami Eyes is flagging @are0h as a transphobe, that makes me distrust the plugin, not Ro. He got targeted by false accusations of transphobia by bigots trying to stir up trouble, but that was a really long time ago.

If they flagged him at all, it means they never vetted their data very well. The fact they're still doing it‽ Holy shit, that means they just throw any old thing in there and DGAF if it's accurate. Not cool. 😒

@stroughtonsmith *reads first five words*

My... what? Does not compute.

I just ran through as many big tech CEOs as I could in my mind, and there isn't a single one of them that I'd piss on to put out if he were on fire.

(I might piss on any or all of them if they *weren't* on fire, just to piss on them... but that's not quite the same.)

@mekkaokereke Holy crap, nice!

I stated off thinking, "Wait, you're doing this with no spotter? 🤨" But damn, you really didn't need one! 🫡

@liztai Thank you very much for this interesting info! I hope you don't mind if I ask: what do the "la" and "wei" at the ends of sentences mean?

@mcnado How does one report things to a patient advocate at the average hospital or ER? That's not something I've ever had to do, or been taught how to do. Do they have a standard uniform or other distinguishing feature, or do I have to ask the ER staff, "I'd like to speak to the patient advocate" or something?

Quick note about alt texts: There's no point in starting off with "Image of...", because screen readers will announce that this is an image anyway.

But there *can* be value in saying if it's a photo, a drawing, a cartoon, etc. That helps the person visualize it better, and may make a real difference to the impact. "Photo of a cat wearing sunglasses" is much cuter than a mere "cartoon of" the same thing! 😺

#AltText #accessibility #a11y

Well, I have done it. I am on #Bluesky, as https://wandererblue.bsky.social. Find me if you like.

I will *definitely* still be here as well; if nothing else, the mere 300-character post limit will undoubtedly put a damper on my posting enthusiasm. But there are people there I'd lost contact with, and that's nice.

When I was growing up, I learned about how juries in the South used to acquit white people for killing Black people. (White juries, of course.) But I was taught that this was a thing that happened in "the racist South", and that it had been pretty much eradicated.

So now NYC feels like "the racist South", back in the '60s or earlier. 🤢😠

Jordan Neely should be alive. Failing that, Daniel Penny should be in jail.

#JordanNeely #JusticeForJordanNeely #DanielPenny #racism #NYC #NewYorkCity

@skinnylatte Your alt text! 🤣💀

Folks are very rightly upset about Facebook, Google, and Amazon partnering with company that listened in on people's conversations to figure out what ads to show them.

But I'm not hearing enough about the company that actually did the spying:

Cox Media Group, aka CMG.

Say their name. Say it with venom. Hold them accountable.

#CoxMediaGroup #spying #malware #advertising #surveillance #SurveillanceAdvertising #Cox #CoxMedia #Facebook #Google #Amazon

@graue In completely unrelated news, @Gargron can't figure out why Bluesky is picking up so many users lately while Mastodon's numbers are hardly climbing at all...

Completely unrelated. Really.

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