Notices by Jenniferplusplus (jenniferplusplus@tech.lgbt)

New theory: "vacations" are a capitalist psyop to get us to use our scarce leisure time burning money and energy instead of resting.

If there's one lesson I could get all the nice liberals to take from the last few months, it's that being even a little bit supportive of marginalized people will cause the worst people in the world to self select out of your spaces. They'll do it loudly and try to make it maximally uncomfortable for the nice liberals, but then they'll be gone and your spaces will be so much nicer.

Really, if a billionaire [...], then it is long past time to regulate them.

@deweyritten Sam Altman is asking for a brand new agency to be created and staffed on his recommendation in order to regulate that AIs won't "escape".

That's not a thing. It's sci-fi nonsense. It's like environmental regulations to prevent creating godzilla.What he's actually trying to do is invent a set of rules that only he can win, and establish that he can't be liable for the real harm he does. AI has only ever been a liability laundering machine, and he wants to enshrine that function in law.

He's also really desperate not to be regulated by the FTC, because their charter is to prevent and remedy actual harm to actual people.

If a billionaire is asking to be regulated, then it is long past time to do so. But under no circumstance should they ever be regulated in the way they want, or by the people they choose.

People keep talking about bluesky and nostr as Twitter replacements. Maybe I'm the weird one, but I just don't see the appeal of jumping ship from the SS Jack Dorsey onto the Jack Dorsey Casino Cruise. 🤷🏻♀️

I keep seeing people propose that we should use AI to write code, and it keeps being a bad idea for a lot of reasons. So, I wrote about some of them.

https://jenniferplusplus.com/losing-the-imitation-game/

Basically:

? AI doesn't reliably give useful results, but even if it did
? AI rampantly perpetuates existing harms, but even if it didn't
? AI proponents are not being honest or acting in good faith, but even if they were
? People don't understand the limits of LLMs or how they work, but even if they did
? AI cannot maintain a complex system because it's fundamentally a task of understanding the system, but even if it could

Humans still need opportunity to learn how to make sense of those systems, and we do that by making them. Giving all the work that's most conducive to learning to a computer is selling out our futures. Even if there was some present benefit, which I'm not convinced there is.

https://jenniferplusplus.com/losing-the-imitation-game/

Cis folk, are y'all ok? Youtube just tried to show me an ad for gendered laundry detergent. Twice.

We have layoffs for exactly the same reason we have homelessness. Both are expensive, harmful, and unnecessary. Both are sustained anyway because capitalism requires that work is compulsory. Both exist to be used as a threat to compel work and deference from workers.

So, I don't know. Keep writing papers and articles about the real effects of layoffs, I guess. But please understand that you'll never convince boards and CEOs to stop doing them, because the harm of layoffs is the desired outcome. So make your audience the people who've been taken in by their lies, and the people who should be protecting us from them.

To be extra clear, homelessness is what makes layoffs effective as a threat and punishment. And in the USA, withholding health care also plays a large part. These are all escalating levels of violence to the same end of making work compulsory so that they can dictate what work you do, when, where, and to whose benefit.

That power to compel and dictate work is what capital is. Money is only a loose proxy for capital, and they will sacrifice enormous amounts of money to retain and expand their power.

I was just fired. If you know someone hiring staff level software engineers, preferably in a #sre, #devops, or #PlatformEngineering space, I'd love to talk.

I'm looking for US remote positions, fwiw. And I can refer some really excellent engineers at all experience levels.

#FediHire

@gvwilson
I've given this some thought, recently. Particularly in the context of MBA brain being a real thing that is actually produced by MBA programs. It seems like it must be possible to do the reverse and instill a sense of communal responsibility. But, like MBAs, it probably has to be a multi-year immersive experience, not just a better undergrad ethics course. I don't have more of an answer than that, though.