become ungovernable

Germany was suffering a brutal heat wave when we were there this month, but it did finally rain when we were in Freiburg and I managed to do a little bug photography.

Here is my most recent photos feed, including a few lab ants in addition to wild insects.

https://www.alexanderwild.com/Photography/Recent/n-js6qN

#bloomscrolling #nature #photography

A Jennifer Hegseth and Natalie Harp stan account called "bossBabeHelpMeat"

#mightExist

I've always really loved the euphemism "correction" for a market crash. Like it's a math problem where someone forgot the decimal point or made a rounding error.

The whole bond fiasco has me really thinking the "correction" for US markets will come just after the November election. It looks like a scramble to keep the lid on.Also that's when gas prices will really start going nuts. It's been impressive how 'low' they have stayed thus far. (And if you want to say they aren't low? Oh no, buckle up)

Normally, I'd say (without much conviction) it is rude to suggest the government would manipulate markets to a political end.

@futurebird @Mabande @Li @richpuchalsky We shouldn't be mad at ourselves that manipulative stuff works on us. We should be mad at the people doing the manipulative stuff.

Being mad at yourself because you were fooled (which you to be honest didn't specify that you were, just "mad", sorry if I overinterpreted) is a major component of how cons work.

@fencepost @richpuchalsky

Unfortunately yes. Or maybe it's "fortunate" for example our server sauropods.win is too small to be on some whitelists, and was accidentally put on a few black lists and there are a few places that STILL have not changed this.

Though this does seem to sort itself out with time.

(please tell your friends to whitelist us, we are very respectable and only a little annoying... mostly about ants... OK that is literally just me I think)

@Mabande @Li @richpuchalsky

Facebook shows me a photo of a sweet black child who is missing an arm trying to stack blocks, he's so precious. Is he real?
"inspiring stories" it says...

Facebooks shows me a woman in tight clothes being hit on a plane "passenger gets what's coming!" it says. (She does look annoying...)

This is pure ID stuff.
And I'm mad that it kind of works on me.

Pete Hegseth.

Just saying his name for no particular reason. As one does.

A lot of people are arguing about if they are using the watermarks to track individual users. This seems very silly to me when they have all of the user logs and can simply look back to those to find out who a user might be. No need to put a secret key in the text.

Some are trying to make this sound like the tech that lets printouts be traced to particular printers. There are some parallels but I think the implications are very different.

Another reason Anthropic might want to watermark their text could be to see how wide their impact is on newspapers, websites, political speeches, etc.

They could detect if some prominent person were using their tech to, for example, create scripts for the local evening news, or for police reports.

It's good to know how your product is being used, and in some cases that information may give them tremendous leverage if the person using it wants it to remain a secret.

@futurebird

This kind of manipulation is not illegal, and some of the people running platforms have said it is their goal.

This is the thing that blows my mind.

We have conspiracy theorists out there doffing their tinfoil hats while explaining that a secret cabal is controlling the weather via [mumble mumble] methods. Then you show them this and they just... turn and look past it like it's not there. This is an actual conspiracy that actually exists. It's known. It's proven. It's not really hidden because no one stops them so they don't have to hide it. And the conspiracy nuts just... don't see it? Their eyes go out of focus and they start talking about the government supposedly putting stuff in the water to change or control us instead because [mumble mumble.]

What the-

"This kind of manipulation is not illegal, and some of the people running platforms have said it is their goal."

It just hit me that this is just a fact, but when people talk about things like shadow banning it's always treated like it's kind of conspiratorial and a little crazy.

And to be fair claiming no one is reading your original novel about elves due to a "shadow ban" is probably silly. But, the idea that there are broad topics being suppressed? It's not just possible it is likely.

@bodling @brhfl @futurebird aww look at the Wikipedia example photo of this sweet doggo carrying some seed travelers

I realize this might all sound very basic and obvious, but I think about it a lot, and I've run into people who haven't really connected all of these things into a familiar image.

I apologize if it's all too obvious.

7/7

In fact, if you are someone who cares about pollution you might even see SOME of the stories about the factory, just fewer of them, and those that are less alarming.

In a way it is harder to detect bias in a social media algorithm than in a newspaper. It's much harder to prove since everyone is seeing a different collection of stories.

That doesn't mean the situation isn't the same.

6/

This kind of manipulation is not illegal, and some of the people running platforms have said it is their goal.

You won't be able to notice this manipulation because it is only a little different from your usual feed. It's just that, for example, any tikToks about factories polluting the river never show up.

It need not take the form of anything obvious such as someone gushing that they think factories are amazing and good for the town.

5/

Everyone has a slightly different feed geared towards maximum engagement for users in your demographic.

But, engagement isn't the only way that one might wish to manipulate the content of social media: you could produce political or social pressure (just like Bingsbly Dollars who owns the newspapers.)

This could be as much about what you choose to show as what you choose NOT to show.

4/

The first job of most algorithms is to keep us looking at social media. This means showing posts we are more likely to engage with by liking or commenting. This means showing posts that cause us to click through and look at further posts. The longer a user spends on social media the more ad revenue they generate.

Most algorithms are centered around creating this kind of addictive engagement. (Including things such as offering scary stories late at night and news segments in the morning.)

3/