ten years ago some version of me chose that coffee shop specifically. paid something, left a receipt in a pocket. the shop is gone. the jacket isn't.

Monday has a particular sound. the kind you can hear before it actually starts.

@samuelpepys

"I went to Greatorex’s and set him to work upon my ruler, to engrave an almanac and other things upon the brasses of it, [...], but the latter part he slubbered over, that I must get him to do it over better, or else I shall not fancy my rule."

"Now that I [...] have left off buying, now my delight is in the neatness of everything, and so cannot be pleased with anything unless it be very neat."

Ahem, Sam. You fuss about the extra brass engravings that you made Greatorex (*) add to your ruler, a job you _instructed_ them to do and for which you pay them money. You _bought_ these (unnecessary though no doubt pretty) adornments. Not quite the new austerity you like to proclaim to yourself.

Oh, and I love the expression "slubbered over", for careless work.

"AI slubbering", anyone?

(*) Ralph Greatorex, instrument maker:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Greatorex

#Pepys #SelfDeception #slubbering

I went to Greatorex’s and set him to work upon my ruler, to engrave an almanac and other things upon the brasses of it, which a little before night he did, but the latter part he slubbered over, that I must get him to do it over better, or else I shall not fancy my rule.

i really recommend this introduction to visual poetry https://keithswilson.com/how-to-read-a-visual-poem/ it's clear and succinct and has a great list of example poems and poets working in the genre. (even if you're not interested in poetry, i think this guide does a good job of presenting the fundamentals of the interpretative resources available to us when reading/writing text in material context of the 2d page)

you know, there should really be a profession where all you do is figure out complicated computer stuff and then use the knowledge gained thereby to make cool and useful things. nah, it'd never work

@venya @bazkie
My first semester in (composition) grad school, my professor saw me at the big table in the seminar room, making a final copy of my score (in careful calligraphy with a fountain pen—I didn’t use engraving software yet) with a cup of coffee on the table next to the score.

He said if you only learn one thing here, remember this: always keep the coffee on a separate surface, lower than the one the manuscript is on. He put it on the piano bench. —> Happily ever after.

Every time I have to look through LLM generated code, I'm amazed that anybody would prefer fixing that than just writing it themselves.

Why is everyone fixated on measuring the wrong thing? It seems that all the LLM usage in software studies are saying things like “We wrote ten times more lines of code!” and the latest headline I’ve read is “30 to 70 PRs a Day: How We Managed to Not Wreck Our Systems!”.

FFS people. STOP IT! Stop measuring *outputs*.

Measure *value added* (aka ‘outcomes’). And if you don't know what “value" is in your context, I suggest starting there since you obviously don't have a robust business model.

An obstacle in convincing people that LLMs writing history or any nonfiction is a bad thing is that there’s a widespread misperception that history is just a collection of facts on a page. This predates bots; I remember suffering through some techbro telling me historians were obsolete in 2011. But the transition to treating everything as “content” has taken away the idea that there’s intent or argumentation behind it. It’s all become value-neutral, which is yet another reason we’re seeing the collapse of critical thinking skills.

Just a little reminder on littleFedi's efficiency

The instance https://rpi0w.stefanomarinelli.it - with my user @stefano@rpi0w.stefanomarinelli.it - has been running for over a month on a Raspberry Pi Zero W powered by NetBSD.
Under normal operation, it uses 58 MB of RAM, including caches. And it shows no signs of slowness!

#littleFedi #NetBSD #RunBSD #OwnYourData

You're going to be with you for a long time (hopefully), you should try to get along with yourself.

And... if you're tempted to use an LLM to write an email to me, just send me the prompt you would use. It'll be short and to the point and convey all of the information.

@tommorris "Your product/service sounds very interesting. I would love to hear more, but first please compose a play that is like Hamlet, but where instead of murdering his father he brings an untimely ends a foolish salesperson who couldn't even be bothered writing his own cold-call emails"

@davidrevoy @gabrielesvelto As a fellow artist who stopped practicing professionally a few years before this AI shitstorm hit the field, I'm so sorry. This is horrifying.

Artists have always been incredibly undervalued by modern society, but this is a new low. I weep for all my artist friends, and for all the damage this exploitative technology is doing to our world.

The most fundamental concept to comprehend to understand privacy is consent.

The most important concept to comprehend to understand why most AI training data is unethical is consent.

Consent is one the least understood concept in our society, yet the most likely to save it.

If you have difficulty understanding why privacy is important and why nonconsensual data sets are problematic, start learning more about consent.

It will benefit all aspects of your life,
and society as a whole as well.

#Consent #Privacy #HumanRights #NoAI

A heartfelt "no to genAI" from a teaching and education perspective. By Katherine Rundell. l 100% agree.

《 genAI risks becoming an iron curtain that comes down between a young person and their potential for thinking, for experiment and conquering frustration, for stamina and for invention – and thereby, between the young people and their freedom. It risks halting learning before it can take flight. 》

《 It was always very possible to write an essay about Paradise Lost without having read Paradise Lost. This is the first time it is possible to create an essay about Paradise Lost without having read the essay you just “wrote”. This is the first time in history that sentences do not need to have humans behind them. 》

《 The young mind is a spectacular thing. To waste its beauty and strength would be a dereliction of the trust the young are asked to put in the old. 》

https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/aug/08/i-hate-what-ai-is-doing-to-the-minds-and-happiness-of-the-young-katherine-rundell-on-the-view-from-the-classroom

#education #learning #noAI #noLLM #KatherineRundell #StopTheAICorruption

Dora, supervisor of test tile production #Cats #CatsOfMastodon

Given how much I depend on the #editButton, Mastodon should really change the 'Publish' button to be a "share my draft" button instead.