I *really* like this quote from Ali Alkhatib in his short essay defining AI which is worth reading in its entirety: https://ali-alkhatib.com/blog/defining-ai

So the term for AI-generated animated films is "slop-motion", right?

“Traders on Oxford Street are saying they are enjoying a boost in sales and footfall after the first week of pedestrianization…. Businesses say they are happy with the changes.”

Streets for people are also good for business. Spread the word.

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:axuvbckddrg7lwlpjs44o7rg/post/3mz4meuw4x22q

Supprimer CNews de l'audiovisuel français.
ça fait longtemps que vous n'avez pas signé une pétition sur le site de l'AN ?
330 000 signatures, et une progression fulgurante.
ça sert à rien ? probable, comme d'hab, ça sert à se faire plaisir en tous cas

https://petitions.assemblee-nationale.fr/initiatives/i-5820?locale=fr

The Jepsen analysis of ParticleDB is so funny

DB companies usually commission Jepsen so they can go ‘hey, this expert analysis found some bugs which could happen under very rare conditions with multiple servers and multiple clients, and we fixed them’ – it’s overall good publicity because it makes the company look diligent about data integrity, notwithstanding the discovery of bugs

This one is ‘the expert analysis found that almost no functionality worked as advertised even with a single server and client, basic SQL semantics were horrendously broken, some new versions created even more bizarre bugs, and the analysis also reveals that nobody at the company was able to explain the bugs or how they were fixed, and even the test suite they claimed they’d already successfully run was actually failing to begin with’

(Also: Damn, it must have taken the patience of a saint to work with these people)

Supprimer CNews de l'audiovisuel français : une pétition refait surface après l'attentat de Trappes.

Publiée en juin dernier, une pétition demandant la suppression de CNews de l'audiovisuel français vient d'atteindre 100 000 signatures sur le site de l'Assemblée nationale.

https://www.laprovence.com/article/societe/3045540390300614/supprimer-cnews-de-laudiovisuel-francais-une-petition-refait-surface-apres-lattentat-de-trappes

https://petitions.assemblee-nationale.fr/initiatives/i-5820?locale=fr

All Protocol Observed

Welcome to Issue 258 of The Continent

For months, the United States has been deporting people to countries that are not their own. The Continent spoke to some of them, in Cameroon.

https://bit.ly/258_TC

"The scientific rationale for a 1.5-degree limit on global heating remains entirely valid. The fact that we are now exceeding this limit must not, therefore, lead to a search for new, supposedly more realistic targets. Rather, the aim must be to monitor closely who is contributing to exceeding this limit, and to what extent. And this must then be linked to liability for the damage caused."

My full-page interview in the progressive weekly "der Freitag" (in German):
https://www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/wolfgang-lucht-zur-klima-forschung-es-zieht-einem-die-socken-aus

AI writing detectors are junk. OpenAI shut down its own classifier after it performed worse than a coin toss.

People are using them to end careers.

Hachette pulled Mia Ballard's novel after one viral video and amateur forensics. Her career was gone. There was no verdict.

Dumas had 73 collaborators. He is canon. Reddit would burn him down today.

I want no part of it.

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/p/the-ai-writing-witch-hunt-is-idiotic

Interesting paper: People were asked to do a programming task that involved the use of a new library. Half had AI support, half didn't. People who used AI were not significantly faster, but they learned significantly less, on average, as measured by an extensive post-task quiz.

The neat bit is that the authors analyzed the strategies that people employed when using AI. There were 3 strategies that people chose for themselves that did support learning.

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.20245

Delta Chat has apparently made great strides forward in usability since I tried it with a friend about two years ago. I hope more people hear about it! https://blog.feld.me/posts/2025/03/deltachat-is-actually-good-though Thanks to links.kalvn.net @kalvn for the tip.

"Programming is rather a test of understanding. In this respect it is like writing; often when we think we understand something and attempt to write about it, our very act of composition reveals our lack of understanding even to ourselves." [..]
"One programs, just as one writes, not because one understands, but in order to come to understand. "
-- Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason

highlighted in https://nex-3.com/blog/computer-power-and-human-reason/ by @nex3

via @samir 🙏

On this day in 1962 Vasily Arkhipov saved the world by refusing to launch a nuclear torpedo and thus starting a nuclear war, during the Cuban missile crisis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov

#OnThisDay #OTD

I gave an interview on the directions of nationalism studies to ‘Modern Subjects’ podcast by Asier Hernández Aguirresarobe, Universidad del País Vasco, Basque Country:

https://zencastr.com/z/3H7Ob_FN

Surveiller n'est pas protéger: Les lycéens mobilisés dénoncent des bâtiments délabrés et des salles invivables. Les données leur donnent raison : dans les lycées populaires d'Île-de-France, la sécurisation est devenue le premier poste de travaux aux dépens de la protection des élèves, y compris face aux vagues de chaleur. https://laviedesidees.fr/Surveiller-n-est-pas-proteger?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

I've long been interested in the question of what the social norms are for contributing on large micro-blogging platforms (do people have divergent views on those norms ? is a consistent set of norms is even possible?)

I remember a joke here a while back that caricatured US, German and Balkan users of Mastodon with respect to fundamental intuitions (something like: "This is my thread, bug off", "showing others they are wrong is a public service", "we argue with everyone" -respectively).

This new philosophy paper in the journal Synthese articulates essentially that "German" position: we have communitarian obligations toward others' knowledge states

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-026-05830-4

#philosophy

#philosophy

#Eleicoes2026 : #Lula victory speech:

"We had to overcome foreign interference through #digitalplatforms, which we will have to regulate.

We cannot have monstrously huge corporations earning millions & billions, paying no taxes to this country & trying to steer this country's election results."

Powerful text.

"The oligarchs are announcing the battle lines loudly, proudly: that it is us against them. They suggest, without flinching, that for Cyclopes to thrive, humanity may have to die. The young generation that is rising up to fight it understands this. I know that, earlier in this essay, I suggested we should “regulate with extreme prejudice”. But what I really want to say about those AI companies is this: terminate with extreme prejudice."

https://www.equator.org/articles/arundhati-roy-artificial-intelligence

One thing I learned from making Twitter bots and web toys with "personality" for years is that some people *desperately* wanted those things to be intelligent. I would say exactly how my algorithm worked to show that it was doing nothing more than pulling random items from a set. But some would assume there was magic happening on some level anyway. There was a hunger for that to be the case, and I think LLM companies trade in sating that hunger.

Very excited that my new book, "When the Well is Dry" is now being released! It tackles the long history of violence over water resources and how to move from conflict to cooperation.
And apparently this now has to be said: not a single piece of it was written, edited, produced, or modified by AI.