How tf did I not think of this?? 🤯

I've been a fan of Greek mythology since childhood.

Mind you, Narcissus was attractive and the pool was beautiful and clear.

#ReflectingPool

"Latin letters do not hold hands. Arabic letters do.

To understand why every machine since Gutenberg has wrestled this script and mostly lost, you need one structural fact: Arabic is cursive always."

This piece is an exhilarating, eye-opening, outrageous, and very funny tale of the difference between latin letters and Arabic letters, and why printing presses and screen renderers have such a hard time with it.

https://lr0.org/blog/p/arabic/

This google scholar page is literally unbelievable. 5.4 M citations, H-index of 1867. Looks to be entirely/mostly driven by self-citation to machine generated content. Impressive hack!

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=fm3iBmgAAAAJ

#Metrics #AcademicChatter

AI costs how much? GitHub Copilot users react to new usage-based pricing system

Some report burning through their whole monthly "AI credit" allotment in a single day.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/ai-costs-how-much-github-copilot-users-react-to-new-usage-based-pricing-system/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

@wiert @janeishly @inthehands I used to be a professional translator with two university degrees in the field. I quit my 15-year translation career a few years ago because idiots think "AI" translations are good enough and just need a low-cost pass by a "translator".

I saw quality drop considerably across the board, and can guarantee you: this is going to get people hurt and killed. A bad translation in a TV manual is annoying. A bad translation in medicine (my speciality at the time) or complex machinery docs can be deadly.

People are going to find out the hard way.

if you ever forget that big information vendors exist to milk libraries & enclose knowledge while providing a shitty surrogate of what they steal as a cover, click a "cite" button for a reminder

RE: https://flipboard.com/@theverge/the-verge-5hobbaa8z/-/a-RKgzzvvtTnadjMq82fXG_A%3Aa%3A43611565-%2F0

"intentional backdoor", read that again.

Don't buy "smart" appliances if you can, isolate if you must, shoot when it makes an unexpected noise.

YouTube has started restricting most of our recent videos. They can still be viewed by turning off "Restricted Mode," but this is only possible to do if you have control of your computer. I.e. people accessing our content from the library, schools, and other public institutions may no longer have the ability to do so. 🫤

Restricted videos include last week's conversation with Jarrod Shanahan and Eman Abdelhadi, a recent panel discussion on disability representation in YA, conversations on supermax prisons, science history, attacks on trans people, New Orleans, Rojava, and more.

Why now? An event in April with Tomas Rothaus and @crimethinc attracted significant far Right attention, and these restrictions are likely the result of a concerted, bad-faith effort to remove our content. Many of the impacted videos feature authors published by @pmpress and AK Press.

Our bookstore will challenge these restrictions, but it's felt for a while that the writing is on the wall for liberatory projects on corporate platforms. We've already moved to reduce our dependence on Google and Meta elsewhere. No doubt this will nudge us further towards independent spaces. (- L)

#EatTheRich #LateStageCapitalism

SpaceX's highly paid lawyers responded to the hundreds of comments and oppositions submitted to the FCC in one letter, that basically shows they didn't actually read our petitions to deny. And now we astronomers and dark sky advocates who are volunteering our time have to do a shitload more work to respond to their non-response. By Friday.

Fuck you, SpaceX.

Treasure Trove of Ancient Astrology Unearthed in Egypt - Biblical Archaeology Society
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-egypt/treasure-trove-of-ancient-astrology-unearthed-in-egypt/

I'm not a gamer at all, but, I am a manuscript nerd, so I may have to install steam just to check this out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3119540/Scriptorium_Master_of_Manuscripts/

#medieval #manuscript #medievalhistory

*I blame science fiction dystopias

*For their impact on stock market prices

For anyone who could use a spot of good news--outside of our region you might not have heard of it.

Dr. #RumeysaOzturk has completed her PhD.

"I would like to be called Dr. Öztürk, not Miss Öztürk, from now on.”

Yes, Dr. sister!

#SomervilleMA

https://www.wbur.org/news/2026/02/20/ozturk-phd-tufts-ice-immigration

Somebody asked yesterday if advertising really works in these days of ad-blockers etc... My answer was that if it wasn't working on most people, big business wouldn't be spending 1.4 trillion dollars on it every year.

But I was reminded of a friend of mine, a student of Russian, that went to study in Moscow in the early 80s. He got what he called an 'eerie' feeling walking around the city, in the metro, etc. At first he thought it was the stories about foreigners being watched - but eventually he worked out what it really was: the absence of advertising - no bill-boards, posters, vehicle liveries, shop window displays, etc...

We swim in an ambient sea of advertising - and its effects go way beyond its immediate purpose of extracting our hard-earned money so that we keep working hard for more, surrounded by mountains of stuff we could easily do without.

The most pernicious effects of advertising are, precisely, ambient...
1. It makes us unhappy. That's the whole point. It is fundamentally based on making us feel we'd be better, more attractive, popular, successful, etc, if only we buy this or that latest cosmetic, car, whatever; and
2. It shapes social expectations - it makes having new, more expensive things, holidays, etc, look and feel desirable, it associates happiness with wasteful consumerism, so we come to really believe that striving for a 'luxury lifestyle' - big house, fancy car, swimming pool, jet-setting, etc - is the meaning of our lives, is better than living simply, contentedly in caring families, communities and the natural world.

Can we start calling the act of leaving Windows for Linux "defenestration" please?

THIS... and I hate it so much (and it's why "environmental justice" was always in the crosshairs because the absolute LAST thing the powerful want is to lose their impunity to dump toxins in poor people's back yards or to have to care for anyone)

🧵
#climatechange

Just think about the amazing Epstein scoops the new CBS Evening News contributors will have just by interviewing each other.

Take care out there. https://www.theverge.com/policy/868571/best-gas-masks

“Tear Gas: The most effective agent used by employers to persuade their employees that the interests of capital and labor are identical.” – Industrial Worker, 06 March 1937.
Source
https://commonslibrary.org/t-bone-slim-quotes/

#GasMasks #ICEout

Turned a #Blender3D render into my second ever #meme (which might be about #colonialism or #imperialism this time), even though it has far too many details requiring you to zoom in. 🙈🙉🙊

EDIT: Had to correct a spelling mistake and move the arrow a bit closer to the fall… 🏛️