Fallacies sunt rerum species.

Mishmash of philosophy, feminism (recognizing the matrix of oppression of race, gender, sexuality, identity, etc.), issues in academia, politics, and fandom. I strive to recognize intersectionality. Personal blog. The intent is to be inclusive regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexuality, ability, or religion--please feel free to message me if I mess up. I am white, cisgender, heterosexual, and prefer pronouns she/her.

[soundsofmyuniverse]

[theanishimori]

Kirk ships it

[poorleno89]

Kirk definitely ships it

[liberalsarecool]

There is no product. It's a scam sold as "you need to act now or everyone will pass you by".

[silvernevermind]

small town diner waitress voice: Omelas? Oh, oh no, easy mistake, you're in oh - MAY - las right now, with an A. Plenty' people get the name mixed up. Nope, no utopia here, just our small little town. *face gets really grim* We do still.. Okay well we do still have a kid that we... I mean it isn't working but- well- You know. It- It's fine. I'm sure it'll start working soon.

[h0lyshift]

The older i get the more i understand why some people become obsessed with privacy, not because they’re hiding something, but because being constantly perceived starts to feel spiritually exhausting.

[melyzard]

Did you know that soda machines at restaurants and movie theaters spy on you? That most common new cars now record your sexual preferences and send it to the manufacturer (and also data about anyone who also gets in your car, walks by your car, and maybe happens to be within visual range of your car)? That grocery stores are trying to force customers to download an app to scan barcodes on shelves instead of putting up prices, so the app can scan the phone, decide how much that customer should be squeezed for, and adjust the price? That more and more innocent people are being sent to jail for crimes committed hundreds of miles away because an AI facial recognition algorithm spit their faces out and the cops didn't bother to do the most basic of checks?

I am not uptight about privacy because I'm hiding something. I'm uptight about it because the people who dismiss my right to privacy are dangerous to you and me and our families, personally, all the time.

And often, they are assholes, too.

[azspot]

Generative AI Is an Engineering Disaster

A shockingly inefficient trillion-dollar project

The problem with generative AI, in the industry’s own jargon, is that it does not scale. The cost of growing from, say, a thousand users to a million is a key factor that venture capitalists examine when they evaluate start-ups. They want to see that the cost of adding each new user decreases over time, so that the company can support millions of users and make increasing profits. This is achieved partly through the careful engineering of computer systems that can efficiently handle more users who want to post photos, hail Ubers, or stream music.

With generative AI, the work of building efficient, scalable systems has not been done. And the problem is exacerbated by the ever-larger generative-AI models, which have grown from 175 billion parameters in 2020 to more than 1 trillion today, according to independent estimates (the actual sizes of the models powering products such as Claude and ChatGPT are secret). The large in large language model should not be a selling point. But the industry’s observation that bigger models tend to outperform smaller ones has given rise to a totemic belief in “scaling laws” that suggest any problem can be solved by simply making models bigger. “Maybe with 10 gigawatts of compute, AI can figure out how to cure cancer,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on his blog in September.

[cuprohastes]

About ten, fifteen years ago I wrote a story about a guy living in a Capitalist dystopia. His walls, furniture, and tableware are all covered in smart displays. Basically animated wallpaper. It's sold as being able to turn your room or objects into anything - A nice forest view, outer space, a fantasy realm... but the companies that run this stuff keep sneaking ads in.

It gets so bad he's always being woken up by adverts that offer insomnia cures and better bedding that play when he tries to sleep.

So he buys the ad-free tier, and it's great... for a few months. And then he starts getting adverts from 'premium partners'. So he goes up a level... and the same thing happens.

So he jailbreaks his wallpaper and sends all the ad servers to 0.0.0.0 and voila... he can sleep.

Until this SWAT team blows his door off and drag him off to jail. The Ad companies are suing him for loss of revenue for the products he' notionally have bought if he'd watched their adverts, based on some weird 'The average consumer buys X products with an average value of Y' calculation.

The judge is like 'well I dun wanna annoy the sponsors' so he RICO's this guy's house and possessions and sends him to jail.

... which is a nice relaxed non-volent offender jail for the corporately disenfranchised. But because these people have no money... there's no ads and now he's happy because the only place he's free... is in prison.

Which at the time was a bit much and now it's like: Called it.

Elon's suing companies for not advertising because he's losing revenue. He's also cranking the price of Ad Free Twitter. Disney and Amazon play adverts on their paid service when services used to be free because of the adverts... and now you have to pay to watch the adverts or go up a couple of tiers.

And google's going around freaking out about ad-blockers.

[alexaloraetheris]

OP did it hurt when Apollo's dodgeball hit you and made you write that story?

[lesspopped]

please wear sunscreen!!! I've seen "fuck the beauty industrial complex" posts about complicated skincare regimens and am 100% with them except sometimes they mention sunscreen and no. no. absolutely not. sunscreen is a wonderful supportive friend who wants to keep you safe, and you should let her do it. throw out all your other cosmetics and skincare products if you want, but keep your sunscreen. and if you're not wearing sunscreen, start wearing it!!!! this is not about terror of aging, this is not about every tiny imperfection our fucked-up culture has made you feel insecure about, this is about protecting yourself from skin cancer. wear the damn sunscreen.

[moniquill]

Sunscreen is not cosmetic; it is functional.

[blackjame]

The fact that at the lowest point of knowledge for me as far as things like racial dynamics in this country, my friend and I at seventeen and in the midst of our senior year, were talking about this?

We both recognized the privilege that came with having American/Western names.

Me? Because I'm the descendant of chattel slaves, have a mother aboard the respectability train, and an am junior despite being a girl. So American first name. Last name is likely that of whoever owned my father's ancestors.

My friend? She's a child of immigrants and I didn't know that. Not until she showed her original name. At some point, her parents had changed it. Gave her an more American sounding one.

But yeah, I don't know how many times we need to have this conversation about AI and the biases injected into it routinely.

It started with something "innocuous" and more excusable to many. "Oh, you just can't wash your hands because the soap dispenser doesn't recognize dark skin? That's nothing."

Now people are being arrested for crimes committed in different states. States they've never even been to. Great job.

[muddypolitics]

(via ‘I Would Never Do This To You:’ Protesting Flock, Arizona Man Presents Plan to Surveil Government Officials)

On July 20, Jacob Petrosky stood in front of the Casa Grande, Arizona City Council during a public comment session and made an announcement.

“I’ve spent the last several months talking to people all over Casa Grande, and one thing keeps coming up: Safety. So, today I’m excited to announce a new company called Shepherd Safety,” he said. “Our mission is simple. Keep government officials and their families safe.” It would be no different than how the city monitors its citizens using Flock cameras, he said; he planned to launch satellites that would use AI to monitor “where government officials go, where they stop, who they meet with, and when they return home.”

He said he’d already started compiling profiles on their vehicles, spouses vehicles, children’s vehicles, and planned to combine that data with Bluetooth signals, advertising IDs, and commercial data sources, “so our authorized users can replay the movements of every government official and their immediate family,” he said. Local businesses would be invited to join the network, to “protect” officials while they shop, eat at restaurants, and move around the city.

After laying out his plan and its benefits for the government officials before him, Petrosky revealed that it was all satire. “I would never do this to you,” he said to the council members. “Could I? Probably. But I wouldn’t because it’s wrong. Just like what you guys are doing to us is wrong.”

[rejectingrepublicans]

[zinjanthropusboisei]

Hell yeah CLRG!

[robertreich]

We do not have to keep living like this.

[beardedmrbean]

[theman]

I GOT A FUCKING RAISE THE POTATO WORKED WTF

[tattooedzombigirl]

This potato works. Every. Fucking. Time.

[secondlina]

Reblogging because it’s a damn potato and I want to encourage people to assume potatoes are magical.

[sinksanksockie2]

w-what if potato is actually lucky

[johnny-depp-is-loved]

[lakemojave]

Google has far more than 2 Ls to their name tbh

[ozempicofficial]

[thisishowyoumakemovies]

That comment is spot on AND sciatica stretches are legit. The best treatment for sciatica is get stretchy.

Signed: Willem Defoe fan with sciatica

[wethekeegsta]

For anyone who doesn’t know, Sciatica is pain due to compression of the sciatic nerve, which runs from your buttocks down the back of your leg. The reason this stretch is helpful is because the sciatic nerve, after leaving your spinal cord, immediately runs just underneath - and may get compressed by - the Piriformis muscle deep in your buttcheek, which helps you externally rotate your hip. (If the muscle is super tight, your toes on that side might actually point further out when you lie down compared to the toes on your other foot, jsyk).

If the above stretch ain’t compatible with you for reasons like having bitch ass knees, here are some alternative and amazing stretches for the muscle in order of easiest to hardest (but imo least to most helpful) to perform:

However, just keep in mind that none of these stretches will help you if you have a herniated disc, which compresses the nerve roots that protrude from the spine itself! For that you’ll for sure need some different medical intervention.

Have fun!

[electricswamp]

[boarofthenorth100]

LOL

[neppler]

What’s so funny

[boarofthenorth100]

Have You Seen This

[mhalachai]

[hungwy]

letting family members sit in for dead senators is just monarchy logic im appalled that this has even happened before

[sugoiney-weaver]

Each state gets to decide how their state is represented in Congress

This has been a common method for a long time in some states

The idea is that a Senator's sibling/spouse/parent/child knows their intentions and policies better than a political rival or a random person would. It's a pretty good way to prevent political assassinations tbh

[prizedpesto]

An unelected individual getting grandfathered into a real political position due to their blood or legal relationship with a deceased elected official is not pretty good actually

[katelyn-danger]

Thank god nobody's ever assassinated a monarch before