Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong | Defector
For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, archive perusers, and history buffs who grew to love their areas of study because of the specific objects that constitute the field: the…
Everybody needs a personal AI policy. Just ask Hank Green.
How can we reap AI’s benefits without melting our brains in the process?
Was nicht unwahr ist
Vor wenigen Tagen las ich in einem Essay der US-Amerikanischen Autorin Joan Didion, dass es Menschen gibt, die keinen Drang verspüren, sich Notizen zu machen ...
Elena Rossini on GoToSocial ⁂ (@elena@aseachange.com)
[1 media attachment] Good morning Fedi friends. Is anybody curious about how the #WSocial experiment is going? You know, the private, for profit "European answer to X" endorsed by the European Commission, which is a fork of Bluesky and has quietly gone closed-source before its beta launch (à la #TruthSocial)? I've got numbers for you! Nearly two months in, W Social has almost the same number of accounts as #Eurosky... You know, the European fork of Bluesky that does NOT require government IDs to post. W Social: 23.5k accounts Eurosky: 24.8k accounts In order to post on W Social you need to provide your government ID and go through a 13-step verification process. So far 4.5k accounts are verified but only 2036 (as of this morning) have ever published a single post or reply. There is a handy website - https://pdsls.dev - that allows you to monitor the "firehose" of any ATproto-powered PDS. Inspired by @pallenberg and his awesome videos (example: https://mu.social/profile/palle.eurosky.social/post/3mskkqrrc522l) I have been comparing the live activities of the two networks. The difference is SHOCKING. W Social is largely a zombie, dormant network, with a high number of accounts that do not interact. Eurosky by contrast shows very lively activity. The screenshot I grabbed yesterday shows a side-by-side comparison of their firehose over a 27 minute period. W Social had a total of 240 events (follows, likes, posts...) whereas Eurosky registered 7596 events in the same time interval. A couple of days ago I downloaded their PDS and saw that 67,8% of their accounts have 0 follows, 0 followers and 0 posts. That's what I mean when I call it a "zombie network." W Social's CEO says they plan to start monetizing by introducing ads in 2027. WITH THESE NUMBERS?!? Sure Jan. I love how with the transparency of open data you can't really use the standard playbook of CEO hype and hubris. Because we can all see their numbers. And they are BAAAAD. I have been feeling…
Mark Zuckerberg's AI manifesto is exactly why people don't like AI | TechCrunch
On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500-word manifesto about personal AI, largely about the possibilities for the "personal superintelligence" systems Meta AI is building.
Every Online Contretemps Is Definitionally Stupid
I meant to write something else and this is what came out. It is very weird to be writing about this again.
Why Is Everyone In Tech So Sad?
A lot of people seem to be realizing that knowledge work is mostly pointless. AI might give us the pleasure of finding out what happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers.
Bear Blog library
A library of Bear Blog themes, add-ons, style options, and dashboard plugins, built and maintained by Robert Birming.
The Gargantuan Lie That is Collapsing The World’s Climate
Thinking we have time left to address climate change, or that “Net Zero by 2050” will save us, is driving us toward full social collapse in ways that become more obvious with every new broken temperature record.
R.I.P. Your Backlog
If everything is going to plan and your operating system is in dark mode, then randsinrepose.com is now dark for you. If you are a light mode person, you can cl
Owning media again - Kedara.eu
This year, one of my aspirations is to rely less on the big streaming services for my entertainment. Why? Well, for one thing, if we give too much power to large corporations by getting overly …
Leaflet's First 10 Atmosphere Field Reporters — writing on art, sports, science, fandom, local scenes and more! - Leaflet Lab Notes
Lab Notes 033: launching a lineup of new publications reporting on communities across the Atmosphere — give them a read!
Humans are social creatures. We crave bonding and social connections. In our digital world, our common social space is a campfire, which is the group chat.
Bluesky’s new CEO wants a big tent, not a bubble
Bluesky is many different things in a trenchcoat.
Launching a Cloud Atlas
The right questions to arrive with—and the right structure for what comes out of the interviews—are not completely obvious. So I’ve been spending some time thinking about clouds.
Männerfantasie: Gott finden, Gott erziehen
Ein langer Flug über KI, Hybris, vernünftige Geisterbeschwörung und die langen Folgen der Fantasie.
I Hate The Way We Talk Online
Jason Toney on algorithm-speak, main character energy, and why a simple question about music charts revealed how badly we've forgotten how to talk to each other online."
The 1989 CBC Massey Lectures, "The Real World of Technology"
Technology has always been a part of human existence. Today though, says the experimental physicist, Ursula M. Franklin, technology has large-scale effects on culture itself. Ursula Franklin is an experimental physicist, University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, a former board member of the National Research Council and the Science Council of Canada, and a companion of the Order...
We Need To Rewild The Internet
The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists.
