That makes sense. Although for what it’s worth, I don’t recall having any problems with Deep Rock Galactic, so whatever issues you had with that may be specific to your particular set up

This is going to be a pretty fast and loose definition of blog, but I like sharing cool stuff. Some of these links will link to a particular post on that blog — this is if there’s a particular post I really like there, or what first led me to that blog.

“A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry” by Historian Brett Devereux. https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/ He’s especially good at military history, which is why I linked to his series on the Siege of Gondor from Lord of the Rings. I also enjoy his series on pop-culture misconceptions around Sparta

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/ It’s a blog by the Statistician Andrew Gelman (and others who guest write). This is one of the more academic ones, so only likely to be fun if you’re a particular kind of nerd

https://gsllcblog.com/2019/08/12/part1statblocks/ Tabletop roleplaying games and law crossover blog

https://scatter.wordpress.com/2022/01/30/sex-as-a-social-construct/ Sociology blog. Quite academic, but still fun. Found it through Andrew Gelman’s blog above

https://www.bookandsword.com/2022/04/16/science-as-verified-trust/

https://www.edwinwenink.xyz/etc/web_paleontology/ Unsure if this site is a blog, but certainly this post has many links to old-school web pages that are cool

https://gretzuni.com/ Dense philosophy stuff about technology. This person is an academic. N.b. I am a scientist, not a philosopher, so I am less good at vetting philosophy takes. I enjoy it though

https://explorationsofstyle.com/2011/02/09/reverse-outlines/ Blog by an academic who specialises in teaching writing to university students. I like her stuff.

https://www.bookandsword.com/2022/04/16/science-as-verified-trust/ I think this person is a historian too

https://thetechbubble.substack.com/p/the-phony-comforts-of-useful-idiots Blog by economist Edward Ongweso Jr.

https://www.cantgetmuchhigher.com/ Blog about “the intersection of music and data”. Also has a podcast.

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/ This post went viral last year. Some people don’t like this tone of writing, but I found it quite cathartic, and have enjoyed other posts from the blog

https://datacolada.org/ “Thinking about evidence, and vice versa”. These guys do a lot of cool stuff on science methodology, like meta-analyses. They were so good at their job that they got sued. I really like them

https://karl-voit.at/ Blog about personal computing information systems. This guy was the one who first piqued my interest about Emacs a bunch of years ago (Emacs is a very old text editor with an insane amount of customisability and an even more insane learning curve)

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/essays/ “Web dev at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland”

https://meaningness.com/ It’s kind of blog that some would call pretentious as hell, but I like its vibe

https://wordsmith.social/elilla/deep-in-mordor-where-the-shadows-lie-dystopian-stories-of-my-time-as-a-googler There’s not too many other posts on this blog, but I really enjoyed this one

https://theluddite.org/ “An anti-capitalist tech blog”

https://blog.thea.codes/winterblooms-tech-stack/ Cool resources on DIY music synthesisers

https://www.math3ma.com/blog/what-is-category-theory-anyway Maths! Especially category theory. The difficulty ranges from “pretty darn accessible” to stuff that’s way above my level. I like the pretty diagrams though.

Okay, that’s all that are coming to mind right now

Out of curiosity, what games? I’m not going to throw unsolicited advice at you — I’m just wondering because all of my games have been astoundingly easy to get working on Linux.

There’s already decent scholarship in this area. One such book is the recent “The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want”, by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve heard good things about it and it’s high on my reading list.

I don’t know too much about this area, but I do know that this kind of task involves a bunch of complex processing in the brain. The more “Mechanical” aspects of vision could be described as visual acuity (sharpness of vision). However, gauging whether something is wonky would be a visual discrimination task, which involves more work by the brain. It’s an area in which one’s skill can be improved through learning, and some occupations have a lower discrimination threshold (I e. They can detect smaller differences).

This sounds like a good interview approach. In the sense that the interview is also an opportunity for the interviewee to evaluate their prospective employer, this would be a green flag for me.

“I’m looking for a role where I can make good use of the skills I bring to the table” (because implicitly, the 299 places that didn’t email back don’t have a role where you can fit in and be useful (even if that’s only true in the sense that they didn’t hire you so therefore you can’t contribute there))

“if you can accurately call it “scraping” then it’s always fair use.”

I think you make some compelling points overall, but fair use has always been more complex than this. The intent is taken into account when evaluating whether something is fair use, but so is the actual impact — “fair use” is a designation applied to the overall situation, not to any singular factors (so a stated purpose can’t be fair use)

I saw a paper a while back that argued that AI is being used as “moral crumple zones”. For example, an AI used for health insurance acts allows for the company to reject medically necessary procedures without employees incurring as much moral injury as part of that (even low level customer service reps are likely to find comfort in being able to defer to the system.). It’s an interesting concept that I’ve thought about a lot since I found it.

I have a friend whose cycle is consistently 28 days long, and she can predict it down to a few hour window. I think she’s a witch.

My periods are super irregular, and tracking is how I try to make sense of it. My last three periods were 2 months ago, 8 months ago and 9 months ago. It’s possible that this irregularity is an indicator of poor health, so my doctor advised me to track stuff and come back if it’s more than 6 months.

Many tracking apps also include the option for tracking how heavy the flow is. The copper coil/IUD often causes heavier flow and more period pains, but for some people, this settles down after a few months. Tracking can be a useful tool in evaluating whether you’re happy with a contraception method (excessive side effects may mean needing to try a different method, like the hormonal coil).

Also, it’s not uncommon for there to be some level of bleeding at times when someone isn’t on their period. Nothing much, just light spotting. I don’t think this is super widespread, but it’s also not super rare either. It can be linked to one’s contraception. Periods are annoying enough as it is, but at least they don’t last long. Irregular spotting may happen when you thought you were safe from bleeding, but some tracking can help spot patterns.

In terms of anticipating patterns and planning around stuff, that’s definitely a thing that people do. Sometimes it’s as trivial as not wearing nice underwear when you’re due to be starting your period. Sometimes it might involve scheduling a date or holiday to avoid overlapping with the period due date. I think perhaps some people who take certain varieties of the contraceptive pill can actually delay their period (I think it’s something like taking week 4 of the medication when you’re on week 3, or something like that). I have a friend whose only contraception method with her partner are condoms (due to health issues around all the long term methods like the coil), and she uses period tracking to ease anxiety around unexpected pregnancy.

Speaking of planning around one’s cycle, I am more likely to make ill-advised horny decisions when I’m ovulating (in a 28 day cycle, ovulation typically happens around 2 weeks after the period starts). I have heard that I’m not the only one who experiences this. It’s not a huge effect, but if I’m pondering whether to get off with someone, it can be useful to know if there are background factors affecting that decision.

In short, there are loads of reasons why someone might benefit from this data. These are far from exhaustive examples. Having things on a separate calendar can be useful if apps make it easier to track things like heaviness of flow. It’s also nice to not have this stuff on your regular calendar (which may be shared with other people).

There’s a curfew? Fucking hell.

Ugh, Andreeson is such a creep.

Many people are being forced to use it though — this is where much of the ire is coming from. These people are likely in the minority though. Something that’s much more concerning though is the use of AI that affects us, but we don’t get a say: doctors being made to use generative AI transcription tools (which perform worse than established audio transcription software that doesn’t use AI). The people pushing doctors to use AI are doing it to wring more productivity out of them — more patients in less time. This means that even if a patient doesn’t end up with AI hallucinations in their medical records, their experience seeing their doctor will likely be worse.

Cases like this are becoming less niche as time progresses, despite mounting research showing the harms of these technologies when they’re applied in this way. Increasingly we are being put into situations where AI tools aren’t something to be used by us (which is something you can often opt out of), but things to be used on us. We don’t find out until something goes wrong, and when it does, regular people can struggle to challenge the situation (the example coming to mind here is false positives in facial recognition systems being used by the police. It is leading to more innocent people being wrongfully arrested)

I have a favourite rock

I wish I had the energy to more meaningfully reply to your excellent comment. However, I am a cripple suffering burn out, so I lack the wherewithal to articulate what I want to say.

In lieu of a better comment, please accept my sympathy and solidarity. Being angry like this can feel unpleasant given how powerless we feel against systemic discrimination, but nevertheless, I am glad to see this impassioned rant — better to impotently rage against the system than to internalise it and blame ourselves for our own marginalisation.

Congrats on taking a difficult step towards improving your learning. I moved away from Duolingo a while ago, and in hindsight, it was a significant boost to my language skills; it was only after I had left that I realised that Duolingo is better at hooking people with gamification than it is at actually teaching language skills (even before the AI trash became prominent). I hope that you experience similar productivity.

I am glad that he tried to assassinate 418, because the massive outcry that led to 418 being saved is something wholesome that I love.

Link with context for anyone unfamiliar with the context: https://save418.com/

Fun videos; thanks for sharing

I miss brightly coloured cars. A friend has an old, bright yellow car that probably won’t last for much longer, and they are sad that newer cars are much duller.