Charlie Loyd @vruba@everything.happens.horse

Come down to National Geodetic Survey marker AE5211 in the next 15 minutes if you want an ass kicking.

Hearing the Minecraft damage sound every two seconds as I skim the Wikipedia article on quaternions.

Happened to be learning about communication technology in the mid-fifties, and my goodness what a time to be reading the news.

This reads exactly like the list of people who liked a post that just says something like “Hands Holbein the Younger” or “we should respect that he took our advice and mackled less”. https://botsin.space/@ryanfb/109999045107815043

A reasonable thing to ask here would be: Charlie, are you Calling For Civility?

Good question. Thanks for asking. And my answer is: Nope. The alternatives here are not (1) status-quo–preserving fear of controversy v. (2) standing in public and playing a recording of your opinions on the loudest speakers you can find. I am positive you can find a way to be firm and even fiery in your arguments without presenting them like things that everyone else was too lazy to think of. I believe in you.

It reminds me of things you hear from people whose information environment is clearly about the size and smell of an Altoids tin: “Homosexuality doesn’t appear in the animal kingdom” or “We’ve never actually observed evolution” or whatever – things where you don’t just want to say no; you want to pull the emergency brake, ask where they heard that, why they believed it, and what they think other people believe.

It’s bad. Even when the conclusions are correct, it’s a bad way to think in public.

There’s a very culture-war–flavored bubbledness to a lot of the “AI” “discourse” that I (mostly accidentally) see, and I hate it.

People sure like making categorical statements about what’s possible, impossible, or inevitable with a level of self-confidence that does not befit grownups talking about the unknown.

In particular, I keep seeing this naïve quality to the delivery of controversial statements: a sense of “I’m revealing the truth to you, not making an argument; treat me as such.”

—Karl Marx, 1867

Need to figure out a way for web fonts to be free but type designers to live lives of lavish comfort.

We did it, everyone; we’re Abnormally Dry: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA

Had to think about the UV index before stepping out for a burrito, so happy first day of meteorological spring I guess.

I’m at the point in this ML essay where I’m imagining Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi as a YouTube influencer. I may be a bit out of practice writing.

I would really like to live in a world where some small but significant proportion of academics get to consider it part of their job to collaborate with news outlets on accessible and self-contained explainers of stuff in the news.

Mildly concerned that the LLM explainer I’ve seen get the most traction is by a someone whose professional and personal behavior seem very questionable. (And who is also very litigious.)

For what it’s worth, some places I do subscribe to are:

LAT: https://www.latimes.com/

HCN: https://www.hcn.org/

Oaklandside: https://oaklandside.org/

Each of them has done things I disagreed with, sometimes deeply, but not with the sort of broad scope and ugly conviction that the NYT has shown.