Charlie Loyd @vruba@everything.happens.horse

Imagining an animist looking at this with the same eyes that mainstream Christian theologians used for Hóng Xiùquán saying he was Christ’s little brother. https://www.chatpdf.com/

Like, “Keeping orcas in captivity is unethical because they’re basically just hairy sharks” is not a good argument.

Actually, I’ll walk that half a step back. I think “just word prediction machines” has some value for introducing people to the idea of an LLM from scratch. But it’s a bit of a “whales are like fish that breastfeed” thing – an orienting statement that is true-ish but really not a good place to stop.

1. Without committing to any firm position, this is why “they’re just word prediction machines” is such a weak criticism of LLMs. There are things you can say about them that are both meaner and less reductive, so why turn to that one? But hey, I’m just a next-action machine, I guess.

2. More essays like this, I say. There are a lot of things I disagree with in it, but I never felt that my attention or the complexity of the issue was disrespected.

https://hachyderm.io/@jyasskin/110214994401056240

If technology continues to progress at current rates – and, more importantly, current rates of acceleration – we may soon live in a world where web forms don’t show giant red warnings like DANGER! YOU SCREWED UP VERY BADLY! THIS IS FALSE! IT IS A FEDERAL CRIME TO LIE IN SOME CIRCUMSTANCES! when you start typing your phone number because it doesn’t have enough digits to be a phone number yet.

Found it.

I’m like 90% sure Sir Thomas Browne makes this point somewhere in “Hydriotaphia”.

Kind of humbling to hold something in your hand, even just a chunk of cheap tea, that might last longer into the future than the Marvel movie timeline itself.

Out-take from that last @salkinjorts:

Have just been made aware of a deep-sea crab that eats trees; please respect my privacy in this difficult time: https://orbi.uliege.be/bitstream/2268/28764/1/2009%20Hoyoux%20et%20al%20-%20R%c3%a9gime%20xylophage%20et%20microflore%20digestive%20de%20M.%20andamanica%20des%20bois%20coul%c3%a9s.pdf

I have a question about this, and the question is: WWWHHHHHHHAAAATTT?! https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/acba86

Me reading things: That’s not a joke. That’s a reference.

Me writing things: People who read the pulp sf collection “Galactic Diplomat” (1965) and got past the absolutely terrible politics are going to love this one word choice! Haha!

Switching to a fully VR work setup just to stop having to worry about the seasonally variable glare from the window behind my screen.

I would really appreciate a paleontologist telling me there’s a good reason this doesn’t make sense, because it messes with the way I look at flowers.

You ever, you know, think about how butterflies and moths evolved coiling proboscises roughly 200 million years ago in the Triassic when the dinosaurs were around, and they still like to drink the tears out of reptiles’ eyes, but flowers didn’t evolve until about 125 million years ago, so what if flowers evolved to look like eyes?