In the last year, I've been through over a dozen cities and used public transport in all of them. It is wild just how confusing and complex buying a ticket can be. While some cities obviously take a user-centred approach to ticketing, others appear to take a Kafkaesque delight in a bureaucratic maze of zones, apps, and intricate restrictions. One of the seminal texts in computer systems design is "Don't Make Me Think". Every time a service forces the user into making a decision, it is placing a…
There has been some talk, even from those unsympathetic to Nigel Farage, that the candidacy of Count Binface, the highest-profile opponent to the Reform leader in the upcoming Clacton by-election, is somehow unserious and indicates something flawed in the very soul of our society. Well, yes. Which is why he’s exactly the right person to take on the Poundland Spode.Farage himself is the most prominent manifestation, in Britain at least, of the wave of populism that has taken hold following the…
✨ In This Edition ✨ 📟 Short-Form Content: AI & the job market: The cognitive dissonance of "Oh no, recent grads used AI in college!" vs. "New hires will absolutely be required to use AI once on the job"; Job applications from people that aren't real; and why is replacing human labour with AI so expensiiiiiive 😩 <insert crocodile tears here> 🌞 Good News!: Librarians are still cool; AI overview opt-out is becoming a thing; and lawsuits may be happening. 📯 The Post-Script: Reading Karl Bode's…
Pictures by Hyperallergic. According to the website Hyperallergic, the London-based activist group Everyone Hates Elon pulled off this intervention on a bus-stop ad for Meta’s new pervert smart glasses created in partnership with celebrity Kylie Jenner. Depending on the angle from which someone views the ad, Kylie’s photo transforms into an X-ray of her skull, and the message changes to read “We’re always watching.” Kind of like those “3D images” for kids. Everything about this story is…
The human mind defaults to stupidity. Morals, ethics, and ideals are hallucinations. The organism cares only about survival and reproduction. Your higher goals, purpose, intelligence, soul, transcendence, and spiritual crap are pure fiction. They are only supported if they help the organism survive and breed. Otherwise, they are useless. Idiotic ideologies keep the tribe alive. Genocide ensures the gene pool. Stupidity is an efficient shortcut. Moral and spiritual stories are noise. You suffer…
I’ve heard tuna described as “chicken of the sea”, but why have I never heard anyone refer to pistachios as “clam of the tree”?
You’ve seen him, you probably said “AWWW!” and love him. Jimothy, the foreshortened raccoon. I was alerted to this ball of cuteness by my eyes-on-Seattle pal Matt Crowley on July 16 (link to Seattle Times) and have been watching how this sweet thing has become an internet celebrity. In the past two days, the story about him is everywhere. And it is a Jimothy Summer. All over the news! I didn’t think I’d write about this and add to the already overwhelming hype, but a few associations were made…
For reference in an upcoming posting about small worlds: brief accounts of Larry Kramer and John D’Emilio, two (justly) celebrated and very public gay men, of extraordinarily different natures, who I happened, once, to get linked with as a member of that category. (Blame it on my man Jacques, who knew the complexities of my nature but still managed, in his love, to think of me as genuinely heroic.) Larry Kramer. From Wikipedia: Laurence David Kramer (June 25, 1935 – May 27, 2020) was an…
The current #AI boom is built on a huge contradiction, you can see this in #mainstreaming terms. That AI companies are not paying the real costs of what they consume. They haven’t paid for the copyrighted material they trained on. They haven’t paid the environmental costs of the water and electricity they use. They haven’t paid for the pressure they place on public infrastructure, or for the social costs of flooding the web with synthetic content. Yet AI services are sold below their true cost,…
I'm way more pessimistic and fatalistic than I'd like to let people know. I believe the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of intellect struggles. Intelligence trying to create a better society and stupidity's shortsightedness fighting it, and we are at the tipping point, where intelligence has stopped progressing, a verifiable objective reality. There's no more future, hope for change is futile, for it's beyond our collective capacity as a species. Abandon ship, let it…
About Brennan Kenneth Brown Queer Métis writer, cultural critic, and web developer based in Mohkínstsis (Calgary), Treaty 7 territory. Author of nine books and counting, the founder of Fireweed Writing School and Berry House Studio, and of Write Club at Mount Royal University. His work has been cited in Le Monde and other publications. Enjoy this content? Support my work and help me create more: Patreon | Ko-fi | GitHub Sponsors
Let’s consider a person you don’t know. Maybe they live in the Republic of the Congo. Let’s say they’re near a city – not the country’s biggest city, but maybe its 5th biggest city. I don’t know that city’s name, but I could probably look it up. And they’re not in the city center, but rather 20 miles due east of its tallest building. Whoever happens to be closest to that exact point at the moment you’re reading this, that’s the single person we’re talking about. I know extremely little about…
I’m giving a brand-new talk ‘Revenants’ at FFConf. The failed utopias of the web, value-sensitive design, hauntology, all that good stuff.Captivating analysis or unintelligible screed? Signs point to yes. Join us on 13 Nov to find out.
Photo by Nathália Rosa on UnsplashAI companies have built their entire product empire on the misconception that infinite choice is a Good Thing ™️They’ve convinced themselves that abundance is a gift - that we somehow want *more* options, *more* drafts, *more* noise. Ask for a logo, get fifty. Ask for an email, get ten. Ask for a strategy, and drown in a tidal wave of vomited and re-vomited decks, memos, and over-engineered frameworks.But nobody actually wants this. Nobody wants infinite choice…
Matt asked me a question recently about the end of my People and Blogs run. The question was if I always thought I was going to hand it over at some point, and it’s an interesting question worth expanding on, which is why I told him I was going to write a post about it, rather than simply answering via email. I started and ended more online projects than I can remember at this point. I bought a dozen domain names, coded way too many sites, only to have them all inevitably bite the dust,…
I was born in the USA. Many tongues call me "American": Italian (americano), French (Américain), German (Amerikaner), Dutch (Amerikaan), Afrikaans (Amerikaner), Japanese (アメリカ人, amerika-jin), Filipino (Amerikano), Hebrew (אמריקני), Arabic (أمريكي), Portuguese (americano), Russian (американец), and Hindi (अमरीकी, Amreeki). I grew up in Southern California. Many of my friends were zeroeth-generation immigrants from Mexico. Weren't their parents born in North America, too? As an adult, I lived in…
Back in April at the most recent Art of Hosting we convened, someone asked me “does the Art of Hosting make good faith assumptions about people?” I’ve been thinking about that question ever since, and not satisfied by my answer which, came from a more defensive posture. I think the short answer is, yes, in my practice I make good faith assumptions about people. But let’s expand that. I found a blog post of mine from twenty years ago that lays this down: The essence of his argument is this: in…
Thinking in terms of dichotomies – either/or, tradition/modernity, people/nation, myth/reality – is rarely productive. The most effective formulations will combine tradition with modernity, the secular with the sacred and reality with myth. The mythical worldview is inherent in every person, modern or not – we simply cannot live without it. It manifests itself especially powerfully in times of crisis and upheaval. –Yaroslav Hrytsak, Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation, trans. Dominique Hoffman…
1. Does a court have discretion to ignore an attorney’s admitted abuse of artificial intelligence that violated the California Rules of Court, or is the court required to resolve whether to sanction that attorney and explain the reasoning for its decision? 2. Does it matter that the party demanding sanctions reportedly teaches people that they are afflicted by disembodied souls that were stolen 75 million years ago by the Emperor Xenu, ruler of the Galactic Confederacy, who brought billions of…
That child-rearing theories have swung back and forth between parents as disciplinarians and bonding with their children, between child-centered and parent-centered is obvious to today’s middle-age Moms and Dads who think but a moment about their parents and grand-parents. Psychologists and novelists have taught us a great deal about child-raising practices and how children’s growth physically, emotionally, and intellectually can flourish or get stunted. Still, uncertainty hovers over what are…
Arvind Kurian AbrahamAs fireworks lit up the sky this Fourth of July, the United States of America turned 250. Barring the heatwave, the celebrations were spectacular, the patriotism genuine, and the questions, as ever, complicated. Among the most persistent: Was the United States founded as a Christian nation? The question has gained fresh attention this year. The White House’s Rededicate 250 initiative, hosted under its America Prays framework, has made faith central to the…
The #Fediverse is an accidental reboot of the #openweb, it wasn’t designed from the top down, it emerged because thousands of people built alternatives to the #dotcons. That’s its greatest strength, it’s also why it’s so messy. Herding cats – the #Fediverse has no central authority, every project, server, and community has its own priorities, culture, and governance. It’s often like herding cats. This can be frustrating, but it’s also what makes the network resilient. There is no single point…
Eddie Rathke on the likely reception of Nolan’s Odyssey: It will be a massive success with fans and critics and this controversy will slip through our collective memories like it never happened, and those who drummed up anger over the casting, the alleged translation Nolan used, the aesthetics of the costuming, the decision to shoot in IMAX, will all either quietly love the movie or become champions of it.And because everyone has a goldfish memory, it won’t matter. You can hate something on…
A true story of grace and transformation, originally published in the Quaker journal, 'What Canst Thou Say.' I share it again for the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, which begins at Vespers on July 21. In all wisdom traditions, she is here in the anahatta chakra. Her secret name is the Unstruck Sound. She personifies our yearning for divine Beauty. For Longing and Beauty
I just learned about The Fandom and Social Connection Initiative and I’m intrigued. The idea is to study the possibility that sports fandom can be an antidote to the “connection recession,” as traditional “third places”—like churches, civic organizations, and bowling leagues—play a diminishing role in our lives. The researchers think their early findings suggest that sports fandom can motivate people to connect, including connecting across racial, economic, and political divides. Here’s an…
Let’s be clear that the post-work future suggested by the Non-Workers Paradise does not mean we will not work, nor will it necessarily be a paradise. [A note on “terms” is at the bottom]. A bit of a downer? I think we need to balance the appeal of the goal with the reality of the […] The post Post-Work Really Means Post-Jobs first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.
We started a conversation yesterday on the use of urine by medieval Western European physicians to determine health. I thought today we'd go into exactly how the urine was an indicator of health.Examining sediment in the urine was one case, which was described yesterday in a paragraph from Giles Corbeil's (fl.1200) poem De urinis. Later elaborations on this suggest the urine would settle into layers of different colors. A large layer on top could indicate a problem with the head. Som sediments…
Cassie Pritchard, on Twitter:I get why so many liberals are fundamentally disdainful of democracy these days—it’s because liberalism is exhausted. It’s out of answers. Liberalism won, it delivered the world it promised, and people still aren’t content. They’re not satisfied. So the people must be wrong. We are unfathomably richer than our ancestors. Output per capita in America today is on the order of 900 times greater than before the invention of agriculture, about ~225 times higher than in 1…
While catching up with ex-coworkers, the conversation inevitable turned to the future of coding. By the end of the evening, “You’re absolutely right!” had become an inside joke. That’s what ChatGPT seem to say when it’s wrong. Each time someone asked a question, they got an “You’re absolutely right!” AI answers aren’t 100% reliable. Coding’s short feedback loops make AI mistakes evident. Now imagine trusting every answer just because “AI said that.” Medical recommendations, investment…
