ML2 @mathlover@social.cleverlibre.org

Was sent a Twitter link where a Mastodon post of mine got shared.

I'll now respond to a counter-argument:

1. In the case of Twitter, media ownership literally is like land ownership because:
2. Elon owns the server farm that hosts your tweets
3. "The Cloud" is not some ethereal thing, it's physical
4. Elon Musk has hegemony because he has physical access to Twitter -- you do not
5. You're dismantling nothing by staying on Twitter

See screenshot of argument to my post.

@pvonhellermannn

31,824 new #COVID19 cases (4,213 symptomatic and 27,611 asymptomatic) reported in #China (12/4/22)

2 new deaths (1 in Shandong and 1 in Sichuan)

Source (NHC, China): http://www.nhc.gov.cn/xcs/yqtb/202212/28e1dd700f754528bf521edc54e3ff47.shtml

Chart: @OurWorldInData@twitter.com

When teaching the postgraduate students at ANU's School of Cybernetics this year, I introduced them to the idea of "goal perversion" - turning a benevolent AI goal into something rather more malevolent. There was a great paper about this in Nature in February. Scary stuff.

And now, this:

https://zacdenham.com/blog/narrative-manipulation-convincing-gpt-chat-to-write-a-python-program-to-eradicate-humanity

Which is a step-by-step tutorial on how do perform goal perversion with #chatGPT.

Eep.

Sinterklaas festival in Rhinebeck NY!

More info about it - https://sinterklaashudsonvalley.com/the-story/

Via @andrewstroehlein: UN official ‘alarmed’ by jailing of climate activist who blocked traffic on Sydney Harbour Bridge | Human rights groups around the world express outrage over ‘disproportionate’ punishment of Deanna ‘Violet’ Coco https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/03/un-official-alarmed-by-jailing-of-climate-activist-who-blocked-traffic-on-sydney-harbour-bridge #ClimateActivistJailed #Australia #Auspol #UN #HumanRights

Did you hear about the mathematician that was afraid of negative numbers????

She will stop at nothing to avoid them.

As we wait for the Supreme Court to decide on this, total loans are not being forgiven: only up to $10,000 or $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients. Most people have a lot more debt, so they will still be paying that back for a long time. The income level for forgiveness is up to $125,000, but the mean (where most people are) is probably down near the average for the U.S, which is not exactly an emerging affluent earner.

Most of us who graduated a couple of decades ago only needed relatively small loans to finance our degrees. But today's students must often borrow staggering amounts of money. Is it "fair" to these students that we chose to stop investing in affordable higher education decades ago?

And what happens when June rolls around?

This 10 or 20K would help a lot of people and hurt no one.

Student Loan Forgiveness: 59% of Borrowers Won’t Be Able to Make Payments Come June-
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/student-loan-forgiveness-59-borrowers-163003288.html

This week at Mt Gibson we've been surveying the reintroduced numbat population. They are adorable and seem to be thriving. This one was hanging out next to the feral-predator fence that keeps them safe from foxes and cats. #WildOz

There are days like today, that I’m reminded from watching and reading Anthony Bourdain: it’s better to be kind than nice. Nice is a perfunctory action of a social contract to smooth things and often creates a “holier than thou” attitude in ppl.

Kind is who you are, what you do because it’s the right thing. You can be an angry, antisocial, but kind person that actually helps others.

Anyone can fake being nice while being awful behind the mask. Being kind is harder. And can’t be faked.

In 1840, a provincial doctor named Richard Overton wrote to Scotland Yard and suggested that fingerprints could be used in helping solve a recent murder.

"It is not generally known that every individual has a peculiar arrangement [on] the grain of the skin," he wrote. "I would strongly recommend the propriety of obtaining impressions from the fingers of the suspected individual and a comparison made with the marks on the sheets and pillows."

The advice was ignored.

#truecrime #history

😷 Exclusive: Public health expert tells NationalWorld that people should start wearing facemasks again as flu cases are 13 times higher than last year.

We found: Almost one in every 12 people were estimated to have flu in the week to 20 November - 13 times higher than the previous year.

From our health and data reporters Helen Johnson and Aimee Stanton.

https://www.nationalworld.com/news/exclusive-flu-cases-13-times-higher-than-previous-year-as-experts-advise-people-to-wear-face-masks-again-3939489 #flu #COVID19 #covid #news #uk

I see positive posts, interesting opinions and occasional cat pics here and I open the other app and see videos of kids getting punched.
The choice isn’t too difficult tbh!

People are willing to walk a lot farther when you make it a pleasant walk.

@evacide he’s a disgrace to men named Matt sorry

I see that there are people who are just now discovering that Matt Taibbi got the brain worms after people read some of the astonishingly sexist crap in his memoir (worst case scenario, he admits to being a rapist and serial harasser of his female employees, best case scenario he thought that admitting to being a rapist and serial harasser of his female employees was a funny joke that is appropriate to put in your memoir) who now believes that the greatest threat to humanity is "wokeness."

“The future is up for grabs. It belongs to any and all who will take the risk and accept the responsibility of consciously creating the future they want.”

-Robert Anton Wilson

#AI #Opinion #Politics #Automation #PoliticalOpinion

People are like 'oh you'd hate it if a robot/ai took your job'.

I'd be disappointed at losing my income, I wouldn't be disappointed at losing my job. I wouldn't like the effort required to get a new job to get a new income either.

If we had a universal basic income so people were not required to work if they didn't want that wouldn't be so bad. If productivity increases due to automation/AI, it can be taxed.

That the White House had to issue statements on...
1. The constitution mattering
2. The Holocaust having happened
3. Hitler being a demonic figure

... talks to the damage some of the other social networks (and their prominent leaders) are doing to the US.

The silence from the GOP on this is also worrisome. The US needs 2 functioning parties (at least) to work. Right now, it appears to only have one.

I'm not sure who thought it would be a good idea to attack the place where pretty much all of #infosec has shown up in the past few weeks, but https://hackmd.io/rD9nsTz1QeuPT-erxqjY-A?view happened.