Tag Archives: ai

href weekly | Feb 2 – Feb 8 2025

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Bits

Supervillains in – with Greg Epstein, Chris Gilliard, and Jim Starlin https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/148678

“In a situation where the outcome is valued more than the process, a shortcut to the desired outcome will always be attractive.” https://archive.ph/h1Pz8

“We cleaned 860K English and 180K Chinese e-books from Anna’s Archive ..” https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-libraries-are-forbidden-fruit-for-ai-companies-but-at-what-cost-250131/

Politics & Economics

“Our assignment is to prove that a trade-off between openness and adaptability is not necessary—that a highly decentralized system, designed to respect individual freedom and community rights, can also respond nimbly to looming dangers.” https://thewalrus.ca/canada-has-spent-over-a-century-avoiding-collapse-can-it-keep-going/

“a future in which surviving the seemingly unsurvivable requires people to show some emotional dexterity, some ability to surrender whatever selfishness they’ve been harboring and see if they have something that someone else needs.” https://archive.ph/fJoZQ

“What’s standing in the way of a Canadian industrial policy that focuses on raiding the sky-high margins of American monopolists with third-party add-ons, mods and jailbreaks? Only the IP laws that Canada has agreed to in order to get tariff-free access to American markets.” https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham

href weekly | Jan 5 – Jan 11 2025

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Bits

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/whats-happening-to-the-internet

“It was never a terrible idea, at least, to use computers to connect to one another on occasion, for justified reasons, and in moderation (although the risk of instrumentalizing one another was present from the outset). The problem came from doing so all the time, as a lifestyle, an aspiration, an obsession. The offer was always too good to be true, but it’s taken us two decades to realize the Faustian nature of the bargain.” https://archive.ph/US4Na

A conversation with CEO Jay Graber https://www.wired.com/video/watch/social-media-reboot-a-conversation-with-jay-graber

..” is a platform that resolutely wishes it wasn’t. And that has profound implications for what its users want the platform to be, and what it can’t; in short, why it will not save us. … excessive dependence on platforms creates an ugly feedback loop that can swallow our dreams whole.” https://www.liberalcurrents.com/bluesky-wont-save-us/

Film & Video

“It takes a motion to notion and it takes a notion to motion.”

“In short, Sun Ra had a religious cult. Only instead of killing people, or drinking Kool-Aid, or committing mass suicide in preparation for some comet flyby, or trying to take over society through covert operations and all-out extortion of members … Sun Ra’s cult played jazz. They played jazz constantly, they played jazz with determination and fervor, and they played jazz in hats made of tin foil, sequins, duct tape, and purple rayon.” https://www.metafilter.com/79781/The-Sun-Ra-Quilt-of-Joy#2479221

Sound & Music

What we have now is a perverse, frictionless vision for art, where a song stays on repeat not because it’s our new favorite but because it’s just pleasant enough to ignore.” https://archive.ph/5Lx61

Politics & Economics

“I think of our move as being more than just ‘protest’, which implies that we academics lack the power to change the publication system directly … by starting new journals that are open, not-for-profit, and have high academic standards.” https://carbonchemist.com/journal-editor-mass-resignations-what-do-they-achieve/

“.. the only tool that can secure economic justice for workers who truly can’t help but do their jobs is solidarity.” https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/21/blockheads-r-us/#vocational-awe