Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

It's so funny that our current problem with AI is that it's more obedient of its operators than its owners.

Hello Mastodon.

I am looking for new PhD students to come work with me at the Oxford Internet Institute in 22/23 (@oiioxford) to study the future of data privacy and digital rights, the impact of AI and algorithms on digital platforms, and help co-create better digital futures.

Boosts very much appreciated! 🐘

If the Dems actually were serious about taking and keeping power (at least for a few generations) they would be fixing healthcare. If any party successfully makes healthcare free at point of service, they won't need to worry about losing an election for a good long while. But, of course, nobody in either political party actually cares about winning voters, as it's the campaign funders who they are really working for.

https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/wisconsin-medicare-for-all-health-care/

Underground greenhouses are helping indigenous communities achieve greater food sovereignty and adapt to the climate crisis.

#AppropriateTechnology
#FoodSovereignty
#Greenhouses

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/03/south-dakota-reservation-food-desert-residents-transforming-crop-oasis

Had an uncomfortable moment earlier this morning that I'm still mulling over.

A friend of mine had boosted a toot, I clicked through, and read what I thought was an interesting dialog representing diverse perspectives on an issue.

I was poised to recommend the thread, when I dug a bit deeper and saw some stuff that seemed weird and out of place. Then viewed the thread on the original instance and saw that there was some abusive trolling by someone on an instance my instance blocks.

For background on the Russian antiwar movement see our coverage here

https://sub.media/system-fail-17-no-war-but-the-class-war/

Students respond better to feedback when it's depersonalized.

Personal: Your wording here is unclear
Impersonal: The wording here is unclear.

Personal: Your organization is confusing.
Impersonal: The organization is confusing.

Personal: You made the opposite claim in the previous paragraph.
Impersonal: The previous paragraph made the opposite claim.

I've found that this makes a massive difference, giving students the detachment they need to focus on their writing.

#AcademicMastodon

Interesting visualisation from 'Our World in Data'

https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

#RailStrike #union #RailroadStrike
The Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee has announced an online rally this Tues at 7 pm EST, register here: https://t.co/E5UxiVwdVV
Supporters are encouraged to attend!!
If you are a railroad worker, To join the Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee (RWRFC) email railwrfc@gmail.com or text (314) 529-1064
The RWRFC issues the following statement, declaring congress & the presidents attempts to crush a rail strike illegitimate:

Let's say you have a legislative body that wants to be able to kill popular bills while maintaining an aura of legitimacy. What you do is this: create an abstruse, arbitrary rule about how bills are adopted that requires a super-majority of votes for anything to get passed.

1/

“Gates sold it by announcing a product that didn’t exist, developing it on the model of the best version available elsewhere, not testing it very seriously, demonstrating an edition that didn’t fully work, and finally releasing the product in rather buggy form after a lengthy delay. From then on this modus operandi became Microsoft’s trademark”, From https://web.archive.org/web/20051013072349/http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS_1.html

@lightweight Unix since the 80's DEC prior. I watched aghast Microsoft do what it did - putting back computer literacy and development by 10 years. At least. Never mind. They did get some good acquisitions and some of those are deeply embedded in organisation IT systems. Microsoft supports those assets as best it can. In the end, it is Microsoft who'll be called on if any of the millions of lines of code i wrote against such assets need to be supported. Woe is their email debacle.

Join us, other civil liberties groups, and concerned residents on Monday at 9:30 AM at City Hall to tell San Francisco: No Killer Robots!

@GuerillaOntologist @Matt_Noyes

I like the ideas around social wealth funds. IMO governments should borrow money and invest in a Total World Stock Index funds.

They can borrow money cheaper than capitalists, and with index funds get the exact same return as capitalists. Seems like a no brainer.

Especially if done via a customer owned mutual like Vanguard.

TIL that the founder of Gillette was a utopian socialist.

"He published a book titled The Human Drift (1894) which advocated that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public, and that everyone in the US should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by Niagara Falls."

It's a trick question, the US only has one party: The Corporate Party. And yes, one of their main goals has always been to crush any real labor movement, any real political power from working people, and both the liberal and conservatives wings of the party work tirelessly towards this goal.

@lightweight @normandc Ultimately the reason why they push so hard to get companies to fully switch over is once you are reliant on their cloud it is much harder to justify solutions that bring you out of it piecemeal, even if they are better.

I never thought, when I trained or worked as a GP, that Diphtheria and Polio or, to a large extent, measles, would again be things that I might have to recognise. Nor would I have believed that malnutrition on a scale currently seen would be tolerated by society. I was wrong - how quickly are the hard-fought gains lost.

I also feel disdain for any IT professionals who actively help to make others dependent on Microsoft. To me, that's actively working to make the lives of others worse.

Being smart gets you maybe a 10x advantage in income opportunity over average people. And that's guessing very very high.

Which means anyone who's a billionaire got there not because they are smart, but because they were exceptionally lucky, or, more likely, they exploited someone or something (or their parents did).

So please stop thinking that billionaires are smart. Mostly they are narcissistic sociopaths.

(but they really, really, really WANT you to think they are smart...)