Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

I am again asking you to stop referring to transgender rights as a "distraction" from the real issues. Civil rights issues are not less important than the price of eggs

https://notes.djnavarro.net/posts/2026-11-01-distraction/

Some notes on WRITING:

> Writer’s block […] usually comes from the perhaps wrongheaded notion that when I sit down to write that I just sit and it pours out. But even if it looks like that, that has no basis in reality: do not imagine if it looks easy and quick, that the process was easy or quick.

https://critical.computer/writing/

I slow walk updates for most of the software I rely on now, either because it’s already slop or because it has no viable anti-AI policy and might become slop without notice

I’m at the end of the line for new mobile devices because the platform I planned to switch to after iOS is now proudly doing slop too

it’s cute to pretend I have the option of pretending to do purity. and again, I realize the accusation is there to make us look unhinged and incompetent. but I’m fully aware of how much of the infrastructure I rely on is slop, and I’m fully aware what can go wrong if and when any of this infrastructure breaks.

I’m not sure any of the “I’m anti-AI but anti-AI has gone too far” people have that level of awareness. I haven’t seen any evidence that we share the same anxieties.

Update on the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature anomalies based on the new proposed analysis from @hausfath , @RARohde and Bruce Calvert
https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-412/
#climate

I hate consolidations. Give me some REAL competition dammit.

“DoorDash gobbles up Instacart in $17 billion deal”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doordash-buys-instacart-in-17-billion-deal/

People keep comparing Flock and "predictive policing" tech to Minority Report

but I really think we should expose more people to the more apt anime Psycho Pass

Minority Report is policing through psychics with clairvoyance, whereas Psycho Pass is literally a surveillance state relying on AI analysis of 24/7 surveillance feeds and automated threat detection systems that tell police who they're allowed to kill on-sight for no reason other than "potential future criminal". Flaws and all

I played through the short “cozy horror” game The Midnight Walk, and I’m pretty impressed by the artistry. It really is a cool work of art.

The most amazing part of the game to me is that most things in it were made of *physical* claymation models which were animated and then 3D-scanned. This gave the game a highly physical and tactile feel, which added to the miniature arts-and-craft feel of the game.

There were video clips in the game in which the physical models were shown puppeteered by real people dressed in black. They didn’t really try hide the performers, and that gave the presentation an almost stage-production feel. Reall cool.

The game itself was short and linear, but the story was heartfelt and the characters sympathetic. You can play the game in VR, but I didn’t.

Recommended! It’s a refreshingly human alternative to the AI slop out there.

#games

https://www.moonhood.se/moonhood-studio-games

"I don't think the robots are taking over. I think the men who play with toys have taken over. And if we don't take the toys out of their hands, we are fools."

__ Ray Bradbury

Can we please just tax the fucking billionaires

So the term for AI-generated animated films is "slop-motion", right?

“On X, prominent traders complained that they had lost money; blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps reported that around 700 users appeared to have been affected, with approximately $2.7 million stolen.”

#crypto

“Polymarket Halted International Trading After Hackers Drained Accounts”

https://www.wired.com/story/polymarket-flagship-platform-hack-traders-lose-money/

RE: https://sfba.social/@drahardja/117538952598314894

Mentally bookmarked for future sharing!

whynoai.info joins leavesubstack.com in my brain as a memorable and helpful place to point people.

Had an interesting online exchange with an event organizer who asked me to repost their AI-generated car event flyer. I declined, and they asked why because AI is the latest and greatest thing. They were really polite and curious about it, so I linked my site https://whynoai.info and thanked them for being curious.

A day later they came back to me and said that they now understood why I took my position and that they respected it.

I like to think that I helped shine some light on this topic for one more person.

#goodNews #ai

It’s interesting that mathematicians see the release of the 700+ purported mathematical proofs (we don’t know how good they are until mathematicians actually read them) as a threat to their existence, and not a tool that can help them move more quickly; and that I think speaks volumes about their recognition that none of these papers were published *to further mathematical curiosity*, but rather as a tech demo for private corporations.

Mathematicians don’t do math like a factory worker makes widgets. They pursue directions that they find *interesting* and that may someday uncover *useful tools* to model natural behavior. Mathematicians didn’t *ask* for Anthropic and OpenAI to help them with math; these companies simply wanted a press release, essentially claiming that their product rendered math academics obsolete. And their release was so voluminous that it would take months if not years to tell whether their claims had any merit—they basically DDoS’d the math world.

#ai

That every single software, app, or platform I rely in has gaping feature and design holes in it – all of which cost me and every other user money in lost productivity – and yet those fuckers keep ignoring the shit they should be fixing in favour of more "AI" features is just constantly incredibly annoying

The shit we're forced to use is full of beginner design mistakes and then they just turn around and keep inventing new ways to break things every day

This industry is so frustrating

Can we coin a fallacy name for the "just use a newer model" thing that LLM addicts subscribe to?

It's such a weird pattern. "Oh, you're using Sloppo F, that's old and no good, you should use Sloppo G". But in 6 months, it's "Sloppo G is no good, try Sloppo H". A model is only good if it's new, apparently!

There are strong elements here of:

- Lack of self awareness
- Failure to observe patterns over time
- Straight up gambling ("the next hand will be better")

The best name I can come up with is the "Latest Model Fallacy". Which is pretty boring. Got anything punchier?

Since people love hate-sharing these, I thought I'd get in on the action. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/10/30/800120153/cartoon/brain-dead-op-eds/

"Writing is Magic; Machine Writing is Ash"

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/machine-writing-is-ash/

My take on why everybody should be writing. Bad writing. Sloppy writing. Unstructured. Whatever. Writing is magic even when you don't have readers and are writing just for yourself.

Matt Stoller thinks #AI software is going to replace established #saas tools because he vibe coded a utility with no logging, no security, no audit/compliance and very little complexity and but thinks he's 85-90% of the way there and that...

> poorly done AI-built software is just not that much worse than what exists now

Oh my sweet summer child, if you truly think that, you ain't seen nothing yet! Just wait for all the CEOs to f*** around and find out that vibe coding "systems of record" might not be the best idea if you want to keep your S/ME solvent/afloat and free from legal challenges and fines.

I do agree with the main thrust of "SaaS companies are evil, enshittifiying gatekeepers" but to claim AI could soon just magically replace this stuff is completely mad.

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-the-2-trillion

/Cc @davidgerard

@kawazoe @zzt I unfortunately am forced to use llms in my job and I also spent many years as an academic studying language models and transformers which, at the time I was excited about but now am basically ashamed of because the llm industry has essentially nerfed any positivity anyone has towards machine learning in general. A lot of my work was showing limitations of transformers and using different models and the refutation was always "bruh we don't need this we have jippity now".

I'm incredibly sad and angry about what Clammy Sammy and his friends and frenemies have stolen from me and my colleagues. I understand LLMs more than most people and that's why it's especially infuriating seeing people claim they are intelligent, that they will become AGi, that we'll solve hallucinations and all those super scammy claims that are basically just not possible with this family of algorithms.

So yes an impure position is possible: I have a PhD in "LLMs" and I write an anti-llm blog. Fuck anyone who tries to draw false dichotomies.

Seeing others who are strongly resistant really takes the edge off the general anger and mourning so thank you for seeing this shit for what it is!