@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es
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PaulGrahamRaven

@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es

Science fiction writer turned tech critic turned STS/critical futures academic turned consulting critical foresight practitioner and worldbuilder-for-hire. Resident in (and aspiring citizen of) Malmö, Sweden.

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emma, to ai
@emma@assemblag.es avatar

Chaoting posting and reposting within the last 90 mins, lol. I am thinking about the role of Silicon Valley proto-fascism in sparking or reinforcing leftist critiques of which (I'll die on this hill) rarely sufficiently address the positive applications (e.g. for medical research)

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@emma The problem here is the conflation and collection of a very diverse and probably incommensurate range of applications of computing under one highly loaded and massively hyped misnomer. Or, more simply: none of this stuff is "AI", really, and labelling medical information technologies with the same term as the generative-model crap serves only to discredit the former when the latter finally, inevitably, falls on its arse and fails.

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@emma Or, to put it another way still: there will still be funding for the medical applications when the AI winter blows in; perhaps slightly less, but not much, and what there is will probably be spent more wisely, because the smokescreen of stupidity will have mostly blown away.

ingrid, to random

Me in 2020: well, seems like journalism is not panning out for me maybe I'll go lie low in academia for a little while to figure out next moves

Me in 2024: lol, lmao

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@ingrid Ask me about my time in 1) the live music industry, 2) libraries, 3) bespoke web development and 4) freelance writing

PaulGrahamRaven, to general
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

thank you, Copenhagen

https://www.velcro-city.co.uk/thank-you-copenhagen/

Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

Ok guys, the fascists are using violence to take power. So far we've done a lot. We've said they look silly. We've even pointed out they are stupid. So now I think it's time we hit them hard and we hit them fast, by pointing out the logical flaws in their arguments.

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@Loukas I was not expecting a Red Dwarf reference.

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@Loukas Well, quite

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Gave a talk on worldbuilding at Copenhagen University this afternoon, and I don't mind saying that I knocked it right out of the park. Video should be available next week.

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@Loukas Thanks, Loukas. :)

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Wow, hoooooly shit has Substack gotten super-thirsty.

Just signed up for someone's letter, what must be the first time in a good couple of months or more, and had to click through four pages of not-quite-dark-pattern attempts to get me to sign up for all sorts of other only marginally related bollocks...

I'll give it to the end of the year before they've gone full enshittification, as per @pluralistic

catandgirl, to random
@catandgirl@socel.net avatar

Facts aren't feelings.

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@catandgirl I'm feeling very called-out by that admirably subtle tarot reference there...

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

A little confused by the "Reddit is being poisoned" discourse, if only because I guess I already considered it useless for anything substantive? To what sort of topics were people going there for answers they could trust?

PaulGrahamRaven,
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For clarity: I'm not arguing it hasn't been / isn't being poisoned, but more agog at the prospect of it somehow becoming worse.

Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

Journalism needs to focus on what's new, what's surprising and what's uncertain.

That's why the news can give you such a false picture of reality - because lots of important things are not uncertain. And they're not that new; but we just don't talk about them in the media because they are no longer 'surprising'.

As Hans Rosling said, you can't get an accurate picture of the world from the media, you need actual education for that.

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@Loukas It's almost like that's why it's called "news"...

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@Loukas Concur.

hrheingold, to LLMs
@hrheingold@mastodon.social avatar

Like words, molecular sequences in biological components are tokens that can be manipulated by :

“Here, using large language models (LLMs) trained on biological diversity at scale, we demonstrate the first successful precision editing of the human genome with a programmable gene editor designed with AI.”

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.22.590591v1

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@hrheingold Let's hope that works out better than the "novel materials" model, or at least that someone checks the sums before going anywhere near sn actual human patient, eh?

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/new-analysis-raises-doubts-over-autonomous-labs-materials-discoveries/4018791.article

tomstafford, to random
@tomstafford@mastodon.online avatar

I just been told by a hotel that they do not offer an inclusive breakfast, but a "delicious hospitality concept" is available.

I'll report back, but I'm wondering if a concept is really going to get me through the day better than some toast and a cup of coffee

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@tomstafford Delicious Hospitality Concept is the name of my new parody Britpop band

PaulGrahamRaven, to worldbuilding
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Malmö music futures: Waves of the Blue Sea

https://www.velcro-city.co.uk/malmo-music-futures-waves-of-the-blue-sea/

tomstafford, to random
@tomstafford@mastodon.online avatar

UK HE shrinking

"This is a live page of all the redundancies and closures taking place across the sector at the moment. "

https://qmucu.org/qmul-transformation/uk-he-shrinking/

Page from QM , listing 50 institutions which are planning for redundancies

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@tomstafford Good grief---that's a lot of blood on the floor.

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@tomstafford Yeah, feels familiar. Similar scenes here in Sweden, though much less severe, as the social fabric is nowhere near so shredded. Nonetheless, I'm increasingly seeing my own involuntary exit from the sector as something of a bullet dodged; better to leave under your own steam than be thrown out as part of a big batch.

mistertim, to random
@mistertim@assemblag.es avatar

Euro train folks: any tips on the best routes for getting between Barcelona and Copenhagen? It looks like I could do it in like 23h non stop but am considering breaking the journey at least in one direction. Paris i guess is the obvious stopping point but I'd quite like to try something different.

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@mistertim Can be done, but as you rightly surmise, brutally tiring and risky. Break the trip in Paris or Brussels. There may also be a route up through southern Germany, but it's a few years since I last looked...

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@mistertim Not even sure what this is, but I do live just across the bridge from Copenhagen, so if you fancy a day off while you're up here...

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@mistertim Hmm, top end of June - I should be about. You'd be very welcome to come hang out in Malmö for an afternoon. It's a nice little city.

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@mistertim If you have the time to research the options -- and I do recommend setting aside most of a day for tweaking and testing -- try plugging subsections of the route into RailEurope's search function. But as always Seat61 is your go-to for solid advice.

eversion, to random
@eversion@assemblag.es avatar

Building junction details haunt you in the night, coming at you in the small hours with threats of kW egress and H2O ingress. Sleep evades you as all the material intersections pile up.

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@eversion

A claymation monkey in a pirate hat sighs and rolls its eyes before it plays a desultory punch-line rimshot on a drumkit, while looking deeply uninspired

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@eversion (Puns don't kill people; people kill people.)

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