@purplepadma I read it during the first Covid lockdown. It felt very hopeful, not so much for the individuals but humanity in general & our more important accomplishments (art & culture!). More hopeful than a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction I've read so it felt very appropriate at the time.
The TV show's also pretty good.
Man, the Open Collective Foundation dissolution emails continue to be the worst and most needlessly hostile vibes. Pulling the rug out from under hundreds of great tiny vulnerable projects while speaking to them like a power-tripping schoolteacher is really something.
@ericshead I recognize that there's considerable variation in communication styles and preferences, but specifically when you've just done a bunch of damage, it feels so wild to me to not a.) apologize and b.) approach the people you've messed with with as much genuine care as possible, along every axis.
And to be clear, I'm not after, like, insincere small talk, but real care backed by demonstrated and extraordinary effort at repair.
11h20 : je passe au service RH en expliquant que j'aurai besoin d'un document à la con dans le cadre de ma recherche de logement. J'explique qu'il me le faudrait dans la journée et que je suis désolé de l'urgence mais je viens d'être prévenu. RH : oui pas de problème, envoie un mail en disant que c'est urgent
11h28 : j'envoie un mail [urgent] avec priorité haute.
15h12 : je fais une relance car j'ai eu des précisons de l'agence immo
16h12 : j'attends toujours. Je deviens une boule de nerfs 😡
J'essaie toujours de court-circuiter les demandes par ticket/mail précisément pour cette raison : c'est enterré ou pas pris en compte dans les temps dans 99% des cas
@davidallengreen thank you. Statement by Penny Mordaunt later apparently. I know this is part of the normal process, but it seems crazy that so many 100s of hours of Parliamentary & civil service time on some bills will be permanently lost. Another argument for fixed terms?
@mwl Maybe having the confidence you can handle violence if it happens may make you less scared, and therefore both more effective at delicate de-escalation tactics and at violence if de-escalation fails?
I know language is fluid and I try not to be overly prescriptivist, but I am never going to be able to accept “learnings” as a valid noun. I’ve tried, but I just can’t, and I need to accept that about myself.
@Meyerweb I'm with you, but how do you feel about “teachings?” After remembering that word, which I'm OK with, I'm torn about “learnings.” #Language#Usage
Shopping for memory foam mattress toppers is an exercise in sorting through dozens of products that appear to be almost exactly the same, and each one has reviews saying it's way too hard and uncomfortable right alongside reviews saying it's way too soft and you sink into it too much.
@rose_alibi There are so many things I own that I like that I wish I had bought five of at the time, because they are no longer made, or they are somehow worse, or they just aren't available for purchase online. And now I'm faced with this situation trying to replace them
Has anyone written about how textual generative AI feels strangely close to toxic masculinity in some respects? The absolute confidence in everything stated, the lack of understanding of the consequences of getting that confidence wrong for important questions, the semi-gaslighty feeling when it “corrects” itself when you call it out on something. It so often feels like talking to someone one would despise and avoid in “real life.” I’m curious if anyone did some writing on this.
I’ve seen speculation about “this is because the models were trained by white men on data from Reddit and Facebook” but I wonder if this is an issue of the training corpus, or is it just the intrinsic nature of LLMs? Is it possible to create a “hesitant, honest” LLM if you wanted to? I feel naïve asking this way, but that’s the part I don’t fully understand yet.
@Binder@mwichary "Mansplaining as a service":
AI generated texts sound like a schoolboy caught red-handed on a unfamiliar topic, just rambling everything that comes to his mind, making up facts, in order to get away having no real understanding of the topic, hoping that the person listening does not pay attention or is even more clueless.
yeah, i would like to eventually have a threads developer portal with API and universal links documentation hosted, but wanted to share these out for now
Horrible when those in charge make decisions that make your life much harder for purely selfish reasons without giving a crap about your situation, isn't it. Just awful.