@cydonian@vivaldi.net
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

cydonian

@cydonian@vivaldi.net

Professionally: AI, data strategy, aviation.

Personally: Interests in travel, languages, history, post-colonial narratives, multiculturalism and much more. Do tend to think that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

Also on Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr, Medium and other websites too numerous to name. Also post GenAI-tuned classical poetry at https://me.dm/@metamutator as an amusement.

🦈 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

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cydonian, to random
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

If I can get my hands on this before Steam Deck (which Valve still hasn’t released for SG-based Steam customers), I’ll be very annoyed. https://www.theverge.com/23700094/asus-rog-ally-price-amd-z1-extreme

cydonian, (edited ) to random
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Zelenskyy and Pavel may or may not be dancing Naatu Naatu. Not all celebrities in front of that palace dance Naatu, please.

cydonian,
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(Yes they shot Naatu Naatu in the grounds of the Ukrainian Presidential Palace and Parliament if you didn’t know )

cydonian,
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@byogesh Naatu - Naatu should rightly be seen as an Indo-Ukrainian triumph. All of the extras in the song except the main characters are Ukrainian. The costume makers (but not designers) too; there’s a video of Rajamouli praising the professionalism of the Ukrainian crew.

All in all, the song now should be seen as an accidental tribute to better times in Kyiv.

(I’ve spoken/ written here against the erasure of Gond history in RRR, and refuse to see the movie. But there are complex themes here)

johnlray, to random
@johnlray@mastodon.social avatar

Big win! Millennials have been upgraded from "feckless losers who will never own a home" to "feckless rubes, stupidly owning all the homes!" https://finance.yahoo.com/news/millennials-fueling-generational-housing-bubble-010504430.html

cydonian,
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@johnlray @MattHodges That’s why we will always love avacado toast. Avacado toast isn’t judgemental.

cydonian, (edited ) to random
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

Maid to the family of Chairman of Surbana Jurong and Changi Airport Group was illegally made to work in two households. When she refused, they fired her and claimed she stole from them. 4 years later, she was acquitted of all charges.

The son claimed in court that women’s shirts found in the maid’s effects belonged to him. This was a clear lie, for which he was sentenced to 2 weeks in jail only now.

Left unreported in local media: the judge’s smack down: https://www.jom.media/karl-liew-the-case-against-the-prosecution/

cydonian, (edited )
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

In his Oral Grounds, the judge said “that the prosecution’s submissions “read like a mitigation and were lifted wholesale and repeated for effect by the defence in its own Mitigation & Submissions on Sentence.”

Nowhere do you see this mentioned in this piece from Today: https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/karl-liew-2-weeks-jail-lying-judge-parti-liyani-2151066

Or this: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/karl-liew-son-of-cag-s-ex-chairman-jailed-two-weeks-for-lying-to-judge-in-parti-liyani-case

cydonian, to random
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

“At the time of Hong Kong’s handover to China, its GDP per capita was slightly higher than Singapore’s. Today, Singapore’s is more than 40 percent higher than Hong Kong’s. This is despite Singapore being in a much less dynamic part of Asia than Hong Kong (South-east Asia compared to China). Clearly, when it comes to their economic fortunes, geography is not destiny.”

https://www.jom.media/why-singapores-government-and-economy-are-outperforming-hong-kongs/

liztai, to random
@liztai@hachyderm.io avatar

About 15 years ago, I had to travel around Britain for work. I discovered that cold sandwiches were a thing in the UK. When I asked for them to be toasted, the server behind the counter looked at me like I was crazy.

They weren't wrong. Cold breakfasts are not a thing in Malaysia, so after 7 days of cold beef sandwiches something in me broke.

I wonder if toasted sandwiches is finally a thing in the UK lol.

cydonian,
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

@liztai One of the major points of difference between wife and I. I love cold sandwiches. Wife doesn't. Thankful for the microwave ovens in Asian 7-11's. :)

cydonian, to random
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Brawndo: It’s got what plants crave. https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/comments/12xw3d2/definitely_wasted_3_hours_of_my_life_making_this/

cydonian, to random
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

Still want to pretend there’s freedom of speech or freedom from persecution in India anymore? https://www.deccanherald.com/national/gujarat-hc-judge-recuses-from-rahul-gandhis-petition-seeking-stay-on-conviction-1213120.html

randomwalker, to random
@randomwalker@mastodon.social avatar

People have been posting glaring examples of ChatGPT’s gender bias, like arguing that attorneys can't be pregnant. So @sayashk and I tested ChatGPT on WinoBias, a standard gender bias benchmark. Both GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 are about 3 times as likely to answer incorrectly if the correct answer defies gender stereotypes — despite the benchmark dataset likely being included in the training data. https://aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/quantifying-chatgpts-gender-bias

cydonian,
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

@randomwalker @sayashk This is worth investigating with Anthropic’s Claude and all the new open source LLMs (LlaMa, Dolly, Hugging Face’s thing etc) that are blooming as well.

Perhaps a weekend project if I have the time!

cydonian, to random
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

“Their landlord, Rochdale Bouroughwide Housing, denied all responsibility, saying that the mold was likely the product of the renters' questionable "lifestyle" and should be painted over. That ignorance cost the two-year-old his life, as the court found. Awaab died due to "prolonged exposure to mold" in an apartment that was "not fit for human habitation." The furious coroner asked: "How in the UK in 2020 does a two-year-old child die from exposure to mold in his home?"”

https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/britain-in-crisis-the-uk-faces-a-steep-climb-out-of-a-deep-hole-a-6b61dc6f-e33f-46f3-bd27-743364dd675c

cydonian, to random
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

Propaganda hour’s 100th episode to get commemorative ₹100 coin. But please don’t call it Monkey Bath.

https://m.thewire.in/article/government/mann-ki-baat-community-radio-stations-100-episode-modi

cydonian, to random
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2023, where AI is helping me write Sanskrit verse but is coming a complete cropper for Telugu poetic meter.

cydonian,
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

Also is it me or is Anthropic’s Claude giving better results lately? More thoughtful and elaborate.

cendawanita, to random

Trying to explain Ponniyin Selvan to my anglophone mostly east asian-facing friends:

"It's like, written around the same time as the Legend of the Condor Heroes, and as huge, but the plot is like Romance of the Three Kingdoms: just that we're talking about the Cholas, the Pandiyas, and the Lankans."

cydonian,
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

@cendawanita Written in 1950’s by Kalki Krishnamurthy, and first serialised in a weekly between 1950 and 1954. Set in 980’s CE though using actual historic figures.

So it’s historical fiction without being historic fiction (like Romance of Three Kingdoms, which was written in 14th century CE or Tamil’s own Sangam literature, which was first written 4440 years ago)

cydonian,
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@cendawanita Yeah it’s Romance of 3 Kingdoms like. Lots of palace intrigue and war action, although it can get too complicated for my tastes on movie. Waiting to get the book version 🙂

cydonian,
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@cendawanita @JubalBarca Planning to read it in Telugu. 🙂 Don’t like to read Indian lit in English in general, unless the piece is originally in English.

noelreports, to random Dutch
@noelreports@mstdn.social avatar

This is a very good read. It gives a good insight in which brigades Ukraine has formed for the upcoming offensive and how they are equiped.

Well done @noclador

RT @noclador
This is a visual overview of the publicly known Ukrainian spring offensive units.

This formation is already more powerful than the operational forces of i.e. the British or French or German or Italian or Spanish Army... but this is not all what is heading to the…
https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1650590089297141760

cydonian,
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

@noelreports This is how the thread looks like if you aren’t logged in to Twitter. Clearly, Russian trolls have done a number on the posts.

(Also, why folks should diversify away from Twitter)

zekuzelalem, to random

CEASEFIRE: Breakthrough in Sudan.

10 days into the conflict between Sudan's national military and paramilitary forces, the factions have agreed to a 72 hour ceasefire which appears to be holding, unlike previous attempts at a ceasefire. Ceasefire was mediated over by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Foreign states want to use this to ramp up the evacuation of their nationals.

Will this lead to concrete talks between the warring factions?

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/sudan-abyss-un-chief-says-diplomat-warns-foreign-meddling

cydonian,
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

@zekuzelalem Thanks for the thread. Succinct info, if depressing.

liztai, to random
@liztai@hachyderm.io avatar

Just completed a 2023 project: to "DeChromify" myself.

I wanted to move away from Chrome due to the privacy and security issues I've heard it has. I've chosen as my browser of choice, though I was tempted with Brave for a while. I think Firefox is good enough.

What browser are you currently using?

https://medium.com/digitalprivacywise/why-you-should-stop-using-google-chrome-6c934c9a827c

cydonian,
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

@liztai Haven’t touched a Google property for a long time. Avoided Chrome to the extent possible until the workplace mandated ZScaler. Workplace IT officially supports only Chrome so now I have no choice. But I installed DuckDuckGo as an extension and switched my search engine away.

cydonian, to random
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

संस्कृतं वाणी यस्य, गम्भीरं तद्वचो भवेत्। अर्थं यद्यपि न जानीत, कवित्वमश्नुते जनः॥

Meaning: Whatever is (said) in Sanskrit, its utterance becomes profound ("gambhīraṃ tadvaco"). Even if one does not know the meaning ("artham"), people perceive it as poetic.

(Generated with AI assistance from Anthropic's Claude)

cydonian, to random
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

“It takes a village to do all this. And a morally shattered, nihilistic movement that feeds off the fear that it generates. As long as we continue to empower that movement in government and law, we will remain in thrall to its pathology. Ringing the wrong doorbell, entering the wrong driveway, opening the wrong door will be invitations to violence and death.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-22/a-culture-that-promotes-paranoia-and-guns-with-deadly-consequences

MissingThePt, to random
@MissingThePt@mastodon.social avatar

Every Tweeter arriving at Mastodon:

cydonian,
@cydonian@vivaldi.net avatar

@MissingThePt Always remember to save a marmalade sandwich in your hat.

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