grvsmth

blogdiva, 5 months ago to random

CONGRATULATIONS CORY DOCTOROW @pluralistic 🥳

"2023 Word of the Year is “enshittification” – American Dialect Society

https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/

grvsmth, 15 days ago to random

"I think banning surveillance advertising would be a very good first step. We would be really cutting at the root of the pathologies that we are dealing with from the tech industry, which is this mass surveillance in the name of influence, influence to sell something, influence to convince someone to vote for something, influence to misinform someone. Ultimately, that’s the game."

• @Mer__edith

https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/24/signals-meredith-whittaker-on-the-telegram-security-clash-and-the-edge-lords-at-openai/

grvsmth, 3 months ago to random

Via @kconnormartin on LinkedIn: "The Oxford English Dictionary has an opening for an entry-level lexicographer.

"This is a rare opportunity for someone who is interested in researching the history of the English language:"

https://jobs.oup.com/uk/jobs/vacancy/editor-lexicography-oed-oxford/4131/description/

grvsmth, 7 months ago to random

This part from @Mer__edith was so good I had to write it down:

"studios would love to do the same Uber move: introduce GPT under the pretext that it is capable of doing their jobs.

"It doesn't matter that it is or not, let's follow this scenario forward: fire all the writers. Then put up 'Writerly,' the app where they have to low-bid each other every day to come back in under the title of an 'AI editor' with no stability, no long term future, no benefits, etc."

https://thedig.blubrry.net/podcast/ai-hype-machine-w-meredith-whittaker-ed-ongweso-and-sarah-west/

grvsmth, 7 months ago to random

My abstract was accepted to the Northeast MLA two years ago, but I wound up not going, because the COVID numbers got worse and the organizers showed no interest in protecting us. I haven't submitted to any conference since. I spent years working on LanguageLab, and I haven't presented it anywhere since.

They gave us a choice: be exposed to #COVID repeatedly or we'll give the career benefits to people who will. I chose the health of myself and my loved ones, but I shouldn't have had to choose.

grvsmth, 5 months ago to trans

The New York Times profiles Bernie Wagenblast, the voice announcer/actor who built a career around a masculine-sounding voice but has recently transitioned to live as a woman and is rebuilding a feminine voice and career to go with it.

There's way too much destiny talk for my taste, but I appreciate the nod to fluid presentation:

"Ms. Wagenblast, who is now 67, still uses [her masc voice] for gigs and said it defines a part of her."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/06/nyregion/bernie-wagenblast-new-york-subway-transgender.html

#trans #transgender #TransVoice

grvsmth, 1 month ago to random

Up to now, the administration of my university has been handling student protests peacefully. Today I was on my way to campus when I got an email that they called in the NYPD.

All my life people have been telling me that Israel helps keep us safe. I've never seen it. Israel, and the US government's imperial policies around it, have made us less safe, as Jews and Americans.

grvsmth, 3 months ago to random

Racists are attacking Malian-French singer Aya Nakamura for singing a song made popular by Edith Piaf at the opening of the Olympics in Paris. Fabric Pliskin reminds us that Piaf's great-grandfather, Saïd Ben Mohamed, was an ethnically Berber acrobat from Morocco, and her great-grandmother, Marguerite Bracco, also an acrobat, was from Piedmont, now part of Italy.

https://www.nouvelobs.com/societe/20240310.OBS85542/ouverture-des-jo-apres-aya-nakamura-faut-il-aussi-se-mefier-d-edith-piaf-dont-la-grand-mere-etait-berbere.html

grvsmth, 30 days ago to random

Sadie was my cat mom. We got her as a kitten when I was three or four. I remember the room she lived in with her mother and littermates.

At first I didn't know any better, so I handled her roughly, carrying her over my shoulder. She bit me and ran away.

Then one day I was sitting quietly and Sadie came and crept into my lap. I was always gentle with her after that, and she rewarded me with nuzzles and kisses.

I'm thinking of her on this Mother's day, and her mother, and her kittens.

grvsmth, 11 months ago to random

Welcome to everyone who's just joining or rejoining Mastodon!

Here's your periodic notice that it is statistically impossible to get a representative sample with a Mastodon poll. The most reliable thing you can find out are absolute numbers ("34 people think Aaron Neville is underrated!").

Please feel free to create, vote in and boost polls for fun. But please don't mislead anyone into thinking that boosting will achieve a "better sample size." It will not!

#FediTips #sampling

mmezabet, 1 month ago to linguistics

BRAIN ASPLODE!

I've never been able to spell "guarantee" correctly on the first try, and today I really looked at it to try to figure out why.

Which is when I realized that the opening "guar" sounds really close to "war" if you are someone who regularly says GUAO or GUËY.

Which is when I realized that a GUARANTEE is the SAME DAMN THING as a WARRANTY.

SAME. DAMN. WORD.

Fifty fucking years on this planet it took me to figure that out, ffs.

#linguistics #LanguageLearning #English #Latin

grvsmth, 2 months ago to random

Just listening to @emilymbender and @alex's January 22 Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, in which they give a well-deserved thrashing to a Goldman Sachs report.

I once worked as a temp secretary for Lehman Brothers, helping with reports like these. They're usually prepared during a few all-nighters by an Analyst just out of college (Pierdomenico) and a recent MBA Associate (Kodnani). Important ones are signed off on by a VP (Briggs) and even a Chief economist (Hatzius).

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/14416779-episode-25-an-llm-says-llms-can-do-your-job-january-22-2024

grvsmth, 20 days ago to random

I'm sitting at an outdoor cafe right now trying to write, and there's a steady stream of 10-30 second clips of music and/or talk coming from the phone of a guy sitting nearby.

He looks like a nice guy, but I'm baffled that it doesn't occur to him to use headphones.

I'm also surprised that more people aren't talking about how TikTok, Instagram/Facebook Stories, Twitter video and YouTube whatevers degrade the auditory environment for anyone else, whenever they're used without headphones.

grvsmth, 5 months ago to random

Happy to report that @Tusky, the Mastodon client for Android, now allows you to hide replies in a Tab, so that your timelines don't get swamped by random monologues! #FediTips

Tabs Home Show boosts (on) Show replies (off) Show self-boosts - Someone boosting their own post (off)

grvsmth, 3 months ago to trans

I keep hearing about this #trans timeline post on Tumblr that was taken down. A Google News search for "tumblr" comes up with one result, an opinion piece in the Sun. Does anyone have a link to a backup of the post in question?

grvsmth, 8 months ago to random

Someone just mentioned theremins. I checked YouTube, and I can't find a cover of "U Can't Touch This" on theremin. Very disappointed...

grvsmth, 3 months ago to random

Count me in team #AltText. I'm not boosting if your image doesn't have good alt text.

If you're going to screenshot a page as a teaser, then screenshot just enough that you can type the alt text.

Giving the people who can read the image access to the text, while screen readers just get "screenshot of [url]", is inequitable.

Why would you screenshot a page anyway? Mastodon doesn't have an algorithm. Do you think a screenshot of text will entice people to click more than your endorsement?

grvsmth, 4 months ago to random

At some point I passed 500 followers, which is pretty respectable for Mastodon. Thank you all for your attention. I enjoy interacting with you - which hasn't been the case on other social networks recently!

grvsmth, 4 months ago to random

I love how so many people were like "full text search is the biggest thing holding Mastodon back!" and then deliver it with the barest bones documentation on how to actually use it.

What does "in:library" mean? Is there any way to filter by instance? Does "from:" support wildcards? What if I want "language:" from certain countries? Can I combine any of these with AND, OR or NOT?

I know I could find these answers somewhere. But search without information literacy is a recipe for disaster.

grvsmth, 4 months ago to random

Okay, I've upgraded my phone to Android 14, and they no longer support my favorite #podcatcher BeyondPod. Anyone have an app they like? Here are some things I want:

• Doesn't support Joe Rogan
• Doesn't recommend anything
• Bedtime timeout
• Easy RSS integration
• Backup and restore to a file I own

It'd be nice to have something that can integrate with a website, but I don't want that to be mandatory for all users!

Please boost so I can get good recommendations!

grvsmth, 8 months ago to random

"Bard is posing as an assistant — an entity that can do burdensome things for you but that you would have to trust to deal with second-order problems without bothering you —and is, in reality, functioning as a shoddy interface on top of a stack of other shoddy interfaces and instead returning those new problems back to you in the form of chipper conversation and errors." - @jwherrman

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/09/the-ai-chatbot-assistants-are-here-do-we-want-them.html

grvsmth, 6 months ago to random

In 1995 I was in my twenties and broke, and almost never took taxis. But I remember people's self-hating reaction to Victoria Drakoulis's working-class accent in her taxi reminders ("Please remember to take all of your belongings").

I was one of the many people who thought "What if they used a New York celebrity? They wouldn't say those things about Joe Torre or Al Franken!"

@ironicsans has a history of New York's celebrity taxi announcements, starting with Drakoulis:

https://ironicsans.substack.com/p/a-celebrity-in-every-taxi

grvsmth, 1 month ago to random

Happy #Caturday! #Catstodon

grvsmth, 1 month ago to random

I don't think "flirt" should be used as an acronym for anything that doesn't necessarily involve actual flirting. Parties, novels, even chimpanzees - fine. Trains, COVID variants, paragliders? Just stop.

cc @Fritinancy
#naming #acronym

jonny, 4 months ago to random

Heard an ad for a smart watch that said "we analyzed all the sleep data from everyone, and everyone is sleeping more shitty, so buy this watch!" And have we reached the stage of surveillance capitalism where surveillance is a consumer feature