@j2bryson@mastodon.social
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j2bryson

@j2bryson@mastodon.social

Still tweeting too https://twitter.com/j2bryson, Twitter is essential comms for a lot of the world e.g. activists in the developing world now, future historians… But increasingly here, on https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryson/ (barf!), and reading physical books.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Edent, to ai
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

🆕 blog! “Why do people focus on AI's failures?”

I saw a prominent AI proponent asking why people always focus on the things that AI gets wrong. AI works so well, he asserted, that it was churlish and childish to focus on a few minor mistakes? Which reminds me of an experience I had a few years ago. I was in a rural pub […]

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/05/why-do-people-focus-on-failure/
⸻
#AI

j2bryson,
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

@Edent @mattjhodgkinson https://joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2021/04/two-ways-ai-technology-is-like-nuclear.html

j2bryson, to random
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Milley’s comments about the second world war echoed in my head. It was, frankly, jarring to hear a recent top US official defend Israel’s mass killing of Gazan civilians by invoking wartime massacres that not only preceded the Geneva Conventions, but helped justify their creation.

‘I’m the new Oppenheimer!’: my soul-destroying day at Palantir’s first-ever AI warfare conference
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/17/ai-weapons-palantir-war-technology?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

j2bryson, to random
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It is essential that universities remain a place where humans are safe but their ideas are subject to critique. That is what universities are for. I wrote this 12 years ago for the UK, I repost it today for Germany and especially @bild. https://joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2012/12/why-belief-religion-should-not-be.html

j2bryson, to random
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This really seems underreported, presumably because it’s a Russian assault on NATO infrastructure, and no one wants to admit we’re at war?

Russia accused of GPS jamming after aircraft disrupted

Finnair suspended flights to the Estonian city of Tartu after GPS signal interference prevented two planes from landing. Estonia and Lithuania have blamed Russia for jamming GPS signals in the region.
https://www.dw.com/en/russia-accused-of-gps-jamming-after-aircraft-disrupted/a-68964307?

j2bryson,
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

@kravietz @vfrmedia There were also massive fires lit on the hottest days of the (hot!) summer of 2022 lit outside Paris & Berlin. In Berlin, someone blew up at ~5am (coldest time, but before the hottest day) the old munitions dump (recovered WWII stuff etc) southwest of the city, took a few days to put out. In Paris it was a series of fires lit at specific time intervals, but I'm not aware of any particular targets that were burnt.

j2bryson,
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

@kravietz @vfrmedia my guess: Some combination of fear of war, too much tolerance of the status quo vs fear of uncertain future, and the fact that some powerful people within every country believe (often falsely) that their interests align with those trying to undermine the rule of law, particularly limits on what they can do financially .

ZekuZelalem, to random
@ZekuZelalem@dair-community.social avatar

We hardly knew ya :(

Another of the Twitter replacement initiatives is shutting down after failing to generate sufficient business growth. Post.news was touted as the journalists' paradise, but it feels as though most journos abandoned their accounts soon after joining.

I'm not exactly sure why it didn't catch on, although a journalist only platform was hardly going to entice the social media masses. I think from now on, the standard for social media is to be federated.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/19/24135011/twitter-alternative-post-news-shutdown

j2bryson,
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

@ZekuZelalem @mattjhodgkinson The idea of stripping journalists away from the masses was just intensely ignorant of what made and still makes twitter an important political communication tool. It's incredibly frustrating that people think they can just magic a replacement for 2014 twitter out of the air. A huge amount of work went into building a verified AND useful communication web. The one place we might rebuild it in less than 20 years is if we reclaim twitter itself & rebuild on the ruins.

j2bryson, to random
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All that would definitely be bad – cynical, self-sabotaging, philistine. But there’s another possibility that is worse: that culture wars aren’t being fought to destroy the humanities – rather that humanities are being destroyed because they’re incredibly inconvenient to authoritarianism

1/2

How cuts and culture wars sent universities into a death spiral
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/11/the-goldsmiths-crisis-how-cuts-and-culture-wars-sent-universities-into-a-death-spiral?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

j2bryson,
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representing as they do “a pedagogical practice that calls students beyond themselves, embraces the ethical imperative for them to care for others, embrace historical memory, work to dismantle structures of domination, and to become subjects rather than objects of history, politics, and power”.

2/2

j2bryson,
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

"When you embark on an education that cannot obviously be commodified, that doesn’t translate into earnings, it is a way of saying (and believing) that your mind’s value to society is innate. Politics is your business because you are its business. You are the keeper of ideas, historical memory, compassion, context, hope, that the market cannot understand and authoritarianism cannot stomach."

#academia 3/3

histoftech, to random
@histoftech@mastodon.social avatar

Online Conference➡️
Rethinking the Inevitability of AI: The Environmental and Social Impacts of Computing in Historical Context

April 22, 2024: 300-500 word paper proposals due

July 18, 2024: Date of online conference

https://uva.theopenscholar.com/rethinking-the-inevitability-of-ai/

j2bryson,
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@histoftech @rg well the present and last few decades are pretty inevitable?

j2bryson, to random
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Not mentioned here: I first heard of the 15 minute city in Singapore, and it largely describes Berlin at least since the Pandemic, but not all German cities.

Why has the concept taken off in Paris but become a toxic idea in the UK?
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2024/apr/06/why-has-15-minute-city-taken-off-paris-toxic-idea-uk-carlos-moreno?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

j2bryson, to random
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Six presumed dead in bridge collapse were immigrants, soccer fans, family men

#GiftArticle #migration https://wapo.st/3TsQ0jq

j2bryson, to random
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

What?

Russia, China veto UN resolution for cease-fire in Gaza

The UN Security Council failed to pass a US-sponsored resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. Russia and China voted against the measure.
https://www.dw.com/en/russia-china-veto-un-resolution-for-cease-fire-in-gaza/a-68643064?

j2bryson, to random
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n05/pankaj-mishra/the-shoah-after-gaza Amazing. Via @Thomasarnold

j2bryson,
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

“Technology and the rational division of labour had enabled ordinary people to contribute to acts of mass extermination with a clear conscience, even with frissons of virtue, and preventive efforts against such impersonal and available modes of killing required more than vigilance against antisemitism.” —paraphrasing “Zygmunt Bauman, the Polish-born Jewish philosopher and refugee from Nazism” who in 1988 “despaired of what he saw as the ‘privatisation’ of the Shoah by Israel and its supporters.”

j2bryson, to Ukraine
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

In case anyone wonders what will happen in #ukraine to villages #russia recaptures.

(Probably not specifically against a religious minority this time.)

GRANTA NEAL ASCHERSON THE BORDERLANDS
GRANTA РАБСТВУЕТ ЭМЕМЯ 60P СКОП .H. MUM VOLE DE CHAM 1969 НАЯ ORDOI CHAMPAGNE BRUT NEW EUROPE!
CONTENTS ed Chile Graham Swift Looking for Jirí Wolf Neal Ascherson The Borderlands Michael Ignatieff Turia Patrick Zachmann The Death of Merab Kostava Victoria Tokareva Centre of Gravity Ludmilla Petrushevskaya Our Circle Inka Ruka Those from my Village The State of Europe: Christmas Eve, 1989 Josef Skvorecký George Steiner Jurek Becker Hans Magnus Enzensberger Werner Krätschell Isaiah Berlin Andrei Sinyavsky Abraham Brumberg Noel Annan Günter Kunert Tony Benn Czeslaw Milosz Ivan Klíma Stephen Spender Mircea Dinescu Yuri Ribchinsky Wedding Day Mikhail Steblin-Kamensky The Siege of Leningrad Vladimir Filonov Dying Village Joseph Brodsky Democracy Jonathan Raban New World (Part Two) Notes on Contributors 41 65 79 91 107 119 125 127 129 133 136 143 148 151 155 158 161 163 164 166 168 171 175 181 191 199 235 255

j2bryson, to random
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

Tesla in Germany: Locals vote against factory expansion plan

Residents of Grünheide near Berlin have voted against expansion plans for the large Tesla facility there. But the vote is not binding and local authorities can still decide. Turnout was high, though, indicating interest.
https://www.dw.com/en/tesla-in-germany-locals-vote-against-factory-expansion-plan/a-68313010?

j2bryson, to random
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

my advise, search for ecological flowers. they come up.

https://wapo.st/48cN9k7

j2bryson, to random
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

I can't believe I never heard Bowie singing Heroes in French before. Thanks @wmbr

https://track-blaster.com/wmbr/playlist.php?id=51499 availble until 18 February

j2bryson, to random
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

Pliosaur, T. rex of the sea, is the Jurassic monster of the moment

https://wapo.st/3OBZ9ER

j2bryson, to random
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

Facebook: 20 years of hope, manipulation and data trading

[below summary leaves out the 3 BILLION users part.]

Two decades ago, Facebook kicked off the rise of social media. But an initial enthusiasm has now given way to disillusionment, and criticism of the company's practices is growing.
https://www.dw.com/en/facebook-20-years-of-hope-manipulation-and-data-trading/a-68154753?

j2bryson, to random
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

New EU proposal aims to encourage sustainable consumption

The European Union legislation will make it easier for consumers to have products repaired rather than simply replaced at great expense.
https://www.dw.com/en/new-eu-proposal-aims-to-encourage-sustainable-consumption/a-68148929?

j2bryson, to random
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

Why countries are pulling funding from the U.N. agency for Palestinians

#giftArticle I really don't understand this – millions of people starving, and we withhold aid because of 12 people, 9 of whom are already dismissed, 1 dead, and 2 unknown? Is there more to this story? https://wapo.st/3SxOFZB

j2bryson, to random
@j2bryson@mastodon.social avatar

Just heard (under Chatham Rule) that the US is trying to get "carve outs" for its companies from the EU's #DSA and #DMA. That would be utterly insane for the EU to grant. It's also wrongheaded for the US to want. The EU (& world) a more stability and better #digitalgovernance
#AIEthics #techPolicy

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