JohnPettigrew

Hat wearer, recovering editor, feminist. Posts about publishing, books, coding, social & environmental justice, & their intersections. #TransLivesMatter #BlackLivesMatter He/him

JohnPettigrew boosted:
Smudge The Insult Cat 🐀SmudgeTheInsultCat@mas.to
2023-05-20
Mae is gae @theepictheymer this is the best word on urban dictionary TOP DEFINITION ソ> Schrödinger's Douchebag A guy who says offensive things and decides whether he was joking based on the reaction of people around him.
JohnPettigrew boosted:
2023-05-20

I have just dealt with an irksome IT problem, after trying many other ways, and panicky Googling, by simply turning the device on and off again

And now I feel the hot sun of ten million IT helpdesk people staring hard at me for not doing that first

JohnPettigrew boosted:
Richard LittlerRichard_Littler
2023-05-10

As an autistic person who doesn't particularly like conversing with people (or, rather, I don't really know how to comfortably interact with people), I don't particularly welcome AI chatbots/search engines that mimic human conversation. When they design the functionality of these AI chatbots, has anyone taken neurodivergent people/brains into consideration, or are they designed to mimic neurotypical interactions? I'm thinking long-term.
@actuallyautistic

JohnPettigrew boosted:
Hughsterhughster
2023-05-10

Of course the Tories have appointed the anti-trans professor who hosted Helen "reduce the number of trans people" Joyce as a "free speech tsar" tasked with forcing all other universities to accept anti-trans speakers—mere months after they put him on the EHRC board that's now trying to remove trans rights from the Equality Act. Because this is a far right government and, just as DeSantis said, they're trying to turn the UK into Florida.
clareflourish.wordpress.com/20
archive.ph/7RKD3

JohnPettigrew boosted:
Consent Games :verified:consentgame@games.ngo
2023-05-09

🥳 The final numbers are in!

⭐ During April:
▪️ 13,949 learned about consent by visiting our sites
▪️ 1,274 people played our consent games

April was Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Although April has ended you are still welcome to learn about consent with our free award-winning video games!

🌐 itch.io/c/1666435/consent-game

#Consent #VideoGames #PublicHealth #Education #IndieGame #Sociology #SAAM #Prevention #nonprofit @stopTDV @gamingagainstv @susanne @crecente @edutooters

Images from four consent games are shown: ADRIFT, How to Blorrble Blobble, Crossing Boundaries, and Stuck in a Dark Place.

"Consent Games for a Variety of Ages"
"Six free games about consent"
"No ads. No in-app purchases. No Tracking."
"From the 'Gaming Against Violence' program by 'Jennifer Ann's Group', a nonprofit charity."
JohnPettigrew boosted:
2023-05-07

Went for a lovely walk today to see bluebells in a local wood. We're a bit late in the season but it was lovely to see not just the bluebells but loads of cowslips, speedwell and other lovely spring flowers!

#bluebells #BluebellWood #SpringFlowers

Woodland with bluebells surrounded by green Spring growth, and a tree covered in yellow lichen in the foreground.
JohnPettigrew boosted:
AnarchoNinaWritesAnarchoNinaWrites
2023-05-07

Truly astounding to me how many people there are out there worried about being punched just because folks are talking about punching nazis.

Let me clue you in on a little history? Pretty much every waking moment between about 1941 and up until roughly the late 80's, everyone thought it was okay to punch nazis. It was so okay, running them over was a joke in the Blues Brothers movies. Guess what didn't happen? A chaotic mess of people punching folks who aren't nazis.

You're telling on yourself.

JohnPettigrew boosted:
Richard MurphyRichardJMurphy@mas.to
2023-05-07
JohnPettigrew boosted:
2023-05-07
2023-05-06

@shelenn Sorry for any confusion - my post was a reply to someone else in the thread, not you directly!

JohnPettigrew boosted:
2023-05-06

@KarenawokeKaren 6 arrested so far including the CEO of Republic.

I suspect TV cameras have now been instructed not to show these images ....

Yellow anti-monarchy posters saying Not My King
JohnPettigrew boosted:
🧡Karen a woke Karen 🧡KarenawokeKaren@mastodon.world
2023-05-06

New anti protest powers in force, the crackdown has begun, welcome to King Charles' Britain.

#NotMyKing

Police haul of Not My King placards and putting them into a hire vanA man in a yellow jacket, Not My King protester up against a shop window arms up while being apprehended by 2 Police Officers
JohnPettigrew boosted:
2023-05-05

"A "very concerning" rise in the number of people catching measles in the UK has been reported by health officials.

The virus spreads incredibly easily and a fall in vaccination rates is leaving more children vulnerable."

Get Vaccinated.
#VaccinesWork
bbc.co.uk/news/health-65481976

JohnPettigrew boosted:
2023-05-04

Jordan Neely was the latest victim of an alarming rise in vigilantism, encouraged by policies embracing the idea that people without homes + living with mental health conditions, especially if they are Black, need to disappear.

JohnPettigrew boosted:
Baldur Bjarnasonbaldur@toot.cafe
2023-05-04

Early reactions have been very promising:

"I bought it, and I read most of it (skimming the middle part), and it is brilliant. Thank you!" - Matthias Büchse linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:l

"I just bought the book this morning and it's exactly what I needed. I have not seen a clearer description of how generative AI works, what it might be good for, and what the risks are. The references alone are worth the price of the book." - Dave Cramer mstdn.social/@dauwhe/110306554

2023-05-03

@supernovae @jrm4 @msilpala @atomicpoet @shelenn The core of your argument seems to be that local moderation by instance admins is a bad thing, and the answer is to abolish the location where they work. Or do I misunderstand?

JohnPettigrew boosted:
Baldur Bjarnasonbaldur@toot.cafe
2023-05-03

Anyway, you can expect more of this sort of risk-focused worrying from me because I just published a book on the business risks of generative AI.

illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/

It even has a chapter dedicated to the risks of large training data sets, where poisoning is a big focus.

JohnPettigrew boosted:
Baldur Bjarnasonbaldur@toot.cafe
2023-05-03

“Poisoning Language Models During Instruction Tuning”

So, large AI models are a security shitshow because they can be poisoned through their training data. Turns out they can also be poisoned through instruction tuning. arxiv.org/abs/2305.00944

2023-05-02

@supernovae @jrm4 @msilpala @atomicpoet @shelenn And as to "Can a person of color join ruby. Social and talk about racism without being told to CW or tone it down because the local feed is about programming 24x7?": as with any smaller instance, ruby.social is a mix of topics, but with a flavour. (And, FWIW, given what I've boosted without pushback, I suspect it's a relatively safe instance.)

But it's not about my particular instance. The Local feed provides value to at least some of us.

Client Info

Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.04
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst