@Lana he’s apparently a human incarnation of zombo.com

I needed to read this today. Thought someone else might need it too.

@mxfraud I would have but they muted everyone on the call and disabled chat 🫠

help I am stuck in a “GenAI for Leaders” training session and someone just said they want to use AI to “simplify hiring” and I’m about to scream

I do not believe
in the four horsemen,
but I confess
at this moment
all I can hear
are approaching hooves.

I went to a talk lately that was mostly about something else, but the speaker came out with:

“If you only remember one thing from this talk, remember this. Everyone in this room who likes helping people, raise your hand.”

Every hand, or nearly every hand, went up.

“If you like asking other people for help, keep your hand up.”

Almost every hand went back down.

“As you can see, people like helping you. When you ask for help, you’re making them feel good, even if you don’t like asking.”

I’ve genuinely forgotten the rest of the presentation but I won’t forget that.

@tlhInganHom ehhhh, “good no matter what” is a tradition that has long outlived its usefulness. Nothing wrong with a simple “well, I’m alive” or “not great, actually”

@Modernmodron has to have a minigame where you make illuminated blueprints

I watched the first season of #ToMyStar (Kdrama) and generally liked it. But the whole “my parents live in Italy” thing was an incredible extended joke that wasn’t even a joke. Seriously, whoever came up with that part of the story, kudos on an amazing job, that is going to be in my head for a long while

@JillsJoy stuck in my head for weeks, such a good song off a really good album

@colindean nothing more ego-deflating than trying your best to seriously communicate in a foreign language and having the other person give you a “it’s so cute that you tried, now let’s just use English because you’re embarrassing yourself” look

“Why GUIs are built at least 2.5 times | Patricia Aas”

https://patricia.no/2025/05/30/why_lean_software_dev_is_wrong.html

> It isn’t typing speed that constrains developers either. We are constantly making custom work in a context, doing it well requires us to deeply understand our context.

“Engaging with AI as a *technology* is to play the fool—it’s to observe the reflective surface of the thing without taking note of the way it sends roots deep down into the ground, breaking up bedrock, poisoning the soil, reaching far and wide to capture, uproot, strangle, and steal everything within its reach.”

Mandy goddamned Brown, everyone: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/toolmen

What makes LLMs work isn't deep neural networks or attention mechanisms or vector databases or anything like that.

What makes LLMs work is our tendency to see faces on toast.

Somebody posted the source code to the IRS’s Direct File to GitHub. https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file

bert: ernie, this heart sutra book is confusing. it says 'form is emptiness, emptiness is form' what does that even mean?

ernie:okay, bert. you know your paperclip collection?

bert: yeah

ernie: they're just bent metal, bert! they're only 'paperclips' because you use them that way. without you, they're just... metal

bert: so...they're empty?

ernie:yep. empty of fixed meaning. but because of that, they can become anything. a paperclip, a sculpture... or a marshmallow catapult, Bert! the heart sutra says when you stop clinging to what you think things have to be,you’re free to see how amazing everything already is

Bert: ernie, don't make a marshmallow catapult out of my paperclips

The irony of a holiday called "Memorial Day," where people don't even remember how it started. 🤷🏿‍♂️

Anti-Blackness is so powerful.

https://time.com/5836444/black-memorial-day/

This isn't forgetting. It's intentional history erasure, to justify present day racism.

Okay. I'm a teacher, so let me say this in a way everybody can understand.

If you ask me for $5 and I say no, but you take it out of my purse anyway, that's stealing.

If you ask me for $5 and I'm too drunk to either say yes or no, but you take $5 from my purse anyway, that's stealing.

If I give $5 to your friend, so you decide that gives you the right to take $5 out of my purse, that's stealing.

If I gave $5 to you yesterday, so you decide to take $5 out of my purse today, that's stealing.

If I'm flashing hundred dollar bills on the street, just really flaunting how much money I have, so you decide to take $5 out of my purse, that's stealing.

If I tell you I'll give you $5, but then, while reaching into my purse to get it, I change my mind and say actually no, but you decide to take the $5 anyway, that's stealing.

If you hold a gun to my head and force me to give you $5, even if I physically reach into my purse and hand you the $5 without another word, that's stealing.

If no one has ever given you $5, and you can see I have extra money in my purse, so you take $5, that's stealing.

If we're married, and you ask for $5 and I say no, but you decide to take $5 out of my purse anyway, that's stealing.

If you say "God gave me $5" and then take $5 out of my purse, that's stealing.

If you're my boss, and you tell me you'll fire me if I don't give you $5 right now, that's stealing.

If you want $5, and I reach in my purse and only give you $1, but you reach in while the purse is open and take $5 anyway, that's stealing.

If you pretend to be my friend in the hopes that being my friend will someday lead to me deciding to give you $5, you aren't actually my friend. And if you take the $5 you were expecting to get for pretending to be my friend, that's stealing.

The reason all men can easily understand this, and that there are no "grey areas" in stealing $5, is that men value $5 more than they value a woman's body.

"New study reveals that when used to summarize scientific research, generative AI is nearly five times LESS accurate than humans. Many haven't realized, but Gen AI's accuracy problem is worse than initially thought."

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rsos.241776