Notices by GeePawHill (geepawhill@mastodon.social)

@arstechnica Like I dint already know that Microsoft was the bad guys.

@Gargron Some time back. I left Twitter earlier. But then I left Facebook and LinkedIn both.

I have one precious contact, my old mentor, who I have lost touch with. Others, friends, companions, associates, I surely miss, but not enough to suffer life in the corporate "commons-for-now" world.

@jenniferplusplus In privacy terms, yes, and even more in "let's get a noob situated" terms, too.

I'm a geek, I had no problem with it. And I love it here. But a whole lotta people have been overwhelmed by what they feel is its complexity.

Said it before, I'll say it again.

If we want better men, and we certainly do, we need to take better care of our boys.

Women can help with this, they really can, but ultimately, it's up to us men who have survived our masculinity, to the extent that we have, to serve.

Do it today. Even just a little.

Mentor a boy or a young man who could use even a *semi*-healthy male figure in their life.

It makes all the difference. It did for me, and I've sought to pay it forward. You can, too.

You kids today, with your protests, and your encampments, and your opposition to a genocidal war, I am old enough to be your *great* grandparent, and I gotta tell you something that, in your naive and wild and feckless youth, you may not have yet heard:

I am so proud of you.

I love you, and I support your efforts to end this war, and I oppose in the strongest possible terms the deployment of armed thugs to prevent your peaceful protest.

Keep the faith.

https://mstdn.social/@kathimmel/112334107930785954

Sugar, these are the badguys.

Have you thought *at* *all*, for even a minute, about the business model of OpenAI?

In one sentence: "We will take every actual human-created content, the golden egg, from everyone, without permission, and then we will use it to sell plausible made-up shit, simultaneously choking out the creation of all new human-created content, the goose."

Ponzi was *vastly* more sophisticated than this.

I've long regarded extractive capitalism as corrupt, but I had no idea they were all so stupid.

@thebravelittleposter I've a country store I favor for their onsite-made fudge, and they're, mmmm, evangelical, and their clerks are always very polite, even as I buy a twelve-pack of beer and quarter-pound of fudge.

But it weirds me out every time.

"Have a blessed day!" they say.

Weirds me out. Tempts me to talk to them about the history of the church. But. Because I like their fudge and I do not like being arrested for disturbing the peace, I just smile and walk away.

I mean, if you're so shocked, it's cuz, up until now, you thought everything was fine.

If, up until now, you thought everything was fine, I have a hard time taking you seriously, as anything other than a rich person who has been inconvenienced.

Honestly, none of these corporations care in any way, shape, or form about the communities we grow using their systems.

1) Corporations don't care because they *can't* care, because caring is something living beings do, and corporations aren't living beings.

2) Corporate success depends on quarterlies. Corporations create and honor spaces for community exactly as long as those spaces feed the quarterlies.

Lay off this "I'm so shocked" shit, wouldja?

Fuck capitalism & capitalists.

@agilealliance My trans friends will not go to Florida, not cuz they're mad, cuz they're at risk of their lives. My Black friends won't go to Florida, not cuz they're mad, cuz they're at risk of their lives. My gay and lesbian friends won't go to Florida, not cuz they're mad, cuz they're at risk for their lives.

Go broke, walking away, go broke. But go broke *proud* that you cared more for humans than for a venue-deposit.

@agilealliance I don't give a fuck about your sunk fucking cost.

Apologize, and eat the cost.

You're committing a sin you'll never come back from.

Your one chance, and it's slim, is to just admit that you made a mistake, ask for forgiveness, and move forward.

@agilealliance

You're doing a conference in Florida?

You truly represent the apotheosis of "Agile".

For reals, yo.

You're cool with your 3,000 person venue where no one who isn't a cishet white salesperson/john man is welcome?

Jesus fucking Christ.

I was already estranged, I freely admit it, But this is beyond the pale.

Fuck the Agile fucking Alliance. They aren't what we wanted, they never have been.

We need to argue about the rig.
We need to argue about how to break the rig.
We need to argue about what kindness is.
We need to argue about how to be kind to people less privileged than us.

We need *all* those things.

We don't actually need to pontificate on whether a machine has cognition.

We need to figure out how to care for everyone we see, every day.

I am not trying to set up some cardboard villain here, that we can all shoot at.

I am telling you that you and I -- AND I -- need to find the way to change the frames that seem to justify this horrible rig we're all caught up in.

Baby, they don't give a fuck about what intelligence is. They don't give a fuck about the Yale School or neural networks or walks-like-a-duck, or Godel.

They give a fuck -- I am not hating here -- about how important it is that they and their circle stay afloat, in a cold hard world. They give a fuck about extracting value from community because it is the only way they know, it is the way they have found themselves in, it is the way to their identity and value as humans.

When we catch our c-suite commissioning a team to explore CoPilot, what we are discovering is not that CoPilot is intelligent.

We are discovering that the owners have not even the slightest clue of how the non-owners create the value so cheerfully extracted.

When we catch our student copy-pasting GPT answers into their essays, what we are discovering is not that GPT is intelligent.

What we are discovering is that our pedagogy is insufficient to the complex needs of someone less lucky than us as they try to learn. (And sometimes, too, what we're discovering is what a horrible idea certification is.)

When we catch our assistant *insisting* that they be allowed to chat with Eliza in private, what we are discovering is not that a few thousand lines of LISP has created the singularity.

What we are discovering is that we are not taking adequate care of our assistant, and as a result they are sad, and lonely, and afraid to say how they feel.

The thing about engaging in the delicious pilpul of the intelligence conundrum -- oh I feel it, I feel it, I'm an AI dork from way back -- is that it is an excellent distraction from seeing the extractive capitalism that has made and continues to make our lives -- our *privileged* lives -- bereft of meaning.

Oh, oh, let's debate Turing & Searle & Hofstadter & Minsky! Let's be angry, let's be slow, let's be open, let's be, let's be, let's be . . .

let's be not seeing the forest for the trees.