maol

joined 3 years ago
[–] maol@awful.systems 3 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Seems like Yud saw fanfiction as an arena he could advertise in and recruit from, not a community he was participating in. Hence he used all the tricks to get as many hits and reviews as possible.

[–] maol@awful.systems 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

He has a page on TV Tropes too, but it's much shorter

E: HPMoR also has a page.

[–] maol@awful.systems 1 points 2 days ago

They should try doing the Harlem Shake next

[–] maol@awful.systems 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Why are they trapped in 2014 making parody music videos

[–] maol@awful.systems 6 points 2 weeks ago

What a twat. "It's much harder to bullshit people than to be rigorous and skeptical guys. Not only is everything fine, I'm actually a better person than ALL my critics"

[–] maol@awful.systems 4 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, that is really depressing.

I think it's a sunk cost thing for the authors, but also it could be fear of coming off as "disgruntled" to people they're hoping to communicate with. They still have hope of changing these communities, but they know these communities are very hostile and dismissive towards any criticism, especially criticism from perceived "enemies". They also don't want to lose whatever power and respect they have in those communities. So emphasising how great these groups are and how smart all the members are and how much they got out of being a member is a tactic to try and get around all that hostility. They want to flatter the remaining members enough that they'll retain their respect for them. Which in itself is a sad comment on the attitudes common in these communities.

[–] maol@awful.systems 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this:

He seems to have spent a lot of time on early tumblr, but young lefty activist women horrified him. I don’t think anyone explained that people are nicer in person and volunteering in person is a great way to fall in love.

Could you explain?

[–] maol@awful.systems 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

I guess the "end the drug wars and stop the attacks on communities of colour" politics that I assume many harm reduction activists had in 00s/10s California wouldn't gibe well with the "I am rich and smart and I will never die so I should be allowed to do whatever I want" politics of TESCREAL.

I've never been a drug user but my impression is that like safer sex education, harm reduction education is actually more likely to turn people off using drugs than encourage them to try it. Like, check out this page about amphetamine harm reduction, which mentions that taking it might affect your immune system, damage your heart, cause psychosis and trigger mental health problems and cause malnutrition. Doesn't exactly make it seem attractive!

[–] maol@awful.systems 8 points 3 weeks ago

Wow, it's formerly gifted children all the way down.

[–] maol@awful.systems 7 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Speaking of 60s psychedelics use. This is from an interview with two members of 1960s band The Pretty Things:

microdosing LSD [is] a practice [Phil] May thinks may have been invented by a keyboard player who performed with the band in the 70s. “He used to have a little lick of acid every morning while standing on his head, doing his yoga exercises.” And did it help him psychologically, as latterday devotees of microdosing claim it can? “Well, no, not really,” sighs May. “He went pretty loony, to be honest.”

[–] maol@awful.systems 6 points 1 month ago

I remember reading a while ago about the defunding of the authority that investigated alleged miscarriages of justice and false convictions. I guess that solves one of the problems with this 👍

 

God help us. These workers are employed by a subcontractor, Covalen.

Multiple workers from Covalen’s ‘AI annotation’ service spoke to The Journal Investigates about their roles. Their day-to-day work involves creating prompts that are fed to Meta’s AI platform so the system can be trained according to guidelines.

In order to do this, some workers have spent entire shifts pretending to be paedophiles online seeking child sex abuse related information, or suicidal people looking for details on how to kill or hurt themselves.

Covalen also does moderation for Meta, with workers forced to watch extremely violent and disturbing footage that has been flagged for moderation.

“Sometimes in my dreams I am the victim, but sometimes – and this is far worse – I am the perpetrator,” they said.

One bright spot:

Over 100 Covalen employees have now joined the Communications Workers Union (CWU). The toll that dealing with sensitive content and inconsistencies in wellness break length were extra motivating factors for the move.

They are also asking for a better rate of pay, as they are currently earning an average of €29,700 per year.

 

"Total demand for electricity last year grew by 4.4pc, or 1.3 terawatts (TW), but 80pc of that increase, or 1.1TW, was from data centre growth."

Training data for LLMs = higher energy prices and environmental degradation.

 

A video interview with the artist John Wild about AI, AGI, eugenics and Silicon Valley TESCREAL cultism. Posting without watching.

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