Torsten Kathke

@kathke.com

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Historian. 19th/20th century US & Germany. JGU Mainz. 70s/80s cultural criticism, pop science, futurology. Book: Wires That Bind. @torstenkathke on most things.

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Torsten Kathke

3.800 Kilometer rund um die Uhr zu kontrollieren, sprengt die Kräfte der deutschen Polizei. Der Kampf muss sich auf die Hintermänner konzentrieren 👉 https://taz.de/Debatte-um-Grenzkontrollen/!6020890/

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Torsten Kathke

The same can be seen with Björn Höcke in Germany where he will pepper a speech with so many phrases meant to be incendiary that the majority go under the radar because the press tends to focus on the most outrageous statement.

Guten Morgen! Auch heute wieder willkommen zu "wird der Zug der gerade nur fünf Minuten verspätet ist noch früh genug ankommen, so dass ich meine 25-Minuten Verbindung erwische?" Dieses Semester hat's glaube ich zweimal geklappt bis jetzt.

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Torsten Kathke

this was very entertaining and accurate

Tempted to read J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy? Skip it and listen to this instead

‎If Books Could Kill: Hillbilly Elegy on Apple Podcastspodcasts.apple.com ‎Show If Books Could Kill, Ep Hillbilly Elegy - Mar 23, 2023

The worst thing is you can't time travel to tell the people who smugly urged you to read Hillbilly Elegy what they would be contributing to.

You may have your own reasons for disliking Aaron Sorkin’s writing, but mine is that every time I finish a 500-word abstract just slightly short I say “498. But with my name, it's 500” in my head.

Why oh why do I keep doing more research on the history of social media? Every time I go check a reference I get sucked back into the discourse on that hellsite and die a little inside.

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Torsten Kathke

Es bestätigt den Trend: Für Selbstdarstellung und Verwaltungsapparate ist an Hochschulen immer mehr Geld da, für die Wissenschaft selbst immer weniger. Die HU Berlin streicht gerade ihre komplette Italianistik. #WissSystemfehler

Marketingkampagne für die #Exzellenz: Berlin University Alliance gibt 900.000 Euro aus Der Berliner Uni-Verbund hat eine Imagekampagne in Auftrag gegeben. Ob das hilft, die Identifikation mit der #BUA zu stärken? Im @tagesspiegel.de und im Blog: www.jmwiarda.de/2024/07/15/m...

Die US-Nachrichtenlage ist schon im englischsprachigen Diskurs fast unerträglich, aber noch absurder ist mit welcher Gewissheit da grade einige komplett fachfremde Deutsche voraussagen was das für die Wahl bedeutet.

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Torsten Kathke

Reply to

Karl Bode

it's important for outlets to explain that when we talk about AI "posing a threat to humanity," we're talking about the rushed implementation of half-cooked automation killing your grandma with an auto-rejection of her medicare claims, not sentient industrialized planet-scouring murderbots (for now)

UnitedHealth uses AI model with 90% error rate to deny care, lawsuit allegesarstechnica.com For the largest health insurer in the US, AI's error rate is like a feature, not a bug.

My, it's the mythical Florida Man!

Why is no one talking about this

A thing that I don't know what it means will lead to another thing I don't know what it means but both are bad and non of them are what I want which is the fun kind of autocracy for the right kind of people.

www.al.com/news/2024/07...

Alabama GOP chairman says democracy ‘leads to socialism’www.al.com America is not a democracy, John Wahl argues.

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Torsten Kathke

If Joe Biden can walk from the White House to Capitol Hill, he stays. If not, you get Kamala, Whitmer, and Shapiro on a stage and whoever gives the most moving speech takes the nom.

Hear me out: what if we let John Goodman take over temporarily.

Be even better at not being good at all?

David Zaslav, the CEO of CNN’s parent company, at the Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on Tuesday: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

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Torsten Kathke

This is such a cool study. It reminded me of an interview I heard with Ta-Nehisi Coates about him writing comics. He said something along the lines of his comics writing enraged folks more than anything else and he realized he was messing with their foundational stories.

“In 1946 amid persistent racial divisions, popular radio series Adventures of Superman launched Operation Intolerance, a sequence of new episodes promoting equality, rejecting racial discrimination and exposing the KKK’s bigotry. We find lasting impacts…” dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...

Gamification, or: making me press "continue" seven times before I can close the app.

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Torsten Kathke

Reminder that Aaron Swartz was facing 35 years in prison and financial devastation for trying to programmatically download and open the contents of JSTOR, which led to him taking his own life. But OpenAI is going to scrape all of academia and make billions by plagiarizing it.

New version of chatbot reaches level of function where it responds to all queries by making a little twisty-wrist gesture with pinched fingers and saying “But isn’t it more *complicated* than that?”

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Torsten Kathke

Das 49€ Ticket ist "nicht finanzierbar" weil es nicht finanzierbar sein soll. Brumm Brumm!

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Torsten Kathke

Als ich Bafög beantragt habe, hatten die Behörden so gar kein Problem mit einem absurd komplexen Bewertungsaufwand. Aber klar, bei Millionären geht das natürlich nicht.

Ok maybe I do need to resubscribe.

‘New York Times’ Announces New Columnist Will Contribute Nothing To Society 3 Times A Weekwww.theonion.com The Onion brings you all of the latest news, stories, photos, videos and more from America's finest news source.

Did anyone check if it had a pain in all the diodes down its left side?

What the what?! youtube.com/watch?v=HJkm...

South Korea's First Robot Suicide. What Happened? | Vantage with Palki Sharmayoutube.com South Korea's First Robot Suicide. What Happened? | Vantage with Palki SharmaIn a surprising turn of events, South Korea has witnessed its first reported cas...

I would say it's all been downhill since they moved on from Times New Roman but then I remember I didn't write my dissertation in Word because it kept crashing too much so it's basically just always been barely usable.

MS Word will *not* stop resetting my default font to Aptos (I guess at least it's not Calibri...) and I am about 5 minutes away from making the whole org switch to WordPerfect.

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Torsten Kathke

I was wondering about just this very subject yesterday and had lots of questions that @patricknathan.bsky.social has thoughtfully and helpfully answered:

Choking on the Cloudopen.substack.com What "AI" tells us is that content pollution isn’t a metaphor at all. Content is pollution, and we’re not only polluting with no consequences, but we’re being invited, on a minute to minute basis, to ...

My best case scenario is currently only being 70 minutes delayed on a trip of two and a half hours so yes everything is working fine.

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Torsten Kathke

We're science fiction writers. Of course we write stories about the consequences of technological innovations, and no one ever comprehends the story is about the consequences and not the technology

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Torsten Kathke

Die Zeit wird außerdem anhand der Angaben der Bahn berechnet. Also mit pünktlichen Zügen usw. Blanker Hohn.

Wie menschenfeindlich möchte man Arbeit machen? Bundesregierung: hold my Bürgergeld-AnReIzE 🤡 Aus eigener Erfahrung kann ich sagen: 3 Std Fahrzeit (auch insg) ist nur schlimm! Vor allem auf Dauer. 2 Std hält man gerade noch aus (hatte ich zur Uni), aber bei Niedriglohnjobs tendenziell schwierig. ⬇️

Bürgergeld-Empfänger sollen offenbar längeren Arbeitsweg akzeptierenwww.tagesschau.de Wer Bürgergeld erhält, soll offenbar künftig Jobs mit einem Arbeitsweg von insgesamt bis zu drei Stunden annehmen müssen. Das sehen laut einem Medienbericht Pläne der Regierung vor. Arbeiten im Renten...

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Torsten Kathke

This is also an indicator that many voters are just kind of checked out but DON’T want the far right to win, either - and they’ll turn out if they get spooked enough. We should remember this in the US

BREAKING NEWS: Voters turned out in numbers not seen in decades to stop the far-right National Rally from taking power in the French National Assembly. Polls predicted a first-place finish for National Rally, which instead came in third in initial results as polling stations closed.

Projections in France's election show voters rejecting the far rightwww.npr.org Voters turned out in numbers not seen in decades to stop the far-right National Rally from taking power in the French National Assembly. Polls predicted a first-place finish for National Rally, which ...

Zug war pünktlich bis drei Stationen vor Endbahnhof und hat's jetzt geschafft eine 23-Minuten Verbindung aufzufressen. Redet nur schön weiter drüber dass das Deutschlandticket nicht dazu führt, dass die Leute das Auto stehen lassen und sowieso teurer werden muss, ihr habt doch eh schon aufgegeben.

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Torsten Kathke

Das Deutschlandticket war eine der effektivsten Entlastungen die 🇩🇪 jemals zustande gebracht hat. Es finanzierte weder Kriege, Ölkonzerne, noch macht es Reiche reicher. Und dennoch soll es jetzt teuer werden, weil 19,4 Mrd. Euro an KFZ-Subventionen wichtiger sind als paar Mrd. € für bezahlbaren ÖPNV😥