PJB

@profbforbargain.bsky.social

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Data scientist (rogue statistician), dreamer, seeker of lost imagination. Alternatively: thinker, loner, some kind of an ogre.

Posts Replies Media

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Newsletter: Goldman Sachs has called BS on Generative AI, and I believe that it's time that everybody follows suit - generative AI is unreliable, unsustainable, requires an entire rebuild of America's power grid, and is most decidedly not the future. www.wheresyoured.at/pop-culture/

Pop Culturewww.wheresyoured.at A week and a half ago, Goldman Sachs put out a 31-page-report (titled "Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?”) that includes some of the most damning literature on generative AI I've ever seen. ...

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PJB

Wallace Shawn on Gaza: “The Anger of the Palestinians Cannot Be Ended by Killing Their Children” The playwright, actor, and member of Jewish Voice for Peace challenges the notion that all Jews support Israel's actions Via THR

Wallace Shawn on Gaza: “The Anger of the Palestinians Cannot Be Ended by Killing Their Children”www.hollywoodreporter.com The playwright, actor, and member of Jewish Voice for Peace challenges the notion that all Jews support Israel's actions

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PJB

Lo: the digital dark ages is upon us

2002: "Careful, kids, the Internet is forever!" 2024: "Oh, hey, all the work you did for a decade of your life was just deleted from the Internet for Business Reasons." latenighter.com/news/paramou...

Paramount Axes Comedy Central Site, 25+ Years of Daily Show Clips Gonelatenighter.com One of the richest repositories of late-night videos—including 25 years of clips from 'The Daily Show' and the entire run of 'The Colbert Report'—is no longer.

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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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We told you so. The Cass Review is now being utilized to eliminate access for adults in the UK.

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did this in ms paint, for some reason

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Comedy's so PC nowadays you can't even fake your own death and post hole

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Germany is banning a university rector and genocide witness from attesting in any public or political space in europe. Fucking INSANE

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This dead expanse of trash and emptiness is what the ruling class wants to make of the entire world. The vibrant community based in solidarity that had flourished here is what we want instead. Socialism or barbarism, liberation or death.

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Reply to

TC Coyote / Not What I Was webcomic

It took longer than I'd like to find this

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PJB

I've said it before and I'll say it again: business school is not education

“Understanding and using AI is now a foundational concept, much like learning to write or reason…” 🥴 www.wsj.com/tech/ai/gene...

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However much the NYT is ripped for its coverage, it’s not enough

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In honor of Good Friday, here's @lindsayellis.bsky.social's supercut of That Note from Jesus Christ Superstar, one that is nowhere in Andrew Lloyd Webber's score.

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYwww.youtube.com "WHYYYYYYY" Supercut from one of the most infamous songs in all of Andrew Lloyd Webberdom - Gethsemene, from #JCS, Jesus Christ Superstar. Why? because he is risen (in that he can hit that high note [some of the time]). Yes, I know there was already a JCS supercut on YouTube - it was time for a new one. Jesus is coming out of his cave, and he's been doing just fine. Pre-order my book - https://t.co/YB0oyrlAUX?amp=1 Twitter - @thelindsayellis Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lindsayellis

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Florence Scott has another good #earlymedieval post up, this time about Easter/Eostre/Ostara/Ishtar, and who made up what, and when, based on whose fibs and fabrications. Fun to read while munching on chocolate bunnies :) Enjoy! #medievalsky #medieval

Eostre: Pagan fertility goddess or complete fabrication?florencehrs.substack.com Special Easter edition

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when was capitalism cured

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“On this St. Patrick’s Day… we are appealing to the conscience of Irish America. We ask Irish Americans in their capacity as citizens, as members of cultural and benevolent societies, as political leaders, to use their influence to avert a Famine as severe as the one faced by their ancestors.”

Great Irish Famine historians issue St. Patrick's Day statement on Gazawww.irishcentral.com A group of historians is urging Irish Americans to use their influence to avert a Famine in Gaza as severe as the one faced by their Irish ancestors.

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Every time. UBI works. AI doesn’t. But which one is getting billions in hot dumb money thrown at it.

Fresh results from another basic income pilot. This one took place in San Antonio, Texas where 1,000 people got a $1,908 payment in Dec 2020, followed by 8 quarterly $400 payments between Apr 2021 and Jan 2023. What happened? Incomes from work went up. That's a commonly observed impact BTW.

San Antonio experimented with giving people $5,108 no-strings-attached. They spent it on housing and school supplies for their kids.www.businessinsider.com San Antonio, Texas is one of several US cities piloting basic income programs to assist low-income residents with housing and combat poverty rates.

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St. Patrick's Day is a good time to reflect on how famines caused by occupying powers are horrific, inhumane, and avoidable.

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Not to be melodramatic but generative AI is an open assault on the idea that information can be verifiable or valuable

I didn’t expect to become so cynical about technologies to generate text, but here we are: a “coobook” purchased by a hospital, intended for use by patients. Note the “2000+ Day Recipe” panel. It is a lie. #MedLibs #AmReading 1/n

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This has officially made my week

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Went to the Brooklyn library today. Bunch of people were there trying to get in. Two cops were being paid to guard the door and say "Library is closed due to budget cuts" to everyone

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Reply to

Carl T. Bergstrom

And they did it. (Gift link) Now get back to work.

C.D.C. Shortens Isolation Period for People With Covidwww.nytimes.com Americans with Covid or other respiratory infections may return to daily activities if they don’t have a fever and their symptoms are improving.

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Update on my video from two weeks ago: the CDC did the thing they said they weren't going to do skepchick.org/2024/02/the-...

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NEW VIDEO youtu.be/bqloPw5wp48?...

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1994: internet is ephemeral 2004: internet is forever 2014: only internet is forever. Print pubs and owning physical media are for idiots 2024: your favorite shows have been removed for tax breaks and private equity firms bought up the websites you worked for and deleted your entire life's work

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Behold - the creation of a Dark Age. The cool thing about modernity is that it happens much much faster than it did in medieval period. If you aren't careful thousands of years from now idiots will be saying we never thought or wrote.

so instead of meeting my writing deadlines I'm archiving the thousands of stories I've written for Motherboard over the years because Vice was run into the ground by by a bunch of failson trust fund brunchlords who are now rumored to be on the cusp of deleting everything

Karl Bodewww.vice.com Everything with the topic 'Karl Bode' on VICE

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Target’s underwear aisle becoming a brutalist high-security vault “to serve you better” is a scene left on Verhoeven’s cutting room floor for being “too much”

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THE PROBLEM: Most forms of energy are harming the environment THE SOLUTION: Switch to alternative forms of renewab... THE PROBLEM: Hold on, I have an idea, what if we made invisible valueless money that eats electricity THE SOLUTION: ...what? THE PROBLEM: Also I have this plagiarism machine

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History repeats first as tragedy then as EVERY BEASTIE BOY: FARCE Doesn't take a German economist to EBB: PARSE As outlined in the 18th Brumaire by EBB: MARX Capital rallies to fashy failsons like EBB: SHARKS This history is dialectical, it EBB: ARCS Classes in tension see EBB: SPARKS

I think the career of Napoleon III bears out that, if you have that sort of cult, it can be transferred to an heir, no matter how absolutely shit they are. If their special fascist dad croaks, but someone they identify as legitimate steps in, they’ll justify it to themselves.