@baldurbjarnason.com
Writer, web developer and consultant based in Hveragerði, Iceland. Lapsed Interactive Media Academic. Webby Tech Stuff and webby book stuff. https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/ https://softwarecrisis.dev/
I finally figured it out: this Iran war feels like the kinds of wars I used to have in Civilization II after I saved the game and felt like seeing how big a mess I could make.
this is like
the thesis statement of our times
There's an interesting cognitive bias called the Misinformation Effect.
It is very easy to study this. Take people, show them a video of, say, a man buying a hot dog at a street cart.
Then, make them read very confident but very wrong descriptions of that event.
What's funny is that we know from generations of experiments that human memory is ridiculously, cartoonishly malleable.
People manipulating their pictures like this are literally fucking with their memories. They will remember that event differently, because of the meddling afterwards.
We don’t talk enough about how morally depraved the tech industry turned out to be. Every single ounce of their self-regarding statements of values was an outright lie.
A long wall with small windows where tuberculosis patients used to sit for fresh air treatment.
My great-grandmother referred to her time at Vífilsstaðir with tuberculosis as her stay at Hotel Vífilsstaðir, which I admit does sound a little nicer.
#Iceland #photography #streetphotography #abandoned #decay #windows #concrete #history #tuberculosis
What is left of an area where tuberculosis patients used to sit for fresh air treatment.
Patients used to sit here for fresh air as treatment for tuberculosis. I suppose antibiotics made fresh air unnecessary for patients because this area is clearly no longer in use.
#Iceland #photography #streetphotography #abandoned #decay #windows #concrete #history #tuberculosis
A long wall with many windows.
My great-grandmother caught tuberculosis before the advent of antibiotics. According to the family lore, a ghost cured her while she was seeing a psychic healer. Whether that's true or not, she did live to be 98 years old.
#Iceland #photography #streetphotography #abandoned #decay #windows #concrete
The mistake is confusing detail vs fidelity. Vibe prototypes let you add a lot of detail quickly, just like how component libraries do.
But all of that detail is essentially distraction and waste. Showing off your tasteful drop shadow on the card view is not stress-testing the merit of the solution
Today I started my day reading how a brilliant lllustrator’s career has now ended due to every marketing client she has ever worked with has now switched to GenAi.
And it boils my blood to know her work is likely in the datasets used to train the same models that have eroded her livelihood. And -
Fun note on this article, this company uses comfyUI, which boasts a collection of some of the most unethical and exploitative GenAi models.
This whole deal is Netflix normalizing the exploitation of the creative workers—whose works GenAi companies stole to train their models— they hope to replace.
Apparently a big chunk of the world's fertiliser goes through Hormuz.
three days to go - it seems like we're in need of a minor miracle (plan b starts on Monday afternoon), but if you're minded to add your name to the 'interested' list, it's an offer that won't actually cost you anything right now..
www.kickstarter.com/projects/tom...
(yes, my ego is battered)
It’s tiring that we are increasingly stuck organizing our intellectual lives around arguing for the value of having an intellectual life
Full report:
committees.parliament.uk/committee/17...
tomorrow's the first anniversary of the Pivot to AI youtube!
here's the very first one, from 6 March 2025. it's the potato quality every guy yells at phone podcast should be
www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1yH...
So, heading into the weekend, it seems likely we’re in for an energy and fertiliser crisis on top of one of the largest financial bubble in history, one that’s already showing signs of instability, in a world economy wracked by inflation, fascism, and increasingly dysfunctional software?
Fun times!
By @tante.cc who is on point as always.
"So there is a new declaration in town called the “The Pro-Human AI Declaration“...before we go into the details, let’s look at who is pushing this for a second because the declaration keeps talking about how broad their coalition is"
tante.cc/2026/03/05/n...
A grim thread. I have reverted to mostly in-class assignments. The era of undergrads writing essays unsupervised on their own time is rapidly coming to a close.
UK arts must not be sacrificed for speculative AI gains, peers say
I am convinced we are on the verge of the first "AI agent worm". This looks like the closest hint of it, though it isn't it quite itself: an attack on a PR agent that got it to set up to install openclaw with full access on 4k machines grith.ai/blog/clineje...
Historian here history first time as tragedy the second time as farce.
Reasons a cis women might have Y chromosomes:
- Twin brother
- Gestating a child with a Y chromosome
- Bone marrow transfusion from someone with a Y chromosome
- Being intersex (we know of XY women who have naturally conceived and given birth)
🦊
We cannot meaningfully separate everyday usage of “AI” from the machine of death and war. If you’re upset by the military-industrial complex? These tools feed it; they *are* it.
ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/propel...
RTO is one of the classic method traps; everyone is managing how much they have Done The Thing and not whether or not doing the thing has helped improve anything.
Scrum and AI are two other notable members of that set.
This is a good principle for design in general:
When users tell you there's a problem, they are usually right.
When users tell you how to fix it, they are usually wrong.
(bonus: if you replace "user" with "stakeholder" this still applies)
Seeing all the “Björk is overrated” reactions to Rosalia’s Brit Awards performance takes me back to circa 2000 when I had just moved to the UK. Back then, when people found out I’m Icelandic the most common reaction I got was an immediate “I hate Björk”
Second most common reaction?
“I love Björk”
You quoted my thread
You didn't link to or talk about the Mastodon thread. And since my thread was about my security concerns, it was entirely reasonable to conclude that the "you" in your post was supposed to be author of the thread you quoted and that the topic was what I wrote
What do tech dudes have to be mad about? We interview author and activist @naomiaklein.bsky.social on our latest episode of Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000. Check out Episode 72: How the War Department Learned to Stop Worrying and Love AI.
(cc @emilymbender.bsky.social)
a map of openai's influence on other media companies
Amazing site here via @timnitgebru.bsky.social - a map of big tech influence on media and media companies.
imo this goes a decent way to explaining why coverage of AI specifically has been so shockingly bad recently. Very useful resource!!
nananwachukwu.github.io/media-captur...
