Stephen McCarthy

Autonomy is a precondition for equality.

On this International Women’s Day, a reminder that all women should have the power to decide.

#IWD26 #InternationalWomensDay

Most of the talk about OpenAI, Anthropic and “mass surveillance” neglected to mention that widespread scraping of the web is in itself mass surveillance.

Life is short, if you aren’t getting shot or blown up you are having a better time than most people, don’t forget that.

Honestly, on first read I thought this was about AI and how governments around the world are rushing to force it into every part of the public sector.

Pretty difficult to refute a single thing in this perfect assessment of where the f**k we are, from @iandunt.bsky.social:

‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local C...

This from 2024 is essential reporting about AI, target generation, and tempo, deadly deadly deadly tempo.

www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-...

Despite their declared assurances or signing of codes of conduct/practice, no big provider has provided a summary. Only 4 providers have explicitly done so – and all are small orgs or open source developers. This sinks arguments against the obligation being burdensome or excessive.

2/

"Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences."

New paper from team @aial.ie! aial.ie/research/gpa...

EU's AI Act Article 53(1)(d) is an obligation for GPAI model providers to publicly provide a 'summary' on their model’s training data. The team assessed published summaries along 6 dimensions & found that all big providers failed on all 6.

1/

AI is not inevitable. Nothing in human societies is inevitable because we design them. Healthcare can be free for the public. Books can be bought instead of bombs. Universities can be free for students, and they can even receive a stipend to live off. Don't let companies dictate the future.

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.

A brown penguin chick of some kind. It looks very much like a man in a suit. It is bedraggled and miserable

Made it to Friday but at what cost

US troop carrier at Shannon hours before attack on Iran It was on its way to a critical hub for US military in the region.

A US military chartered aircraft used to transport troops stopped at Shannon last Friday before flying straight to Kuwait – a critical hub for American forces in the region – just hours before Washington-backed Israel attacked Iran.

www.ontheditch.com/us-troop-car...

This makes me think of Soylent Green. I can picture a HoD running through the campus screaming "the research is made of people!"

Phone AI ad: 'if your friend texts you a question shouldn't your phone just...answer?'
Me: NO, because that's fucking creepy and my friends deserve genuine human attention from me jesus fucking christ.

It's kind of a (non)choice between Lucifer and Satan, with Grok being the Father Of Lies.

the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself

I'd be interested to know how many of these instances of "humanitarian goodwill" were actually paid for, since the Irish government is charging for the privilege of evacuation.

All the reports of evictions are not coming out of nowhere. It's government policy.

If landlord TDs were disallowed from voting on the 'Residential Tenancies Bill' it could not have passed.

But they weren't. They were allowed to vote for their own personal benefit.

#SpéirGhorm

Close-up of lichen growing on a large rock

Lichen on a rock
📷 Pentax 17
🎞️ Ilford HP5
🧪 Caffenol
📷📲 Epson V600
#halfframe
#FridayFavourites
#believeinfilm
#filmisnotdead

On world book day, two AI-related books that are marvellous:

"More Than Words", by John Warner, @biblioracle.bsky.social, on the wonders of writing in this age of awful.

"Empire of AI", by Karen Hao, @karenhao.bsky.social, which is terrifying.

A lot of people say AI isn't very good for the world and its outputs are routinely unreliable, but these haters fail to see how it's revolutionizing how we incinerate schoolchildren.

Why reading matters – for children, adults and communities That thirst to read is one of the most enduring gifts that books give us.

"When a child opens a book, they do not simply receive images or information. They become a collaborator in creating the world of the story... In an age of instantly delivered visual content, that imaginative partnership is something distinctive and precious."

northeastbylines.co.uk/culture/book...

Lovely article on reading.

"When a child opens a book, they do not simply receive images or information. They become a collaborator in creating the world of the story... In an age of instantly delivered visual content, that imaginative partnership is something distinctive and precious."

My costume is tentatively titled, "curmudgeonly grumpus of indeterminate middle agedness drinking unhealthy amounts of black coffee".

Photo of Silvius the little Latin mouse dressed as The Very Hungry Caterpillar for World Book Day

#fabulamurina (mouse story) 491
hodie diēs librorum orbis terrarum est (Today is World Book Day). Silvius simulat personam e libro esse - eruca ieiunissima est! (Silvius is pretending to be a character from a book - he is The Very Hungry Caterpillar!)
#WorldBookDay

Apparently it's world book day. A selection of currently being read:

King Sorrow, Joe Hill
David's Crown, Malcolm Guite
A Sword of Bronze and Ashes, Anna Smith Spark
Shroud, Adrian Tchaikovsky
Hyperspace, Michio Kaku
The Ferryman, Justin Cronin
Memorable Fancies, Minor White
Gilgamesh

I think "still" in Ireland means the rain falls straight down instead of sideways.

Excerpt of a book: "And in the poetic treatise of John of Garland, the Morale Scolarium, of 1241, the author highlights the worldliness of the student body: "If you are a real scholar you are thrust out in the cold. Unless you are a money-maker, I say, you will be considered a fool, a pauper. The lucrative arts, such as law and medicine, are now in vogue, and only those things are pursued which have a cash value". John of Garland's censure is typical of the many condemnations of medieval students by a minority of enlightened critics who sought to keep alive educational notions that transcended the short term and the immediately consumable."

...so, uh, I guess we've been fighting this trend at universities for a little while now? 😅