@news4wombats
My posts here are a random hodge-podge of stuff, plus auto-posts from my blog. I teach philosophy in Albany, New York. My research is mostly in the philosophy of science, philosophy of music, pragmatism, and the epistemology of technology.
oh just a thought if your plan for overthrowing the Iranian government depends on the Iranian public rising up, you likely shouldn't have defunded the American government run news agency that speaks in Farsi.
The age is golden is the same sense as the showers.
"Must microfiction always rely on stereotypes, since there is so little space to convey novelty?"
"No," said the wise guru. "If we were in a story, readers would be able to surmise from style and nuance that we are both anthropomorphic otters and that we met years ago when working as rodeo clowns."
I’ve definitely learned in the past 10-15 years how easy it is to lose social progress. The idea that gayness is too “adult” for kids, and parents should be able to “opt out”, is so regressive and I really thought American culture was moving away from that. But the fear and cowardice is still here
The inevitable next level
In bombing Iran, the US has been using AI to pick targets. This is a playbook that was deployed first by Israel in the early attacks on Gaza. As I commented last year, "Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza has shown that they are willing to bomb and murder indiscriminately,…
AI just doesn't yield the imagined gains, at least not if you consider the entire product lifecycle and you want a reliable, secure, extensible, and scalable product that does what customers need. I'm not saying an LLM isn't a useful tool, only that it's not the panacea these execs imagine.
7/11
Redefining terms to give Trump new channels by which to chicken out. #TACO
Always a good idea
I am teaching 17th&18th Century Philosophy this semester for the first time in a while. This week was my favorite bit of the course: Berkeley's argument for idealism. It's a short, deductively valid argument from tempting premises, to the conclusion that the whole sensible world…
Kristi Noem has done a stunning amount of damage and it’s good she’s gone.
But this doesn’t change the fact that we need a complete overhaul of DHS, impartial investigations into the killings of two American citizens, and information on children that were taken from Minnesota.
Wars are extremely hard things to justify. It is intrinsic to what they are that they tend to death, destruction, and misery. Given this and some knowledge of history, one's default attitude towards powerful people purporting to do the world some great benefit by war should be extreme scepticism.
When I arrived in Oslo in 2021, I saw an interview with one of my colleagues where he said that AI wasn’t going to replace expertise. So needless to say, I made a chatbot based on his works. I called it Øystein Linnebot.
The whole point of joining the organized crime syndicate is so that he gets to act like a gangster.
Who would have guessed that the Make America Fascist and Imperialist Again movement would turn out to be an organized crime syndicate?
And, to be clear: I mean to stop the fascists. The lives of people I love depend on it.
Interviewed for @joeykpollock.bsky.social’s blog. Made to account for my errors in public.
Cool. I really like the 2023 paper, and it's nice to hear your updated reflections on it.
No war, no ICE
Here's a thing I wrote to my senators: It's important to resist the unprovoked war with Iran, especially on the heels of the unprovoked incursion into Venezuela. Reckless and indiscriminate overthrow of governments is just a recipe for chaos. It's also important to resist funding…
MPRNeWS This Twin Cities Dungeons & Dragons group of 2,500 people turned into a mutual aid hub and escape for its members affected by the ICE surge
I just love real America so much.
things every single republican president of your lifetime has done
- started a war in the middle east
- completely destroyed the economy
To make “war fighter” the default for any military service member makes me wonder: What does Hegseth, in the moments he is sober, think the military mission is during peace time? IOW, it sends the messages that we SHOULD ALWAYS be at war as long as we have a military. That’s at once stupid & scary.
Absolutely. A great paper and also fun to teach.
I'm old enough to remember when polio ripped through the globe and put my friends into iron lungs.
We dutifully lined up at school to get vaccinated. We eradicated the disease. We protected the common good and saved lives.
RFK Jr. is a disgrace.
Local zoning is the way! A lot of these are being stopped or stalled by neighborhood organizing.
These warehouses often need to be purchased, permitted, approved for occupancy and specs. Each one of those steps can be interrupted.
Ppl are pressuring corps not to sell, counties to deny permits, etc
The deadline has been extended for the UAlbany Grad #Philosophy Conference. This years theme is AI&Emotions. If you do work in either philosophy of #AI or philosophy of #emotions, submit something! (Realistically, that's an inclusive disjunction!)
philevents.org/event/show/1...
I’m “P.D. Magnus” even though “D” isn’t my middle initial. Even so, when I first got a webpage I deliberately worked to rise in the search hits ahead of all the other P.D. Magnuses.
When people say “race is a social construction” it can often seem abstract. The use of “Judeo-Christian” as a seemingly natural ethno-religious category—despite centuries of anti-Jewish expulsions, pogroms and mass killing—is a good example of a political project constructing identity to gain power.
But it does suffer from the fact that “aesthetics” and “philosophy of art” are used interchangeably except when they aren’t.
BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide.
This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.
Singing to the future, singing to the past
Dylan and The Moon's cover of "Yellow" made me tear up a bit. It's a capable cover of a pretty song, of course, but it lands harder than that. The artist is trans, and it is edited to be a duet with his pre-transition self.
Bloomberg says we've spent $3B on Trump's invasion of Venezuela.
Which is 6X more than the cancer, Alzheimer, diabetes, and heart disease cures they've cut to pay for it.
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...