From Pine View Farm

October, 2023 archive

Facebook Frolics, No News Is No News Dept. 0

Bloomberg tech columnist Dave Lee explains why the Zuckerborg is turning its algorithms away from promoting news content. A snippet:

Beginning with the fallout from the election of Donald Trump as president, promoting the news became more trouble for Facebook than it was worth — though it’s only now that it dares say it out loud. Turning its back on news during the Trump years would have been seen as giving up on the truth. Meta was trapped in a cycle: With legitimate news came fake news. With fake news came the need to moderate. And with the need to moderate came the accusations of bias. Depending on whom you asked, Facebook was either censoring or pandering to the right. A Trending Topics team brought the company into disrepute and was eventually disbanded. Congress vented its fury.

(snip)

So now Meta has decided it’s had enough. It’s not that news isn’t allowed — Canada excluded — but that Meta doesn’t feel it’s in its interests to support news organizations the way it once did.

Read the whole thing. It reinforces the obvious: “social” media isn’t.

Afterthought:

Indeed, I think an argument can be made that “social” media in the hands of companies motivated primarily, if not exclusively, by their bottom lines is anti-social media, as it is inclined to give persons what they want to hear, not what they need to hear.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Another random act of politeness.

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QOTD 0

Susan Hampshire, in the voice of Molly MacDonald:

We all harbor dark thoughts. The secret is to know them for what they are.

Aside:

If you can find Monarh of the Glen on a streaming service, watch it.

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

The New Secesh deploy duplicitous doubletalk to defeat desegregation.

Righting the wrongs of the past is in their eyes a wrong.

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

Clarence Page sees an uncomfortable parallel. A tiny bit from his article:

Even more disturbing is how Trump’s rhetoric has plainly drifted over into the tragically crazy fringe that comes straight out of the mania of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Yes, also new in this campaign, Trump’s attack invokes a theme from Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto, “Mein Kampf,” in which the Nazi Party leader railed about what he called the impurity of immigrants, Jews and interracial couples.

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Republican Thought Police 0

Afterthought:

Many years ago, when I was a young ‘un just a couple of years into my first real job (as opposed to summer jobs), my then girl friend and I had occasion to visit an apartment occupied by two young men.

I remember that she was rather taken aback when she saw that there was only one bed in the apartment.

But, really, they were just being who they were, and they were harming nobody.

Who does it harm to just let let persons be who they are in the privacy of their own homes?

As an aside, I can attest that no marriage of mine has ever been harmed by anything that happened in a same sex bedroom.

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House of Whacks 0

Republican Elephant keeps pushes repeatedly on a

Click to view the original image.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

I have a word of advice for oxymoronic “responsible gun owners”:

Don’t play with your portable phallus.

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The Role Model 0

At the Idaho State Journal, Larry Gebhart reviews a list of “Trump-like behaviors” compiled by Bob Gandossy, Senior Fellow at The Conference Board and asks why anyone would want his or her children to emulate those behaviors.

One of the behaviors in the list particularly caught my eye, because, despite Trump’s documented behavior, he seems to have pulled this one off, at least in the eyes his dupes, symps, and fellow travelers:

Use religion as a prop, a shield to appear on the right side of things.

See the rest of the list at the link.

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Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0

The Learning and Implicit Processes Lab at Ghent University takes a look at the current state of ChatGPT (and Large Language Models in general) and concludes (emphasis added):

Returning to the question of ChatGPT’s intelligence, it is important to note that it was developed with a specific purpose: to interact with humans through a computer interface and produce coherent answers to whatever prompt it gets. With that goal in mind, its performance is remarkable.

It was not designed to be generally intelligent (i.e., capable of flexibly adapting to novel situations or problems), and it isn’t. Still, it gives us the illusion of intelligence because it mimics intelligent human language.

Follow the link for their reasoning.

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QOTD 0

Rosa Parks:

People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically… No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

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A Tune for the Times, It’s Bubblelicious Dept. 0

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Precedented 0

Republican Elephant says,

Via Job’s Anger.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Mower politeness.

Musical NotesGuns and stupid, guns and stupid,
They go together like love and Cupid.
Let me tell you, brother,
You won’t find one without the other.

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Chaos Agents,. Reprise 0

Speaking of chaos agents, Above the Law reports the Fulton County D. A. Fani Willis called one out (emphasis added):

In that letter, Willis went on to explain the Constitutional and statutory defects in (House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim–ed.) Jordan’s claims to have oversight authority with respect to state prosecutions. This time she just called him an ignorant hick with a Napoleon complex.

A charitable explanation of your correspondence is that you are ignorant of the United States and Georgia Constitutions and codes. A more troubling explanation is that you are abusing your authority as Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary to attempt to obstruct and interfere with a Georgia criminal prosecution,” she wrote, adding, “While you may enjoy immunity under the United States Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, that does not make your behavior any less offensive to the rule of law.”

Follow the link for context.

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Antisocial Media 0

Chart titled

Click to view the original image.

“Social” media isn’t.

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The Crypto Con 0

Just in case you wondered what “Effective Altruism” means . . . .

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Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0

Another lawyer gets caught with his briefs down, and Above the Law’s Joe Patrice says it sure looks like ChatGPT to him.

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QOTD 0

Susan Hampshire, in the voice of Molly MacDonald, and Lloyd Owen, in the voice of Paul Bowman:

Molly: You know what they say in the beginning of wisdom.

Paul: Yeah, a good kick up the backside.

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Break Time 0

Off to drink liberally.

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