see also the old ludicity snowflake post https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-accidentally-saved-half-a-million-dollars/ and everything by corey quinn LastWeekinAWS.com - there’s like this learned helplessness in corporate america IT (perhaps Graeber is right and more budget validates your self importance even if it’s wasted cloud spend), or they think its monopoly money or something. or, both.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79948695/how-can-i-avoid-using-llms-as-a-software-developer

For me, the ideal usage case for LLMs are not prompts like “write this app” or “write this functionality” which indeed will often wreck havoc, but instead write simple functions. Sure, I can implement a matrix multiplication algorithm or search for optimised versions of it, but so can the LLM in a matter of seconds.

Please, just fucking don’t, BLAS and sparse pack and the netlib exists for a reason. Matrix multiply only sounds simple to you because you don’t actually care that much. The last thing anyone wants or needs is to start a new job and have to debug your awful regurgitated Numerical Recipes In C, incorrectly ported to python, AT SCALE.

My old job had a last minute investor call - “startpage is benefiting significantly from AIO backlash” did not expect that and pretty mixed feelings. Like yeah AIO is bad but don’t run into the open arms of the long tail adtech industrial complex marketing monetization engine either :|

https://lbpost.com/news/education/california-state-university-renews-controversial-systemwide-contract-with-openai

A CSU spokesperson confirmed to EdSource on Wednesday that the university will pay $13 million a year for three years to provide systemwide access to its more than 470,000 students and 63,000 faculty and staff. The previous 18-month subscription cost $17 million and expires at the end of June.

Are we so locked in we’re going to put up with a 10% price hike? Couldn’t be bothered to get a new vendor with a better deal, or use the Google one they are also paying for, or just use the free one? This is where the tuition increases are going, this is how we want to spend our taxes? :(

Holy Empire of AI - Predictive History

Once you have the AI state, you now have the technocracy and the world will be perfect.

All right? Does it make sense you guys? What he’s saying here? This is an amazing paragraph written 40, 50 years ago.

So, I’m not saying he’s a Freemason. I’m not saying he’s part of a society, but, he sure thinks like a Freemason.

Zbigniew Brzezinski has been dead for nearly a decade, but sure, let’s play the hits. plus AI! /s

Jiang hadn’t popped up in my feed in a while, guess he’s still at it. At least he’s reading Karen Hao, maybe some viewers follow his cites. He really should just write a Dan Brown novel or something, he’s obviously capable enough at lore dumping.

Iran has created an Insurance Company to guarantee safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Vessels pay their Insurance Premiums in Bitcoin

https://x.com/IranObserver0/status/2055716544596922700 via naked capitalism

this is fine

Apparently I’m retroactively Canadian, if I can find the paperwork. eh !?

No one is stopping any one from editing out jar jar, if they care that much, just do it. Put up or shut up. /s

AI is Hungry for Power and You Are Footing the Bill - Naked Capitalsim

Money spent on grid upgrades and tax breaks tied to them means fewer resources for things people actually need, like schools, public transit, local infrastructure, or basic community services that make life more affordable and stable.

Even if you’ve never touched an AI model in your life, you’re going to pony up for it.

I usually think of it as Pivot : All In :: Ted Turner : Rupert Murdoch. Hoping he can grow out of his Bill Maher phase, but at least he’s been pretty generous to my dumb State U in the meantime. And if he wants to rack up listeners/ad dollars by doing chatgpt boycotts, by all means.

Galloway closes with a pretty strong sneer: Apocalypse No

AI’s popularity is correlated to wealth, with only those earning more than $200,000 per year viewing AI as a net positive. That’s not a reflection on AI, but yet another signal that the incumbents (the old and the wealthy) have successfully hoarded opportunity. In other words, the AI jobs freak-out is the latest act in America’s ongoing wealth inequality drama. The Gini coefficient is how economists measure inequality: Zero indicates everyone has exactly the same wealth; a score of 1.0 means one individual owns everything. In the U.S., we’re higher than 0.8 — about the level seen when the French began separating people from their heads. The real disruption won’t come from AI, but from the public watching arsonists sell smoke detectors and call it innovation.

The AI job apocalypse isn’t an economic forecast — it’s a marketing strategy. We’re not witnessing the end of work. We’re watching the monetization of fear.

Seems like he’s getting back to his pre-crypto / we-wtf style. But when did podcasters start charging $53 (EDIT: $86.50 for floor) / seat at the Wiltern, that place is huge. And no Swisher either, it’s his other one.

Not sure if this was posted in prev weeks, just popped on my youtube: purdue cs240 situation is crazy

So several hundred students drop Intro to C after being accused of cheating with AI.

OK so that is like normal at my state U, but the whole part where the chair does a little press conference, quasi-reinstates everyone, blocks the student newspaper from attending, and then some students sneak in and live stream it anyway is pretty comical. And then forcing the prof to file the academic charges forms one-at-a-time takes it into wtf territory.

Haven’t seen it mentioned elsewhere, not that I really went looking for it though. I’m just thankful to be out of higher ed.

Note that this is the same school that will require AI as a gen ed iirc.

I asked someone from the mainland, she more or less agreed with you:

This is basically consistent with the long-standing logic of the Chinese internet: technology brings discursive power, and to give it away is to give away discursive power. AI is especially so.

https://russwilcoxdata.substack.com/p/and-the-alignment-problem-what-chinas

In June 2025, Zhao Tingyang gave a talk at Tsinghua’s Fangtang Forum. The edited transcript ran in The Paper on July 4 under the title “人工智能的伦理与思维之限” (The Ethical and Thinking Limits of AI). Near the end, Zhao wrote this:

“What requires more reflection is that attempting to ‘align’ AI with human nature and values actually contains a risk of human species suicide. Human nature is selfish, greedy, and cruel. Humans are the most dangerous biological species. Almost all religions demand the restraint of human desire; this is no accident. AI aligned with human values may well become a dangerous subject by imitating humans. Originally, AI does not possess the selfish genes of carbon-based life, so AI is actually closer to the legendary ‘human nature is fundamentally good’ kind of existence, whereas human nature is not ‘fundamentally good.’” The alignment paradigm treats human values as the target AI should conform to. Zhao is arguing the target is the danger. An AI aligned to human values inherits the specific features of human judgment that Zhao says have produced the record of human harm. The paradigm is not incomplete. It is pointed the wrong way.

Zhao’s argument has developed across CASS, The Paper, and Wenhua Zongheng from late 2022 through 2025, from a provocative aside into a sustained critique of the alignment paradigm. In the same period, the English-language alignment and AI ethics literature produced no substantive engagement. No citations. No rebuttal. No naming. Zhao is a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Philosophy, author of the Tianxia framework, and one of the most cited philosophers working in Chinese today.

I need to think on this a little more, wasn’t on my radar.

1. JPod diverged enough from the novel that it would have ended really differently if it could have ran for a while.

2. Jo Walton’s Thessaly series is kind-of-sort-of isekai and could have a good ensemble cast, Greek gods, fantasy and robots. And anime Socrates would be rad.

3. Mulholland Drive, for its craft and for its critique of Hollywood.

4. Also Mulholland Drive !?

People talked about doing this with bitcoin mining - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/16/bitcoin-crypto-mining-home-heating-energy-bills.html - but I’m not aware of anyone trying to scale it out or turn it into a company.

blogosphere-era link aggregator that somehow kept going way longer than occupy wallstreet did. one thing to know, (like here), they link to a lot of stuff they don’t support.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/04/ai-reputational-crisis-violence-data-center-protests-sam-altman-openai.html

The profound ignorance of tech on the part of most American lawmakers is no joke. In a prior life, I was once responsible for updating a future Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee on tech issues and it was like showing an alarm clock to a chicken.

haha

That same senator went on to be a huge RussiaGater and played a central role in Twitter and other social media titans upping their censorship game at the behest of US politicians.

oh :(

New polemics.md on the Altman molotov

https://www.polemics.md/suspect-in-molotov-attack-on-sam-altman-is-a-eugenicist-who-believes-ai-will-end-the-world/

Haven’t seen any estimates of death toll due to social media but cigarettes is/was pretty staggering (20-40m), way too big to hide - https://www.ucpress.edu/books/golden-holocaust/hardcover - if it’s “only” 50 years to flip the consensus on social media, that would be a faster process, I do hope its possible though. Tobacco execs had the good sense to keep a relatively low profile compared to Zuck and Musk, so that might speed it up.