Feral T. Robot, Oil Swamp Utility Bot #7629
@feralrobots.bsky.social
580 followers 790 following 13K posts
Cis straight borderline-elderly middle-class white man. Follow implies ABSOLUTELY NO expectation you'll follow back. I block follow-farmers. https://mastodon.social/@FeralRobots
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feralrobots.bsky.social
The truth is, these are not very bright guys, & things got out of hand.
Reposted by Feral T. Robot, Oil Swamp Utility Bot #7629
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
A second generation nepo baby, raised by a pair of sociopaths and given every advantage in the world. I'm sure this story will end well.
robertscotthorton.bsky.social
Trump said he deserved a cut for brokering the TikTok deal, and at once there was agreement that his son Baron would have a top executive slot... though he hasn't asked for it, and has no apparent qualifications to hold it. This is how Trump 2.0 works. www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025...
Barron Trump tipped for top TikTok job
US president’s 19-year-old son could be appointed to the app’s board
www.telegraph.co.uk
Reposted by Feral T. Robot, Oil Swamp Utility Bot #7629
bbolander.bsky.social
the most recent season of the x-files was what you'd call a mixed bag, which is still better than the bag of dog shit before it in 2016, but it does contain one of my favorite eps which has this bitter little conversation that i think about a whole fucking lot lately

m.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Ef...
X Files Dr They
YouTube video by Al Gritzmacher
m.youtube.com
Reposted by Feral T. Robot, Oil Swamp Utility Bot #7629
thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social
A philosophical question for the skyline on this Saturday morning:

Have the Portland protestors successfully reclaimed the frog as a symbol from all the Pepe-bearing white supremacist right-wingers?
feralrobots.bsky.social
I'm not being sarcastic when I say that, depending on which Trumpist we're talking about, this is very likely intended as either:

- something akin to ritual human sacrifice; or...
- an attempt to sow chaos from which fascist Trumpism can pretend to rescue us; ...

... or both.
jamellebouie.net
an incontestable fact of the second trump administration is it is actively trying to sicken and kill as many americans as it can
lenasun.bsky.social
NEW: @CDCgov hit hard by massive firings that several staff describe to me as a “bloodbath.”
Among those RIFd:
—leadership of the center for immunization and respiratory diseases;
—leadership of global health center
—leadership of the measles outbreak response; 1/4
Reposted by Feral T. Robot, Oil Swamp Utility Bot #7629
kaiheron.bsky.social
This year's Nobel Peace Prize winner was an apt choice. An islamophobic Zionist who rubs shoulders with Europe's far-right including Geert Wilders and Marie Le Pen and who has expressed support for a renewed Reconquista. Europe's direction of travel encapsulated.
feralrobots.bsky.social
I do not remember exactly what I was referring to, but FWIW my recollection is that I didn't pull the 'Hibernian' part of of my ass.
Reposted by Feral T. Robot, Oil Swamp Utility Bot #7629
emilymbender.bsky.social
Here's a rule of thumb: If "AI" seems like a good solution, you are probably both misjudging what the "AI" can do and misframing the problem.

>>
Comment by Tom Diettrich on a linkedin post reading:

"You can't "test-in quality" in engineering; you can't "review-in quality" in research. We need incentives for people to do better research. Our system today assumes that 75% of submitted papers are low quality, and it is probably right (I'll bet it is higher). If this were a manufacturing organization, an 75% defect rate would result in bankruptcy. 

Imagine a world in which you could have an AI system check the correctness/quality of your paper. If your paper passed that bar, then it could be published (say, on arXiv). Subsequent human review could assess its importance to the field. 

In such a system, authors would be incentivized to satisfy the AI system. This will lead to searching for exploits in the AI system. A possible solution is to select the AI evaluator at random from a large pool and limit the number of permitted submissions. I imagine our colleagues in mechanism design can improve on this idea."

Original:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7381685800549257216/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(activity%3A7381685800549257216%2C7382628060044599296)&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A(7382628060044599296%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7381685800549257216)
feralrobots.bsky.social
Bingo: the main issue he foresees is gaming, which he proposed to solve with counter-gaming. The idea of trying to address the problem without gaming in the mix different seem to occur to him
feralrobots.bsky.social
Are you glad they awarded the prize to someone who advocated the US murdering more Venezuelan civilians on the high seas?
Reposted by Feral T. Robot, Oil Swamp Utility Bot #7629
mekka.mekka-tech.com
3. Growing food is no more noble a profession than providing child care. But when I say that we should subsidize child care more you tell me to shut up. But we're supposed to buy bushels of corn so some rich family in Idaho can vote to have their own employees deported?🤡

Make it make sense.
feralrobots.bsky.social
I don't think I'd want to see a paranormal adaptation of "Shooting an Elephant", but I wouldn't mind seeing a adaptation that found the horror in the existing story. 'Cuz it's absolutely there.
longfran15.bsky.social
@mikeflanaganfilm.com can we get a George Orwell horror series?
feralrobots.bsky.social
I mean he got booted from his label in the late '90s because they thought people would think he was uncool. He then was courted by a heavy metal label & given a blank slate & won IIRC several grammys because his previous label was run by uncool accountants (but I repeat myself).
feralrobots.bsky.social
...also both those guys would totally endorse that message.
feralrobots.bsky.social
Griping aside, we need to be prepared for the regime & its fellow-travelers doing lots & lots more violence than they're doing even now, rationalized on purely fantasized evidence. That may happen on 10/18; it may come later. But it will come, & we need to be prepared.
atrupar.com
Mike Johnson: "We're so angry about it. I mean, I'm a very patient guy, but I've had it with these people. The theory we have right now -- they have a hate America rally that's scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall. It's the pro-Hamas wing and antifa people ... "
feralrobots.bsky.social
"America shouldn't have a king" apparently translates seamlessly to "Hate America"?
atrupar.com
Mike Johnson: "We're so angry about it. I mean, I'm a very patient guy, but I've had it with these people. The theory we have right now -- they have a hate America rally that's scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall. It's the pro-Hamas wing and antifa people ... "
feralrobots.bsky.social
My professional experience is that "how do you spend your working hours" is almost always a pretext to claim that the things people have to spend time on are not important.
oliverdarcy.bsky.social
News: Bari Weiss just sent a memo to staffers at CBS News asking them to produce a memo explaining "how you spend your working hours—and ideally, what you've made (or are making) that you're most proud of."

One CBS News staffer puts it like this to me: "We just got Elon Musked."
Reposted by Feral T. Robot, Oil Swamp Utility Bot #7629
oliverdarcy.bsky.social
News: Bari Weiss just sent a memo to staffers at CBS News asking them to produce a memo explaining "how you spend your working hours—and ideally, what you've made (or are making) that you're most proud of."

One CBS News staffer puts it like this to me: "We just got Elon Musked."
feralrobots.bsky.social
Meanwhile...
costasamaras.com
Picture how big the Hoover Dam is. An absolute unit. The Hoover Dam has a power capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW).

The solar farm that the Admin just cancelled could have produces 6.2 GW of power. That's more than 3 Hoover Dams.
jael.bsky.social
SCOOP: The Bureau of Land Management says the largest solar project in Nevada — the Esmeralda 7 mega-farm — has been canceled

The news was quietly dropped via a sudden website update with no public word from any of the companies involved or a statement from the agency

@heatmap.news
feralrobots.bsky.social
Part of her response to the award was to praise Trump for having Venezuelan fishermen murdered.
Reposted by Feral T. Robot, Oil Swamp Utility Bot #7629
cowtoolsdaily.bsky.social
shouts to Juggalocalism for the idea
outside.bsky.social
I'm guessing you've done this one already?
Reposted by Feral T. Robot, Oil Swamp Utility Bot #7629
feralrobots.bsky.social
The subtext of Whiskey Pete's Come to Jesus speech a couple weeks back was "The World Belongs to U.S. & We Allow You To Live In It."
This is just Buddy Carter saying the quiet part loud.
atrupar.com
Rep. Buddy Carter: "Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. That's why I'm introducing a resolution today that will honor him with the Nobel Peace Prize."

(It doesn't work like that lol)
feralrobots.bsky.social
A lot of us didn't. Lots of folks seemed to boost the decision after hearing 'democracy advocate'; hell, I fell for it myself. Given I'm old enough to remember how Reaganites weaponized "democracy advocate", I should've seen through that language.
feralrobots.bsky.social
_Cocaine Bear 3: Meth Gorilla_
jwherrman.bsky.social
implied agentic ai pitch: we will lure users with unrealistic promises, and in the process turn them into spammers that destroy the entire existing marketplace. then... profit?
The bet by investors like Y Combinator, in other words, is on a broadly familiar form of disruption but with a couple of twists.
Generative AI may expose some incumbent firms to outpricing, outselling, and outmaneuvering by start-ups that embrace it, while more and more people acclimate to strange, new, chatcentric modes of computing. In the meantime, it may also help glut, jam, and temporarily destroy the entire markets in which they're operating. It's a version of creative destruction in which the destruction is preemptive, indiscriminate, and maybe looks a bit like sabotage — with a little bit of help from all of us, of course.