René Walter
@rawx.bsky.social
i learned more from a three minute record than i ever learned from a large language model.
Meme Magic / SocMed Psy / AI / Climate / Ex-Nerdcore.de
http://goodinternet.substack.com
http://goodmusic.substack.com
https://sigmoid.social/@rawx
Meme Magic / SocMed Psy / AI / Climate / Ex-Nerdcore.de
http://goodinternet.substack.com
http://goodmusic.substack.com
https://sigmoid.social/@rawx
Reposted by René Walter
If you're living somewhere outside the USA, one thing you can do is pressure your leaders to boycott World Cup and Olympic events here.
January 24, 2026 at 8:29 PM
If you're living somewhere outside the USA, one thing you can do is pressure your leaders to boycott World Cup and Olympic events here.
Reposted by René Walter
Is this why he dropped America out of the World Health Organization?
January 23, 2026 at 6:42 AM
Is this why he dropped America out of the World Health Organization?
Reposted by René Walter
🧵 @jburnmurdoch.ft.com is spot on about the conditions in his FT piece. Liberal democracy held it together thanks to growth, good demographics, and the promise of a better future. Those days are gone, and that’s the "why" behind the erosion. However...
Democratic politicians have, though, pursued growth in GDP at the expense of other values. One response to @jburnmurdoch.ft.com pessimistic scenario is refocus on those values, combined with egalitarianism, sufficiency and quality of life. Not "it's the economy, stupid" but "it's the the society"
Is liberal democracy in terminal decline?
The old system worked under a set of conditions that are no longer present
www.ft.com
January 23, 2026 at 9:07 AM
🧵 @jburnmurdoch.ft.com is spot on about the conditions in his FT piece. Liberal democracy held it together thanks to growth, good demographics, and the promise of a better future. Those days are gone, and that’s the "why" behind the erosion. However...
Reposted by René Walter
The Board of Peace is to other international institutions as Truth Social is to other social media.
January 22, 2026 at 1:16 PM
The Board of Peace is to other international institutions as Truth Social is to other social media.
Reposted by René Walter
There is a rally in front of #Berlin 's US Embassy by the Berlin Rechtsanwaltskammer (RAK) (the Berlin Bar Association) at 1pm today. I had expected to be there, following an important @europarl.europa.eu panel debate on hybrid threats to European Democracies nearby but I am down & out with the flu.
"The Day of the Endangered Lawyer, an annual event to raise awareness of risks to members of the profession, has in recent years picked Belarus, Iran and Afghanistan as its subject. For 2026, it has chosen the US."
This is Trump's USA.
www.ft.com/content/cf5d...
This is Trump's USA.
www.ft.com/content/cf5d...
Lawyers are ‘endangered’ in Trump’s America, international group warns
Citation places US alongside Belarus, Iran and Afghanistan as places that have threatened the rule of law
www.ft.com
January 23, 2026 at 8:48 AM
There is a rally in front of #Berlin 's US Embassy by the Berlin Rechtsanwaltskammer (RAK) (the Berlin Bar Association) at 1pm today. I had expected to be there, following an important @europarl.europa.eu panel debate on hybrid threats to European Democracies nearby but I am down & out with the flu.
Reposted by René Walter
You don’t know your role yet maybe, but we are all finding out just what we have to offer.
In Minneapolis, one man knew immediately what he could offer and said “Bring me your clothing”.
In Minneapolis, one man knew immediately what he could offer and said “Bring me your clothing”.
January 23, 2026 at 2:57 AM
You don’t know your role yet maybe, but we are all finding out just what we have to offer.
In Minneapolis, one man knew immediately what he could offer and said “Bring me your clothing”.
In Minneapolis, one man knew immediately what he could offer and said “Bring me your clothing”.
"The White House responded by sending (...) this this message: (...) Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue."
@bildoperationen.bsky.social #MemeFascism applies.
@bildoperationen.bsky.social #MemeFascism applies.
January 23, 2026 at 7:12 AM
"The White House responded by sending (...) this this message: (...) Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue."
@bildoperationen.bsky.social #MemeFascism applies.
@bildoperationen.bsky.social #MemeFascism applies.
Reposted by René Walter
"The Makerspace of Diogenes"
January 23, 2026 at 5:45 AM
"The Makerspace of Diogenes"
In 2031, every very-serious conference is full of swearwords and enshittificational neologisms to differentiate themselves from the AI slop machine.
Everyone is starting to sound like AI, even in spoken language
Analysis of 280,000 transcripts of videos of talks & presentations from academic channels finds they increasingly used words that are favorites of ChatGPT
Model collapse, except for humans arxiv.org/pdf/2409.017...
Analysis of 280,000 transcripts of videos of talks & presentations from academic channels finds they increasingly used words that are favorites of ChatGPT
Model collapse, except for humans arxiv.org/pdf/2409.017...
January 23, 2026 at 6:55 AM
In 2031, every very-serious conference is full of swearwords and enshittificational neologisms to differentiate themselves from the AI slop machine.
Putins Troll Army has been democratized.
Tremendously important work...👇
How malicious AI swarms can threaten democracy www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @daniel-thilo.bsky.social @kunstjonas.bsky.social et al.
AI swarms are can be used to engineering a "synthetic
consensus" that can manipulate public opinion and perceptions.
How malicious AI swarms can threaten democracy www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @daniel-thilo.bsky.social @kunstjonas.bsky.social et al.
AI swarms are can be used to engineering a "synthetic
consensus" that can manipulate public opinion and perceptions.
January 23, 2026 at 6:52 AM
Putins Troll Army has been democratized.
What a day. What a lovely day.
I put my life savings into gas town coin
January 23, 2026 at 6:44 AM
What a day. What a lovely day.
More GOODMUSIC featuring new tracks and songs from Savages / Courtney Barnett / Xcomm / The Barbarians of California / Wolf Alive / Adult DVD / Fickle Friends / The Brunettes / Searows and many more --> goodmusic.substack.com/p/goodmusic-... <-- ALL KILLERS NO FILLERS!
GOODMUSIC 1.6/26
Savages / Courtney Barnett / Xcomm / The Barbarians of California / Wolf Alive / Adult DVD / Fickle Friends / The Brunettes / Searows and many more.
goodmusic.substack.com
January 22, 2026 at 7:51 PM
More GOODMUSIC featuring new tracks and songs from Savages / Courtney Barnett / Xcomm / The Barbarians of California / Wolf Alive / Adult DVD / Fickle Friends / The Brunettes / Searows and many more --> goodmusic.substack.com/p/goodmusic-... <-- ALL KILLERS NO FILLERS!
Reposted by René Walter
It appears that the White House edited this image using AI
January 22, 2026 at 4:46 PM
It appears that the White House edited this image using AI
Oh god this is sending me down memory hole, german Arte Tracks about the UK Jungle revival... www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXiu...
Warum ein verbotener UK-Sound gerade die Clubs übernimmt | ARTE Tracks
YouTube video by Arte TRACKS
www.youtube.com
January 22, 2026 at 6:07 AM
Oh god this is sending me down memory hole, german Arte Tracks about the UK Jungle revival... www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXiu...
Is constitutional AI Lebensphilosophie anthropomorphimaxxing?
A few quick notes on the Claude "soul document" that was released by Anthropic today under a CC0 public domain license - it's a huge 35,000 token essay used as part of Claude's training to instill core values and help define Claude's personality simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/21/...
Claude’s new constitution
Late last year Richard Weiss found something interesting while poking around with the just-released Claude Opus 4.5: he was able to talk the model into regurgitating a document which was …
simonwillison.net
January 22, 2026 at 4:32 AM
Is constitutional AI Lebensphilosophie anthropomorphimaxxing?
Reposted by René Walter
A defining aspect of the present is that our elites created an alternate media and information system for themselves so that they could hide from the reality of their own making in a make-believe fantasy where all of their decisions don’t have any effect on them.
You and I are watching protests and babies being tear gassed on social media.
They are not.
And part of that is because the media they consume - like the NYT - isn't really showing it.
They are not.
And part of that is because the media they consume - like the NYT - isn't really showing it.
January 22, 2026 at 2:33 AM
A defining aspect of the present is that our elites created an alternate media and information system for themselves so that they could hide from the reality of their own making in a make-believe fantasy where all of their decisions don’t have any effect on them.
Reposted by René Walter
Reposted by René Walter
Trump jetzt live aus Davos
January 21, 2026 at 10:27 AM
Trump jetzt live aus Davos
In which i fix the image of sentient cephalopods because octopuses rule!
January 21, 2026 at 12:47 PM
In which i fix the image of sentient cephalopods because octopuses rule!
Pick up the nearest book. Turn to page 42, post the second sentence
"K. knocked at the flats where the doors were closed and asked whether Lanz the joiner lived there."
(Franz Kafka - The Trial)
"K. knocked at the flats where the doors were closed and asked whether Lanz the joiner lived there."
(Franz Kafka - The Trial)
Pick up the nearest book. Turn to page 42, post the second sentence
"'You've seen her.' it wasn't a question."
(20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill, republished as The Black Phone and Other Stories :)
"'You've seen her.' it wasn't a question."
(20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill, republished as The Black Phone and Other Stories :)
Pick up the nearest book. Turn to page 42, post the second sentence
"Combined with the checkered tiles, this surreal illumination makes it feel like I'm at the center of a massive roulette wheel."
"Combined with the checkered tiles, this surreal illumination makes it feel like I'm at the center of a massive roulette wheel."
January 21, 2026 at 12:41 PM
Pick up the nearest book. Turn to page 42, post the second sentence
"K. knocked at the flats where the doors were closed and asked whether Lanz the joiner lived there."
(Franz Kafka - The Trial)
"K. knocked at the flats where the doors were closed and asked whether Lanz the joiner lived there."
(Franz Kafka - The Trial)
Despite the anthropomorphizing language this is fascinating.
Paper: Reasoning Models Generate Societies of Thought ( www.arxiv.org/abs/2601.10825 )
And can someone neologize a better word for anthropomorphization? I get AI-hands from typing it.
Paper: Reasoning Models Generate Societies of Thought ( www.arxiv.org/abs/2601.10825 )
And can someone neologize a better word for anthropomorphization? I get AI-hands from typing it.
January 21, 2026 at 12:37 PM
Despite the anthropomorphizing language this is fascinating.
Paper: Reasoning Models Generate Societies of Thought ( www.arxiv.org/abs/2601.10825 )
And can someone neologize a better word for anthropomorphization? I get AI-hands from typing it.
Paper: Reasoning Models Generate Societies of Thought ( www.arxiv.org/abs/2601.10825 )
And can someone neologize a better word for anthropomorphization? I get AI-hands from typing it.
Reposted by René Walter
I always feel roguish to make such a basic point, but bias is an intrinsic feature of _data_, and transitively of any system of analysis or decision-making based on data.
The fact that this point has to keep being demonstrated over and over for more complex systems is crazy-making to me.
The fact that this point has to keep being demonstrated over and over for more complex systems is crazy-making to me.
"Drawing on a 20.3-million-query audit of ChatGPT, we map systematic biases in the model's representations of countries, states, cities, and neighbourhoods. From these empirics, we argue that bias is not a correctable anomaly but an intrinsic feature of generative AI”.
ht: Dagmar Monett
ht: Dagmar Monett
The silicon gaze: A typology of biases and inequality in LLMs through the lens of place - Francisco W. Kerche, Matthew Zook, Mark Graham, 2026
This paper introduces the concept of the silicon gaze to explain how large language models (LLMs) reproduce and amplify long-standing spatial inequalities. Draw...
journals.sagepub.com
January 21, 2026 at 2:47 AM
I always feel roguish to make such a basic point, but bias is an intrinsic feature of _data_, and transitively of any system of analysis or decision-making based on data.
The fact that this point has to keep being demonstrated over and over for more complex systems is crazy-making to me.
The fact that this point has to keep being demonstrated over and over for more complex systems is crazy-making to me.
Reposted by René Walter
This is great - it's about time someone updated the discourse on LLM energy usage to reflect that coding agents use massively more prompts than occasional questions to ChatGPT
Simon estimates that a day of coding agent usage comes out close to the energy needed to run a dishwasher
Simon estimates that a day of coding agent usage comes out close to the energy needed to run a dishwasher
Whenever I read discourse on AI energy/water use that focuses on the "median query," I can't help but feel misled. Coding agents like Claude Code send hundreds of longer-than-median queries every session, and I run dozens of sessions a day.
On my blog: www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01...
On my blog: www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01...
January 20, 2026 at 11:10 PM
This is great - it's about time someone updated the discourse on LLM energy usage to reflect that coding agents use massively more prompts than occasional questions to ChatGPT
Simon estimates that a day of coding agent usage comes out close to the energy needed to run a dishwasher
Simon estimates that a day of coding agent usage comes out close to the energy needed to run a dishwasher
same
it is not customary for such venerable leviathans to be at all social
January 21, 2026 at 4:21 AM
same
Reposted by René Walter
This is a stunning illustration of the national auto-lobotomy going on in the United States 🇺🇸 www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
US science after a year of Trump: what has been lost and what remains
A series of graphics reveals how the Trump administration has sought historic cuts to science and the research workforce.
www.nature.com
January 21, 2026 at 1:43 AM
This is a stunning illustration of the national auto-lobotomy going on in the United States 🇺🇸 www.nature.com/immersive/d4...