👻👻 Ben, but rationalized a reason to stay on Xitter 💀💀
@benfields.net
610 followers 610 following 1.7K posts
🇺🇸immigrant in LDN recovering academic Trying to understand humanity with data, music, libations Might not be looking in the right places – currently: Head of Data @lakaHQ previously: @bbc @futurelearn @funandplausible cf https://assemblag.es/@alsothings
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benfields.net
Old enough to remember when this was Buy Nothing Day
karlbode.com
twice a year the entire U.S. press becomes a marketing extension of a single billionaire-owned retailer, and nobody in any position of editorial power thinks it's weird or gross
photo of Google News search results for Amazon Prime Day (the second this year)
Reposted by 👻👻 Ben, but rationalized a reason to stay on Xitter 💀💀
iandunt.bsky.social
Trump's $100,000 skilled worker visa fee gives Britain a golden opportunity to attracted global talent. Needless to say, we're going to piss it away because we're scared of upsetting Nigel Farage.

inews.co.uk/opinion/trum...
Trump's migrant obsession offers Starmer a rare win - but Farage has scared him off
We have a golden opportunity to kick-start the British economy
inews.co.uk
benfields.net
"kiss the boss's ass and cover mine"
ernest33141.bsky.social
Reuters photographer Jonathan Ernst noticed that Bondi flipped open a file during the Senate hearing and he zoomed in.

Inside were her crib notes for attacking the senators.

The GOP now practicing Cliff's Notes Fascism

In other words, under oath Bondi was purely a performance.
#FuckTrump
benfields.net
Not to put too fine a point on it, but, uh

That right there is Joe Biden's legacy. I suspect that wasn't the bridge he meant to build, but it is what he built.
brooklynspoke.bsky.social
It's almost like January 6th, 2021 happened and then time just skipped over to January 20th, 2025. It's one long illegal coup.
royalpratt.bsky.social
The President of the United States is calling for the mayor of Chicago and governor of Illinois to be jailed.
Reposted by 👻👻 Ben, but rationalized a reason to stay on Xitter 💀💀
noupside.bsky.social
Sens Ted Cruz and Eric Schmitt are holding their hearing on the Biden Censorship Regime of 2018. Watch live here as they try to figure out: who was president in 2020?

Witnesses: Alex Berenson, Sean Davis of the Federalist,
Eugene Volokh, Gene Kimmelman

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QRu...
LIVE: Ted Cruz Leads Senate Hearing About 'How Uncle Sam Jawboned Big Tech Into Silencing Americans'
YouTube video by Forbes Breaking News
www.youtube.com
benfields.net
The only way out is through, there is no going back. The faster this idea becomes normalised the less there will be to repair.
rincewind.run
that the entire republican party and the supreme court have enthusiastically gone along with this is a structural issue that also needs to be solved and we cannot simply return the pre-trump status quo, yes
seentoomuch.bsky.social
That our current system was unable to prevent this is a sign it probably should not recover
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rincewind.run
that donald trump was allowed to become president again after J6 is something we may never recover from as a nation
govpritzker.illinois.gov
I will not back down.

Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power.

What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?
Donald Trump Truth Social Post: Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also.
Reposted by 👻👻 Ben, but rationalized a reason to stay on Xitter 💀💀
owillis.bsky.social
Weird. It’s almost like making accusations generates friction which generates news which rallies your supporters.
2 Key Democrats Come Out And Say It: Trump Has 'Some Kind Of Dementia'
benfields.net
Turn your prison into 1987's The Running Man (s/Hunger Games/g if you're a young person) with this one weird trick
hypervisible.blacksky.app
“A company called 4Sight Labs has created medical monitors that measure vital signs like heart rate and breathing. When locked onto the wrist, the device is designed to alert the jail’s staff of a medical emergency.”
Can a biometric bracelet keep people from dying in jail?
This year, jail officials in Philadelphia started putting digital wristbands on inmates that measure vital signs. They can alert staff when a medical emergency is happening.
www.wbur.org
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stephenkb.bsky.social
No, it's not. It's all a lie. The blunt truth is across the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them.
igmansfield.bsky.social
Outstanding piece by Stephen Daisley.

Ethnicity is no barrier to Britishness - it's culture and integration.

That means 'smaller cohorts and aggressive integration policies' - and tackling the institutions that 'have amplified grievance narratives and radical anti-Western ideologies'.
Reposted by 👻👻 Ben, but rationalized a reason to stay on Xitter 💀💀
jdportes.bsky.social
I hope and believe that most of my fellow Jews will join me in saying that it is sickening that anyone should justify this outpouring of execrable racist bile by claiming that it's for our sake.
igmansfield.bsky.social
Outstanding piece by Stephen Daisley.

Ethnicity is no barrier to Britishness - it's culture and integration.

That means 'smaller cohorts and aggressive integration policies' - and tackling the institutions that 'have amplified grievance narratives and radical anti-Western ideologies'.
Reposted by 👻👻 Ben, but rationalized a reason to stay on Xitter 💀💀
benfields.net
really difficult to call out the real actual fascists that are in power right now if the same word is getting applied to the most well known authoritarian communist
benfields.net
come on now, can aspire to still have words with meanings? Stalin was a horrible authoritarian, but no fascist.
benfields.net
more and more of my colleagues are using LLMs as applied search tools (eg. what's a good restaurant for groups in this neighbourhood?) and it appears it is one of the most efficient ways to get me to become an old man yelling at clouds
benfields.net
Were your instructions compiled, interpreted, or turned into dice rolls? /fin
benfields.net
I think the better binary split is more along this difference between deterministic and probabilistic outcomes. Does the machine do exactly and precisely the things it was told (edge cases, weird interpreters, and all) or is a probabilistic process involved between the specification and execution
benfields.net
whereas other 'no code tools' are pointy-clicky interfaces to LLM-based genAI tools. so the user of the system triggers a generative tool to create a control system. This abstraction creates a probabilistic outcome, since the genAI interface may not create the same output against a repeated input.
benfields.net
I really dislike this phrase 'no code tools'. It feels like it creates a binary in the wrong place. Some 'no code tools' are visual programming environments, perhaps an application specific one (maybe a visual DSL if you're in deep), so a deterministic control system, just like a (text) coding. 1/n
Reposted by 👻👻 Ben, but rationalized a reason to stay on Xitter 💀💀
md.ekstrandom.net
Our system follows the data!

<opens the data>

<finds redlining, racist Reddit posts, every slur a Twitter user has ever hurled at another, the complete archives of the Annals of Eugenics, the collected writings of ESR, and so much more…>
wolvendamien.bsky.social
The current paradigm of "AI" encodes & recapitulates eugenicist, fascist, and generally bigoted tendencies— but previous paradigms did, too, & if these facts had been addressed, then, in the culture of technology specifically and our sociotechnical culture writ large, it might not still be like that
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paulisci.bsky.social
A Brief History of Men are Becoming Less Manly

🧵
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atherton.bsky.social
this is literally stuff King Charles did, like not only did the American colonists have a revolution to not have this happen, but they did so in the wake of the English revolution, which was about not having stuff like this happen
peark.es
Well that's not how appropriations work at all

*WHITE HOUSE TO TRANSFER TARIFF REVENUE TO FUND WIC: LEAVITT
Reposted by 👻👻 Ben, but rationalized a reason to stay on Xitter 💀💀
benfields.net
Trump is asserting _more_ power than the fuckin King of England
benfields.net
What's wild is that the actual English Crown hasn't had this sort of discretionary spending power in England for a loooooong time
rincewind.run
we literally fought the revolutionary war over shit like this