onfocus

"This isn’t just a problem for Stack Overflow. In pretty much every other example where you see ChatGPT screwing up basic facts, it does so with absolute self-assurance. It does not admit a smidgen of doubt about what it’s saying. Whatever question you ask, it’ll merrily Dunning-Kruger its way along, pouring out a stream of text. It is, in other words, bullshitting."

Effortless bullshit. At scale. What could possibly go wrong?

"The likelihood that Congress will impose a deal along the lines of the presidential panel’s recommendations, or the tentative agreements, means that management has little incentive to agree to union demands."

Pretty wild that congress can just force a labor contract for rail workers. Knowing that congress will side with management means negotiating was never meaningful.

"The lack of action extends to new accounts affiliated with terror groups and others that Twitter previously banned. In the first 12 days after Mr. Musk assumed control, 450 accounts associated with ISIS were created, up 69 percent from the previous 12 days, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that studies online platforms."

Same name, completely different site.

“I’ll have to repair nearly every article I’ve ever written since my tweets got wiped out,” journalist and videographer Vishal Singh wrote on Mastodon on Monday, after being banned from Twitter. “Hundreds of articles written by countless journalists used my tweets. From all sides of the political spectrum. Academic papers that cited my tweets. These links and embeds are now all broken.”

The ability to purge the public record is a good argument against citizens relying on private companies to host/protect the public record.

”Passing this bill is our chance to send a message to Americans everywhere: No matter who you are, who you love, you deserve dignity and equal treatment under the law. That’s about as American [an] ideal as it comes.”

More like this please.

"Between January 2020 and September 2022, Twitter suspended more than 11,000 accounts for breaking Covid misinformation rules and removed almost 100,000 pieces of content that violated those rules, according to statistics published by Twitter."

Not any more. Those accounts are back and there’s no effort to remove misinformation. "Public square" now considered actively harmful.

"One might think—or hope—that, after Enron, WorldCom, Bernie Madoff, Jordan Belfort and the 2008 financial crisis, that the business press could harbor skepticism about financial and business leaders in general, but particularly those in a shadowy, emerging sector known for its instability (Forbes, 5/10/22) and its susceptibility to scams (Forbes, 9/23/22)."

The business press functions as a cheerleader rather than a critic. People who care about the impact of businesses on people are in a different business.

"Democrats running on pro-abortion rights nearly swept the table, and every ballot initiative aimed at restricting abortion lost, while ballot initiatives strengthening abortion rights prevailed and even outperformed Democratic candidates in some cases."

Where is all the media soul searching and feature articles about abortion rights voters?

"There are various theories purporting to explain Musk’s hard right turn: a childhood in apartheid South Africa, his connection with Peter Thiel, disappointments in his personal life. Whatever the truth of the matter, whatever right-leaning tendencies he may have had before a couple years ago appear to have been latent or unformed. Now the transformation is almost complete. He’s done with general “free speech” grievance and springing for alternative viewpoints. He’s routinely pushing all the far right storylines from woke groomers to great replacement."

Billionaires are not immune to radicalization. Unfortunately society is not immune to billionaires.

"ooh.directory is a place to find blogs that interest you."

A new blog directory dropped like it's 2002. This is by Phil Gyford, so great--read things! By people!

"Even if the attention of the world were to move away from [Mastodon] it will absolutely sustain itself because it only requires a bunch of committed people to say, 'hey I want to do this'. Things like that are very robust."

Brooke Gladstone interviewing Clive Thompson about what Mastodon is and why anyone should care.

The removal of the president from the two offices that interested him most—the presidency and his twitter account—gave the platform new life. The hellsite was still a shadow of its earlier days, sure, but finally began to reemerge as a somewhat more healthy medium for serious communication.

And then Elon bought it.

Excellent summary of the current state of Twitter and why it's time to move on.