Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town

Pfffft... Wildebeest is going well I see.

https://github.com/cloudflare/wildebeest/issues/303

"The admins can read your DMs" is old baby news. How about "Everyone can read your DMs"?

In case you considered thoughts and prayers to be the least they could care. In case you thought they couldnt be more bored with this shootings at school thing.

Vanderbilt University Caught Using ChatGPT To Console Students After MSU Shooting

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vanderbilt-university-uses-chatgpt-email-after-msu-shooting_n_63f620abe4b0a209e82ad9e6

I see another person is getting press for "inventing sign language gloves" so now is a good time to remind you that a) someone supposedly invents these at least once a year b) they basically never actually work and c) the Deaf community has repeatedly said they don't want them and that they don't really help.

Random Soapbox: I am against citation formats that include only authors' first name initials. They are Anglo-centric in assuming that there exist more variations in last names than first names; and they also assume the existence of last names!

TV shows do a timeskip without one of the main characters growing facial hair to show time passing challenge (impossible)

Teen Vogue is the only publication that, to my knowledge, always points out that the SAT was created by a eugenicist.

@welshpixie This one is a fan of birdcam but he was getting too rambunctious so I had to turn it off so he could go nap.

My goodness, but I would love if File Explorer / Nautilus / Finder style apps would display README.{txt,md,rst} files similar to how GitHub does it. Would love to be able to leave reminders to myself as to what the fuck a folder is for.

Single sentence, double standard

These days my go-to example of "you cannot bet on having access to better technology as time progresses" is "I used to have an app on my phone that could predict the next hour of weather with startling accuracy and that is no longer an option"

(I am talking about Dark Sky)

Edited to add: I only want to hear suggestions for services/sites/apps if they offer the same ~10min interval microforecasts for the upcoming hour that Dark Sky used to, because that is the thing I am lamenting

they told me that sonnets needed to have a "turn" in them 🤷🏻‍♀️

Open source bros, we need to stop shaming people for not using your inaccessible, unreliable, annoying software.

If you want to tinker with broken things for fun, stay in your bubble as much as you want!

If you are trying for widespread adoption, then yes, you need user research, usability, accessibility, testing, and documentation.

If that means having a code of conduct and getting rid of assholes so you can recruit a wider range of contributers, deal with it!

None of this is off topic.

This is kind of interesting... It seems as though the Sydney chatbot was experimentally used in India and Indonesia before being unrolled in the US, and manifested some of the same issues with them being noticed. Here's an issue filed on Microsoft.com apparently in November (!) that seems to describe the same issues that have only come to wider public notice in the last week. The Microsoft service representative has no idea what's going on.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/forum/all/this-ai-chatbot-sidney-is-misbehaving/e3d6a29f-06c9-441c-bc7d-51a68e856761?page=1

This whole train of thought started a few days ago when I was playing on my go-to Minecraft server and one of the members used the r slur. I was like "bruh fam no", and their noncomittal response made the topic stick in my head for a bit.

So later when I overhead my younger brother in the other room say something to the effect of "that's so stupid", I paused for a minute and realized that he was basically saying the same thing, just swapping out the slur with a more socially acceptable snyonym. While it is undoubtedly better that he didn't use the r slur, there was still the implication of "i dont like it = it's bad = it's [redacted]/stupid/dumb/other synonym"

Now, this had being super mindful, and I realized just how prevalent the speech pattern of "that's [insert some dismissive term]" is, and how frequently it's a synonym of the r slur, similar to what my brother said. Maybe part of that's just the small sample of who I've been around in the past few days and/or is a result of me being hypervigilant about it. I dunno.

Either way, I've tried to actively avoid repeating the pattern in the days since. Instead, whenever I would have liked to be dismissive and say something like "oh that's ridiculous", I try to think deeper about why I'm instinctively feeling the way I am, and just elaborate on that feeling instead. Plus, I've found that avoiding the speech pattern helps keep conversations flowing and helps to make sure you don't accidentally demean someone or their work when tone of voice may be harder to convey.

I hope this train of thought has some merit and isn't just my mind spinning in circles from nowhere near enough sleep. And I REALLY hope I didn't like, do something egregious while trying to talk about such a sensitive topic. If I did, in fact, do a bad, PLEASE LET ME KNOW so I can fix things!

(I'm not a linguist or philosopher or anything, by the way, so do take what I say with that in mind.)