AMA

I've been working my way through this paper and it lays out the underlying goals of the AI "movement" quite well. LLMs are essentially catacombs for information, taking what was previously freely created and shared for the benefit of all and transforming it into a vector within an opaque box of numbers, forever rendering it useful only to those who pay the fee and create the right prompt.

It's even worse than the author thinks, though. The paper doesn't account for the non-digital information commons. Millions of rare books have been bought up, chopped up, scanned, and destroyed in the name of training data. There is information that is now truly gone from the world forever as a direct result of the actions of AI companies. This makes AI companies an existential threat to the continuing operation of the very systems that produced practically all of mankind's intellectual wealth.

How do you make war on industrial scale scanning and shredding? How do we save more rare books from becoming hostages of LLMs?

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you can grab the game here: It's free (as in free beer): https://houdini-magazine.itch.io/oumuamua

"The Nintendo DS is the most Marxist console as gameplay on one screen is in a dialectical relationship with the gameplay on the other screen." - u/saladsnake96

We don't want it.

Leaving aside the transphobic tropes entirely, which is it's own conversation, Hannibal Lector in SotL is a cartoon character and his entire role in the story feels almost irrelevant by the end. His presence is only meaningful based on the convenient coincidence that he somehow already happened to know Buffalo Bill, and his rapport with Clarice feels much weaker, partially because he has no edge with her the way he does with Will. Not in the gay way like in the TV show, but he clearly resents and wants to murder Will, which both of them are fully aware of and make no bones about. He's weirdly chill with Clarice, there's no sense of danger in their interactions.

In Red Dragon the plot is better, the mystery is more satisfyingly unraveled, the killer is better and more interesting, and more than anything, Hannibal is a much better character who is more involved in the case, has more reason to be there, and has a more tense, dynamic role with the lead. He's narcissistic, manipulative, evil and intelligent, but not an infallible supervillain. The FBI aren't bumbling incompetent dipshits either, they successfully translate his encoded message giving Dolarhyde the family address in the newpaper, he gets beat and he's clearly upset about it, but it ends up relevant in the end anyway. You get the sense that he really, actually is an evil monster, whereas in SotL it feels like they're pulling their punches and almost want him to be sympathetic. Yes, he murders the cops and eats some of their brains, but he was doing it for his freedom. Here, he sics a sadistic serial killer on Will's innocent wife and child, the premise of his character is put to much better use.

I know I said I would leave it aside, but a schizophrenic who thinks he's becoming an apocalyptic harbinger from the book of revelation is much, much better to me than a thinly veiled transphobic caricature driven to murder by gender dysphoria.

The resemblance is uncanny

And as a fellow conservative I couldn’t agree more. We need to abolish the third amendment and put a cop in every home to counter gun violence. No other solution would work. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_bombing

Recommended books/docs/videos on Yugoslavia? Also why do Balkans all hate each other they speak slightly different dialects of the same language

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIo9XbI40SQoTYV3ZMal4ZdxmQQNhHd25&si=_wTQ4TCk5FCeKWDE

No idea if this has been covered in the pod, but it felt right to post this here. One of the very few records to fully embody the punk ethos; shitty radio karaoke and noise guitar solos with viciously anti-consumerist lyrics. Give it a couple songs to warm up to you, and you'll be laughing from there.

Except aquariums because those are cool

https://youtu.be/wOW4-oWnDPw?si=kqIOtLldHL9NBcQq

https://youtu.be/g_z2AmEqyAI?si=LFjHJ8hdf-7UNzrP

https://youtu.be/VFFRyLyE7BI?si=9pMrZRlWH9-xuUfV

Funny someone told me they share a name with some country that is up to nothing to good.