@theorangetheme @mttaggart

Autonomous death robots for plausible deniability during any future Nuremberg-like trials.

@venitamathias @msbellows

In addition to yelling the n-word, Davidson could also be heard yelling, “Shut the f--- up,” and “f--- you” during various points in the ceremony.

From https://people.com/john-davidson-deeply-mortified-n-word-baftas-incident-11912076

The only direct slur via tic that night was the profoundly racist one.

The thing white people like me don't understand, don't feel in our gut, is the 250+ years of systemic dehumanization and torture carried by that word. It's not a word. It's a reminder and a promise. It carries weight we cannot imagine. Why he said it matters far less than the fact that it was said. It was said and the reaction by most news outlets is to focus on the illness that said it.

Focus on Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, Oscar nominated actors from one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the season being reminded that some people still never see them as anything other than that word. John Davidson didn't mean it. His illness chose the word. But there are millions of white people who do mean it, every day. People filled with overflowing hatred. When they hear that it doesn't matter why it was said. Just that it was said and it put those two incredibly talented men and every other person of color within earshot "in their place".

The BBC could have censored it. They had a two hour delay. They could have offered an honest apology and acknowledged how deadly that word is, and it is deadly.

They did neither. They should be the ones blamed and punished. They knew and they did not prepare. They were told and they didn't listen.

I'm sad for John Davidson and the "mortification" he feels. He was there to celebrate a movie made about his own life to shine a light on his disability.

I'm more sad for every BIPOC who saw this live or read about it and was reminded that they are never safe, not even when they do everything right and are at the top of their game.

One word tells them it will never be enough.

That's the legacy we have to understand. Slavery. Literal chatel slavery. That's what that word conjures. Can you imagine?

But I'm white. I've already spent too much time talking instead of listening.

@Impossible_PhD

I write short stories but I've been a member of a local writers' group off and on for almost twenty years.

It's not genAI, well not just genAI. It was already drying up unless you were an established name with guaranteed sales or a workhouse churning out genre paperbacks like clockwork.

Amazon Kindle seemed to be the beginning of the end based on the slow change in our speakers presentations.

And traditional publishers were enshitifying before it was a word. You, as the author, have had to do all of the work for a long time. Build your audience, market yourself, practically plan your own press tours unless you were profoundly lucky or well-known.

I hear the old workhorses are being laid off now. They aren't saying "we'll just use genAI" but I think that's the direction. Rather, have genAI spit out a novel and then you, an actual author, get paid shitty wages to "edit" it instead.

Some authors are writing dozens of books a year and still barely making ends meet. The only ones I've known who are "making a living" as writers are older folks who are retired from regular jobs and that's been the case for at least ten years.

If I ever get enough time to put together an anthology of my own short stories, I'll just self-publish and be fine with it. I'll never make money at it. I still write because I love writing.

@KatyElphinstone

In the fictional scenario given to participants, Sally tells a friend it’s safe to swim with jellyfish. She believes they’re harmless. The friend is stung and dies.

Without additional context, I am left to assume that Sally is in no way qualified to advise anyone on whether or not "it's safe". The correct thing for Sally to have told her friend that she could not offer any sort of authoritative assessment of the situation and her decision is whether her own.

Also, did the friend approach Sally and explicitly ask for her opinion or did Sally just blurt out "hey, it's safe to swim with jellyfish!" without being prompted? That would be an important thing to know.

Either way, Sally was wrong to tell her friend it's safe. She should be far more careful with her words.

Edit: "despite her good intentions". There is not enough information for the reader to infer that Sally's intentions are "good".

@mark @gabrielesvelto

At least potted plants are living things.

And nobody tries to say a washing machine will magically birth AGI (as far as I know).

It's not the "talking to things" part that's madness. It's the belief that a machine that can match tokens and spit out some text that resembles a valid reply is a sign of true intelligence.

When I punch in 5 * 5 into a calculator and hit =, I shouldn't ascribe the glowing 25 to any machine intelligence. It should be the same for LLM powered genAI, but that "natural language" throws us off. Our brains aren't used to dealing with (often) coherent language generated by an unthinking statistical engine doing math on giant matrices.

@geekmomprojects I'm part way through a reread of Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness". We've been certainly come a long way from Antarctica being the last great unknown continent in the last 100 years.

@taylorlorenz

Inertia and uncertainty?

They are used to what they're currently doing and there's not enough public knowledge about Fediverse and Mastodon so they don't have an informed opinion.

I often tell people what I found on Mastodon and share articles and suggest that they join. They never do. All it took to get me on Mastodon was musk buying Twitter.

I've got friends who are far more progressive and leftist than me who are still using Facebook and Instagram. I get it. I gave up access to multiple artists whose work I enjoyed because I left Instagram. I have no idea what's happening with much of my extended family because I left Facebook. Some people are not willing to give it up.