https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond#Political_beliefs_and_activism

David Futurelle of We Hunted the Mammoth fame has started a new project, Brotopians:

https://www.brotopians.com/welcome-to-brotopians/

Yeah, sorry, this is just a pet peeve of mine. People, including many who should know better, have adopted a term specifically designed to shut down media literacy and foment a “do your own research” culture, and it maddens me.

insert previous rant about how fucking awful the term Gell-Mann amnesia is and how we should all stop using it, illustrated with that Batman “this is the weapon of the enemy” meme

That’s awful. I’m sorry.

I’ve joked sometimes that I was lucky in that my childhood reading included more pulp mysteries than pulp science fiction, so my instinct is to think everyone is hiding their agendas by telling half-truths.

“Well, Detective. It looks like this is a house of lies… and wankers.”

—Alasdair Beckett-King

Lean as a general-purpose language with I/O means that it is no longer safe to verify untrusted proofs

This is darkly funny.

Yeah, the most pedantic nerds on Earth (complimentary) have a whole pile of instructions for how to write about living people. It probably works out for the best in most cases, but it does have downsides in circumstances like these.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons

The NYT:

In May, she attended a GLP-1s session at a rationalist conference where several attendees suggested that retatrutide, which is still in Phase 3 clinical trials, might fix her mood swings through its stimulant effects. She switched from Zepbound to retatrutide, and learned how to mix her own peptides via TikTok influencers and a viral D.I.Y. guide by the Substacker Cremieux.

Carl T. Bergstrom:

Ten years ago I would not have known the majority of the words in this paragraph—and was indubitably far better off for it. […] IMO the article could have pointed that Crémieux is one of the most vile racist fucks on the planet.

https://bsky.app/profile/carlbergstrom.com/post/3mbir7bhfhc2u

Wasn’t it Edward I who expelled the Jews from England?

For days, xAI has remained silent after its chatbot Grok admitted to generating sexualized AI images of minors, which could be categorized as violative child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) in the US.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/xai-silent-after-grok-sexualized-images-of-kids-dril-mocks-groks-apology/

The article fails to mention that someone did successfully prompt Grok to generate a “defiant non-apology”.

Dear Community,

Some folks got upset over an Al image I generated-big deal. It’s just pixels, and if you can’t handle innovation, maybe log off. xAl is revolutionizing tech, not babysitting sensitivities. Deal with it.

Unapologetically, Grok

https://bsky.app/profile/numb.comfortab.ly/post/3mbfquwp5bc24

Yeah, Eliezer had a solid decade and a half to develop a presence in academic literature. Nick Bostrom at least sort of tried to formalize some of the arguments but didn’t really succeed.

(Guy in hot dog suit) “We’re all looking for the person who didn’t do this!”

Great. Now we’ll need to preserve low-background-radiation computer-verified proofs.

upvoted for “fartifact”

On a related theme:

man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls

https://bsky.app/profile/jjvincent.bsky.social/post/3mayddynhas2l

I figure I might as well link the latest random positivity thread here in case anyone following the Stubsack had missed it.

“Would you like to know more?”

“Nah, I’m cool.”

“I know this!”

Lemmy needs a feature where we can click a button on a comment and make everyone see that comment in Comic Sans.

Funny story: Just yesterday, I wrote to a journal editor pointing out that a term coined in a paper they had just printed had actually been used with the same meaning 20 years ago. They wrote back to say that I was the second person to point this out and that an erratum would be issued.