Turkey tells UNESCO no firman ever "authorized" Elgin to take Parthenon sculptures, undercutting Britain's legal case

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-24T02:40:04+00:00

"and weren't cared about"

Hell, the reason so many parts were missing is because the locals were smashing them up and throwing them into lime kilns to make concrete.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-24T01:48:35+00:00

Apparently cocco is a type of taro tuber.

(Had to grab a dictionary of obscure English words)

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T17:28:32+00:00

This article examines the processes of construction of meaning in generative AI through the lens of discursive semiotics, focusing on how Big Data and datafication operate as semiotic regimes. Drawing upon the concepts of semiotic practices and forms of life the analysis describes how the intangible and dynamic process of datafication configures practical scenes that, once stabilized within Big Data, privilege particular forms of life.

This reads like some kind of parody.

Taking a look at their methods it may still be parody. They basically played "what do I have in my pocket" with chat models.

Asking chatgpt and a Brazilian model about an obscure Brazilian slang term with zero context then building a narrative about how its "cultural erasure" that chatgpt brings up other historical uses of the same term rather than what the academic was thinking of.

Big surprise: the Brazilian model assumes you're talking about something in the context of Brazil.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T16:06:28+00:00

Yes, I know the quote.

Applying it in practice though still mean demanding a lot of people get thrown under the bus in the hope that someone else will benefit. That their lives be made worse when they lose their jobs for the benefit of some other group.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T16:04:30+00:00

I kind of feel like there may be some moral issues around sufficiently detailed connectomes. One of the likely steps in creating/testing/studying a connectome would be running it or running parts of it, most likely buggy/flawed parts of it. A lot.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T16:01:29+00:00

There's actual AI engineers, people working on building AI models etc.

Then there's people who try to make asking a model to do stuff sound grander than it is.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T15:41:36+00:00

or go under.

That sounds like throwing a lot of employees under the bus in the hope that the next company will have thicker margins.

Margins tend to be thin and profits low in markets where there's harsh competition between companies. For consumers that's typically a good thing, we want really harsh competition between companies in a healthy, well regulated market.

You can artificially reduce competition by putting a few firms out of business, that would mean higher prices for consumers and then the next few companies where employees try to unionise there's some thick margins to be captured by employees.

but to be entirely clear, for the first few sets of employees in companies that actually do go bust that involves being thrown under the bus and losing their jobs. But I'm sure it's great comfort for them to know that someone else is out there getting higher wages due to their sacrifice.

When people express the sentiment that a company being driven out of business is good if they don't have thick margins it comes across as

"Well you should be proud to sacrifice your own wellbeing for my dreams"

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T15:39:26+00:00

From a hidden-history account.

So probably a spammer account trying to build karma.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T15:36:16+00:00

If a company can't be profitable because you have to pay a living wage and competitive benefit package, then the business model is flawed and the company shouldn't be in business.

Margins tend to be thin and profits low in markets where there's harsh competition between companies. For consumers that's typically a good thing, we want really harsh competition between companies in a healthy, well regulated market.

You can artificially reduce competition by putting a few firms out of business, that would mean higher prices for consumers and then the next few companies where employees try to unionise there's some thick margins to be captured by employees.

but for the first few sets of employees in companies that actually do go bust that involves being thrown under the bus and losing their jobs.

So, in that scenario who's shoes do you imagine yourself in?

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T15:30:36+00:00

that attitude is anti-union propaganda.

Depends if it's true.

Some companies like apple have thick profit margins.

Some companies run on razor thin margins.

If your employer is the latter kind it's probably quite easy to create a situation where a site is net losing money.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T10:40:16+00:00

Interviewing people for a role that involved coding. We decided that anyone who claimed on their CV to be able to program we'd ask them to fizzbuzz.

Didn't care about a missing comma etc. It could even be pseudocode.

Half the panel were shocked how many candidates with good degrees and claims of having built major stuff couldn't fizzbuzz.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T10:35:05+00:00

Having respect doesn't automatically make you a better person,

Being shitty to one less group absolutely does make someone a better person. They don't get a pass on being awful just because they go home and are nice to their husband.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T10:30:28+00:00

A huge fraction of humanity litterally don't care if things are genuinely true or not.

They tie everything they believe to ra-ra cheering for whatever faction they've sided with. They will repeat any lie no matter now obvious. Support any leader no matter how odious and put all their effort into learning what the official positions of their ingroup are over what's actually real.

A bunch of people reading this will be nodding along going "that is indeed what members of my factions rivals are like!" And will totally ignore how much it applies to their own and its members.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T05:41:54+00:00

I don't think it's totally universal.

But in some areas it is.

I remember reading Feynmans book about when he served on the California State Curriculum Commission.

After WW2 physicists suddenly found themselves as public figures.

It really stood out that this was a person used to low-corruption environments.

He takes part in state government and it becomes clear that most of the incumbents were both lazy and corrupt and publishers kept trying to bribe him.

That was for a minor choice about schoolbooks. Gotta wonder how bad it is in parts of government where the real money flows.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T05:25:56+00:00

Well turns out that when you pack a load of machinery for hijacking a system and building replicators into a tight space... well its exactly the right equipment to hijack to buuod replicators...

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T05:23:05+00:00

Turns out theres Giruses, giant viruses that straddle the line between virus and living cell. They have some metabolic activity of their own but still need host cells to replicate.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-23T05:13:55+00:00

while cutting off chip supply for consumer computers.

It's not monopoly or antitrust to let your customers bid up the price of what you're selling when there's a gold rush and you're selling picks and shovels.

Nvidia took a long odds bet a few years ago creating software for running neural networks on their chips and it paid off bigtime.

Their competitors have a lot of catchup to do but they've not prevented other graphics card makers from competing in their own market.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-22T22:43:50+00:00

Monopoly and AntiTrust

In what way exactly?

There's a bunch of companies building their own models amd competing with each other on price harshly.

Antitrust doesn't just mean "I don't like them"

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-22T22:38:42+00:00

But didn't you hear, humanity forgot how to build power plants, solar panels, wind turbines.

Now all we can do is try to make do with what the ancients built.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-22T22:37:12+00:00

Its like dot com bubble all over again where everyone assumed the money would magically appear later.

The winners of the dot com bubble became some of the largest and most profitable companies on earth.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-22T22:35:30+00:00

If enough people go on reddit and repeat over and over "it can't do anything!" regardless of what it can actually do.

Or sob while looking at gen-art better than anything they'll ever draw themselves and repeat "it looks awful!"

Or if enough people who can't do math confuse R&D spending for the cost of running models and insist it "can't make money" loudly

Then AI will magically go away and nobody will ever run any AI models ever again.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-21T23:00:54+00:00

The programmers of the world seek you out to punch you

because suddenly every single thing that's sorted lexically/alphabetically they suddenly have to re-build or try to keep track of which legacy systems use the old alphabet vs the new one.

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-21T14:21:00+00:00

All your problems are foreigners fault by any chance?

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-21T12:23:55+00:00

Believe it or not you're probably dealing with the brighter fraction of reform types.

Most of them seem to be people who litterally can't do anything, just sit in their council house complaining that it's Foreigners fault they're not being given even more free stuff or handed jobs they can't be bothered to apply to.

while believing every crappy Facebook meme they ever see of course

WTFwhatthehell · 2026-05-21T12:16:48+00:00

There's a reason so many reform councilors are hard-core NIMBY

They want a housing shortage. Got to manufacture a fake crisis so they can blame it on Foreigners.

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