Link tags: log

The sound of inevitability | My place to put things

People advancing an inevitabilist world view state that the future they perceive will inevitably come to pass. It follows, relatively straightforwardly, that the only sensible way to respond to this is to prepare as best you can for that future.

This is a fantastic framing method. Anyone who sees the future differently to you can be brushed aside as “ignoring reality”, and the only conversations worth engaging are those that already accept your premise.

(optional.is) Latency and the Sea

Brian’s excellent comparison of network latency and the nervous system of animals:

If an earthquake occurs in California USA, halfway around the globe someone can find out faster than a blue whale detects something has touched its tail.

The Imperfectionist: Navigating by aliveness

Most obviously, aliveness is what generally feels absent from the written and visual outputs of ChatGPT and its ilk, even when they’re otherwise of high quality. I’m not claiming I couldn’t be fooled into thinking AI writing or art was made by a human (I’m sure I already have been); but that when I realise something’s AI, either because it’s blindingly obvious or when I find out, it no longer feels so alive to me. And that this change in my feelings about it isn’t irrelevant: that it means something.

More subtly, it feels like our own aliveness is what’s at stake when we’re urged to get better at prompting LLMs to provide the most useful responses. Maybe that’s a necessary modern skill; but still, the fact is that we’re being asked to think less like ourselves and more like our tools.

Large Language Muddle • Jason Santa Maria

It feels like someone just harvested lumber from a forest I helped grow, and now wants to sell me the furniture they made with it.

Ensloppification – David Bushell – Web Dev (UK)

Frankly, I’d rather quit my career than live in the future they’re selling. It’s the sheer dystopian drabness of it. Mediocrity as a service.

I tried the tab-completion slot machines; not my cup of tea. I tried image generation and was overcome with literal depression. I don’t want a future as a “prompt artist”.

I’m mostly linking this for what it says, but oh boy, do I love the way it says it with this wonderful HTML web compenent.

Toolmen | A Working Library

Engaging with AI as a technology is to play the fool—it’s to observe the reflective surface of the thing without taking note of the way it sends roots deep down into the ground, breaking up bedrock, poisoning the soil, reaching far and wide to capture, uproot, strangle, and steal everything within its reach. It’s to stand aboveground and pontificate about the marvels of this bright new magic, to be dazzled by all its flickering, glittering glory, its smooth mirages and six-fingered messiahs, its apparent obsequiousness in response to all your commands, right up until the point when a sinkhole opens up and swallows you whole.

👏👏👏

Stop saying that AI is just a tool and it only matters how it is used | Frank Elavsky

Must be something in the air.

The luxury of saying no.

If I’m understanding Greg correctly here, he’s saying it’s okay for people to use large language models …because they’re being forced to?

An Entirely Other Day: The Triumph of Triumphalism

Scratch the skin of wild-eyed AI proponents, and a thick syrup oozes out, made up of the blendered remains of Roko’s Basilisk, barely sublimated Christian end-times thinking, and the mis-remembered plot of that one cool science-fiction story they read when they were twelve. This is the basis for the new order, just like the blockchain was a couple of years ago, and a dead-eyed, low-poly, pantsless rendering of Mark Zuckerberg was a couple of years before that.

“You’re going to be left behind” is only the latest version of “Have fun staying poor.” It’s got every ounce of the smug self-satisfaction that it shouldn’t need if the inevitability it promises were actually inevitable.

“AI-first” is the new Return To Office - Anil Dash

AI is really good for helping you if you’re bad at something, or at least below average. But it’s probably not the right tool if you’re great at something. So why would these CEOs be saying, almost all using the exact same phrasing, that everyone at their companies should be using these tools? Do the think their employees are all bad at their jobs?

Pluralistic: The enshittification of tech jobs (27 Apr 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

The point of AI isn’t to make workers more productive, it’s to make them weaker when they bargain with their bosses.

What we talk about when we talk about AI — Careful Industries

Technically, AI is a field of computer science that uses advanced methods of computing.

Socially, AI is a set of extractive tools used to concentrate power and wealth.

P&B: Jeremy Keith – Manu

In which I answer questions about blogging.

I’ve put a copy of this on my own site too.

Beach daydreams, lost at sea (Interconnected)

Matt’s beach thoughts are like a satisfying susurrus in my RSS reader.

Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?

You won’t be able to unsee this. It’s like the FedEx logo …if the arrow was an anus.

1. Circular shape (often with a gradient)
2. Central opening or focal point
3. Radiating elements from the center
4. Soft, organic curves

Sound familiar? It should, because it’s also an apt description of… well, you know.

Once Again From the Top • Jason Santa Maria

Welcome back, Jason!

The Blowtorch Theory: A New Model for Structure Formation in the Universe

Make yourself a nice cup of tea and settle in with Julian Gough’s magnum opus:

How early, sustained, supermassive black hole jets carved out cosmic voids, shaped filaments, and generated magnetic fields

Stop Using and Recommending React - Lusitos Tech Blog

I can’t recommend React to any project or customer anymore.

Using almost any other modern alternative, you will save time, money and nerves, even if you haven’t used them before.

Don’t stick to technology just because you know it.

In the way

This sums up my experience of companies and products trying to inject AI in to the products I use to communicate with other people. It’s always just in the way, making stupid suggestions.

The web was always about redistribution of power. Let’s bring that back.

Many of us got excited about technology because of the web, and are discovering, latterly, that it was always the web itself — rather than technology as a whole — that we were excited about. The web is a movement: more than a set of protocols, languages, and software, it was always about bringing about a social and cultural shift that removed traditional gatekeepers to publishing and being heard.