One of the best ways to evaluate your own understanding of a subject is to attempt to explain it to someone else. Through explaining things, we discover how much of the "totally obvious" world is actually full of ambiguity, mystery and contradiction.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/05/defining-humanity/#narrowing-the-numinous

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Tech companies like Microsoft and Meta shared names of #Dutch civil servants and scientists with the US senate commission that investigates "tech censorship".

Dutch secretary of state says that stopping to work with American tech companies on the short term is not possible.

This is nonsense. Also people have been trying to put digital independence on the agenda for years, without much success, unfortunately.

Article in Dutch:
https://nos.nl/artikel/2615391-techbedrijven-deelden-namen-nederlandse-ambtenaren-met-vs-ontzettend-zorgelijk

#DigitalSovereignty #DigitalAutonomy #FOSS

"I never expected to find my news from strangers on a federated social network that half the internet has never heard of. But there's something quietly beautiful about a place where people just share what they know. No brand deals, no engagement metrics, just someone who spent 20 years studying Arctic policy posting a thread at 2 AM because they think you should understand what's happening. It's the internet I was promised in 1996."

https://matduggan.com/boy-i-was-wrong-about-the-fediverse/

#Fediverse #Journalism #Internet

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260513-i-applied-to-be-pope-losing-grip-on-reality-while-using-chatgpt

''Millar first started using ChatGPT in 2024 to write letters for a compensation case"

These stories are usually starting like that.

And it makes me annoyed that people who should know better are advertising their use of LLMs while minimising it. "Oh but I only use it for [x]", "Oh but I use an alternative/opensource/european model", etc.

I have a big issue with normalising these products, for many reasons. But this is one of them. When you're telling it's pretty ok to use ChatGPT for some tasks, you actually put some people in danger of falling into LLMs-associated delusions. Among other risks.