Mastodawn

Alison Hearn Jul 8, 2023

jonathan w. y. gray 🐨Jul 8, 2023

just arrived in san francisco and learning about "coning" or "unicorning" - the practice of "placing traffic cones on self-driving cars" 😂🦄🚗🚫

more at
@SafeStreetRebel https://www.safestreetrebel.com/

#coning #unicorning #safestreetrebel #autonomouscars #selfdrivingcars #selfdriving #ai #artificialintelligence #machinelearning #sanfrancisco #sfba #sf #bayarea #california #til

Safe Street Rebel

Not without a fight

Safe Street Rebel

Alison Hearn Jun 21, 2023

Matthew Garrett Jun 21, 2023

I know there are people reading this who work for major companies still advertising on Twitter (Apple, Google, and Amazon at least), so: two days before the SF Trans March, Elon is making it even more explicit that Twitter is a transphobic platform. You have the ability to influence the behaviour of your employers. Maybe do that?

Alison Hearn May 28, 2023

Jason Read May 28, 2023

I wrote about DeSantis' attack on Higher Education because “What is happening in Florida will not stay in Florida."

http://www.unemployednegativity.com/2023/05/florida-man-war-against-higher-education.html

Florida, Man! The War Against Higher Education

Alligator has to be the best University Mascot “What is happening in Florida will not stay in Florida." From the AAUP's Report on Florida ...

Alison Hearn May 28, 2023

Frank Pasquale May 28, 2023

“To a TikTok creator, all the world’s a stage, or more specifically the set of a low-budget reality show, with formerly TV-bound tropes like the prank show and man-on-the-street interview becoming user-generated content that spills past the boundaries of its traditional medium and breaks the fourth wall.”
https://kneelingbus.substack.com/p/the-museum-of-sauce

The Museum of Sauce

Much of TikTok remains inscrutable to me, but even I can tell that it has dethroned Instagram as the internet’s most vital aesthetic engine, if not yet the most broadly transformative. While TikTok’s visual imprint hasn’t quite trickled down to the design of fast casual restaurant chains and other mundane corporate environments, it has at least hammered a nail into the coffin of the previous status quo; as the app’s various side effects become more noticeable, the Instagram-friendly detritus of millennial culture, by turns Scandinavian minimalist and neon-lit (but almost always cheugily “tasteful”), now forms the bland background against which TikTok’s impact stands in relief, all the more vivid thanks to the contrast. I’ve referenced Molly Fischer’s

Kneeling Bus

Alison Hearn May 6, 2023

danmcquillan May 6, 2023

Alison Hearn Apr 14, 2023

Roland Meyer Apr 14, 2023

As AI-generated images become increasingly indistinguishable from »real« photographs, there has been much talk about how this will undermine our trust in visual representations. But we may also see other, more fundamental changes in the relationship between image and reality. Photography has never been an objective mirror of reality, and manipulation is as old as the medium itself. But even as it has sought to represent the world, photography has also transformed it, making reality more »photogenic« by turning places and events into »photo ops«. Of course, this tendency has been further amplified by the ubiquity of smartphone photography and social media: shops, restaurants, exhibitions, tourist destinations, even dinners are now valued for their »instagrammability« and carefully designed to look good in digital photos. Thus, instead of photography mirroring reality, our reality has long since begun to mirror photography, remade to produce perfect images. But what if AI image generation is about to change that? Already, most images we see online are highly filtered versions of our world.

As AI becomes more and more integrated into everyday image production, we need less and less "reality" to produce more and more impressive pictures of it. The world only gives us the raw data, everything else happens in post-production. We don’t need to wait for the perfect sunset, our dinner doesn't have to look flawless, and we don’t have to worry about other people ruining our perfect shot. As the researchers behind GEN-1 call it, we can take the »structure« of reality and completely remake its »content«. In a way, this seems dystopian: it's the end of a shared visual reality, as everyone can automatically adjust and filter their environment according to their mood and aesthetic preferences. On the other hand, it could also free reality from the need to look good in photos …

Alison Hearn Apr 14, 2023

Show thread

petersuber Apr 13, 2023

Update. #Republicans in the #Missouri House voted to #defund all the state's public #libraries. The bill now goes to the Republican-controlled Senate.
https://heartlandsignal.com/2023/04/11/missouri-house-republicans-vote-to-defund-libraries/

The bill is retaliation against a lawsuit by Missouri library associations to overturn a #BookBanning statute.

Missouri House Republicans vote to defund libraries

Missouri House Republicans voted to defund all of the state’s public libraries, in a proposed $45.6 billion state budget that will soon move to a vote in the GOP-controlled state Senate.

Heartland Signal

Alison Hearn Apr 2, 2023

David Golumbia Apr 2, 2023

one of the major, largely backgrounded goals (but very much fundamental drivers) of the #fascist attack on #education in the US is coming into focus: preventing teachers from teaching about #climatechange https://time.com/6266938/ohio-climate-change-education-bill-culture-war/ #fascism

More States Want Students to Learn About Climate Science. Ohio Disagrees

An Ohio bill would force college instructors to teach proven falsehoods and misleading fossil fuel talking points about climate change.

Time

Alison Hearn Mar 30, 2023

Frank Pasquale Mar 30, 2023

“The first step is to buy time to upgrade our 19th-century institutions for a post-A.I. world, and to learn to master A.I. before it masters us.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/opinion/yuval-harari-ai-chatgpt.html