Johnny Mac

@[email protected]
36 Followers
204 Following
70 Posts
Poet. Experience and content strategist. Dad-joke expert. 
Principal at fivemagnitudes.com and head writer at johnmccrory.com 
Active on the internet since 1987, I believe it is time to establish a PBS for the internet.
I've lived in VA, PA, IL, OH, NY, NH, & NJ. Working remote for 6+ years in CA, NYC, UK. Surprised to have become a birder.
Personal writinghttps://johnmccrory.com
Content & experience strategy workhttps://fivemagnitudes.com
LocationMontclair, New Jersey
Johnny MacFeb 18, 2025
Ethan MarcotteFeb 18, 2025

🦊

Friday was my last day working at 18F. It was a wonderful place to work, filled with extraordinary people, but a few things happened that made me realize I had to leave.

Everything happens so much these days, so I thought I’d write down for myself what happened, and how I made my decision:

https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/

(FYI, this post gets into recent #uspol events. If that’s a stressor, or not interesting to you, I’d suggest skipping.)

Moving on from 18F. — ethanmarcotte.com

I had a wonderful job, until I didn’t. This is about what happened—and what is still happening.

Show threadJohnny MacFeb 24, 2024
If AI is absorbing its sense of reality from humans' chaotic understanding of the truth, then it will be just as befuckled as we are.
Johnny MacFeb 24, 2024
AI modeled on us repeats our mistakes. AI does not appear to have a way to know what's true and what's false yet. To be fair, we humans also have our struggles with deciding what the facts are.
Show threadJohnny MacFeb 24, 2024
Our daily lives are a cascade of situations in which we have to quickly react with finely nuanced judgements. That ability rests on a lifetime of experiences. We are often wrong. But now the plan is to swap in AI in our place and expect it to peform better.
Show threadJohnny MacFeb 24, 2024
Complex in that navigating roads means confronting the irregular and unexpected: a surprise detour, construction, crashes and their aftermath, jaywalkers, schoolbuses with their stop sign swinging out, flooded roads in storms, trucks overturned spilling thousands of dildos on a highway (look it up).
Show threadJohnny MacFeb 24, 2024
In a sense, we have autonomous airplanes. But, roads are a much more complex environment than the air.
Johnny MacFeb 24, 2024
The software behind driverless cars doesn't need to pass a driving test to get out on the road, and companies are pumping out AI-generated content in real time without legal review. What could possibly go wrong?
Show threadJohnny MacJan 12, 2024
When you select a platform, you are choosing more than a technology. You are choosing a community, whether you like it or not.
Johnny MacJan 12, 2024
Relying on platforms you don't own exposes you to the issue of how those platforms operate. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own the presses. #substack
Johnny MacJan 4, 2024
No, @washingtonpost, my two Jewish sons should not have to live with this in America. What if we swap the word Jews for Irish, or Chinese, or gays or left-handed people, or African Americans? Would a call for the genocide of those peoples be permissible political speech? What is wrong with you?!