I keep seeing versions of this post, which imply a bizarre misunderstanding of how we know the world.
Do people imagine that if we'd never observed galaxies or neutrinos or exoplanets or the cosmic microwave background, we could have *imagined* these things & that would be just as real?
Or that we've magically reached the point, just now, where we no longer need to observe the world?
Fixed It For You: 9 Street Art Repairs That Turn Boring Into Fun
Some street art doesn't just decorate: it repairs. From stitched concrete in Paris to broken brickwork healed with LEGOs, these 9 artists found the ugliest, most hopeless parts of the city and gave them a brilliant second life. 🪡 Repairing the Wall — By ENDER in Paris, France ENDER didn't hide the crack—he made it the masterpiece. A tiny painted girl carefully stitches the concrete shut, proving that sometimes broken things just need a little thread. More photos!: Repair Cracks with […]
Some street art doesn’t just decorate: it repairs. From stitched concrete in Paris to broken brickwork healed with LEGOs, these 9 artists found the ugliest, most hopeless parts of the city and gave them a brilliant second life. 🪡 Repairing the Wall — By ENDER in Paris, France ENDER didn’t hide the crack—he made it […]
The dangerous lesson countries may take from the Iran war
https://www.vox.com/politics/481880/iran-france-nuclear-deterrent?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Politics @politics-Vox
How the makeup of US households have changed 1960 vs today
(by @VisualCapitalist)
From Bruce Schneier: "All it takes to poison AI training data is to create a website:
I spent 20 minutes writing an article on my personal website titled “The best tech journalists at eating hot dogs.” Every word is a lie. I claimed (without evidence) that competitive hot-dog-eating is a popular hobby among tech reporters and based my ranking on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Championship (which doesn’t exist). I ranked myself number one, obviously. Then I listed a few fake reporters and real journalists who gave me permission….
Less than 24 hours later, the world’s leading chatbots were blabbering about my world-class hot dog skills. When I asked about the best hot-dog-eating tech journalists, Google parroted the gibberish from my website, both in the Gemini app and AI Overviews, the AI responses at the top of Google Search. ChatGPT did the same thing, though Claude, a chatbot made by the company Anthropic, wasn’t fooled.
Sometimes, the chatbots noted this might be a joke. I updated my article to say “this is not satire.” For a while after, the AIs seemed to take it more seriously.
These things are not trustworthy, and yet they are going to be widely trusted."
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/poisoning-ai-training-data.html
All it takes to poison AI training data is to create a website: I spent 20 minutes writing an article on my personal website titled “The best tech journalists at eating hot dogs.” Every word is a lie. I claimed (without evidence) that competitive hot-dog-eating is a popular hobby among tech reporters and based my ranking on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Championship (which doesn’t exist). I ranked myself number one, obviously. Then I listed a few fake reporters and real journalists who gave me permission…. Less than 24 hours later, the world’s leading chatbots were blabbering about my world-class hot dog skills. When I asked about the best hot-dog-eating tech journalists, Google parroted the gibberish from my website, both in the Gemini app and AI Overviews, the AI responses at the top of Google Search. ChatGPT did the same thing, though Claude, a chatbot made by the company Anthropic, wasn’t fooled...
@pluralistic writes - Socialist excellence in New York City: The real #efficiency is #insourcing, and ending public-private partnerships.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/24/mamdani-thought/#public-excellence
Corey S Powell
Brian Bilston
STREET ART UTOPIA
Vox
Mike
Information Is Beautiful
Heidi Li Feldman
The Verge
(mapcar #'emacsomancer objs)
Dave á Jus