Dave Bartkowiak
@treetreed
- 64 Followers
- 36 Following
- 383 Posts
It’s a long story
Cory Doctorow> Samantha: This town has a weird smell that you're all probably used to...but I'm not.
> Mrs Krabappel: It'll take you about six weeks, dear.
-The Simpsons, "Bart's Friend Falls in Love," S3E23, May 7, 1992
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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/2026/01/14/sole-and-despotic/#world-turned-upside-down
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Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️
Robot Diver 🌊🌬️🍃🌿🌸🌱🌱🌱As both the weird kid and a figure skater growing up this routine officially wins my heart. Most people would be surprised to know I had trophies for interpretive ice dance.
Kashmir HillAfter writing about people going into delusional spirals with ChatGPT and having what look like mental breakdowns, I wanted to understand exactly how it happens.
A corporate recruiter in Toronto who spent 3 weeks convinced by ChatGPT that he was essentially Tony Stark from Iron Man, agreed to share his transcript after breaking free of the delusion.
We analyzed the transcript & shared it with experts. Now you can see the interactions & how delusional spirals happen:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/technology/ai-chatbots-delusions-chatgpt.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ck8.FEwL.MLb9ajaocyTx&smid=url-share
αxel simon ↙︎↙︎↙︎@flq @carnage4life Yes, Luddism is mostly misunderstood, the Luddites were not anti-tech. @pluralistic wrote a good essay on the issue for @Locusmag a few years back: https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/
Clive Thompsonbehold the "HTML bomb"
it's a defensive counterattack on AI web-scrapers that persistently scrape and rescrape your web site, even when you tell them not to
the bomb file *looks* like a tiny HTML page, but when scraped -- or even requested by a regular browser ...
... it unpacks into a huge-ass 10-gig HTML page ...
... which quickly crashes any browser or scraper
Item #6 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-37-wind-theft-an-html-bomb-and-the-rice/
