Remember...

“Beware that, when hating on assholes, you yourself do not become an asshole... for when you shitpoast long into the abyss, the abyss shitpoasts also into you.”

This message brought to you by Nietzsche Cheese Doritos, food for thought.

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Meme Dump!

QotD: Ticktockification Edition...

In a post on the lingering death of some of the bigger social media sites, I came across this deliciously laugh-out-loud paragraph:

"For zuckermuskian social media bosses, Tiktok became an object of fierce envy. Here was the ultimate Tom Sawyer robo-fence-painter, a self-licking ice-cream cone that motivated people to convince each other to make money for you. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter took a hard pivot away from showing you the things that the people you loved had to say, in favor of showing you short videos of people whose parents didn't give them enough affection in their childhood, desperately shoving lemons up their noses in a bid to win your approval (and a revshare split with the platforms)."

Remember that a social media site's entire business model is based on keeping you engaged on their site, not sending you away to follow links to blog posts or magazine articles. Every outgoing link you post on, say, Facebook lowers your hidden internal "social credit score" and causes your posts to be de-prioritized in other people's feeds, even if they specifically follow you because they want to see your stuff.

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Meme Dump!

A.I. Delusions

Suppose you were the sort of person who got a little obsessed with someone. Suppose you thought that this person was sending you subtle signals that they really wanted to be with you. Suppose you had a machine that would confirm those delusions, one that was, in fact, programmed to encourage you to think you were right?

We’ve identified at least ten cases in which chatbots, primarily ChatGPT, fed a user’s fixation on another real person — fueling the false idea that the two shared a special or even “divine” bond, roping the user into conspiratorial delusions, or insisting to a would-be stalker that they’d been gravely wronged by their target. In some cases, our reporting found, ChatGPT continued to stoke users’ obsessions as they descended into unwanted harassment, abusive stalking behavior, or domestic abuse, traumatizing victims and profoundly altering lives.

In other cases, the built-in confirmation bias of LLMs can lead otherwise intelligent people to think they were doing some serious "research" to their own detriment...

Though Dr. Marzbani didn’t know it, Joe was routinely asking questions about his cancer to several generative A.I. tools, which often struggle to give accurate medical advice. He told them to list the early signs of Richter’s, interpret his lab results and explain complicated research about the treatment his doctor recommended. He knew not to trust A.I. unilaterally. He often read the scientific papers the tools cited and — as best he could without medical training — tried to verify that they aligned with what the tools had said.

He came away feeling so confident in his understanding of the science that declining treatment seemed to be the obvious choice.

It can be a useful tool for some things, but it's important to get second opinions and reality checks. I know we think we're all way too smart to get trapped in a spiral like that, but...

YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO PROPAGANDA

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Meme Dump!

Memes to Kick Off the Week!

Tab Clearing...

• Fortunately, that will buff right out: Photos of a visibly patched-up KC-135 transiting through RAF Mildenhall en route back to CONUS for repairs.


• The Click That Cost $11,000: Google placing ads for various third party travel agency intermediaries above the links to the actual hotel is a perfect example of enshittification.


• Europe about to feel jet fuel crunch.

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WTAF?

I have no idea what's supposed to be going on in this AI slop picture. Is that Jefferey Epstein or Hunter Biden he's laying hands on?

EDITED TO ADD: Ell. Oh. Ell. This post took so much blowback from MAGA stalwarts that it got deleted.

Sunday Meme Dump!

Meme Dump!

Automotif DCXVIII...

I was aware of the existence of a Vietnamese automobile manufacturer by the name of "Vinfast". I knew that they were gradually getting a small toehold in the US market, but they don't make the kind of cars I really dig, and I couldn't have told you off the top of my head what any of their model names were or what their vehicles looked like, exactly.

Therefore, first time I saw one in the wild and thought to myself "I have no idea what I'm looking at here", I suddenly realized that this is what all cars look like to non-enthusiasts: an otherwise undifferentiated automobile-shaped object.

Anyway, this is a VF 8.

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Don't Forget to Grab a Meme for the Weekend!

They're from the government and they're here to help.

"The Trump administration wants to require health insurance companies to hand over troves of sensitive, detailed, and identifiable medical records from millions of federal workers and retirees, along with their families. The move is raising immediate concern from legal and health policy experts, according to a report by KFF Health News."

I see no way that this data could possibly be misused. Besides, citizen, if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about, nicht wahr?

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Meme Dump!

Middle of the Week Memeishness!

A River Runs Through It...

Here's a neat online tool sponsored by Mapbox and, I think, built off Google Maps where you can plop a raindrop anywhere on the map and trace its path as it flows to the ocean (or wherever its final destination may be.)

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Meme Dump!

Great Cats of Science...

Here's an interesting bit of trivia: That mind-blowing high definition video stream we've been receiving from the Artemis II mission is being transmitted back to Earth using a laser communications system first tested with a video of a cat named Taters.

Back to the Meme Mines!

Tab Clearing...

• David Yamane: Sometimes "I Don't Know" is the Right Answer


• Matt G: Pull Up.


• Secretary of Defense Rock: In Defense of Operation Market Garden

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A Basket of Memes!

Automotif DCXVII...

Driving home from TacCon I made a point of pulling over and photographing this Snow White 1958 Edsel Ranger 4-door sedan in Pryor, Oklahoma. (It was parked outside the same shop where I snapped that '57 Dodge wagon back in 2022.)

This is only the third Edsel I can recollect seeing in the wild, with the others being a '58 Citation and a '59 Ranger.

If you want to read the definitive story on Ford's Edsel debacle, it's Bonsall's Disaster in Dearborn: The Story of the Edsel.

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Meme Dump!

Strange Attractors

I was today years old when I found out that Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League, tutored Arlo Guthrie for his bar mitzvah, which is one of those weird pop culture trivia facts on the order of "Samuel Beckett drove Andre the Giant to school."

Coincidences like this feel like the universe is desperately trying to communicate something, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it is.

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To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before

There are currently ten toilets in space:

• International Space Station: 4
• Crew Dragon Docked at ISS: 1
• Soyuz Docked at ISS: 1
• Tiangong Space Station: 2
• Shenzhou Docked at TSS: 1
• Artemis II on way around Moon: 1

This will be the first time a toilet has left low earth orbit, and the toilet on Artemis II will venture further from earth than any crapper in history. It had a spot of trouble, but the crew and Mission Control successfully fixed it.

They also had trouble with the capsule's computers running two instances of Microsoft Outlook. A lot of talk is made of NASA's SLS rocket using Shuttle-era solid rocket boosters, but it's also worth noting that Microsoft Outlook was first released 25 years after the final Apollo moon mission… …and 29 years before Artemis II.

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War Plans...

I've been collecting proposals to get shipping through the Strait of Hormuz...