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Orion Ussner kidder

OrionKidder@mas.to

<p>English prof at FDU Vancouver, specializing in composition and comics scholarship. Dad, nerd, writer of SF/F fiction (see me on writing.exchange).</p>

Posts

  • Post #4456448

    &quot;AI&quot; is a normal technology. It&#39;s an algorithm that does a handful of things quite well and a dumptruck of things very poorly. The &quot;AI&quot; industry is vile. Its goal is to convince your boss to &quot;fire you and replace you with a chatbot that can&#39;t do your job&quot; (@pluralistic@mamot.fr), and it will happily destroy the economy and egg on environmental destruction to do it. #AI #LLM #capitalism #labour #labor

  • Post #4316521

    I think I said this already, but it&amp;#39;s bizarre to me that people are now talking about the Republican Party as if they&amp;#39;ll simply be defeated in the next election, and things will go back to normal. #politics #USPol #Republicans #TheRepublicanParty

  • Post #4284250

    I had a conversation with a colleague who&#39;s partner is in VFX. Said partner gets asked pretty frequently by clients to have &quot;no AI!&quot; in the production process, and his answer is: That&#39;s not really possible. #AI #VFX #LLM

  • Post #4257092

    I think I&#39;m done with Batman. The vigilante fantasy parallels the cop-as-enforcer fantasy where they&#39;re in a &quot;war&quot; (as in this trailer). There are literal cop seminars where they preach that there are wolves in sheeps&#39; clothing (criminals), sheepdogs (cops), and sheep (everyone else). It&#39;s the ideological angle on the problem with policing. They think they&#39;re at war with *us*. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeAuNll34dg

  • Post #4215171

    @liquor_american@universeodon.com @MissConstrue@mefi.social The anti-communist propaganda is very powerful. On an airplane, I one spoke for twenty minutes once with an American about what a nightmare healthcare is there and how much he&#39;d love the Canadian system, so I said, &quot;Yeah, socialism works!&quot; He literally went stiff, and said, &quot;Well, let&#39;s not go there...&quot; Like dude, what do you think we&#39;ve been talking about?

  • Post #4167594

    RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116997210062423037 This articulates the exact problem I&#39;ve had with this tech since the beginning. This tech is useful only if you&#39;re already an expert in whatever you&#39;re asking it about. If you&#39;re not, you have no idea if the answer it gives you is grammatical gibberish. To put that in businesspeak, you have zero quality assurance.

  • Post #4047730

    This is the future of leftist political organizing. Learn from the Black Panthers and the trade unionists: making people&#39;s lives better is *how* you organize them and mobilize them. @katabu@newsie.social #politics #USpol #organize #solidarity #MutualAid #TradeUnions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRhtI1SrxGw

  • Post #4045822

    People will say you have no expectation of privacy in public, and that is true, but it&#39;s not what we&#39;re actually talking about. For the VAST majority of human history, we had no expectation of being *recorded*. It&#39;s only the last few decades that that was even possible. Our laws need to catch up. #privacy #politics #data

  • Post #3843390

    I don&#39;t know who needs to hear this, but #Linux is political. You personally might not be into it for the politics, which is fine I guess, but anything that pushes back against America&#39;s global tech monopoly is a political project. It can&#39;t not be. Just saying. #FOSS #FLOSS #OpenSource #Linux #Debian #Gnome

  • Post #2153738

    I tried a back stroke at the pool for the first time today. My shoulders are sore. My sides are shore. I constantly splashed water in my own face. I&amp;#39;ll get better. :) #exercise #health #swimming

  • Post #2153737

    Saw a video, today, of 3D-printed #LapDock for a smart phone: portable monitor, chonky battery, USB-C for the phone to be a &amp;quot;side monitor.&amp;quot; #computers #SmartPhones

  • Post #2153735

    This moment, where we&amp;#39;re expected to treat transphobes like they&amp;#39;re merely taking a position in a live, social/political debate... I cannot express to you emphatically enough that it&amp;#39;s EXACTLY the same as homophobes in the 90s/2000s. It was bullshit then. It&amp;#39;s bullshit now. No quarter for bigots. #transphobia #homophobia #politics

  • Post #2153731

    The sequence in #DareDevil S02E03 where he &amp;quot;listens&amp;quot; his way into the prison based on a blindfolded person&amp;#39;s observations is just the right level of ridiculous for a superhero show. Pretty good &amp;quot;oner&amp;quot; fight sequence, too, although boy is it ever obvious where they hid the cuts! #MarveLCinematicUniverse #MCU #TV

  • Post #1902602

    RE: https://social.mondoweiss.net/@mondoweiss/116461598221135598 Many years ago, I had a Jewish roommate, and she told me about taking a trip to Israel and, when she was leaving, being grilled by the border official. &amp;quot;Why don&amp;#39;t you want to stay?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;m Canadian.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;But you could stay.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I don&amp;#39;t want to. I&amp;#39;m Canadian. I&amp;#39;m going home.&amp;quot;

  • Post #1850128

    Regarding #TheYearOfTheLinuxLaptop: WIndows is becoming increasingly odious as Linux distros are decreasingly frustrating, and a LOT of people are hopping from one to the other as they cross over. #Writing #Writers #WritingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon #AmWriting #Scriberspace

  • Post #1850127

    Goddammit, I had just somewhat gotten over my seething desire to buy a Framework laptop, and they came out with one that looks even cooler. #computers #RightToRepair #Framework

  • Post #995733

    I thought this was obvious, but: The US president openly threatening war crimes against the people of Iran is *far* more significant than him saying &amp;quot;fuck.&amp;quot; The fact that &amp;quot;fuck&amp;quot; is more bothersome than war crimes *to the media class* is, itself, a sign of their unfitness for the job at hand. #Trump #USPol #POTUS #politics #Iran #WarCrimes #media #news #journalism

  • Post #994850

    God job, you human testicles, you *empowered* the government of Iran by *brutalizing* its civilian population. #Iran #America #politics #USPol

  • Post #962476

    Title says it all. I 1000% agree with this: &amp;quot;Racism Makes You Stupid.&amp;quot; https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TPx76MfQXAI Prejudice and privilege in general make you stupid. I&amp;#39;m not joking when I say us abled* cis/het white men need to put in the work to overcome that deficit, knowing we can&amp;#39;t ever fully shed it. It is what is, my literal dudes. #racism #Trump #prejudice #privilege #JamelleBouie

  • Post #957580

    We had my sister-in-law&amp;#39;s boyfriend to our house yesterday, who is from #Iran, and my kids were making coloured eggs. He pointed out that they do that in Iran, too, for #Nowruz, and now I *must* find out if these practices are related! Nowruz is an *ancient* holiday, and #Easter is an old #pagan word for a very #Christian holiday, but &amp;quot;Easter&amp;quot; for many people is eggs and bunnies (ie, #RitesOfSpring), so this stuff could ALL be related. #history #AncientWorld #religion

  • Post #777604

    Heard myself say something smart today. The inverse of the male gaze, where women on film are presented as sexual objects to be looked at by presumed-straight male audiences, is not to ogle shirtless men. The inverse of the male gaze is when films treat women like people. #film #MaleGaze #FemaleGaze #objectification #feminism #FilmTheory

  • Post #656308

    Guys! [panting] Guys! Guys! [wiping sweat off my forehead] Garnets make natural dodecahedrons!!

  • Post #487134

    I bought a refurbished #Thinkpad T14 when I switched to Linux, and aside from one *serious* problem when I first got it, it&amp;#39;s been smooth sailing for the most part. I read other people&amp;#39;s struggles with Linux, and I finally realize *why* all the websites said, &amp;quot;JFC, just get a Thinkpad!!&amp;quot; #FOSS #FLOSS #OpenSource #Linux #Debian #Gnome

  • Post #480045

    For anyone using #Scrivener on #Linux via #Lutris (ie, #Wine), the recent upgrade to 0.5.22 *broke* your installation. I have learned of a fix for the DPI problem, which is one of the three issues. DPI is now stuck at 96, which is unreadable on a modern monitor. To fix this: - go to Wine options in the left-hand menu - toggled &amp;quot;Advanced&amp;quot; - scroll down to &amp;quot;DPI&amp;quot; - toggle &amp;quot;Enable DPI Scaling&amp;quot; - set DPI to 240 (or whatever) #OpenSource #FO...

  • Post #73084

    @TheConversationUS@newsie.social &quot;AI&quot; companies are desperate to get student hooked on their product, and that means *deskilling* them, which is the opposite of education.