ekphrasis - Network

If you're on Bluesky also, or just joining, I'd love to connect: https://bsky.app/profile/maggy.kia.net

If you're on Bluesky also, or just joining, I'd love to connect: https://bsky.app/profile/maggy.kia.net

I've been absent for a few months from these shores, I know. I don't intend to be gone forever, but I have some major projects...

I've been absent for a few months from these shores, I know. I don't intend to be gone forever, but I have some major projects taking up almost all my attention right now (and I got new meds for that, too, so I'm... hyperfocusing nowadays, at least by my usual standards). So it'll be a while longer before I start posting more regularly here. Maybe late spring or early summer.

I am occasionally more active on Bluesky though, and that place is open to the public now: https://bsky.social/about/blog/02-06-2024-join-bluesky

Amazing Job Alert for an academic administrator with commitment to workers and labor in the greater San Diego and border region:...

Amazing Job Alert for an academic administrator with commitment to workers and labor in the greater San Diego and border region: https://apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF03568

For a good time, ask ChatGPT: "What are some reasons you may not want to lay off your Ethical AI team?"...

For a good time, ask ChatGPT: "What are some reasons you may not want to lay off your Ethical AI team?"
https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/13/microsoft-lays-off-an-ethical-ai-team-as-it-doubles-down-on-openai/

Really looking forward to reading this, just the idea of it feels so generative for me right now:Dr. Genevieve Guenther: "I'm...

Really looking forward to reading this, just the idea of it feels so generative for me right now:

Dr. Genevieve Guenther: "I'm happy to say that I have new scholarship on #Climate storytelling out in TDR, The Drama Review. TL/DR: climate narratives tend to reproduce the traditional theatrical genres of tragedy and comedy, but these genres actually demotivate people. To counter this problem climate communicators can structure their stories on the epic... "

https://twitter.com/DoctorVive/status/1634256640173023251?t=CPvY1LJXVGLzA1dTFkAhQg&s=19

If you do any kind of justice movement work, you might really appreciate this thread. I can't (but really, I can) believe I've never...

If you do any kind of justice movement work, you might really appreciate this thread. I can't (but really, I can) believe I've never come across the book she's writing about.

Malka Older on "The Pushcart War:"
https://twitter.com/m_older/status/1632499394443444224?t=wbztaUlY6WKvdLe5M_Q64g&s=19

This VF story on the perfect storm that preppers, cryptofascists, white supremacist technolibertarians, racist nomads and other wealthy...

This VF story on the perfect storm that preppers, cryptofascists, white supremacist technolibertarians, racist nomads and other wealthy death cultists have wrought upon Jackson Hole is giving me flashbacks to my own adventures with the last generation of such weirdos.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/new-right-civil-war

My department is having a meeting about AI chatbots next week, and every time I try to prepare I'm struck by how simultaneously...

My department is having a meeting about AI chatbots next week, and every time I try to prepare I'm struck by how simultaneously premature and overdue this conversation feels.

Someone needs to write something about the temporality of ChatGPT but in the meantime here's a really good one on imagination and its colonization by all this weirdness:

Challenging Tech’s Imagined Future – @hypervisible via @ssrc_just_tech
https://just-tech.ssrc.org/articles/challenging-techs-imagined-future/

'This is all absolutely hilarious to me, because if someone called ME [...] with incontrovertible evidence of an alien encounter that...

'This is all absolutely hilarious to me, because if someone called ME [...] with incontrovertible evidence of an alien encounter that they need communicated to a large audience, I would reasonably reply “Why are you contacting me and not, say, the mainstream press?” But the members of the Intellectual Dark Web do not say that, and I can only imagine that this question doesn’t occur to them because they honestly believe they are ALWAYS the right men for the job.'

https://skepchick.org/2023/03/whos-pranking-sam-harris-eric-weinstein-about-ufos/

In Tijuana, asylum seekers are struggling to use a required CBP mobile app that needs to discern faces but "has trouble" with...

In Tijuana, asylum seekers are struggling to use a required CBP mobile app that needs to discern faces but "has trouble" with darker skin.

How long have we known about this problem now?
https://twitter.com/L_Toczylowski/status/1631063774210785280?t=K9wROwCHpneJrMbBMt9lLQ&s=09

"Even the more militant outbursts—19th century slave rebellions, 20th century urban uprisings—did not utilize indiscriminate...

"Even the more militant outbursts—19th century slave rebellions, 20th century urban uprisings—did not utilize indiscriminate violence. The philosopher Cornel West has said that “justice is what love looks like in public.” Feminist bell hooks wrote a trilogy about love, and spoke of it often as the foundation of pedagogy and ethics." --Dan Berger

How Love Fueled the Black Power Movement:
https://time.com/6257292/black-power-movement-love-story/

Outside of Florida's troubling situation, this is the first I've heard of universities cutting out entire humanities and social...

Outside of Florida's troubling situation, this is the first I've heard of universities cutting out entire humanities and social science majors. Is it more common and I just haven't noticed? It's so bewildering. How do you cut out... English, ffs?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/02/24/marymount-university-humanities-majors-eliminated/

I've seen this from a few people in these parts too, so, my programming languages, in the order in which I learned...

I've seen this from a few people in these parts too, so, my programming languages, in the order in which I learned them:

BASIC
PASCAL
C
VisualBasic
sh/bash/csh
sed/awk/regex
Makefile (?)
Perl
JavaScript
PHP (+ MySQL)
Python (but not if I can avoid it)

Not sure if HTML qualifies but if it did, it would come right after the shells. If CSS qualifies, that would come after PHP, LOL (I was... resistant.)

Somehow I held it together until this bit, and then completely lost it:"What if doctors are climbing through windows to suture penises...

Somehow I held it together until this bit, and then completely lost it:

"What if doctors are climbing through windows to suture penises to sleeping cheerleaders?"

https://www.theonion.com/it-is-journalism-s-sacred-duty-to-endanger-the-lives-of-1850126997

Like watching a whole new class of fetish develop in real-time.(I know, said fetish probably already exists. Also, I get that YKINMK, and...

Like watching a whole new class of fetish develop in real-time.

(I know, said fetish probably already exists. Also, I get that YKINMK, and I'm not trying to shame anyone for their actual kinks. )

On the other hand, it's been... interesting watching tech journalists in particular experience and deal with gaslighting.I'm not...

On the other hand, it's been... interesting watching tech journalists in particular experience and deal with gaslighting.

I'm not making a point here, just observing.

I have to admit, this new genre of "news" story on the Bing AI chatbot is starting to get annoying. The are nuggets of...

I have to admit, this new genre of "news" story on the Bing AI chatbot is starting to get annoying. The are nuggets of interestingness once in a while though.

'The company said it hadn’t fully envisioned Bing’s AI, which is integrated into a search engine, being used for “general discovery of the world” or “for social entertainment.”'

I find it super hard to understand why they'd release to the public a tool that's such a huge reputational risk.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/02/bing-ai-chatbot-falsehoods-fact-checking-microsoft/

Well. I finally screwed up the courage to watch the last two episodes of Andor past the prison escape. I was afraid they would disappoint,...

Well. I finally screwed up the courage to watch the last two episodes of Andor past the prison escape. I was afraid they would disappoint, considering. @LyndaN assured me they were worth it. Still, I was willing to call it done at that one perfect note that is Episode 10.

They did not disappoint.

"The evacuation order was lifted on February 8, dying chickens notwithstanding. A reporter, Evan Lambert, was arrested for trespassing...

"The evacuation order was lifted on February 8, dying chickens notwithstanding. A reporter, Evan Lambert, was arrested for trespassing during Governor Mike DeWine’s press conference announcing the change in guidance. The police said, practically begging eyes to roll, that Lambert was being too loud during his live broadcast. It was difficult not to feel that we had indeed entered DeLillo territory: simulation, managed perception, hyperreality."

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/it-is-happening-again

"It is dislocating, of course, to contemplate the prospect of a person getting killed by a factory that has not existed for decades. In...

"It is dislocating, of course, to contemplate the prospect of a person getting killed by a factory that has not existed for decades. In a way the East Palestine disaster replicates the twisted, Möbius-strip temporality of toxic exposure in the body on a societal scale. The heyday of industry in Ohio, as everyone knows, is long gone, for better and for worse."

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/it-is-happening-again/