Links
“Friendship is actually quite a dangerous thing,” Bell told me. “Friendship is this thing that doesn’t have an immediate social purpose, or social purpose that is defined by the state. Friendship is something that is potentially extremely transgressive, because it’s something where I have an attachment to this person that has no purpose for the preservation of a social order.”
This animation does an amazing job of explaining why a slightly misplaced wire label led to a shipwide blackout, which in turn led to a the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsing. Dymo owners take note!
Reading is falling off a cliff, like an endangered craft. This is clearly more about performance than interiority, but perhaps that’s okay if it leads to someone reading?
This ridiculous post (the answer is clearly his own tariffs) made me learn about “Boxed Beef”, a fascinating turn in intensive beef production that reminds me of what has happened to poultry. Sci-fi authors who thought we’d be eating vat protein got it wrong.
I grew up in a town where there were several Aboriginal deaths in custody in the ‘80s. The final report of the RCIADIC was released 34 years ago.
Nothing’s changed.
Western Sydney University students and alumni emailed to say their degrees had been “revoked”. These incidents are damaging because they mirror the officious and depersonalised tone of so much comms. If acting in more human and humane ways was the norm, these incidents wouldn’t be so harmful.
I’m proud to announce my new role as Chief Content Officer for SlopApp and I look forward to the many challenges of the role.
“OpenAI Is Preparing to Launch a Social App for AI-Generated Videos”
A small way of showing your support for students and staff at UTS:
Petition · Save UTS Public Health – For Students, Communities, and Equity
Prestige over merit: An adapted audit of LLM bias in peer review
The ever-diminishing set of use cases for LLMs…
A Croakey post by me: Calls for action to stop public health cuts at University of Technology Sydney
Me 🫴 The Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers 🦋 is this real? (It’s very well done)
Three influential policy groups that together receive almost $20m in donations a year refuse to reveal their key donors, including those whose commercial interests may overlap with their public advocacy campaigns. The progressive Australia Institute, the right-leaning Centre for Independent Studies and the conservative Institute of Public Affairs argue they cannot reveal their donors without exposing them to attack from political opponents.
Slack. Good on Grattan, CEDA and Per Capita for being more honest about their funding.
Reported by Henry Belot for _The Guardian _