We need to get back to teaching science literacy and critical thinking in schools.

The problem is… funding.

But most people have always been science illiterate. It’s just that now we’re (as a a whole) explicitly electing/listening to people who don’t value that literacy either.

If the alternative is nothing, that’s fine.

And if you need Facebook for work, fine.

But there is no reason to endure being on hellish social media. We lived without it for thousands of years, and you are (IMO) deluding yourself if you think participating brings even an ounce of change. The biggest impact you can make is not being on there and robbing Facebook (or whoever) of the engagement boost you give it.

They were crucified. Some people freaking believed it with Helene.

This is a good point.

I think “old internet” culture was unsustainable as it scaled up, even without algos fanning the flames.

Off topic, but I am jealous of that handle.

The “piracy database” in question is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis

Screw scholarly journals and giant publishers for squeezing cash out of already-thin academics while being shitty gatekeepers, letting complete trash through while blocking others (among other things). They’re greedy, stagnant, exploitive middlemen.

Doesn’t make what Zuck\Facebook did OK, but I have zero sympathy for the monopolistic “victims” here, especially since it’s going to open weight models one can use for free.

That’s the sad thing. RFK is “right” about a lot, not just about health but about what happened in the election, but that doesn’t make the bad bundled with him OK.

Some people are crazy or corrupt and should absolutely not hold office, but that doesn’t necessarily invalidate points they raise… But apparently we can’t have it that way. We go all in someone or bury, nothing in between

Twitter would still be based, and accessible, overseas, but of course, yeah.

And if Musk counters with “Well why does Facebook et al. get to basically operate the same way?” Yes. That is an excellent question. Perhaps they shouldn’t.

Don’t feed the trolls.

- Internet rule #1 since 1983.

I can already see Musk’s followers crying censorship… Thing is, they don’t need to block Twitter like China’s firewall, right? Making it irrelevant in the EU is enough.

And if it isn’t (like if conservatives make a point to stay on it or whatever), can’t the EU block companies from doing business with Twitter? Global/EU business with any interest advertising there wouldn’t dare risk the EU market. Thus, operating Twitter without major advertisers in the EU would burn cash, and they’d probably ‘soft ban’ EU users by deranking posts or maybe even prevent signups, unless Musk opts to keep it up as a massively expensive propaganda apparatus.

To reiterate, the illusion is that Twitter is a public forum. It’s not. It’s a business making money datamining/advertising, without any semblance of fair attention between users’ posts, and I feel like the EU absolutely has a right to say “Push politics all you want, but you can’t make a profit doing it like that.”

Fair point, and probably true.

That said, for much of the ‘old’ internet… it doesn’t matter. Spaces were mostly user moderated niches, and they weren’t monetizing their users to the point where tracking regulation is enough of an issue to bifuricate.

Welcome to the age of “But the engagement! We just can’t help ourselves.”

Also… don’t call this the internet.

Facebook and Twitter are not the internet, they are Facebook and Twitter. It’s tragic they have become the de facto internet for so many, but still.

Maybe some US “Twitter broadcasters” will move to EU analogues when it turns into such a wasteland. If Twitter’s base hates them anyway, there’s no point in being there, and they can still get some traction overseas.

I fear regular users are “stuck” in the US though. Old friends or grandmas are not moving off of Facebook. And small businesses (or anyone small enough not to be amplified by news outlets and other sources) is stuck on US Twitter, where the audience they’re actually trying to reach is.

All I care is if these wild rumors make their way back to Trump’s feed.

And into his head.

I very much enjoyed the Lincoln Project’s “audience of one” strategy, and like to think outlets are writing stuff with that in mind.

They’re also the only for profit (at the time) company I’ve ever seen say, “Hey, our cost of running the services has dropped, so we’re lowering our prices.”

It’s called competition!

Easy to forget that, everyone once in awhile, anticompetitive monopolism, collusion, or ad propaganda aren’t there…

Grok is a laughing stock in LLM world.

• It’s worse than Gemini, Claude, so… why use it over API?

• It’s not open source or even open weights. Elon is straight up lying when he claims it is.

• It’s more expensive and generally more censored than great open weights models. Its even straight up worse than the remarkable Deepseek v3.

• It has no niche. It’s not long context, it’s slopped from training on other models, it’s not fast, it has seemingly no architectural advantages (not that they publish anything about it,) it’s not particularly good at prose or code completion or answering grounded in facts (hence the subject of the OP) or anything.

• Elon has one of the most inefficiently used H100 hoards on the planet, while other labs are making good models without being billionaires or scorching the Earth.

• Elon is an asshole, and I don’t want anything to do with him.

• Even for “business use,” simply associating with X makes you radioactive.

The only ostensible reason I can think of to use Grok is ignorance, or to lick the boots of Musk/Trump. It’s not good, it’s not ‘based,’ it’s just a shitty, expensive product hyped to the moon and “better some day.” Surprise, surprise…

Anyway, the point is Elon doesn’t care if Grok makes him look bad. Reality is irrelevant, he can hype the snot out of it and have hordes come running to bow in deference.

This is… so inefficient.

She could have become an engineer (or whatever she wants), made videos about it, and made a big difference in many people’s lives, and had whatever personal life she wanted. Instead, she’s producing ‘entertainment’ that’s been replicated a bajillion times.

I an happy for her personally, but this is such a loss to society and a huge ding against the education/work pipeline. I assume she would’ve rather gone into her chosen field if it wasn’t such a miserable grind. If it isn’t ‘worth the hardship’ for someone so brilliant, hardworking, charismatic, and everything to go into STEM, then the system she’s in is completely busted.

Wow, I was expecting something graphic, but its totally on point. Harmless self-awareness.

Heck, Bezos wouldn’t mind.

The only reason he and anyone cares is that “accepting” it would make the president elect throw a Twitter tantrum, or at least pass-aggress Bezos… Sometimes, I can’t believe this is where we are.

Fuck Spez.