finally some serious AI critique
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slwr
@entreprecariat@post.lurk.org
hometown 4.6.8+hometown-1.3.0#computers, #work, #videogames, and a bit of #linux | toots in #it & #en | he/him | #nohumans
1135 Followers
714 Following
49 Posts
Joined April 20, 2018
stuff:
publishing:
what my random wikipedia browser homepage serves me
The most unpronounceable portmanteau is back!
The 2026 edition of Entreprecariat, featuring a new extensive introduction and an energizing cover, is now available for preorder.
Out on June 26. Check it out on Set Margins' website: https://www.setmargins.press/books/entreprecariat/
That magic feeling when you search for the pdf of a book, and you find it inside the website of a person you actually know.
OUT NOW! Entreprecariat: Everyone Is an Entrepreneur. Nobody Is Safe. (2026 Hustler Edition)
Entrepreneur or precarious worker? These are the terms of a cognitive dissonance that turns everyone’s life into a shaky project in perennial start-up phase. Silvio Lorusso guides us through the entreprecariat, a world where change is natural and healthy, whatever it may bring. A world populated by motivational posters, productivity tools, mobile offices and self-help techniques. A world in which a mix of entrepreneurial ideology and widespread precarity is what regulates professional social media, online marketplaces for self-employment and crowdfunding platforms for personal needs. The result? A life in permanent beta, with sometimes tragic implications.
This new edition, published seven years after the first and expanded with a new introduction, is a needed update for a time when precarity has become ubiquitous and entrepreneurialism has gone berserk.
With a foreword by Geert Lovink and an afterword by Raffaele Alberto Ventura.
Design by Federico Antonini & Alessio D'Ellena
Published by Set Margins'
I had a conversation with Tim Rodenbröker about "learn to code vs code to learn" 4 years after I wrote an essay on the subject.
Some time ago Anna's Archive launched a contest to create a visualization of the “ISBN space,” i.e., all books registered through this code. The results are spectacular. I recommend that you search for any book in the winning tool for an authentically Borgesian experience.
Winner: https://phiresky.github.io/isbn-visualization/
List of winners: https://annas-archive.org/blog/all-isbns-winners.html
Today everything is a computer, but nothing can be used *as* a computer.
Can Wendell Berry's "Why I Am not Going To Buy A Computer" (1987)* be considered an early example of permacomputing?
Little excerpt:
> I would hate to think that my work as
a writer could not be done without a direct
dependence on strip-mined coal. How could I write conscientiously against the rape of nature if I were, in the act of writing, implicated in the rape? For the same reason, it matters to me that my writing is done in the daytime, without electric light.
* https://classes.matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/berry-computer.pdf
what a joy to clean the music library with beets
joking, I haven't "tested" it. But I gave some thought about what testing means when it comes to new AI tools (services, really): there is some sort of Pavlovian response from the user who is expected to be blown away. In this sense, the user is tested by the new tool (service, really).
Today I learned that the paper card inside a cassette is called J-card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-card
one repercussion of vibe coding is that people are again designing their own personal website
"In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it. Therefore, the primary choice is not between a “yes” or “no” to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem; between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence."
Such a weird effect to read these words from Pope Leo XIV, a mix of Christian theology and STS.
god bless wikipedia random page
Should We Be Worried?
"Having your every click, tap, pause, and scroll monitored has long been part of the bargain of using Facebook and Instagram. Now it’s part of the bargain of working there, too." *
Player Piano intensifies
* https://www.platformer.news/meta-mci-monitoring-layoffs-knowledge-work/
I came to think that one of the most important – and rarest! – skills a design tutor can have is the ability to extrapolate a convincing project from the dirtiest prototype.
"Marcuse's conviction that art constituted a 'Great Refusal, the protest against that which is' came to seem like outmoded Romanticism, quaintly irrelevant in the age of capitalist realism." – Mark Fisher, 2016, "Acid Communism"
Replying to
@dried@sonomu.club Download with Nicotine+; $ beet import albums; beet $ import -s individual songs. Rhythmbox to listen, with a special playlist to highlight recently added music. That's it :)
I feel so sorry for Angine de Poitrine, weaponized on LinkedIn to moralize about the lack of humanity of AI, turned into the collateral damage of a silly debate.
The coolest archive just went online: the Nokia Design Archive,* with 722 entries. I swear I'll check them one by one.
ppl leave insta, quit x, get lost on masto. how to know if yours truly has published something new? on the telegram channel, of course. no titles, descriptions, etc, just hyperlinks to the text: fu "link in bio" --> https://t.me/+bC63xS3oaAUxYWJk
crone job 🧹
Replying to
@nolwennm@mastodon.design x and LinkedIn are full of people bragging about their vibe coded websites
A good indicator of a text I won't like is the punchy, revelatory line as a single, isolated paragraph. Something like:
[long paragraph]
This is us now, all of us.
[long paragraph]
I'm *not* on a roll.
Replying to
@dried@sonomu.club no, it cleans up the downloaded files, adds metadata and imports into a folder of choice. Neat!
At 87, Steward Brand wrote a book on maintanance. Here is a (pretty negative) review: https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/17/1135408/book-review-stewart-brand-fixing-everything-maintenance/
in the meantime manovich goes all "capitalism is best"
I have so much gratitude to people who made extremely cheesy pizzas cheese-by-cheese. It already feels difficult to remember how much effort it really took.
Thank you for getting us to this point.
OK, let's try to make this happen (again).
Enter THE POLL'S DILEMMA 2: Pareto Edition!
You can:
- vote
- boost
- reply with strategy and overview of the situation
- wait 7 days to see the results
good non-fiction writing is a while loop of "depends"
"We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible."
Who wrote this?
Who's gonna be the first to intelligently implement fake AI follow-ups in their human-written text?
I have so much gratitude to people who wrote extremely long novels character-by-character. It already feels difficult to remember how much effort it really took.
Thank you for getting us to this point.