Martin Rundkvist

As a response to your prompt, the LLM gives you the words that are statistically most likely in the order that is statistically most likely, given its training texts. That's all it does. It's artificial but not intelligent. You're reading a mind into the LLM output just the same way as you think about your robot vacuum cleaner as a house pet. #llm #ai #aibubble

Talked to someone who has been dabbling in translating fiction. This guy was horrified when I told him that if he uses machine translation for more than dictionary checks of individual words, he can't put his name on the translation and the work is ineligible under most standard publishing contracts. "OMG, but then it would take FOREVER to translate a novel!?!?" Yes. You're right. That's why translators get paid. #translation #llm #books

The 1985 Ericsson Portable PC was the first computer my parents owned when I grew up. Later they got the expansion case with a 20 MB hard drive. #retrocomputing

While otherwise a painstaking recycler, I've quit sorting plastics out of our waste. Because I know that the "recycling" bin for plastics leads straight to a furnace. Recycling plastics is not economically viable by far with known technology. It's been a marketing lie from the makers of plastics all along. It causes microplastics. Until Swedish authorities face up to this and give me a convincing reason to sort plastics, I'm not continuing the charade. #plastics #environment #recycling

A lot of people seem to believe that if you ask an LLM to look through a database and calculate something, or extract data according to some criteria, then it will do exactly what you ask for. It won't. It will calculate an output that looks normal. And you won't discover this unless you do the same operation manually and compare. #llm #ai #aibubble

Bragging time! In the past 16 months I have published three volumes of UK short fiction translated into Swedish, almost all of it from before WW2. These are my first professional efforts as a fiction translator. I just learned that all three have been selected for library subsidies by the Swedish Arts Council! 😁😁😁 #books #translation #happy

"Återvandring" är etnisk rensning. #svpol

My wife and I have always paid more attention to the anniversary of us meeting (6 June). But we just realised that today is our Silver Wedding Anniversary! 25 years! #marriage

Dagens anglicism siktad: killen skriver "introducera mig själv" i stället för "presentera mig". 🙄

Bra röstat, kära stockholmare! #klimat #Stockholm

Talked to an old person whose main take on the recent Swedish election was that the incoming Prime Minister had not taken any interesting stances or made any interesting promises in TV debates and interviews. I said "Try doing an online political compass survey next time". I did not say out loud "People who base their voting choices on what they hear someone say on TV should not vote".

I want to avoid American fashion because of 77 million appalling 4547 voters. This includes the riveted denim products of Levi Strauss et al. What is the EU standard trouser type for a middle-aged museum curator in 2026? #fashion

Sverigedemokraterna i Nacka kommun uppvisar oroväckande tecken på klanröstning. Tredje namnet på deras kommunvalsedel är på topp-10 för personkryss i hela kommunen än så länge under räkningen. #svpol

So who's in the #Stockholmpride parade tomorrow? I'm going to work security for the Left Party. It's my second parade supporting my trans daughter. Please come up and say hi! #Stockholm

One point where I can really agree with the MAGA Republicans is in their hostility to liberalism. It's a really nasty right-wing ideology -- although not as bad of course as that of the abysmal MAGA Republicans themselves. #Liberalism would work just fine if everyone was born into this world equally smart, rich and healthy.

#Goodmorning from sunny Fisksätra. Today: read, gaming group admin, bike ride, tea with old dad, #boardgames night. And you?

My trans daughter turned 28 yesterday! ❤️

I want to browse a big used book store. #books

If you wonder about the party I call the Swedish Fascists, I guess all you need to know is that they are a 1980s skinhead sticker campaign, "Preserve Sweden As Swedish" that has changed its name to "Sweden Democrats" and just ran for parliament under the slogan "Make Sweden Swedish Again". #svpol #fascism

Historical reenactors be like

"The measures needed to deal with the climate emergency are not acceptable to the voters." This just means "I am more concerned about getting re-elected than about the climate emergency." Or in other words, the climate emergency cannot be dealt with within democracy. And I certainly don't believe any dictatorship would do better. We're just fucked, caught in a problem many of us can't even understand. It started with the first steam engine around 1700. #climate #democracy

How old were you and your long-term partner when you met? We were 27 and 26 in 1999. #love #marriage

I wonder if the use of old (how old are they really?) books to train language models will re-awaken old usages in English. Like when people try to argue that the mistake they make today is legit because it's attested from 1704. And has been abandoned since. 😄 #llm #ai #language

@jonsson-niedziolka.pl In Vienna we sit in a late-night café Straight connection, TEE In Wien sitzen wir im Nacht-Café Direktverbindung, TEE I haven't reflected before over the fact that this only rhymes in German, so it's clear which version came first. #lyrics #kraftwerk

Hey everybody, let's not have sex in a hammock. OK? It's a hassle.

Pulling together a fortune has never been a life priority of mine. And I'm really keen that people who make that a priority should not have more political influence than I have. In fact, I oppose all legislation that mainly benefits people who are richer than me. The bottom 95% should not do the top 5% any political favours. Let me say this again: I don't want to get rich and I want to make it extremely hard for you to get rich too. Or poor.

Just rode the bus through Elfdalen. When we played Vaesen, a dialect professor from Uppsala found the elves' silver cup walled up in the church here, and they drove him demented through dancing in a fairy circle. #folklore #ttrpg #pnpde

Here's how we bought Depeche Mode gig tickets in 1986.

1. Call booking on home phone, reserve tickets under your name.

2. Ride public transport to the Svala och Söderlund stationery shop in Hötorget Square. I wonder now if they had this service because they were next to Concert Hall? dM didn't play there.

3. State name at ticket window, pay for tickets with cash allowance that Mom had gotten from one of the new cash machines.

#history #music

In one of Édika's 1980s comics, a man dresses up as a Diplodocus testicle in the hope that it will make women desire him. Would that actually work?

September colours #autumn

Nobody likes Iran's theocratic dictatorship. But some of their many opponents are quite odd. Yesterday I saw a large group of Iranians gatecrashing the Stockholm Pride parade. Known as "Royalists", they were waving pictures of the deposed Shah's son, a US flag, an Israeli flag, and lots of pre-1980 Iranian flags. Not an improvement, in my opinion. #iran

Strömma #bridge

Jellyfish are getting much more common in the inner reaches of the Stockholm Archipelago. I don't know if it's a good or bad sign for the environment, but they're lovely creatures. Very calming to watch them pulse their slow way through the water. ❤️ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelia_aurita

#Goodmorning from cloudy Fisksätra. Today: grocery shopping, baking, cycling, nap, boardgames night, look for meteors. And you?

@ErikUden@mastodon.de The AI biz is certainly destructive. But they're shredding *one copy* each of these books. The Library of Alexandria contained unique manuscripts. #ai #llm

#Goodmorning from sunny Fisksätra. Today: pack for a week in the archipelago and travel there, read. I came down with Juniorette's cold yesterday, luckily after the mountain hike was done. And you?

#Goodmorning from sunny Djurö. Today: cycling home to Fisksätra, dinner at a good Chinese restaurant that is closing. And you?

Sex dagar kvar att rösta på. Rösta idag! Du behöver bara vanligt ID. Många folkbibliotek har röstmottagare redo. #svpol

@Allinrep@social.spejset.org @Livija@mastodon.nu Åtta minuter på SVT:s nyheter, som rapporterade på plats!

@Allinrep@social.spejset.org @Livija@mastodon.nu Nej tvärtom. Åtta minuter är en evighet i det sammanhanget. Det är liksom kungabegravningsnivå.

In planning a week on Runmarö Island, I've made a map of what it looked like 1100 years ago. The shoreline displacement and the inland lake basins' last points of contact with the Baltic are key to my understanding. There are no known pre-modern sites on Runmarö, but the island is huge and has in all likelihood been at least utilised before 1500, probably also inhabited. #archaeology #history

I wonder what's eventually going to end the grinding multi-year standstill in Ukraine. It's seems the Russians are paying way more in all kinds of resources for every day that the front doesn't move. #ukraine

It's artificial, all right. But it's not intelligence. #ai #llm #aibubble

#Goodmorning from sunny Djurö. Today: bike ride, neighbours coming over for tea, read. And you?

You have no idea how funny the Perseid Meteor Shower is to Finnish people. @kallekn@mastodonsweden.se can explain. #space #language

Jag berättade för en kompis om en transperson jag känner som tidigare var ihop med en cis-tjej. Tyckte det var lite märkligt att min kompis verkade så lättad när jag sade att paret hade gjort slut. Min kompis trodde att jag pratade om en SiS-tjej. 😄

Good news: voter participation is proving markedly higher in Sweden's multi-ethnic housing areas than at last election. Seems the furriners (who generally have low participation) have realised that yes, they have an urgent personal motivation to get rid of the current fascist-dependent government. #svpol

@bopfink@mastodon.nu @jonsson-niedziolka.pl "We're standing here, exposing ourselves We are showroom dummies" 😄

@pms@cupoftea.social What's your current book?

@troed@masto.sangberg.se I agree. Liberalism is not an authoritarian ideology. That's not my problem with it. Most importantIy, I don't want anyone to have full capitalist freedom in economic matters. Also I believe that enforced solidarity is much better than the individual freedom to ignore the poor.