Ethan Plaut

I've been thinking about the fact that LLMs are increasingly training on the output of LLMs and I suddenly realised what I think it reminds me of...

The end result of multiple generations of lossy video compression! Like this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR4K...

Here is my best Habermas story.

I am grad student waiting in LONG line for Habermas talk. There is a tall man waiting in front of me. Line moves so we are eventually visible to organizers, a woman looks over & makes horrified face. Runs out: "Prof Habermas! You don't have to wait in line!"

Roforofo Jazz ♾️ La Boucle ♾️ YouTube video by OfficeHome Records

Brother DAYS aka RacecaR steady cooking HUGE chunes with these French jazz cats!

Challenges for wildlife seeking sleep in a disturbed world Summary: Animals must obtain a daily amount of sleep to perform well when awake, but doing so in the modern world is increasingly difficult owing to various forms of human-made disturbance.

Read about the challenges faced by wildlife trying to sleep in a disturbed world

"Challenges for wildlife seeking sleep in a disturbed world"

doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

I was introduced to this Anti-AI slop site by @kamkonek.bsky.social where your answers come from humans LARPing as AI and you in turn also pretend to be AI. youraislopbores.me

New open-access book!

"Atmospheres and Digital Media: Connection and Disconnection Across Everyday Life"

Satellite proposals threaten the night sky In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency responsible for authorizing satellite launches and operations…

The FCC just opened public comments on SpaceX's plan to launch a million satellites to do AI compute in space. Under the current proposal, an environmental review won't be required. Please consider submitting a public comment to oppose this damaging plan.
darksky.org/news/two-sat...

Old (mental) habits die hard — 8x through the changing seasons down here, and I still don't have my head entirely wrapped around it

though autumn vibes have 100% arrived in Tāmaki already

I suppose, yeah — preordered from my hometown of Chicago, where spring doesn’t officially start for a couple more weeks…

wonderful new book by @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social JUST arrived in Aotearoa NZ by post!!

In denial over here

just smashed a small pile of them with yogurt and almond butter, can recommend

feijoa is the king of yardfruit

Photo: Handful of green feijoa fruit

major autumn vibes down here in Tāmaki Makaurau

not my oldest, but I’m the proud owner of a solid one-word gmail address

World's smallest QR code is thinner than a lightwave The Guinness World Record has major implications for the future of data storage.

Microscopic QR codes as archive:

“With ceramic storage media, we are pursuing a similar approach to that of ancient cultures, whose inscriptions we can still read today…”

feijoa hamantaschen, who knew

Congrats, you saved yourself zero time, but now everyone's mad at you

Of all the AI vs IP skirmishes, this is the one that gets a product pulled, hilarious… for context:

Screenshot of a chessboard with checkmate using bishops, a knight and a pawn

stay pretty, shapes

The @InternetArchive x @GrayAreaOrg Trillionth Webpage Commissions bring new net․art to life from the Archive’s collections.

Rodell Warner’s "Ghosts of the Internet Archive" creates generative “ghosts” from Web 1.0, layering lost materials.

More ⤵️
blog.archive.org/internet-arc...

#Wayback1T

“She had the gift of making silence as vindictive as speech.”

The graph spans 1580-1719 in 20-year periods. The script categories shown are "Secretary", "Mixed", and "Italic". Secretary script is at nearly 60% in the first period, falls to about 20% by 1620-1639, is below 5% by 1660-1679, and falls to zero by the end of the century. Mixed scripts occur throughout, with their heyday from 1620 to 1679, during which nearly 10% of the letters are written in Mixed hands. Italic starts at about 40%, but is nearly 50% by the second period, and dominates strongly thereafter.

Here's a graph showing the primary script used in early modern English letters plotted over time. This graph is based on 3,489 letters, 22% by women, with decent social coverage although lower ranks are underrepresented.

60x speed timelapse from the International Space Station doing an "orbital cartwheel" from Atlantic to Pacific

ᴄʀᴇᴅɪᴛ: ᴢᴇɴᴀ ᴄᴀʀᴅᴍᴀɴ, ɴᴀsᴀ 🧪

Supreme Court threatens contempt charges for litigants citing fake AI-generated authorities - Law News NZ Supreme Court warns litigants they may face contempt charges for citing fake AI-generated legal authorities in court submissions.

"The [NZ] Supreme Court has warned self-represented litigants who submit [AI]-generated 'hallucinations' to court that they could face contempt proceedings... [which] could be interpreted as the judiciary losing patience with the amount of AI-generated 'slop' reaching the courts..." ⚖️

Ursula K. Le Guin — Ursula on Writing: A Rant about "Techonolgy" Ursula K. Le Guin on the presence of technology in her work

One for the material culture fans: 'As if linen were the same thing as flax — as if paper, ink, wheels, knives, clocks, chairs, aspirin pills, were natural objects, born with us like our teeth and fingers'. www.ursulakleguin.com/a-rant-about...

Urban Construction Boom Threatens Climate Goals Cities are under pressure to build housing while also cutting emissions. Researchers say it is possible to do both, but only if we rethink current construction practices.

My latest for @forbes.com is on a fascinating study from @utoronto.ca. I'd really appreciate it if you'd consider reading it 🧪👩‍🔬⚛️ www.forbes.com/sites/laurie...

"Good point, somehow."

- my mom absolutely destroying me yesterday, in front of my wife and child, for no good reason, and in the process coining a phrase that will forever ring out in our family argot

Reckoning with Everything. The Becoming-Environmental of Computing › meson press Computation must and has always had to “reckon with everything.” This volume brings together contributions that seek to describe the environmentality of computation based on selected settings.

My new text on parallel processing and the financial nature of AI is online open source (along with a bunch of other killer texts) in the new volume Reckoning with Everything edited by Bernhard Siegert and Benedikt Merkle for Meson Press meson.press/books/reckon...