I still think the Discoprise might be the best rendition of the 1701 weâve had in a long time.
Martial artist, motorcyclist, pragmatist, comics philosopher, queer phenomenologist. Assistant Professor @CSUN. Japanese philosophy, race, gender, disability, tech/AI. Inquiries: johnathan.flowers@csun.edu Rider of the mind shaitan. He/Him/His đłď¸âđ
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I still think the Discoprise might be the best rendition of the 1701 weâve had in a long time.
âWhatever this is, I cannot.â - Spock, SNW S3E2
Goteem.
Aster being maximum cat: on the highest point in the room, in a box, being judgmental.
Not for nothing, whenever someone conflates search algorithms, LLMs, and whatever the fuck AI is, I send them this article.
That said, better rhetoric might help if folks were willing to stop treating criticism and refusal to support Newsom as tantamount to being unserious about fighting fascism. That, I think, might be something worth doing something about.
So, my point is that the desperation for someone to "do something" has made folks who are riding for Newsom, even if it is due to his comms team's meme game, are unlikely to be motivated by "better rhetoric" given their context. Better rhetoric from those of us with legit concerns won't fix this.
Not just informed about Newsom, but about the lives of the people they're implicitly sacrificing in their push that we all line up behind their candidate. This is, I think, something of a problem, especially given how desperate people are for someone to "fight back."
That is, by placing the onus on folks with legitimate concerns (Newsom's failures on housing, education, trans issues) to develop "better rhetoric," folks who ride uncritically for Newsom due to his meme game no longer have the responsibility to become informed citizens.
An opening would imply that they're willing to be moved, and many folks who ride for Newsom have indicated no such thing rhetoric aside. Additionally, this absolves folks of their responsibility to be good citizens and engage with the experiences of the people they're in community with.
I honestly don't. If presenting arguments on the basis of Newsom's track record on trans issues, homelessness, or the concerted opinions of Californians won't move them from their position on Newsom, I doubt offering up a new candidate would.
Back home from an excellent DragonCon. Already got thoughts for the next one!
To quote @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social from earlier "I've seen the best minds of several generations ruined by Immanuel Kant," to which I add, also a not inconsiderable number of the other minds of several generations.
Finally, I would suggest Audre Lordeâs âThe Use of Angerâ on this very point.
That said, part of this is the way that the dems who are turned away by âI wonât vote for him,â fail to take seriously the experiences that lead to that conclusion. This, I think, is the true problem, not a language thing.
I get the sentiment but the same people who are turned away when folks say âI wonât vote for him in the primaryâ or âI wonât vote for him in the general,â are uninterested in our reasons, or; they treat them as less important than the goal of electing their candidate.
Morning, itâs Labor Day and there are a massive amount of protests scheduled to take place nationwide. www.newsweek.com/map-list-cit...
Tangential but itâs notable that when California does things it gets reported as âNewsomâ and when Illinois does things it gets reported as âIllinoisâ
Ok but hear me out, what if we taxed the fuck out of really rich people
Lizardmen are not kaiju, they are more accurately classified as bakemono. As such, they are best dealt with by sentai and not anti-kaiju actions. In this essay, I willâŚ
at their core, trans rights, abortion rights, and vaccine rights are actually all the same issue: theyâre all about bodily autonomy, and the willingness to concede any of them puts the others at risk.
Okay. I just came back to this and you arenât calling these efforts resegregation yet, you absolutely should be
âIn the late 1960s, Dr. Rossiter was working on her Ph.D. at Yale, when a comment from one of her male professors puzzled her. Who, she had asked, were the women in science? There were none, he said. Another professor mumbled something about Marie Curie being the exception.âđ
Academia still hates women. But we resist! Solidarity with all women in academia who face everyday sexism, erasure, harassment etc. and with all who were pushed out đâ¤ď¸
Like, I think thereâs other things beyond what I am doing (and has worked so far) that have affected student learning in this moment.
Idk man, I donât think a policy aimed at teaching children responsibility with their devices is responsible for âone of the most illiterate generations since the introduction of compulsory education.â I think thereâs a whole bunch of other stuff, like defunding public education, charter schoolsâŚ
Not gonna lie, I think a student gas a better view of NYC than a cop.
I currently teach in higher education but I have taught K-12 and educational philosophy courses. Iâve been in the room where folks (educators, parents, admins) have discussed the merits of these kinds of policies and how best to apply them. What grade level do YOU teach? What are your credentials?
And youâre not in my classroom, my man. Thatâs also not what you said in your first reply.
Beyond this, Iâve discussed this policy with other K-12 educators who have given this a shot in their classroom and seen success. My point is that a universal ban is short sighted and is not applicable in all K-12 contexts.
I disagree. My point is a blanket ban does nothing to teach students appropriate use of their devices. And, to be clear, I have taught young adults, instituted this policy, and seen success with it.
Take your pick, my man.
Because my colleagues arenât in my classroom? Because there are ways to use the classroom to teach appropriate device use? Because this seems to be a one-size-fits all solution that doesnât consider the situation of students? Because a poll by the NEA isnât ground for my classroom policy?
The thing is, every time you defend Newsom as a great candidate and what âweâ need, youâre telling trans people that youâre willing to throw them under the bus You can sit in my mentions and whine about how Iâm criticizing Newsom too much and I will continue to highlight how your transphobia sucks
My point here is that we need to teach students appropriate use of the technology; a blanket ban does not do that.
Emergencies? Some children act as translators for their parents. Also, note what I said: on, face down, on vibrate. If theyâre going to use the device, they have to be intentional about it and do so in full view of an educator who can reprimand them.
I am a teacher and I disagree. So, whatâs your point?
Black Trans Lives Matter. Never forget it.
My colleagues are foolish for this given the current situation. If theyâre that much of an issue, have students put them on vibrate, face down on the desk.
Also, the horrifying part (to me) was the Gengar haunting as part of an estate. That implies a legal right to the ownership of peopleâs souls. See: Crueledge and Armorouge.
Kantians must be stopped.
Iâm pretty horrified, but also I think environmental personhood might fix some of this?
Yup! Legit going to your PokeLaw panel.
辤ĺŻĺŁŤ
My students, who attend a working-class rust-belt college, openly talk abt how much they hate AI & are afraid of its consequences. I wonder how much of the oft-reported student enthusiasm for the tech is the merely result of the NYTâs Ivy League bias
In Valenâs name, I will hunt AI lobbyists for sport.
Why donât you send everyone proof of life first? (Either way, Chicago doesnât want you here)
Lack of access to lightweight explosives seems to be THE barrier to drone terrorism outside of active war zones. ipso facto, if youâre worried about drone terrorism, you should be channeling as many resources as possible into *explosives control*.
âwas Lee or Grant a better generalâ is a question with an obviously correct answer that a whole lot of people get wrong
I have an entire section in my Data and Eugenics paper I just finished on COVID and American Neofascism that outlines exactly this point.
Clear speech at a moment of great danger is an ethical imperative.
This ONLY makes sense if it isnât a new course proposal. Otherwise, yes. With a new course, that shit would be solved in seconds flat due to fighting over the value of the course, the learning objectives, or the classification.
Perhaps you are unmoved by Gov Gavâs shittiness toward trans people? Well, fear not! There are so many other ways heâs terrible!
DM me. If I donât respond next week, do it again.
The maddening thing is that we know EXACTLY how to prevent this. Yes, kids should get vaccinated, test, stay home when sick, mask as much as possible. But even without any of that: Better ventilation and filtration in schools can MASSIVELY reduce viral spread, for all sorts of respiratory diseases.
Yes. And while those consequences will be large, the institutions arenât even using any substantive safeguards. Theyâre doing an experiment on us in full knowledge that the outcomes will be terrible.
10am Sunday!
> ⌠a community called Blacksky recently spun up its own PDS, so things are progressing on that front. > Rudy ⌠confirmed to TechCrunch that [Blacksky] doesnât plan on blocking any users based on where theyâre located, anywhere in the world.
Fair play, though.
I would give you this if the United States didnât exist.
What if scientists hadnât waited until this point to speak about politics Every time I see a headline like this, my brain just shouts Like what if scientists hadnât sat around silently watching everyone around them get attacked Maybe the fight on campus would have gone differently
This is a real photograph of Washington, DC this week, where the United States president has ordered military occupation in peacetime, and ordered the display of colossal portraits of himself. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
âThis is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.â đŽâđ¨
Before yâall get snippy, I said THING not PERSON. Persons arenât things (for now).
I challenge you to give me one good thing that Britain has contributed that was not stolen from its colonial subjects or simply appropriated as part of its colonial ambitions. One. Good. Thing.
I have learned some Truly Horrifying things about the Federation in my research for this panel and I fully intend to put The Horrors on display.
I donât know if I would ever recover from this, if I were Musk, because can you imagine how utterly humiliating???? How is the the richest man in the world and still behaving like this? (Rhetorical question, please donât answer, I know)
Kinda wild that Martin Luther King gave his famous speech at The March on Washington 8 years to the day that Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi.
Herein lies the rub: âBy inappropriately applying shared decision-making principles to a scenario where robust evidence strongly supports vaccination, the CDC abandons the clinicianâs professional responsibility to offer clear, directive guidance when warranted.â
Datafication in fully automated luxury communism? More likely than you might think.
Ha! This is a pretty good time to remind folks that Iâm going to be presenting or speaking on a bunch of panels at DragonCon, including one on the United Federation of Planets as a surveillance state of massive proportions.
I spoke with @mmasnick.bsky.social who wrote the paper that inspired the creation of bsky (he's now on their board of directors) about the development of @blackskyweb.xyz these last 2.5 yrs. We talk about Blacksky stealing market share from bsky (đ), content moderation, and all the stuff we ship đ˘
According to federal data, 13 of the top 20 cities in homicide rates have Republican governors. None of those cities are Chicago. 8 of the top 10 states in homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states are Illinois. And yet Trump is sending troops here.
Y'all, National Guard members have day jobs. This is ridiculous. Let them go home to their lives and rehire the NPS staff.
Why is the rent so damn high in LA? Simple economics: the demand for housing is extremely high and our housing supply is extremely low.
"Yet no merely mechanical object has ever talked somebody into suicide before. That is evidence of an extraordinary new power, no?" If that's the bar for believing a technology is revolutionary, then student loans are an incredible innovation.
In all my time on Al Gore's internet, I have rarely seen such an asinine take. How, pray tell, does this fucker think that capitalism will end after his so-called revolution? Does he think that it will just fucking vanish into thin air?
Pretending Bluesky has a singular cohesive politics is actually so funny.
HERE WE GO: THAT LITTLE BIT OF GOOD NEWS YOU WERE LOOKING FOR
Notably, students across all three of my in-person courses booed CSU's pivot to AI when I mentioned it as part of my syllabus AI policy.
Today's agenda includes waiting patiently while my machine ensures OCR compliance for all of the readings for all three of my courses and browsing for a power supply for one of my monitors since the last one was killed last night
"Vote blue, no matter who," except for folks who will actually move the needle on human rights or provide a pathway towards getting us out of this capitalist dystopia.
This. "Vote blue no matter who" is such transparently a ratchet-tactic. It is not deployed thoughtfully as a strategy to build power. It is deployed to cajole people to accept a further and further rightward drift in the name of "pragmatism," and AGAINST any attempt at leftward movement.
Gunpla sales about to be FUCKED.
this week in american despotism: we can no longer buy things from other countries and fed independence is over unless the supreme court decides to step in (lol, lmao) itâs monday
I'm begging you to push back against every exonerative use of "pre-existing conditions". We should be taking care of everyone. Even if you are a unicorn, (if you are lucky to live long enough) you will eventually develop the pre-existing condition of old age.
Gov. Pritzker: This is not about fighting crime. This is about Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city to try and intimidate his political rivals. This is about Trump searching for ways to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections
For the record: this is how you respond to a federal occupation. Both Newsom and Bass should take note. Now letâs just hope he backs it up with action.
"Newsom is a Democrat and Trump is a Republican, and while both have been very vocal about each otherâs differences, Jehl (R) and Myers (R) note in the letter that when it comes to homelessness strategy, their approaches to a solution are similar." www.wane.com/top-stories/...
No syllabus ever survives first contact with the students.
Oh my. Well hello, Taylor. I am sure you know best. My experience here is filtered a bit through my professional background, which suggests that this is the case with all Ed policy trade-offs between parent rights and school resources. I suspect that LA Unifiedâs issues are about their context.
if the presence of my vote is important to you in keeping whoever the republicans run next out of the white house, i recommend keeping governor newsom from running in 2028. dont worry you've got 3 more years to figure that out !
"Two-thirds of student loan debt belong to women Student debt has race and gender gaps. Black women have the highest debt load, with an average of $33,000. That is more than three times the amount that white men are carrying, and $15,000 more than what white women owe."
I just finished it.
Our own study of multilingual AI finds that these systems are trained on mostly English-lang data, machine translated speech, or data scraped from the web which doesn't represent how people speak. Translation is an art form. AI is creating six-fingered mimicry of language: cdt.org/insights/los...
We can agree to disagree.
Not only is Prey a genuinely good Predator movie, but it is also a genuinely good movie in general. Tied with Predators for my favorite in the series.
Iâm going to make individual posts for the Palestinian accounts Iâm boosting today so they donât get lost in a thread but if you are looking for them all in one place Iâll link them here đ˝
Okay, yeah. I'm ready to write The Predator completely out of the Predator canon like I did with Alien: Covenant. It is so, so bad.