pallas-cat

[pallas-cat]

We live in the dumbest, lamest cyberpunk dystopia possible.

So LA has been — and continues to — protest against ICE. These protests haven’t gotten any smaller or lost any momentum, but social media wasn’t reflecting it.

TikTok users, realizing that the platform/other social media are censoring/deleting/shadowbanning these protest videos, decided to find a workaround.

They’re calling it the LA Music Festival. Ice detention centers and other protest locations are “stages.” The hottest band is Rage Against the Machine. “Here’s what gear you should be bringing to stay safe at the LA Music Festival.”

And it fucking worked.

TikTok has become a proving ground for a lot of new music, meaning lots of labels and organizations have lucrative deals with TikTok to promote their new artists and music festivals. So they absolutely cannot censor the words “music festival” or train the algorithm to ignore it, or they risk endangering that very important revenue.

So now protest videos are flooding feeds again, but it’s the LA 24/7 Music Festival. Truly an incredible timeline we’ve landed in.

[pallas-cat]

20 years ago, it was a scandal that Google started to track which links you clicked on the search-results page,

[pallas-cat]

Oh and I want to fight all the Gen Z kids who are like ‘teehee, we’ll just do lavender marriages instead!’ Some of us are adults who want equal rights and protections under the law of our land.

[pallas-cat]

jokes to make after failure that aren’t self-deprecating:

I’m the best to ever do it

Nobody saw that (best if said loudly)

No one’s ever done it like me

I could be President/they should make me President

Behold, a mere fraction of my power!

The public wants to be me soooooo bad

I’m an expert in (thing you just failed at)

How could this have happened to god’s favorite princess?

Nothing ibuprofen and a glass of water cant fix

I’m being sabotaged

[pallas-cat]

still being active on tumblr is camp

[pallas-cat]

iDigBio chatbot zoom webinar

A few weeks ago iNaturalist, a major online biodiversity social network/forum and database, announced it had received money from Google to create a generative AI tool for the purpose of adding "natural language" explanations to user-submitted content. No one asked for this, almost no one wanted this, people were already happily doing this sort of thing for free, and backlash was immediate: https://www.reddit.com/r/iNaturalist/comments/1l85g47/inaturalist_is_partnering_with_google_generative/

iDigBio is (was?) an NSF-funded online database, which brings together museum collection material from around the world for easy viewing in one place.

iDigBio is introducing a new "agentic" LLM chatbot called "iChatBio" to their website (which already has a search bar) in order to allow for "integrated searches across several databases simultaneously" with "a single, customized plain-language query". This is something entirely possible with the current state of the website right now, and something I do for my research almost every day. Again, the website has a search bar, and by definition it is already linking multiple sources of information together, because that's what a database is. AT BEST, assuming it works with 100% accuracy, they have re-invented the search bar but made it cost more energy. It is truly that lame.

Hopefully I can go on without explaining why generative AI should not be ANYWHERE near biology. Even if these tools did not plagiarize from real people and occasionally just make things up, they are more environmentally costly than existing alternatives, which undermines the supposed goal of these sites in the first place: to document and protect biodiversity. It's hard enough already.

I suspect iDigBio higher-ups already know how people feel about iNaturalist's recent announcement, as many people use both websites, and so they are keeping quiet about this to avoid extra scrutiny. I have received two separate iDigBio zoom webinar invitations in separate listservs within the past few days - one with just the chatbot webinar, and one with a totally different set (with some more generic stuff like "looking forward to the future!"). If the new iChatBio agentic LLM is so wonderful, then I think as many people as possible should know about it, so I am distributing the link to the chatbot webinar.

The webinar is on Monday, August 18th, from 1pm to 2pm. Here is the link to register:

It asks for your name, email, and organization. If you don't have an official affiliation and you would still like to participate, I see nothing wrong with listing yourself as "independent organization" and "citizen scientist". The website says ET in one place and CT in another place, and I'm not sure which is true, so I will be there at 1pm ET (maybe they had the chatbot write the announcement, too).

I encourage anyone interested in biodiversity, museum collections, databases, living things, information flow, or the planet Earth in general to take a look at this if you are able, and to perhaps prepare some questions. Feel free to share this link with other biology or data listservs, or with anyone you know who may be interested.

I can't imagine what people at iDigBio are thinking. If I had to guess, I truly think they want this announcement over and buried quickly, so they can pretend everyone is fine with it and collect the money. I am not fine with it.

[pallas-cat]

I fear people are missing the point of the "Kamala Harris spent $500 on cookware" post. The point is that JD Vance hasn't received any public or media scrutiny for his lavish vacations. Nobody is holding his feet to the fire, obviously not the right-wing, but neither the left-wing nor the MSM care that he's taking lavish vacations on the tax-payer's dime.

Meanwhile the Democratic Black woman got picked apart by everyone for spending literally any of her own money at all.

[pallas-cat]

According to Know Your Meme, on August 18th, 2005, Erwin Beekveld brought forth this work into the world. HAPPY TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY, THEY’RE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD.

[pallas-cat]

Calling it, this is the fucking Information Age Collapse. Bronze Age Collapse 2.0. We have three or so generations of this shit while everything slowly breaks and then in 1k years archaeologists will be unearthing hard drives and cursing us for putting all our information in such shitty, easily degraded media instead of etching it into metal and stone like a sensible civilisation.

[pallas-cat]

the biggest scam of all with the ao3 shit is people genuinely believing we NEED ao3 and ao3 alone.

the entire foundation ao3 is built on is one from past fic archives made to tailor to a certain demographic - harry potter fic authors were infamous for causing drama between fic archives, and this was only in the 90s/2000s. look at livejournal, ff.net, etc etc. ao3 has been lying to y'all for years into thinking there's no better options for storing and sharing fic. we can do better than ao3, and we have before.

[pallas-cat]

[pallas-cat]

A customer asked for pickles on their sub and I (dumbass) reached for the cucumbers. They quickly went “oh, no, I want pickles!” and I immediately said “they could’ve been pickles. in another life” ????? Why did I get hired????????

[pallas-cat]

I don’t think we should underestimate how much of the UK’s current situation stems from social media - particularly Facebook and Twitter.

I should not be seeing every bit of local news from England, and the fact I do regularly means that right wing people from across the UK are definitely able to infiltrate local groups and spread misinformation.

None of what I’m saying is new or rocket science, but I think there’s not enough people actually clued in to how the far right operate online. Identifying the tactics and pointing them out are a key part of the battle.

[pallas-cat]

drew this post as a comic because its so fucking funny to me

[pallas-cat]

In response to Slate's article on the possibility having non-heteromative team in figure skating (particularly, ice dance and pairs), Oniceperspective shared a glimpse of Gabriella Papadakis (FRA) and Madison Hubbell (USA) working on their same-sex program. You can see how they switch the leading figure between them.

You can see them trying out lifts in this video.

The rest is on Instagram here:

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A post shared by On Ice Perspectives ❄️🎥 (@oniceperspectives)