Reheated (111)
For newcomers, some items from the archives:
Any Widening Of The Eyes Will Result In Detention.
Teacher Appreciation Week, but with ludicrous wigs and big rubber tits.
The other issue, I’d say, is the fact that schools have surrendered to cross-dressing men with a rapidity and full-throatedness that is quite remarkable. The place where cross-dressing men should not be – in positions of intimacy with, and authority over, children – is where they seem to find the most gushing welcome and the most ludicrous indulgence. […]
Supposedly, it’s about making the children feel “comfortable.” Though it occurs to me that the [Transgender Pride] flag’s connotations of coerced pretending, fetishistic mutilation and life-shortening hormone abuse – and generally being subordinate to a cross-dressing man with mental health issues – may have other effects. Say, by transforming a classroom from a place of learning into one of cowed pretension, of deference to the untrue.
And then there’s the not insignificant matter of introducing an element of transvestite farce into the classroom, which may result in children being distracted from the task at hand by the perhaps more immediate question of what the strange man in the wig and padded push-up bra sees when he looks in a mirror.
The crushing terror of “white supremacy” in middle-school maths class.
Mr Lolkus laments his “positionality” as a structurer of lessons and “knower of… mathematical concepts,” wishing instead to be merely a “community member.” A somewhat fanciful flattening of “hierarchy,” and of values, and an abandonment of the teacher’s customary responsibility.
This is followed by a suggestion that pupils, especially underperforming minority pupils – the party least familiar with the subject matter – should be put in charge of structuring lessons and the broader curriculum. A sure-fire recipe for success. And then there’s the conceit that heroically brown pupils are performing “additional labour” by doing less well in class, or by not doing the work at all.
To those seemingly unfamiliar with the concept.
Other teething problems have, it seems, arisen. As the Telegraph reports: “The initiative by Northamptonshire Police followed community and parental complaints over young male asylum seekers loitering near a primary school in the county, including claims of filming.” Not loitering at the gates of primary schools in order to film small children being another cultural subtlety requiring clarification. […]
One of the consequences of massive, indiscriminate immigration – equivalent to the entire population of Sheffield, every year – is that it radically alters the general mood of those on whom this demographic transformation is being imposed. One might, for instance, aspire to the role of gracious host, as it were, of making newcomers feel welcome. But this ideal presupposes an immigration policy that is limited and selective, and in which newcomers have good reason to feel lucky – and grateful.
The graciousness of the locals, the ideal, depends on the notion that the host country is regarded as something special, a desirable thing, something worthy of respect.
But massive, indiscriminate immigration undermines that ideal. If seemingly anyone can walk in and demand goodies, any ill-mannered flotsam of the world, and if they can do so with no discernible sense of gratitude, or any expectation of such, and with no apparent regard for the norms and values of the host society, as if they were unimportant, then the indigenous population may feel they have little reason to be gracious. Indeed, being gracious may be something of a struggle.
I realise that even the idea that the locals might dare to think in such terms – of being the gracious host – is, for some, anathema, a basis for tutting and scolding. But the sense that the value of one’s society – one’s home – is being pissed away, sold off cheap, is not a promising basis for coexistence.
And yet here we are.
For those craving more, this is a pretty good place to start.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
And should you wish to express encouragement, there are tip jar buttons below.
An opinion on appearance is offered.
The cheese shop uncontaminated by cheese.
The politician untarnished by human decency.
The professor unsullied by truthfulness.
[ Clicks schedule. Ponders merits of poached eggs on toast. ]
Divine is looking positively seedy.
But then this is hinting that a slim white woman looks more attractive than a fat black woman isn’t it.
History major?
Not just the American left.
Don’t you mean more seedy?
But mostly the American left.
For those who need closure on the subject, the poached eggs on toast was a win. Salt, pepper, a little grated cheese. Top-notch comfort food.
#LifestyleInfluencer
No. No, it did not. As WTP pointed out, an LLM cannot lie because it has no understanding of what it’s saying. When an LLM says “2 + 2 is 5” it’s not doing the math and lying about the result; it’s just ingested a copy of 1984 and was trained that “2 + 2 = 5” is a string of characters that makes sense to users. The :LLM is not capable of distinguishing between “What is 2 + 2” and “What does Big Brother say 2 + 2 equals” because it doesn’t actually understand the question.
In this case, the LLM has no idea what it did. It’s just been trained that when prompted “you did bad thing X”, the string of words “No”, I”, and “didn’t” makes sense to a user. “Makes sense” is the only possible training target because that is what an LLM is designed for. It has no world model or fact model or any understanding of what “true” or “false” means.
LLMs are random word generators that just happen to be very good at pareidolia. Trusting what they say is akin to trusting your decisions to a random dice roll.
An English translation
Nothing psychotic about this trans person. No, nothing at all.
Unrelated to anything: the following came up in conversation this week and I thought it pithy enough to relate.
The difference between Gen X and millennials is that when presented with “It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs”, millennials will invent increasingly torturous explanations for why that has to be literally true, even discounting the script notes that the character is obviously lying.
By contrast, when presented with the notion of getting a truck full of Coors from Texarkana to Atlanta in less than 28 hours – far more than enough time, even in 1977 and sticking to back roads to avoid toll gates, weigh stations and state police – Gen X just rolls with it.
Also, eagles don’t swarm.
A detail, I know, all things considered.
You know this and I know this (even though I had no bloody idea what pareidolia meant…yet somehow understood it), but do you suppose the Sam Altmans and Elon Musks get it? On the one hand surely, surely they understand this but on the other hand their public pronouncements on the subject* seem more oriented towards business and legal concerns and “Grok 4 (5,6,7,8,9…11tyThousand) fixes that” than this soul consciousness thing. At least as it regards AI hallucination, lies, etc.
*Again, not a subject I pay real close attention to or I will find myself yelling at my iPad like I yell at the TV during an episode of Bosch…”Don’t let that snotty, spoiled, pretentious brat talk to you like that! Send her to bed without her supper!”
Perhaps. But regarding Texarkana, if you’re down in Louisiana you’re a damn sight further than “just about” a mile from there.
Didn’t split enough beer atoms.
Band name.
Movie reference.
Had to look that one up. Not sure I want to know more.
It’s only about a 30 minute drive from Texarkana, Texas to Atlanta, Texas.
Not worth the bother, really. It was mildly amusing at the time.
No worries, mate. She’ll be good.
Take no prisoners: Elon Musk refused to settle: “We will pursue not just the organization, but anyone funding that organization.”
Via Scott Adams.
And on Threadreaderapp.
I’m… trying to understand that hair.
Again, a detail, I know. But I’m superficial that way.
It seems . . . implausible . . . that documents substantiating a conspiracy to delegitimise & undermine the President of the United States would be found in un-burned burn bags.
You don’t have to hold bureaucracies in high regard to think they really can’t be so stupid as to fail to destroy incriminating evidence in 8 years.
A personality clue, I suspect.
Because I’d forgotten some details of the film The Abyss I asked Grok how could the divers verbally communicate when they were breathing perfluorocarbon.
Grok did not correct me and say that there were no scenes of divers talking while breathing liquid, it just carried on as if I was correct, babbling on about super-advanced technology, artistic license, etc.
It seems a bit portentous that the Grok logo is a graphic representation of an event horizon.
After having worked in government for 22 years, I’m not surprised at all that the ‘burn bags’ had yet to be burned. This is “I did my part of the job, so?” attitude that is legion in unionized civil servants. Bare minimum compliance with a work order and if follow-up isn’t part of that w/o for “X” documents to be sent to the shredder company, then suddenly discovering no one actually called the shredder people for pick-up is really par for the course.
One might think the high mucky mucks who dumped the docs into the [bag, barrel] would have followed up, but that’s not how they think AND they certainly wouldn’t want to draw attention to the shredder bin by asking questions they never asked in the past about document destruction.