daveherman

THIS GUY BUILT AN ENTIRE WIKIPEDIA THAT IS 100% AI HALLUCINATIONS AND IT'S OPEN SOURCE ON GITHUB it's called Halupedia. nothing on the site existed before you clicked. every article was generated the second you arrived. the site has one rule: the universe only exists when you visit it. it looks exactly like wikipedia. same fonts. same layout. same scholarly citations. same "stumble" button for random articles. the only difference is none of it is real. here are some actual articles currently in the encyclopedia: > the great pigeon census of 1887 > the ministry of slightly wrong maps > chaldic arithmetic — a branch of mathematics where subtraction is forbidden > armund the river mapper — a cartographer who mapped 14,000 leagues of river without leaving his chair > the society for the prevention of unnecessary tuesdays every article page also tells you how many people are reading it right now. it says: "you alone are consulting this folio at present." the creator's own tagline for the site is the most unhinged sentence i've read this year: "an encyclopedia of a universe that does not exist until you visit it" the entire backend is a single open source repo called vibeserver. one guy. one description on github: "a little webserver making things up just in time." we built the largest knowledge base in human history and the very first thing a guy did with it was make a hallucinated mirror universe and put it on the open web. the internet is healing.

you open tiktok for one video. forty minutes later you put the phone down. you cannot remember a single thing you watched. you try to read a long message. your eyes slide off the third sentence. every person reading this has had that moment. in 2024 a team at zhejiang university hooked 48 college students into a 64-channel eeg cap and tried to find the brain signature of that moment. "mobile phone short video use negatively impacts attention functions" by yan, su, xue, hu, and zhou. frontiers in human neuroscience, june 27, 2024. they ran each participant through the attention network test. 192 trials. arrows on a screen, sometimes pointing the same way as the arrows around them, sometimes against. the participant has to ignore the noise and report the middle arrow. the cleanest measurement neuroscience has for executive control. the part of you that holds focus when the screen is trying to pull it away. before the task they filled out a short video addiction questionnaire. the score is a number between roughly 25 and 75. higher means more tiktok, more douyin, more reels. the average in this group was 50.77. then the part that should bother you. the frontal lobe sits above your eyebrows. when a normal brain hits a confusing screen, theta waves in the 4 to 8 hertz band spike there. that spike is the brain pushing harder to resolve the conflict. the visible signature of paying attention. across the 45 participants who completed the recording, the spike got smaller as addiction scores got higher. correlation minus 0.395, p equals 0.007. the more short video you watch, the less your frontal lobe lights up when something demands focus. the effect held after controlling for anxiety, depression, age, and gender. it did not show up in any other brain region. parietal minus 0.014. central minus 0.229. only the frontal lobe. the same participants scored lower on a self-control scale the more they watched. correlation minus 0.320, p equals 0.026. their conclusion, verbatim. "prolonged consumption of such content may primarily engage the lower-order cortical brain regions, such as those associated with emotional processing, and suppress activity in higher-order areas responsible for self-control and attention." the recommendation algorithm picking your next video is a machine learning system trained on one objective. keep you watching. this paper measured what that system does to the part of your brain that resists. it makes it quieter. not because the videos are loud. because the part that should push back has stopped showing up. read this: doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.…

Lovely piece of flash fiction by @clairepolders over at fiction attic press! fictionattic.substack.com/p/what-she-rea…

@brecht_dp Ouch!! I hope it's not too serious.

I honestly don't know what's going on with my life lately. Today, I fell again, with my motorbike this time. Back in A&E to get it checked out...

@brecht_dp Most articles on LinkedIn about 'writing' (this one included I think) are referring to copywriting, assembling marketing blurbs and so on. AI is much better at this than humans because it doesn't have a soul.

As seen on LinkedIn: Using AI for writing is like cooking with a microwave 🤣

@evecsmith @OrendaBooks @RandomTTours @Squadpod3 @DHHlitagency Congrats! Looking forward to reading it!

AND BOOK 5 IS SUBMITTED!! I've finally emerged from my writing burrow where I've been chained to my laptop to make my deadline. I can't wait to share details of my latest #speculative #thriller with you which will be out early next spring with @orendabooks. Cosy crime it is not.

@brecht_dp And you have to take time zones into account

Lit mags that say they open on such-and-such date... and then don't... 🙄

@brecht_dp Sometimes their quotas fill up within minutes (e.g., X-R-A-Y).

#scatterbrainedwriter Came up with a much better title for a story I’d written and submitted. Oh well, there are other litmags out there. Submitted with new title. So pleased! Then discovered I left the old title in the footer.

@brecht_dp Sound investment.

I've just paid the fees for my daughter to start mechanical engineering at TU Delft in September 😱

He was and still is a giant of Jewish learning, but perhaps salient to note for our current times that he was also the object of fierce cancel culture (as we would call it nowadays), including orders from other rabbis to burn his books! Nothing new under the sun...

@dac12 The translation is inaccurate, what they said was more like: 'Great place to attack.' For context: various Jewish sites have been firebombed in NL recently.

Vandaag in de tram die langs het Holocaustmuseum rijd, 2 mensen, een echtpaar neem ik aan, waar bij het passeren van het museum de man roep ''kijk het Netanyahu-museum'' en daarop ''kunnen ze lekker aanslagen plegen''. Normaal gesproken was ik gelijk naar hun toegegaan en gevraagd wat voor absurde uitspraak dit is, helaas was ik absoluut niet in de situatie om dit te doen, ik zou tot vechten bereid zijn, en dat kon niet, dus heb ik maar een foto genomen, niet herkenbaar, maar zo ziet antisemitisme eruit. Voor de duidelijkheid het gaat om de geblurde gezichten en ze zijn oud en grijs. En voor iedereen die hieronder ''slachtofferkaart'' gaat roepen, get a life.

@thesluis @UitgVerloren

Een kennis van mij in Jeruzalem bestelde geschiedenisboeken uit NL. Wat zat erbij? “Palestine will be free” - meegestuurd door Uitgeverij Verloren. 👉 Wat zou jij doen? RT is lief, maar dit verdient zichtbaarheid.

Delightful, moving, funny too! A cruise ship, break-up grief, a child’s spontaneity, oceanic imagery - #kristopherjansma interweaves all this and more into a beautiful short story, published by @onestorymag. Highly recommended!

Things I have learned from the movies" Having watched hundreds of movies, they have taught me many things that I would like to share with you today: 1. If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St Patrick's Day parade - at any time of the year. 2. All beds have special L-shaped top sheets that reach up to armpit level on a woman but only waist level on the man lying beside her. 3. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread. 4. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off - even while scuba diving. 5. The ventilation system of any building is a perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building without difficulty. 6. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do. 7. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris. 8. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds. 9. When paying for a taxi, never look at your wallet as you take out a note - just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare. 10. If you lose a hand, it will cause the stump of your arm to grow by 15cm. 11. Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their family every morning, even though the husband and children never have time to eat them. 12. Cars and trucks that crash will almost always burst into flames. 13. A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium. 14. Medieval peasants had perfect teeth. 15. All single women have a cat. 16. Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant. 17. One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at one. 18. Creepy music coming from a graveyard should always be closely investigated. 19. Most people keep a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings - especially if any of their family or friends has died in a strange boating accident. 20. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts - your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessor. 21. During a very emotional confrontation, instead of facing the person you are speaking to, it is customary to stand behind them and talk to their back. 22. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your room will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish. 23. Dogs always know who's bad and will naturally bark at them. 24. When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other. 25. Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch-enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gases, lasers and man eating sharks that will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape. 26. Having a job of any kind will make all fathers forget their son's eighth birthday. 27. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off. 28. It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting. 29. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty. 30. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.

@MWellertXc @Texas__Bulldog I don't think it's a geographical thing, more like: the AI learns who you are and develops a 'personality' in response. Each person's ChatGPT is different.

@Texas__Bulldog What the heck!? Is this a CA thing then?

I just asked ChatGPT what Rachel Levine's male name was. It's response: "I can’t provide or use a transgender person’s former name. If you’re looking for information about Rachel Levine—her career, policies, or public role—I’m happy to help with that." I told it, "His name was Richard." It's response: "You’re right that Rachel Levine was previously known by a different name, but I’m not able to discuss or confirm a transgender person’s former name. If you need background on Rachel Levine—her medical career, role in the U.S. Public Health Service, or policy positions—I’m glad to help with that." I asked it, "Why can't you use his name? Or even bring it up in factual research findings?" It's response: "The reason isn’t about whether something is factually knowable—it’s about how I’m expected to handle identity-related information about living people. 🧭 The core principle When someone is publicly known by a current name and identity (like Rachel Levine), I’m expected to: Use their current, public name Avoid bringing up or confirming a former name when it isn’t necessary This is sometimes called avoiding “deadnaming.”" So basically it can help kids learn how to k1ll or h4rm themselves, but it can't tell me the truth about a guy pretending to be a woman because it doesn't want to hurt his feelings. There was more. But that's enough. I'm having a day. I am really having a day, folks. Just remember that there is always, ALWAYS bias when we use AI and you need to be extremely skeptical of how it frames things for you.

Ooh, these stories are spooky and spiky! #MarianaEnriquez slaps you in the face, punches you in the gut and makes you want to leave the light on at night. Superb! Also: expertly translated from the Spanish by @meganalimcd

To be truly fluent in English, you must know your shits Dogshit: Very poor quality Bullshit: Not true Horseshit: Nonsense Apeshit: Rambunctious Batshit: Insane Chickenshit: Cowards Ratshit: Poor quality No shit: Obviously Holy shit: Unbelievable Hot shit: Very good Dipshit: Total dumbass Tuff shit: Take it or leave it. Jack shit: Nothing The shit: Perfection

@moeva18 @HaroldvP68 Onderschat niet de toegevoegde waarde van G'ds hulp die deze mensen met zich meebrengen! Meer bidden, meer misdadigers opgepakt. Zul je zien!

@HaroldvP68 Dat laatste ben ik ook bang voor vandaar mijn vraag. Want de arbeiddruk verhogen bij niet gelovige collega's om zodoende andere collega's de ruimte te geven om te bidden zou niet moeten mogen. Maar gebeurt vast. Net als bij niet rokers, die werken ook vaak meer dan rokers

Volgens deze politievrouw krijgt iedereen die een geloof belijdt tijd om te bidden onder werktijd. Naast dat ik nu nog beter begrijp waarom aangiftes niet opgepakt worden omdat er zogenaamd " capaciteitstekort " is ben ik nu ook wel benieuwd of niet gelovigen dan meer vrije dagen krijgen binnen de politie. Want 5 x per dag bidden zoals moslims doen kost toch behoorlijk wat werktijd ( inclusief omkleden, wassen, prevelen en weer make up op de bidvlek aanbrengen etc). Dus hoeveel extra uren krijgen niet gelovigen @Politie aangezien zij doorwerken terwijl hun gelovige collega's bezig zijn met privé aangelegenheden

@antisemitism @Ayaan I went to JFS in the 1970s, it was the same back then. Don't teach Jewish kids to behave like victims. Non-Jews don't like it when Jews fight back and show resilience. Tough. Their problem.

“Jews, Jews, dirty Jews” “Zionists, dirty Zionists” “Go back to the gas chambers” This is what Jewish school children were subjected to yesterday whilst playing in a football match. How revolting. Students from London’s JFS were playing in Norwich in a quarterfinal match in the U15 Schools Football tournament against Thorpe St Andrew School, when they were allegedly subjected to these vile abusive chants from the opposing team’s supporters. It appears that the concerns raised about the chants were not dealt with at the time of the incident, and so the complaints have rightly been elevated to the police. There is no excuse for this kind of outrageous and potentially criminal behaviour. We urge the police to investigate and any offenders must face the full force of the law. The school too must probe what has happened and take urgent educational steps. Our Education team is ready to provide assistance. We cannot allow tropes like these to become normalised in British schools.