Replying to
@gjorgji_vasileski@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social
You're a big boy and I bet you can figure this out all by yourself.
Remote
Charles 
, fuck all GenAI
@celesteh@hachyderm.io
mastodon 4.7.3Boys just want to have fun. / Composer / Coder /
http://www.berkeleynoise.com
Proud member of the MIDI Association
This is not my "professional" account. I'm just posting weird stuff.
If you know me from another social network or in real life, please say hello!
Kill your inner cop. Fight the fascist within. (Also, give your inner liberal a few kicks in the pants.)
Jewish
1888 Followers
1414 Following
50 Posts
Joined September 19, 2025
Pronouns:
He / Comrade
Profile Picture:
Eva Maria Dreisiebner CC BY-SA 4.0.
Latest bandcamp:
Replying to
@farseen@fedi.nptr.xyz @reformed_content_marketer@mastodon.social
What you're describing with mechanisation is capitalism, not a feature of the machine. A machine like a loom gets more valuable output for less labour.
LLMs cost much more to run than the value of their output. This is why I've described them as a financial scam. We could certainly imagine that a communist dictator might have dumped a ton of resource into one of these as a pet project, but it would be killed by his successor. If Stalin had gone in big for LLMs, the project would be protected as long as he was around to protect it and then it would have ended. However, whatever looms he bought were very unlikely to be scrapped.
Replying to
@farseen@fedi.nptr.xyz @reformed_content_marketer@mastodon.social
Tractors cause something called "tractor pan". Basically, they're very heavy and they squish the ground, slowly creating a very compact layer of soil just below where the disks reach. The problem builds up slowly over time and is expected to become a large issue in US agriculture in a few years. The use of diesel also increases the carbon input for food. Multiple calories of petroleum go into every calorie of food.
However, farm labour is really very difficult, hard physical work and switching back to plough horses would massively increase labour input. This also makes food more expensive.
We have the ability to redesign tractors. A Dutch inventor has come up with light tractors that are passively powered by wind. Farmers are resistant because they don't want to have to wait for favourable weather to run their machinery, but it does show that a redesign is possible.
So tractors:
- Make food more affordable and abundant in the medium term.
- Have longer term ecological problems that are addressable.
- Replace labourers from jobs that often few people want anyway because the work is so hard.
- Farming safe food is an inherently useful technology.
LLMs:
- Have massive ecological problems which are not addressable - the technology uses vast amounts of data. It's like it's brute forcing language (etc).
- Under the best possible conditions, their output is dubious and contains embedded bias, thus propagating social harm.
- Under normal/worse conditions, they're extremely useful for fascism and spam and are eroding democracy.
- The data gathering is causing massive problems for the web and is shredding rare books.
- They are a financial scam that is much larger than the mortgage crisis.
- They are not adding to the amount of reliable information in the world.
Looms:
Luddites were not against mechanisation, they were against poor working conditions: long hours, low pay, child labour, lack of safety. None of their complaints are an inherent feature of the technology. It's easy to imagine an ethical use case for looms.
Ergo Luddites were on the right track, but it's not a direct parallel and we don't need to get caught up in trying to make it one.
Replying to
@farseen@fedi.nptr.xyz @reformed_content_marketer@mastodon.social
If you are from the US, I strongly suggest you read _A People's History of the United States_. If you don't want to read the whole thing, the cotton gin might be a good place to start.
I'm not sure what books to recommend to a European. Maybe something by Graber? I couldn't get started on Pickety, and I don't want to suggest a book that I wouldn't read.... Marx gets at this, but is quite dated...
When people start getting a sense of class conflict, this sometimes turns to worker-ism, which is an idea where labour is kind of glorified in its own right. But people have human rights by virtue of being human, not by virtue of their work. A certain amount of labour is required so that everyone can prosper. A fair way of dividing this is by asking people to contribute what they can, for some maximum number of hours per day/week, for some maximum number of years. And to ensure that they have enough leisure time to rest and pursue other interests and a personal/family life. Also, people should have access to what they need, including food, housing, and so forth. Productivity gains help us reach the goal of having adequate resources for all.
Capital does not need to be in private hands. It does not need to be oppositional to most people.
Computers are/were a productivity gain. Job categories like typist and typesetters were lost, but new job categories became available, like programmer and so forth. These job changes can be difficult for individuals and a fair system allows for retraining or even early retirement.
The problems with LLMs are that they are inherently extractive to produce a statistical mean. That's hard to put aside because that's what they are. If you take away the carbon output, the mineral input, the invisibilisation of labour and the bias magnification of the statistical process, what's left? They are a technological dead end. It's as if all the car companies decided to hype flying cars and sell them at a loss despite their tremendous unsuitability. The capitalist case for LLMs is not the LLM but rather dumping the stock before it collapses. Think tulip bulbs, but harmful.
In the 90s, when I was a queer teenager, it was often legally risky for queer adults to even speak to queer teens.
Just to be clear, this was NOT put into place to protect us.
I mean, lol, imagine, its like getting protection from section 28. Indeed, it's exactly like that since there was nothing remotely accommodating at school either.
When I came out, I literally did not know any other out queer person. I knew no queer adults. This was because of several policy decisions. I later saw one of my teachers at pride. She didn't know if her job was safe if she got found out. (How do I know? I waited for her after school one day. This is one of the questions I asked.)
What I had was a few very dated library books and the ability to watch a public broadcasting TV station in San Francisco during pride month.
Again, I want to be very clear: the enforced isolation was not remotely a safe situation for me.
The US backers of social media bans are extremely open about their desire to isolate queer teens. Keir Starmer is quoting from their rhetoric and appropriating the dog whistles their corporate partner monopolists sometimes use. So what's his goal?
Replying to
@farseen@fedi.nptr.xyz @reformed_content_marketer@mastodon.social @knowprose@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social
I think William Morris wrote about this.
Replying to
@farseen@fedi.nptr.xyz @reformed_content_marketer@mastodon.social @knowprose@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social
Some countries have the idea of moral rights that reach beyond normal copyright.
In the US the framework is much more cut and dry. The original version of Steam Boat Willie is in the public domain which means he bongs to everyone and noone. There are absolutely no limits as to what can be done with him in terms of modification and reuse. Like Shakespeare and the King James Bible and every single work over a certain age, no person has the right to restrict what any other person (or corporation) does.
Anything released into the public domain by a living artist (or their estate if they're recently deceased) is in the same situation, at least with regards to copyright law in the US.
Most slop generators are primarily governed by US law, to the extent that they're governed at all.
Slop generators do also run afoul of plagiarism, which does apply to works in the public domain. I cannot pass off Steam Boat Willie as my own work.
When I tried to write a tutorial and was posting it as a thread here, people said it sounded like an LLM.
I've written a LOT of online tutorials over the last twenty some years and they all got into Common Crawl.
It's not a coincidence that AI sounds like me.
When Facebook was prattling on about "friendship" in a way that allowed them to dodge responsibility for content moderation (read: when they were merrily enabling genocide), they also had a hackathon culture, in which their workers were periodically expected to work all night, in addition to their more than 40 hour per week workweek.
This is to say, the job was specifically unavailable to anyone with caring responsibilities or who was actually embedded in physical community. By taking all the time of their workers, they isolated them from their relationships. This environment was set up around the values of young men who were largely isolated.
These people waxing lyrical about friendships were prevented from having any. Their relationships were almost entirely oriented around work, which management insisted was the same as play.
This is who remade our conception of connection, sharing and relationships - people who were systematically cut off from having access to any of those things.
Climate change, fascism, death
People who are still fans of Harry Potter are problematic in several ways. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/10/harry-potter-fans-force-relocation-of-430m-undersea-cable-to-avoid-dobbys-grave
A few years ago I was at a Purim Spiel that was a spoof of Frozen and one of the repeating songs had the bad guys singing "Do you want to kill a snowman?"
Every single time, one woman in the audience just fell over laughing.
Anyway, after spending a week hearing a six year old singing 'Hakuna Matata', I have somewhat greater context to understand why this was so funny.
Apparently, fascists like AI slop music because it can just be made to say racist stuff really quite loudly and there's none of the baggage or liability associated with racist bands.
This does rather suggest that consumer-facing slop music generators should face more scrutiny.
If somebody replies to your post to say you've said something antisemitic, the best way to respond is to argue. Nobody likes an antisemite, so don't let your self be counted among them.
Replying to
@permacomputer@retro.social
I am interested in how these can be used to control physical things.
Actually, I'm specifically interested in musical instruments like player pianos and busking organs. These were originally designed to take paper tape or punch cards, but recently I saw somebody built a physical Turing machine our of lego. I don't really understand how it worked, but I'm interested in how things can be programmable with very little or no electricity and be able to do thongs like block or open air intake for a piano.
Anyway, like, my phone has more transistors than a Saturn V rocket, but the rocket computer is more powerful because of its use case. So maybe part of your answer is finding physical use cases that are interesting. The interfaces between digital and analogue, or digital and mechanical are super interesting.
Replying to
Q: Wouldn't LLMs be a bit shit for professional composers?
A: Putting aside my own feelings, there may be some potential for the technology...
My thought: No don't put aside your feelings. Why can't we speak honestly about how shit this is?
Boosted by @GroupNebula563@mastodon.social
Via email, San Francisco pride pol
Replying to
Somebody posted an extremely old letter to Anne Landers complaining about the new fad of industrial music. It mentioned a band.
They're on Bandcamp. I can listen to the album that upset somebody's dad 35 years ago.
That search functionality is really fucking good and I don't want to lose it.
Permacomputing is a beautiful fantasy about making computer systems that are sustainable, helpful and widely available. It's a goal to work for, rather than a thing to exists.
Digital sovereignty is equally a fantasy . . ..
"This keeps happening!" I say as I carelessly make the same mistake ten times in a row.
Replying to
@spacehobo@teh.entar.net
This is the problem of making music a technical course within the academy.
Computer music is not a special case of computer science.
Computer science is a special case of music. And weaving.
Replying to
We don't need to be neutral about setting the planet on fire.
Professionalism doesn't mean sitting in the This Is Fine café!
Replying to
I can always distract myself by going on fedi and finding a Canadian I've never met, in my mentions, insisting I "NEED" to get an AC now.
Thanks, kind stranger.
Replying to
It should be illegal for people younger than me to die.
Replying to
@Gaolaitch@cupoftea.social @afewbugs@social.coop
For private residences:
Putting in a heat-only pump is a very minor modification. You can use all your existing radiators.
Putting in cooling requires replacing all of them and the internal pipes because of condensation. Its major building work.
By the time your house is insulated well enough for the heat pump, you can vet through a heat wave by opening windows at night and closing them in the day.
Institutional buildings however, need to make the modifications.
Replying to
@dev@discuss.systems its interesting to see the robotics bubble also get acknowledged. Those humanoid robots in the illustration have no use case. Roboticists fear the next AI winter will also be a robotics winter. Non-humanoid robots are actually useful, so maybe they'll escape it.
Replying to
If you are autistic, you are at higher risk of heat stroke. There are more heatwaves coming. Please be careful and try to stay cool. You need to drink 3 litres of water a day. Be aware this can impact your electrolytes. You can these from the chemist in tablets you can dissolve in water.
You can cool yourself down by showering or using cold flannels etc. You might want to get a room thermometer. If you're in a place that's really very warm or its making you sweat loads or feel uncomfortable and you can't cool it down, you need to find some place else to go.
A friend of mine is making a webpage for tips aimed specifically at people on the spectrum and I'll link it when it goes live.
Heat stroke is very dangerous, please try to stay safe.
Replying to
@badambassador@social.vivaldi.net @fesshole@mastodon.social
This way the fessor also skips out on microplastics and saves money and gets to spend a few moments cleaning the tea pot.
Replying to
@ireneista@adhd.irenes.space @dev@discuss.systems
There's an Isaac Asimov story about this.
A stranger on signal just sent me death threats because he saw my use of the hebrew alphabet (to spell a Yiddish word).
Does signal leak location data at all? Like, I don't need to worry about this, right?
Replying to
Fucking hell, my friend died from the heat.
Things that emit a lot of carbon collectively that are not solved by eating the rich:
-
Eating meat, especially cows.
-
Fast fashion.
Yeah, rich people do eat more beef than normal people, but they don't eat enough by themselves to account for the emissions or deforestation. Chicken-eating, not a luxury food, has been climbing steadily for decades and it also has a cost in global heating.
Fast fashion makes owners rich, but its normal people who are wearing it. There's a lot of the Sam Vines boot problem in here, but, like the number of chickens we eat, the number of clothes a typical person owns has massively increased since the 60s. We have vast wardrobes full of rags.
Replying to
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io
The first time I heard my British spouse say "Jalapeno" still stays with me....
However, that article oddly fails to note that 'tortilla' is also a Spanish dish, as is Chorizo, so people (just Londoners??) do tend to know how to pronounce those things, although not with a Mexican pronunciation.
If a train regularly sells out for part of the year, maybe run more of them on that route at similar times? Just a thought.
(I will not be getting the night train to stockholm this summer.)
Replying to
@CppGuy@infosec.space @FiXato@toot.cat @fesshole@mastodon.social
There's a knack to pinching the end to get it to split, but other than that I can't really say.
I only eat bananas very rarely and there are none in my house right now, so I'm unable to gather any evidence.
Replying to
@CppGuy@infosec.space @FiXato@toot.cat @fesshole@mastodon.social
I do the banana thing, but honestly, I almost never talk about it
Replying to
@saltywizard@beige.party
I did not know and I do not like that my browser tells web pages what keyboards I have installed.
Some character sets are strongly linked to minority groups.
Replying to
@ifixcoinops@retro.social
Lilt is no longer its own brand, but is now one if the flavours of Fanta. I can't recall the name. The tin is light blue.
Replying to
@ifixcoinops@retro.social
The sold a story thing elides some very specific political context about the Bush administration and its war on public education.
I'm sure its broadly right on reading, but there's a lot of the story missing in terms of why and how things happened as they did.
Replying to
@Daveosaurus@mastodon.nz @whitequark@social.treehouse.systems
Its not a private landlord, though. Upthread, somebody mentions that the council bought it to make sure it stayed a private residence and doesn't become a tourist attraction.
Replying to
@ajswritesthings@plasmatrap.com
I have a Tilly hat because it packs flat, but I'm under the impression that there are now crushable panamas.
Replying to
@ajswritesthings@plasmatrap.com
They seem to be very fashionable this year.