TechTakes

Found a new and lengthy sneer on Bluesky, mocking the promptfondlers' gullibility.

the fifth episode of odium symposium, "4chan: the french connection" is now up. roughly the first half of the episode is a dive into sartre's theory of antisemitism. then we apply his theory to the style guide of a nazi news site and the life of its founder, andrew anglin

EDIT: btw if you like the episode please tell people about it! frankly we have no idea how to market or otherwise promote a podcast sooo we're kind of just hoping the listeners do it

J. Mijin Cha writes:

My colleague reviewed a paper for the journal Climate and discovered it has been written by AI (citations that didn’t exist). Not only did the journal keep the paper, they asked her to re-review it. We are so cooked.

Climate is an MDPI journal. Finland's journal-ranking service downgraded Climate to zero status.

New Time War lore dump

I need to quit clicking, my yt recommendations are so cursed now.

Love the Edgar Allen Poe thing at 3:30 though, wtf. Also where did he find the sephiroth at 4:19?

OpenAI Declares ‘Code Red’ as Google Threatens AI Lead

I just wanted to point out this tidbit:

Altman said OpenAI would be pushing back work on other initiatives, such as advertising, AI agents for health and shopping, and a personal assistant called Pulse.

Apparently a fortunate side effect of google supposedly closing the gap is that it's a great opportunity to give up on agents without looking like complete clowns. And also make Pulse even more vapory.

Disney invests $1B into OpenAI with allowing access to all Disney characters

https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-openai-sora-agreement/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AirForce/comments/1pie3px/plastered_all_over_the_pentagon_today/

regarding my take in previous stubsack, it does seem like crusoe intends to use these gas turbines as backup, and as of 31.07.2025 they had five turbines installed, who knows if connected, with obvious place for five more, with some pieces of them (smokestacks mostly) in place. it does make sense that as of october announcement, they had the first tranche of 10 installed or at least delivered. there's no obvious prepared place where they intend to put next 19 of them, and that's just stuff from GE, with more 21 coming from proenergy (maybe it's for different site?). that said, it's texas with famously reliable ercot, which means that on top using these for shortages, they might be paying market rates for electricity, which means that even with power available, they might turn turbines on when electricity gets ridiculously expensive. i'm sure that dispatchers will love some random fuckass telling them "hey, we're disconnecting 250MW load in 15 minutes" when grid is already unstable due to being overloaded

A game/sneer where you are a venture capitalist with billions invested in generative AI: https://woe-industries.itch.io/you-have-billions-invested-in-generative-ai

Slopocalypse Now h/t The Syllabus

For context, Kunzru wrote the novel Red Pill a few years back.

Candace is a pioneer. Following her, we are exiting the age of the public sphere and entering a time of magic, when signs and symbols have the power to reshape reality. Consider the “Medbed,” a staple of QAnon-adjacent right-wing conspiracy culture. Medbeds are one of the many things about which “they” are not telling “you”; they can supposedly regenerate limbs and reverse aging. How evil would you have to be to deny such a boon to We the People? In late September, Trump posted an AI-generated video of himself promoting the scam, promising that every faithful supporter would be given a card that would give them access to this magic technology. Trump posted it because it made him look good, a leader healing the sick, but also because it is a way to hyperstition a version of this fiction into reality. No one will really be cured, of course, because the Medbed doesn’t exist. Except now it is someone’s job to make sure it does: The president is a powerful magician who never tells a lie, so some loyal redhats will have to be given cards that let them lie down in some kind of cargo-cult version of a Medbed. Perhaps it will be a job for TV’s own Dr. Oz, who has crossed to the other side of the screen as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

God we live in the dumbest possible world.

This is not art as critique. Critique is just sincere-posting, dutifully pointing out yet again that the Medbed isn’t “real.” Art can mess with our masters in ways we don’t yet fully understand.

I hope so, Jesse Welles getting on the Colbert and playing Red shows some people are moving in that direction, but is also definitely sincere-posting, and ultimately that kind of performance just doesn't pay the bills like if he went Truck Jeans Beer. Eddington seems to have gotten under some people's skins in an interesting way... And I'm skeptical that /any/ novel would have any impact or reach outside the NYT class, what with having to actually read something.

New edition of AI Killed My Job, focusing on how AI's fucked the copywriting industry.

Boom Aerospace, not content with attempting the next Concorde, have gotten a little sidetracked. Funnily enough, they didn't show any footage of the engine actually working. Surely it's whisper quiet and won't be a massive pain to live next to.

https://boomsupersonic.com/flyby/ai-needs-more-power-than-the-grid-can-deliver-supersonic-tech-can-fix-that