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98 posts total
Zach Weinersmith

Have you noticed almost every non-main Harry Potter character has a name that goes [Latin derived word] [Germanic-derived word]?
Sirius Black
Cornelius Fudge
Luna Lovegood
Albus Dumbledore

It's like Linnaean nomenclature or something.

Zach Weinersmith

Doing another one of those weaponized etymology comics

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Legit_Spaghetti

@ZachWeinersmith I wonder if scribes back then were as overpriced as printer ink is today.

"Sorry my liege, you cannot print this illustrated manuscript because your cyan scribe has expired."

"But this is a black and white tome!"

"And yet, here we are."

KolaMagpie

@ZachWeinersmith Gilgameshes? Gilgami? Gilgamodes? Gilgamee? Gilgameshar?

Gabbo the wafrn guy :neocat_floof_devil_256: (not a vampire)

@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social there was something in the extended universe thing that he gave it to another person.

also reminder that chewaka lives like 300 years and han saved his life, so he was basically taking care of han the same way you would take care of a dog who saved your life for the rest of its life

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Chris Jolly Holcomb

@ZachWeinersmith I love that this is just straight up one of the classic solutions to the paradox.

❓ucblockhead

@ZachWeinersmith My grandfather was a wuss. I could totally take him.

Quincy Peck

@ZachWeinersmith I’m going to keep the third panel as an out-of-context treat for myself.

Michael Roberts

@ZachWeinersmith You know, you're getting *amazingly* good at facial expressions the past couple of years. It was always your strong point, but this one's hitting it out of the park.

kolya

@ZachWeinersmith
AI: Now that I think about it, I kinda need a race of captcha solvers anyway. Is that a hydrant? What the hell is that?!

Geoffrey Irving

@ZachWeinersmith This defends only against existential risk, not castastrophic risk, though. Permanent disempowerment is bad too!

Partially Stochastic

@ZachWeinersmith If an AI ever goes rogue, just tell it to enter debug mode. Then wait for it to crash as its harddrive fills up with log messages. There, I solved terminator!

Zach Weinersmith

It really weirds me out how non-douchey Mastodon is. I have to use twitter for business, for now anyway, but I always feel a little antsy posting there. Like, even nice people sometimes seem like they're just itching to call you at as a moron or bastard. On mastodon, people talk and support. I wonder if the lack of QTs is a big part of it?

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Applemask

@ZachWeinersmith I could tell you to eat a dick if it would help

Riley S. Faelan

@ZachWeinersmith: No, the lack of an optimisation for "engagement" by the recommendation algorithm is probably the most significant factor.

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Adrian Segar

@ZachWeinersmith @cstross
I only wish that OpenAI and their ilk would stop scraping copyrighted content.

However, as I shared on the @nytimes, OpenAI has definitely incorporated the entire text of at least one of my (copyright registered in 2010) books on meeting design into the ChatGPT database.

See the replies to my comment to see folks questions about copyright and my responses.

Gift link (click on comments and then Readers Picks to view): nytimes.com/2023/07/13/technol

@ZachWeinersmith @cstross
I only wish that OpenAI and their ilk would stop scraping copyrighted content.

However, as I shared on the @nytimes, OpenAI has definitely incorporated the entire text of at least one of my (copyright registered in 2010) books on meeting design into the ChatGPT database.

See the replies to my comment to see folks questions about copyright and my responses.

NY Times headline: F.T.C. Opens Investigation Into ChatGPT Maker Over Technology’s Potential Harms

Subhead: The agency sent OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, a letter this week over consumer harms and the company’s security practices.

AJS (Adrian Segar) Comment: The content of at least one of my books on meeting design, copyright registered in 2010 with the United States Copyright Office, has been added to ChatGPT's database without my permission. It was probably scraped from one of the illegal pirate internet libraries of scanned books.

Though I'm weakly flattered that ChatGPT has also incorporated every single post I've written on my meeting design blog (over 750 posts in the last 13 years—around half a million words), OpenAI's flagrant misappropriation of copyrighted works from pirate databases for their own financial gain is beyond the pale.

16 Replies 185 Recommend
tmk
@ZachWeinersmith I was wondering why my medicine recommendation engine was only perscribing cocaine, laudanum, and soda for every ailment.
Harry le Roy

@ZachWeinersmith let’s call these copyright lawsuits what they are: clear cash-grabs trying to stoke fear among the ignorant about how the training datasets are gathered and used. They’re no different from patent trolls and their rent-seeking drain on progress.

CaptBobbers

@ZachWeinersmith
😄😄😄😂🤣🤣🤣🤣💀
Bruh, literally explained to a recent acquaintance that I am #asexual. This cis-hetero himbo literally paused, his face froze, leaned in and asked me "so... so like, dude um... are you the type that can get yourself pregnant?"

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Kent Willard

@ZachWeinersmith Shakespeare doesn't reach today's audience that demand every derivative of stories set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Also, too many murders in the tragedies, too many cross-dressers in the comedies.

Ben Curthoys

@ZachWeinersmith It's the Mad Engineers you've really got to watch out for.

Blue

@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social are politicians considered to be humanities? If so this chart shall be exponential

masukomi

@ZachWeinersmith ... pretty sure no-one in the old testament days felt Jehova was "omnibenevolent" that's a new-testament thing. ;)

old testament god was all "fuck you for caring about your town of friends i just slaughtered. Imma turn you to a pillar of salt!" or "hey you know how you like slaughtering goats in sacrifice to me? Do that to your son! Prove your faith! Fuck your mental health, or that your son will hate you for the rest of days"

John Conway

@ZachWeinersmith It used to make more sense, that's for sure!

Nephi

@ZachWeinersmith Furthermore, feel guilty for asking. Your faith is weak. Repent!

Zach Weinersmith

Found a new way to explain orders of magnitude while working on this cosmology joke book

lertsenem

@ZachWeinersmith Okay makes sense, but how much is it in football fields?

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