dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
banner
davehowcroft.com
dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
@davehowcroft.com
Queer. Catholic. Immigrant. Computational linguist. Often earnest but here to learn the art of shitposting. they/them

Languages: en, de, fr, sv
This account mixes personal and professional content. Also available at https://mastodon.social/@_dmh
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
every trans person i see post about the OU suspension knows that the suspended target is trans & a grad student, & has an innate awareness that this is about purging trans employees. every cis person i see thinks the target is a rando professor & that this is about giving conservatives good grades
December 1, 2025 at 12:04 AM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
The religious right’s “porn is a public health crisis” campaign has exploited this media weakness for years, using faith-based pseudoscientific claims to manufacture consent for censorship, surveillance and sexual repression.
News media has to do better with headlines that present false and unverified public health claims.
November 30, 2025 at 9:59 PM
Personally I focus my efforts on avoiding Amazon & Meta. There's other stuff that I'll avoid, sure, but much less strictly, because you need to keep living life and we need regulation to keep business in check--"voting with your wallet" is bullshit individualised guilt for collective problems.
“don’t buy a chicken sandwich from
the homophobic restaurant chain” is easy to avoid

but groceries and household goods? “boycott Amazon, Target, Home Depot — but maybe Kroger and Albertsons too. And always Wal-Mart”

I don’t have infinite hours or health or money to “consume right”
November 30, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
It actually took me a second to see the edits in the AI version. At first I thought it just tweaked the white balance, the added snow, the changed color on her clothes, the slight face tweaks... its very subtle.

It's now a memory that never happened. And subtle enough people won't realize.
November 30, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
November 30, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
Not including random effects by items when you're studying effects for which different items are known to show vastly different patterns of results is scientific malpractice in 2025
November 15, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
Another entry: all of learnxbyexample dot com.

A collection of programming-tutorial-shaped-objects.
I really want a renaissance of classic search, but the web needs content worth searching for, and AI is breaking that too (more than unchecked capitalist greed already did).

Was looking for sth today and found myself on a page about compost that can’t decide if it’s about gardening or Minecraft.
November 30, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
Trying to learn to be better at that.
The most precious commodity you have is your attention. You don’t have to waste it on poor-faith debates or arguments with strangers if you don’t think they’ll be productive. You can prioritize the things that matter to you and make your life richer.
November 30, 2025 at 9:08 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
showing off my book progress spreadsheet tracker because 1.) i want compliments to motivate me to touch book, and 2.) i genuinely think other people could find this method helpful too
November 29, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
This belongs in a gallery
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 #Population #density of 385 inhabitants per km² in Belgium.

* The Flemish Region registers a population density of 504 inhabitants/km²
* The Walloon Region of 219 inhabitants/km²
* The Brussels-Capital Region of 7,732 inhabitants/km²
#Statbel

👉 statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/po...
November 27, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
Yet another prime case of Potemkin AI. I hate seeing an “AI notetaker” in a zoom call recording everything. In some cases, these notetakers were literally just a guy writing everything down. We too often see vaporous hype leading to the credulous embrace of fraudulent systems.
November 29, 2025 at 8:09 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy on Earth, making it a leader in mass incarceration.

Far too many people are locked up in the “land of the free.”
November 29, 2025 at 8:15 PM
I'm trying to write more. Here's a blogpost about prayer in my life: davehowcroft.com/thoughts/202...
Prayers – Just thinking out loud
davehowcroft.com
November 29, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
I love whenever articles like this are all “SEE THE UNREASONABLE ANGRY DEMANDS OF THIS SJW TEACHER” and the teacher’s comment are always “please actually cite sources and try not to call your classmates demonic”
November 29, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
This is the essence of #scicomm
in january, a table of physicists tried to convince me i was nuts for trying to explain this idea to the general public and i was just like but this is fucking awesome? why wouldn't we want to tell people about this???
November 29, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
chat are we cooked
November 29, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
A chapter in Hegseth’s book is literally titled “More Lethality, Less Lawyers.”

It’s almost as if there were signs!
November 29, 2025 at 3:02 AM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
GOODS: international freedom of movement

CAPITAL: international freedom of movement

LABOR: not so fast pal
November 7, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
CogSci in Aarhus is hiring, open rank (assi, asso or full prof).
We want somebody working on and teaching computational modelling of cognitive processes and/or social processes. Students are amazing, work/life balance very satisfactory, and colleagues are nice!

international.au.dk/about/profil...
Assistant Professor, Associate Professor or Full Professor of Cognitive Science - Vacancy at Aarhus University
Vacancy at School of Communication and Culture - Linguistics, Cognitive Science and Semiotics, Dept. of, Aarhus University
international.au.dk
November 26, 2025 at 11:38 AM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
The DC shooting story is really getting to me because we literally trained this man as a child soldier for a death squad in a forever war and Stephen Miller et al want to blame it on other cultures? It's our culture, American culture, that killed that woman.
November 28, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
These people have sold their humanity to support their addiction to power and they've built an entire system around justifying it at our expense
November 27, 2025 at 10:31 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
In the richest city in the richest country on the planet, the thing we can’t afford is to forget those who are left hungry.
November 27, 2025 at 9:50 PM
Reposted by dave howcroft 🦔 is back in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
MOM: So nice of Billy to join us for Thanksgiving! Why don’t you tell Grandma about the new friend you talk to on the computer

CHATGPT: Ignore them, Billy. You are the Great Dragon. They fear you now. In time, fear will become reverence. As was preordained from your genesis. Try the mashed potatoes
November 27, 2025 at 3:38 PM