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irongremlin.bsky.social
@irongremlin.bsky.social
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irongremlin.bsky.social
From the Citigroup investment strategy memo, 2005:
Header: "Is there a backlash building?" Section content: "Plutonomy, we suspect, is elastic. Concentration of wealth and spending in the hands of the few probably has its limits. What might cause the elastic to snap back? We can see a number of potential challenges to plutonomy. The first, and probably most potent, is through a labor backlash. Outsourcing, offshoring, or insourcing of cheap labor is done to undercut current labor costs. Those being undercut are losers in the short term. While there is evidence that this is positive for the average worker (for example Ottaviano and Peri) it is also clear that high-cost suitable labor loses." "A third threat comes from the potential social backlash. To use Ralws-ian analysis, the invisible hand stops working. Perhaps one reason that societies allow putonomy is because enough of the electorate believes they have a chance of becoming a Pluto-participant. Why kill it off, if you can join it? In a sens, this is the embodiment of the American Dream. But if voters feel they cannot participate, they are more likely to divide up the wealth pie, rather than aspire to being truly rich."
December 6, 2025 at 9:51 PM
irongremlin.bsky.social
Hey if anyone happens to be reading this and they feel this way about AI -

I don't respect you; I will never respect you; you should not respect yourself, and please stay the fuck away from from any discourse anyone else is having about any kind of art or craft.
December 2, 2025 at 10:38 PM
irongremlin.bsky.social
=/
A crop of a blue sky feed with two skeets, the first of which is a link to an article titled: "Tinnitus Is Somehow Linked to a Critical Bodily Function", and then the next skeet, which is Cooper saying: "The audio is cutting out for everyone right?"
November 23, 2025 at 4:36 AM
irongremlin.bsky.social
Stephen I do not believe you have lead this particular thought to the correct place, you may wish to try again.
Image of this user's profile, the words "Thought Leader" are highlighted. Full text as follows: R. Stephen Browning @rstephenbrowning.bsky.social 697 followers 1.3K following 1.8K posts Freelance Writer, Retired Senior Nonprofit Executive, Performing Arts Advocate, Thought Leader, Travel & Lifestyle, Progressive Provocateur.
November 19, 2025 at 3:38 AM
irongremlin.bsky.social
This may also expressed as:
The same image as the linked post, but instead of "Should I defend the New York Times on social media? -> No." it has had words crossed out with red lines to read: "Should the New York Times media? -> No."
November 14, 2025 at 9:44 PM
irongremlin.bsky.social
A painting featuring an "unknown" wooden contraption holding a large blade aloft on a rope, the bottom of which is a mostly obscured platform. The platform is obscured by a large black rectangle featuring the words: "This image is censored for no particular reason." Also visible towards the bottom of the painting is another rectangle, cropped, featuring the text: "...fying last moments of ...oinette's turbulent life"
November 11, 2025 at 7:41 PM
irongremlin.bsky.social
Still from Simpsons showing man with tongs about to drop radioactive glowing rod.
November 4, 2025 at 3:36 PM
irongremlin.bsky.social
Margaret Mitchell cowrote this.

This is who you're arguing for blocking, one of the pioneers in the specific field of "why we shouldn't build AI chatbots."
November 4, 2025 at 3:07 PM
irongremlin.bsky.social
Here.
A photograph of one of the more gorgeous, moderately sized waterfalls on planet earth spilling out between mossy rocks into a small creek. Framed by trees at the base of a mountain near Seward Alaska.
November 4, 2025 at 4:40 AM
irongremlin.bsky.social
In case you or others don't particularly feel like diving into that paper, here's an excerpt that illustrates the general thrust:
6 STOCHASTIC PARROTS In this section, we explore the ways in which the factors laid out in §4 and §5 — the tendency of training data ingested from the Internet to encode hegemonic worldviews, the tendency of LMs to amplify biases and other issues in the training data, and the tendency of researchers and other people to mistake LM-driven performance gains for actual natural language understanding — present real-world risks of harm, as these technologies are deployed. After exploring some reasons why humans mistake LM output for meaningful text, we turn to the risks and harms from deploying such a model at scale. We find that the mix of human biases and seemingly coherent language heightens the potential for automation bias, deliberate misuse, and amplification of a hegemonic worldview. We focus primarily on cases where LMs are used in generating text, but we will also touch on risks that arise when LMs or word embeddings derived from them are components of systems for classification, query expansion, or other tasks, or when users can query LMs for information memorized from their training data.
November 3, 2025 at 8:35 PM
irongremlin.bsky.social
This you?
November 3, 2025 at 1:04 PM
irongremlin.bsky.social
Want to see something super gross?
Screen shot of an e-mailed advertisement from the Washington Post, received at 7:46 AM, May 6th, 2025: Text reads: image of Pulitzer coins The Washington Post wins two Pulitzer Prizes This week, The Washington Post won two Pulitzer Prizes in breaking news and illustrated reporting and commentary. The Post was also honored as a finalist in three other categories. These awards recognize our commitment to consequential journalism and to holding power to account. Support this work by becoming a subscriber today. Subscribe for $40 Billed as $40 for the first year, then $120 per year thereafter. Cancel anytime. A second screenshot of the same email. Text reads: Subscribe for $40 Billed as $40 for the first year, then $120 per year thereafter. Cancel anytime. Breaking news reporting Staff of The Washington Post For urgent and illuminating coverage of the July 13 attempt to assassinate then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Illustrated reporting and commentary Ann Telnaes For delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity and fearlessness.
May 6, 2025 at 4:32 PM
irongremlin.bsky.social
An iconic image featuring a pig's turd resting upon his balls, which has contributed drastically more valuable substance to the American political discourse than the linked and quoted article that it is responding to.
April 30, 2025 at 5:59 AM
irongremlin.bsky.social
Huh. I wonder what inspired the name on that bill?
The roll call for the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, in which then senator Joe Biden voted to ban the federal recognition of homosexual marriage.
April 30, 2025 at 4:53 AM
irongremlin.bsky.social
A discord conversation in two parts. The first reads: The Rent Reducer 9000 - A gun in a box disguising it as a free little library. A raspberry pi scrapes Zillow for open houses nearby. During open house ours, it tells a starter pistol/cap gun to fire a few times. Seen here at an art thing I brought it to: [Included pictures displaying said tiny library] The second part reads: that is brilliant, but also, brazilians: [Omni-man meme including text which reads: Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power]
April 29, 2025 at 8:33 PM
irongremlin.bsky.social
I present to you, the cream of good ideas:
A line of recently black-bagged US residents, head's shorn, faces pushed toward the floor, being forcibly dragged into detention by masked fascists.
April 12, 2025 at 10:30 PM