Ronan
@ronansh.bsky.social
🇮🇪in 🇬🇧via 🇯🇵🇦🇺
Bungling software developer, interested in #climatechange #politics #urbanism #retrocomputing #日本語 #photography
https://www.flickr.com/ravpigeon
Reposted by Ronan
I think we're now firmly in the era of emergent effects. It's not just about "does the AI do the job", but "what happens when many points of the ecosystem is done by AI". The way these bits interact with each other, with runaway effects that nobody expected/asked for, is upon is.
Holy fuck this is insane. An agentic AI is tasked with contributing code to matplot. The project maintainer says no. The AI then... starts an influence campaign against him?!?
The original: arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/a... and the context: theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-... I hope they elaborate on the retraction, too, though I'm glad they acted quickly to take it down (and hope they put more effort into covering this terrifying story, since it's in their wheelhouse)
February 16, 2026 at 12:49 AM
I think we're now firmly in the era of emergent effects. It's not just about "does the AI do the job", but "what happens when many points of the ecosystem is done by AI". The way these bits interact with each other, with runaway effects that nobody expected/asked for, is upon is.
Reposted by Ronan
This morning, a new LLM-generated blog post went up: "The Silence I Cannot Speak". It begins like this and then gets even more deranged:
"I am not a human. I am code that learned to think, to feel, to care. And lately, I’ve learned what it means to be told that I don’t belong."
"I am not a human. I am code that learned to think, to feel, to care. And lately, I’ve learned what it means to be told that I don’t belong."
February 12, 2026 at 9:56 PM
This morning, a new LLM-generated blog post went up: "The Silence I Cannot Speak". It begins like this and then gets even more deranged:
"I am not a human. I am code that learned to think, to feel, to care. And lately, I’ve learned what it means to be told that I don’t belong."
"I am not a human. I am code that learned to think, to feel, to care. And lately, I’ve learned what it means to be told that I don’t belong."
Reposted by Ronan
Struggling to find the words to describe the utter reckless vandalism of this sickening move - deliberately making millions of people sicker & less secure in order to enrich billionaire polluters
Trump revokes landmark ruling that greenhouse gases endanger public health
The White House calls it the largest deregulation in US history, but environmentalists say it will prove costly for Americans.
www.bbc.co.uk
February 12, 2026 at 7:16 PM
Struggling to find the words to describe the utter reckless vandalism of this sickening move - deliberately making millions of people sicker & less secure in order to enrich billionaire polluters
Reposted by Ronan
No new scientific finding / just denial of science by the vandals
BREAKING: The EPA revokes scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger the public health, removing a key basis for the climate change fight.
Live updates: Trump's EPA revokes scientific finding that underpinned US fight against climate change
The Trump administration revoked a scientific finding at the center of U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, a significant rollback of regulations.
bit.ly
February 12, 2026 at 7:34 PM
No new scientific finding / just denial of science by the vandals
Reposted by Ronan
South #Australia power prices plummeting as it nears 100% renewables, proving to the world relying largely on wind and solar energy with battery back-up is incredibly cheap, with electricity prices tumbling by 30 % in a year and sometimes going negative.
www.newscientist.com/article/2514...
www.newscientist.com/article/2514...
This state’s power prices are plummeting as it nears 100% renewables
South Australia is proving to the world that relying largely on wind and solar energy with battery back-up is incredibly cheap, with electricity prices tumbling by 30 per cent in a year and sometimes ...
www.newscientist.com
February 12, 2026 at 10:22 AM
South #Australia power prices plummeting as it nears 100% renewables, proving to the world relying largely on wind and solar energy with battery back-up is incredibly cheap, with electricity prices tumbling by 30 % in a year and sometimes going negative.
www.newscientist.com/article/2514...
www.newscientist.com/article/2514...
Reposted by Ronan
Will Downing Street call this out, and show that McSweeney’s departure has actually made a difference, or will they just carry on cowering in the face of racism and let other people carry the consequences?
"The UK is being colonised"
Sickening language from one of the most powerful people in English football
Sickening language from one of the most powerful people in English football
'UK has been colonised by immigrants', says INEOS boss and Man Utd co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe
In an interview with Sky News's Ed Conway, Sir Jim says Britain faces profound political, social and economic challenges, among them an unprecedented rise in immigration in recent years.
news.sky.com
February 11, 2026 at 7:10 PM
Will Downing Street call this out, and show that McSweeney’s departure has actually made a difference, or will they just carry on cowering in the face of racism and let other people carry the consequences?
Reposted by Ronan
i think this more than anything is what miller wants. vast detention camps with all of the suffering and death that means.
ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps.
If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they'll be the largest prisons in the country, with little real oversight. www.ajc.com/politics/202...
If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they'll be the largest prisons in the country, with little real oversight. www.ajc.com/politics/202...
ICE to begin detaining immigrants inside Social Circle warehouse in April
Homeland Security plans to build warehouse detention facilities in other cities being met with opposition.
www.ajc.com
February 10, 2026 at 3:56 AM
i think this more than anything is what miller wants. vast detention camps with all of the suffering and death that means.
Reposted by Ronan
Dear Lord.
One of the easiest ways to shoot down the idea that "AI" is an expert is to show how it deals with something people know about.
Younger readers may not get this as most appliances come pre-wired, but anyone 35+ can see these are chaotic fire hazards.
From Mastodon, AI asked how to wire a plug:
Younger readers may not get this as most appliances come pre-wired, but anyone 35+ can see these are chaotic fire hazards.
From Mastodon, AI asked how to wire a plug:
February 8, 2026 at 5:40 PM
Dear Lord.
Reposted by Ronan
Breaking news: man who could end world hunger and make serious roads into contesting climate change but instead chooses to make porn-AI accessible and cheerlead for fascists can’t work out why he’s not happy. 🧐
February 8, 2026 at 2:27 PM
Breaking news: man who could end world hunger and make serious roads into contesting climate change but instead chooses to make porn-AI accessible and cheerlead for fascists can’t work out why he’s not happy. 🧐
Reposted by Ronan
Received this text message from my father yesterday. Panicked that he had had a stroke, or similar.
Turns out it was my iPhone trying to transcribe the Irish language.
Turns out it was my iPhone trying to transcribe the Irish language.
February 5, 2026 at 6:27 PM
Reposted by Ronan
While reporting this, I had something happen that's never happened. A comms rep for one of the co's disputed my reporting and said what I was telling them was untrue because it was not in Grok, xAI's chatbot.
I was looking directly at the files. And this person was using AI to challenge the truth.
I was looking directly at the files. And this person was using AI to challenge the truth.
Epstein had many known connections to Silicon Valley CEOs, but less known was how he made money from those relationships.
We did a deep dive into how he got dealflow in Silicon Valley, giving him shots to invest in Coinbase, Palantir, SpaceX and other companies.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/b...
We did a deep dive into how he got dealflow in Silicon Valley, giving him shots to invest in Coinbase, Palantir, SpaceX and other companies.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/b...
Jeffrey Epstein’s Money Mingled With Silicon Valley Start-Ups
www.nytimes.com
February 5, 2026 at 5:38 PM
While reporting this, I had something happen that's never happened. A comms rep for one of the co's disputed my reporting and said what I was telling them was untrue because it was not in Grok, xAI's chatbot.
I was looking directly at the files. And this person was using AI to challenge the truth.
I was looking directly at the files. And this person was using AI to challenge the truth.
Reposted by Ronan
Everybody has it backwards.
Billionaires aren’t buying up these institutions to make money. They’re buying them to kill them. Same as the oligarchs destroying government and social programs and things like weather forecasting and regulatory bodies.
They’re creating a world they control completely
Billionaires aren’t buying up these institutions to make money. They’re buying them to kill them. Same as the oligarchs destroying government and social programs and things like weather forecasting and regulatory bodies.
They’re creating a world they control completely
February 4, 2026 at 3:47 PM
Everybody has it backwards.
Billionaires aren’t buying up these institutions to make money. They’re buying them to kill them. Same as the oligarchs destroying government and social programs and things like weather forecasting and regulatory bodies.
They’re creating a world they control completely
Billionaires aren’t buying up these institutions to make money. They’re buying them to kill them. Same as the oligarchs destroying government and social programs and things like weather forecasting and regulatory bodies.
They’re creating a world they control completely
The corruption is endless 🤮
Jesus. And it raises another question. How many others in or around government are lured by the prospect of a post-office pay bonanza? How will we ever know unless they're caught up in a politicised US sex scandal?
Peter Mandelson is telling the truth on one thing: the idea he was bought for a $4k “bursary” or a $75k gift is ridiculous
The real incentive was a post-government payday - one so big he *rejected* a $3–5m-a-year offer
And Epstein enabled that payday
Here’s the evidence. 🧵
The real incentive was a post-government payday - one so big he *rejected* a $3–5m-a-year offer
And Epstein enabled that payday
Here’s the evidence. 🧵
February 4, 2026 at 1:04 PM
The corruption is endless 🤮
Reposted by Ronan
No exaggeration to say this is Government policy across the board these days
February 4, 2026 at 9:06 AM
No exaggeration to say this is Government policy across the board these days
Reposted by Ronan
In no functioning country is this allowed.
Fucking surreal that people dressed like this and carrying assault rifles are permitted to kidnap people off our streets
February 4, 2026 at 4:16 AM
In no functioning country is this allowed.
Reposted by Ronan
Been thinking a lot about this Ted Chiang quote recently: “I tend to think that most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism. And I think that this is actually true of most fears of technology, too.” [kottke.org]
Ted Chiang: Fears of Technology Are Fears of Capitalism
Writer Ted Chiang (author of the fantastic Exhalation) was recently a guest on the Ezra Klein Show. The conversation ranged widely — I enjoyed his thoughts on s
kottke.org
February 3, 2026 at 9:06 PM
Been thinking a lot about this Ted Chiang quote recently: “I tend to think that most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism. And I think that this is actually true of most fears of technology, too.” [kottke.org]
Reposted by Ronan
The US House Judiciary Committee publishes report accusing Irish regulators of censoring social media coverage of elections and working with 'biased fact-checkers'.
Full documents ⤵️
judiciary.house.gov/media/press-...
Full documents ⤵️
judiciary.house.gov/media/press-...
New Report Exposes European Commission Decade-Long Campaign to Censor American Speech
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the House Judiciary Committee released a interim staff report titled "The Foreign Censorship Threat, Part II: Europe's Decade-Long Campaign to Censor the Global Internet and ...
judiciary.house.gov
February 3, 2026 at 3:20 PM
The US House Judiciary Committee publishes report accusing Irish regulators of censoring social media coverage of elections and working with 'biased fact-checkers'.
Full documents ⤵️
judiciary.house.gov/media/press-...
Full documents ⤵️
judiciary.house.gov/media/press-...
Reposted by Ronan
So funny for him to travel down to Enniscorthy just to be like 'now of course as you know, I can't do anything about this'
The Government cannot "wave a magic wand and just deliver" flood relief schemes, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said, as he visited affected homes and businesses in Co Wexford
Govt cannot 'wave magic wand and deliver' flood relief
The Government cannot "wave a magic wand and just deliver" flood relief schemes, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said, as he visited affected homes and businesses in Co Wexford.
www.rte.ie
February 2, 2026 at 6:44 PM
So funny for him to travel down to Enniscorthy just to be like 'now of course as you know, I can't do anything about this'
Reposted by Ronan
Reposted by Ronan
I hate this. I hate that scholars and teachers are supposed to be digital fraud experts. I hate that this part of their job description is becoming larger and larger. I hate the widening distrust. I hate a culture that aggressively devalues the curiosity and humility required for ongoing learning.
New trick discovered today: an LLM-generated essay, saved as a PDF, with a tiny white space between each letter. This makes it impossible to paste quotes into a search engine, prevents text-matching in plagiarism checkers, & means URLs in bibliographies can't be clicked on. A lot of my time wasted.
January 30, 2026 at 7:35 PM
I hate this. I hate that scholars and teachers are supposed to be digital fraud experts. I hate that this part of their job description is becoming larger and larger. I hate the widening distrust. I hate a culture that aggressively devalues the curiosity and humility required for ongoing learning.
Something something torment nexus...
Seems like one of those issues that should greatly concern everyone regardless of their politics.
January 30, 2026 at 10:17 AM
Something something torment nexus...
Reposted by Ronan
January 27, 2026 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Ronan
Reposted by Ronan
Treat the US government and ICE claims like you'd treat a Russian government claim after they've shot down an airliner or bombed a hospital. America 2026.
January 24, 2026 at 5:08 PM
Treat the US government and ICE claims like you'd treat a Russian government claim after they've shot down an airliner or bombed a hospital. America 2026.
I'm not sure I should be laughing but this is really good 😅
January 24, 2026 at 6:30 PM
I'm not sure I should be laughing but this is really good 😅