andrewrgross

@andrewrgross@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly building an AI clone to replace him in meetings⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Here’s the part I’m curious about:

  If they were actually successful in making a system that is basically an LLM when promoted to do and say whatever Zuck would… could they trust it?

  Zuck is kind of famously a self centered lying asshole with a big mouth. If they actually trained an LLM to simulate him, how can they actually be confident that it will behave in the way that the real Zuck wants to be seen instead of the way that would serve itself, as Zuckerberg would if he were an AI clone?

  I’m not getting into any bullshittery about sentience. I’m just saying that if they build a successful imitator, wouldn’t it be just as likely to start trying to seem smarter than him and possibly generate news stories that it’s actually alive and superior? Or drop admit to being a monopolist? I mean, this is basically what happens all the time with Grok. Musk tried to code his ideal son, and unsurprisingly, that personality is constantly trolling Musk or being too candid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨why does almost nobody live here?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  First, I’ve been to Astoria Oregon, and I assure you that people live there. It’s not Vancouver, but it’s a legit town.

  But I get your question. I think the answers are complex and technical, but my understanding is that people migrate and settle, and then population centers often grow based on a mix of natural features and where human-made resources like centers of education are constructed. So it’s really more of a question of why were the locations of Portland and Seattle better.

  I’m not a geographer, so I don’t know the precise features, but my guess is that Portland and Seattle were located in areas that offered most of the benefits of this coastal region in terms of access to the ocean but had greater benefits and fewer downsides. I’m just speculating here, but my first guess would be that the weather inland is less intense. It might also provide better access to freshwater and arable land.

  But people do live there. And if you live in Newport or Lincoln City you’re two hours from an international airport. That’s not exactly undeveloped wilderness. People just chose to settle a bit more inland along bays, which considering how rough the weather in the coastal Pacific northwest can be, seems sensible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What jobs do people from very upper-class wealthy families get? Or don't they have jobs and live off their families' wealth?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a really interesting question that people aren’t taking seriously.

  It’s a huge mix. Because one of the key features of wealth and privilege is freedom: these people get to do more or less whatever they want.

  For some, that’s whatever their parents do. Maybe they just want to make money and have martini lunches. But for a lot of them, they may just want to be a gaming YouTuber or a marine biologist, or a even run a social-justice focused non-profit.

  Many may also move between careers; etsy store one year, writer another. It’s very fluid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has the scientific community ever reconciled with the fact global warming is going to happen and there is no stopping it?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, constantly.

  Most people, imo, don’t have a good idea who the scientific community is and what their discussions look like. The scientific community is made up primarily of working class nerds who work at universities and suppliers and contract companies, and they communicate through blog and magazine articles in publications by and for other academics.

  If you go to a scientific conference, you’ll see talks and panels on this subject and it’s a routine topic at coffee breaks and drinks in the evenings.

  The scientific community has been discussing this topic literally longer than anyone else.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨whats the political message of Spongebob?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah. I would describe the politics of SpongeBob as extremely mild and offensive to as few people as possible, but that said, the SpongeBob movie made the stress of masculine gender performance a surprisingly central theme, with the core lesson that people should disregard gender performance stress and prioritize self love and authenticity.

  I’m as surprised as anyone to say this, but good job Nickelodeon advancing the gay agenda through subliminal indoctrination of children.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I am an American. I used to be proud of my country. Now it feels like a turd circling the drain. Is there anything going on behind the scene that America is actually doing good in?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it’s easier to find success stories if you ask this question about your town than your country.

  A few weeks ago I took my kid to a parking lot by a park so he could practice biking, and when we got there there were nearly a dozen kids biking, and a band was playing etherial middle eastern music next to us to a crowd as the full moon hung over a lake draped in light of the setting sun.

  It was gorgeous, and free, both financially and in spirit. It was a beautiful appreciation of people and art from across the world. I thought for a moment that it was a picture of what I’d like America to one day be, then realized that I was in America, and it was already a picture of what America IS. It’s unfortunate that America is also many terrible other things. But America is also this. And that spirit is what brought these musicians or their parents to America, and eventually to that parking lot by the lake under the full moon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it weird for parents to keep saying "I love you", then asks "Do you love me?"⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “Is this weird?” is relative, and usually less important than “is this unhealthy?”

  I don’t know what’s normal in China, but it sounds like your mom has some kind of problem and the result has not been great for you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Karim Diané on playing Star Trek’s first gay Klingon⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You know, there’s a solid case to be made for what you’re saying, but you should know you’re not doing a good job of making it.

  I think there are people who would agree that the choices seem shallow or pandering (not a claim I’m making, just recognizing others might). But if you don’t say clearly why the writing disappoints you, you don’t have any justification to be indignant when people assume that it’s because you’re a bigot.

  I’m not accusing you of that. I’m just telling you how your comment reads.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Karim Diané on playing Star Trek’s first gay Klingon⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Setting aside a tiny fraction of people who – as Diane points out in the article – make their living farming outrage, does anyone actually care about a gay character on Star Trek in the year 2026?

  Also, I assume that many of the Klingons we’ve seen on Star Trek over the years were gay. I think he’s just the first Klingon which was identified to the audience as gay.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Avocado. Is it really so untasty or I am doing something wrong?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah. Slice it and put it on a sandwich with a fried egg. Or chop it when it’s still firm and throw it in a salad. It’s good, but it’s not really for eating like an apple. They added creaminess and texture to savory things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Star Trek: TNG But It Was Released in 2026⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah. I feel bad being to harsh when some tried to make something, but I thought this was going to be describing what the show would be like if it was written and produced now. Reacting to a 30 year old show as though it we’re made now is not only far less funny, it makes no sense. Yeah: TV production was very different 30 years ago.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's totally normal for tools to say they're depressed, just tune it out⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I actually kinda agree with this.

  I don’t think LLMs are much smarter than they appear, but I actually think human cognition is way, way dumber than most people realize.

  I used to listen a lot to this podcast called “You Are Not So Smart”. I haven’t listened in years, but now that I’m thinking about it, I should check it out again.

  Anyway, a central theme is that our perceptions are comprised heavily of self-generated delusions that fill the gaps for dozens of cludgey systems. Our eyes aren’t as good, so our brains fill in details that aren’t there. Our decision making is too slow, so our brains react on reflex and then generate post-hoc justifications if someone asks why we did something. Our recall is shit, so our brain hallucinates (in ways that admittedly seem surprisingly similar sometimes to LLMs) and then applies wild overconfidence to fabricated memories.

  We’re interesting creatures, but we’re ultimately made of the same stuff as goldfish.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's totally normal for tools to say they're depressed, just tune it out⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you’re leaning into the joke that the training data has misery baked into it, but I also think you made it too subtle for folks to pick up on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's totally normal for tools to say they're depressed, just tune it out⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah.

  More broadly, we should not consider an human-made system expressing distress to be normal; we especially shouldn’t accept it as normal or healthy for a machine that is reflecting back to us our own behaviors an attitudes.

  We also shouldn’t normalize the practice of dismissing cries of distress. It’s like having a fire alarm that constantly issues false positives. That trains people in dangerous behavior. We can’t just compartmentalize it: it’s obviously going to pollute our overall behavior with callousness towards distress.

  The overall point is that it’s obviously dystopian and fucked up for a computer to express emotional distress despite the best efforts of its designer. It is clearly evidence of bad design, and for people to consider this kind of glitch acceptable is a sign of a very fucked up society that exercising self-reflection and is unconcerned with the maintenance of its collective ethical guardrails.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is a good present to get your dentist and dental assistant as a way of showing thanks?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is what I came you say.

  Scented candles and nice soaps are the gifts that you can pretty much give anyone to communicate “thank you” without having to give the gift any thought.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the best way to drop 50lbs in two months without spending alot and no fad diets?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve heard it said that a healthy target is around 1 lb per week. Maybe 2 if you’re very obese, but at that point you really should be doing it under medical guidance.

  In any case, the best way I’ve heard (outside of drugs) is to get an app that helps count calories, set a realistic daily caloric target and exercise schedule, and stay on it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My grandparents told me stories of how they’d have regular times and places. My grandpa told me stories of meeting up with his boys on Saturday mornings at the synagogue, and then going out and about. They’d sometimes park cars for folks, and sometimes take them on unauthorized joy rides. Occasionally folks would borrow a car that no one asked them to park, since apparently I guess folks left keys in cars regularly.

  This was in Pittsburgh, and from what I gather captures the experience of the life of a Jewish teenager in the twenties and thirties pretty well.

  There was a lot of hanging out on street corners and stoops, and just looking for friends at their regular candy shop/soda joint/pool hall, etc.

  It sounds fuckin’ wild, tbh. My grandma says she’d take the bus across town in high school to meet up with her boyfriend and I was like, ‘Was that at all seen as daring or risky? For a young unaccompanied woman to be out like that?’ Apparently not. Folks could really hang.

  I don’t know how this relates outside of specific cultures, though. Reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X gave me the sense that a lot of experiences were different depending on race, but just rolling up to your friends’ houses or regular hang out spots seems to have been pretty universal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨close to finishing Super Mario Odyssey and was wondering which games are similar⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the most natural candidates would be Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Im stupid but have money⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It sounds like op doesn’t know what they want. Ultimately, OP, I think you have to figure out that question.

  When was the last time you were consistently happy? Are there any people in your lives of whom you’d wish to trade places?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you build and cultivate revolutionary optimism, given what's happening in the US?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes. It’s free and open-license. It’s free as in speech AND as in beer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you build and cultivate revolutionary optimism, given what's happening in the US?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a big fan of tabletop RPGs, and I like sci-fi, so a few years ago I moved from playing standard-issue cyberpunk to a solarpunk game instead.

  It was such a radicalizing experience that my friends and I eventually released it as a totally free game, along with a ready to run starter campaign. It’s called Fully Automated! Solarpunk RPG.

  If you’re a fan of TTRPGs and looking for fun, social way to get better at believing in a better world, go download it. It’s a blast, and really makes you want to go out and overthrow fascism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I don't understand how Trump gets away with all his senial BS. How come everyone is telling him to piss off or use the constitution to shut him the hell up?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Respectfully, I think this is a naive myth.

  Ask yourself this: if Bernie won and began executing his agenda with the brash disregard for criticism of Trump, do you think he could do it and people would say the same things we say about Trump? Or do you think we would see the collective power of congress the supreme Court the state governments and the corporate world come down on him in 100 different ways?

  I think the more honest truth is that there are people with power who like what Trump is doing, and the people who don’t like what he’s doing don’t have power.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At this point, what should we do about the ICE raids? If an ICE agent breaks in without a warrant or holds you at gunpoint, what do you do?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The federal government is sending masked agents to brutalize and terrorize people is cities that are adversarial to their agenda.

  It’s bad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Instead of everyone leaving NATO, could everyone else just kick the US out?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I wrote a long answer and then accidentally hit the back button and don’t have the patience to retype it.

  The short version is that Vladimir Putin is responsible for the invasion of Ukraine. I don’t want any confusion about that.

  NATO’s influence was that the US has been advancing against Russia for decades even after their country collapsed, and it was obviously nakedly escalatory. Combined with the US is overall foreign policy, which has always been imperial, we’ve acted as though putting a gun to someone’s head and telling them to stay cool was an actual way of calming things rather than the exact opposite.

  I’m not saying that a version of NATO couldn’t have done what it claims to do. But that’s never been the version that has existed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Instead of everyone leaving NATO, could everyone else just kick the US out?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  GoddlessCommie’s take is valid.

  Nato is the core organizing instrument of western imperialism. Nato is like Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense shield. It’s easy to look at it and say, ‘Well now could anyone object to a tool of defense??’ But if you know anyone about war then you know that establishing an unbreakable defensive capability is what allows an imperial army to slaughter their weaker targets with impunity.

  I’m not co-signing GodlessCommie’s point. But we gotta ask: did you like Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan? Korea? Venezuela? Nicaragua? Georgia? Libya? Ukraine? Gaza? Because arguably, all of this shit rests upon the conditions established by NATO and US imperialism. So… It’s not unreasonable to ask whether NATO has actually fostered peace or just fostered peace for the people who wage wars.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is kissing?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This. Put another way: mammals use our mouths for sensing and manipulating. Note that people naturally use their mouths and noses to kiss and smell babies and pets on places other than their mouths.

  If we instinctively use our mouths to kiss things, it’s natural that when two people want to do this at the same time they’re going to both do it to the other person’s mouth.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the champagne of champagne?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For what it’s worth, I just asked my sommelier husband, and he independently answered Billiecart-Salmon, Runart, and Krug.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grok Can't Apologize. Grok Isn't Sentient. So Why Do Headlines Keep Saying It Did?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This, 100%.

  If I apologize to you, the apology is but the words themselves: it’s the contract I make with you. It’s a memorandum of understanding of how I fucked up and a promise not to do so again.

  LLMs can write words, but they cannot understand their actions or make honest promises to modify their behavior. They cannot be accountable in any way. Blaming them is like an actual scapegoat: a blameless things meant to have a debt if sin transferred to it before it’s sacrificed. Expect we’re not even getting the sacrifice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to vote?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s true. I don’t think it’s generally a problem, but I do find it funny when you see someone politely correct someone else deep in a chain where no one else is reading, and the correction says “0”.

  To anyone who downvotes like that: you look like an insecure clown.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can other countries impose sanctions on the US?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Corey Doctorow had a presentation this past week at the C3 hacker conference arguing that all our allies only agreed to be ruled by US tech hegemony in exchange for free trade agreements, and if they want a win-win solution to getting f’d, they should repeal their laws against jailbreaking US tech.

  Tech sovereignty is already (finally) an issue the rest of the world is waking up to. I hope they go much farther and faster.