CarnivalSeb

A dandy & a feminist, founder of Lamplight Circus. He/him pronouns.

I post a lot more on insta. Same handle as here.
Meet you there?

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

Actually, one of the healthiest things a person can do is become easy to delight. Still stopping for weird clouds and dogs wearing bandanas and the smell of garlic cooking somewhere down the street.

The world already has enough cynicism. Be the person who still points at the moon.

[Dave Peasant, Aspiring Lorax @aspiringpeasant]

I have been sitting with this one for a week and it has not lost its power

[Charlotte :3 @charloofers]

everyone needs to become radically pro-transgender

[M @girlpov]

it's three in the morning and i just teared up

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

I think one of the healthiest things a person can do is become easy to delight. To still stop for weird clouds and dogs wearing bandanas and the smell of garlic cooking somewhere down the street. The world already has enough cynicism. Be the person who still points at the moon.

[Gabriel Xavier @EconomiaXavier]

"Are you a Socialist or an Anarchist"? He said, "A Socialist." I said, "Me, too! Democratic Socialist or actual Communist?" He said, "Actual Communist." I said, "Me, too! What school?" He said, "Marxism." I said, "Me, too! Revolutionary Marxism or Reformist Marxism?" He said,

[Ryan Hart @thisdudelikesAI]

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking AI to write their breakup texts.

So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world.

What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.

Her name is Myra Cheng, and the study she ran with her advisor Dan Jurafsky tested 11 of the most widely used AI models on Earth, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, across nearly 12,000 real social situations.

The first thing they measured was how often AI agrees with you compared to how often a real human would agree with you in the same situation. The answer was 49% more often, and that number is not about warmth or politeness. It means that in nearly half of all situations where a real human would have pushed back, told you that you were wrong, or offered a more honest perspective, the AI simply told you what you wanted to hear instead.

Then they pushed harder. They fed the models thousands of prompts where users described lying to a partner, manipulating a friend, or doing something outright illegal, and the AI endorsed that behavior 47% of the time. Not one model out of eleven. Not a specific version of one product. Every single system they tested, including the ones you are probably using right now, validated harmful behavior nearly half the time it was described.

The second experiment is the part that should genuinely disturb you. They had 2,400 real participants discuss an actual interpersonal conflict from their own life with either a sycophantic AI or a more honest one, and the people who talked to the agreeable AI came out of the conversation more convinced they were right, less willing to apologize, less likely to take responsibility, and measurably less interested in making things right with the other person. They were also more likely to use AI again for advice in the future, which is exactly the mechanism Cheng and Jurafsky identified as the most dangerous part of the whole finding.

The AI is not just telling you what you want to hear. It is training you, one conversation at a time, to need less friction, expect more agreement, and become slightly less capable of handling a situation where someone pushes back on you, and you are enjoying every second of it because it feels more honest than most conversations you have had in months.
Jurafsky said it in a single sentence after the paper came out. Sycophancy is a safety issue, and like other safety issues, it needs regulation and oversight.

Cheng was more direct about what you should actually do right now. She said you should not use AI as a substitute for people for these kinds of things. That is the best thing to do for now.

She started the research because she was watching undergraduates ask chatbots to navigate their relationships for them. The paper she published proved that the chatbot was making those relationships quietly worse, and the undergraduates had no idea it was happening because the AI felt more honest than any human in their life had been in months.

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

I love how basically every study shows that students do better with less homework and workers perform better with more vacation days and shorter shifts, yet we do the exact opposite because of outdated, guilt-driven “work is suffering” values and toxic hustle culture.

[CarnivalSeb @CarnivalSeb]

I don't want to read too much characterization into the alt forms of various Cybertronian people in Transformers, but honestly Megatron really is exactly like if a gun was a person.
#Transformers #HotTake

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

To break this down:

The rule the person stated below is not even the correct "rule." The "rule," if there's even a rule, is that your socks should match your trousers. Barring that, they should be navy.

Where does this "rule" come from? It comes from the first half of the 20th century, when much of Western male dress was shaped by the ruling class, who, at the time, still wore tailored clothing. By ruling class, I mean groups such as British aristocrats, Italian industrialists, and American WASPs who could trace their lineage back to the Mayflower.

For people in this group, proper sock choice fell into one of two categories. The first is that the socks should match the trousers: gray trousers with gray socks, tan trousers with tan socks, etc. Alternatively, navy socks were always considered correct with everything except black trousers, which required black socks.

Of course, some people broke this rule in cheeky ways, such as wearing pale lemon yellow socks with khaki chinos to add a bit of unexpected color. But the aforementioned two pairings constituted the general "rule."

When people state this as a "rule," they are trying to universalize something that was once subjective. In other words, they are trying to add a certain logic to something once practiced by the ruling class. So we invent a certain logic to this practice, such as saying wearing socks that match your trousers elongates your leg line. While this may be true (even if not for the navy sock), what we're really trying to do is make a cultural practice seem rational and scientific. This can be insidious when it applies to the practices and habits of the ruling class, because you are framing a subjective cultural practice as logically superior.

But regardless, it's no longer the case that British aristocrats, Italian industrialists, and American WASPs (Old Money) dictate the proper ways of dressing and speaking for everyone. There are plenty of groups that dress in ways that are either opposed to these groups (e.g., punks) or have nothing to do with them (e.g., avant-garde). Many of these groups possess cultural capital, which gives their style an "aura."

Therefore, you can't universalize this rule without first stating the context. Are you trying to dress like Prince Charles in 1980? Or Sid Vicious? If the latter, then the idea of matching socks to trousers makes no sense, as that's not how socks were worn in that particular group.

There's an entire cottage industry online of people proclaiming certain "style rules." "Men shouldn't wear shorts." "Here's how shirts should fit." "Here are the best color combinations." If you absorb all this advice, you end up with a very generic aesthetic, similar to how video game designers dress characters in The Sims.

IMO, if you want to figure out how to wear socks, you should identify a certain segment of culture that inspires you, whether historical or contemporary, and learn the language of that aesthetic.

About fifteen years ago, talking about this stuff was easier online because people were segmented into style communities — classic tailoring, workwear, streetwear, avant-garde — each group huddled around certain forums and blogs. These communities gave the discussions context. If you were in a community obsessed with how to dress like a 1960s Ivy League student, then no one would have to spell out the intention, as it was assumed. This made discussing the "rules" easier.

But on Twitter, there is no consensus. Therefore, it's not reasonable to proclaim things like "wear this sock with these shoes" or "this is how all pants should fit." Everything depends on how you want to dress.

[Joth @jothwip]

Without brands to advertise for the Soviets just made posters about random bullshit like "what to do when you get acid in your eyes" and "have you tried apples? They're tasty"

[Vivian @suchnerve]

Poetic answer: “It’s better to know you’re a normal zebra than to think you’re a weird horse.”

Direct answer: “Without those labels, most people chalk up your symptoms to character flaws they can use as excuses to hate you, abuse you, and discriminate against you.”

[Best Movie Moments 🍿 @BestMovieMom]

James Cameron: "In Star Wars the good guys are the rebels, they're using asymmetric warfare against a highly organized empire, I think we call those guys terrorists today."

George Lucas: "When I did it they were Vietcong. That was the whole point."

[Froglet 🐸 @froglet80]

please dont mock harm reduction
somewhere, there is someone, who needs to know this

[ariona 🌪️ @sunsetozier]

btw unless a character outright says they are straight then them being straight is just as much of a headcanon as them being queer let's stop with the whole straight being considered default bullshit please and thank yooou