Mike D

toolmaker/artist ▽ software architect; he/him ◱ sculpture, architecture, music, video, theater, poetry, electronics. ⏭️ dewb@ bsky, cohost, @discuss.systems

[Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak]

In Tom Engelhardt’s 1991 essay that coined “screen time” as a moral panic, Paul Reubens is the chief villain. His description here of PEE-WEE’S PLAYHOUSE is meant to be damning, but it accidentally turns into an account of the show’s brilliance. Creatures made of screens.

[The Hollywood Reporter @THR]

"By day 72 our souls were cracking. The distant horizon of the strike loomed long and large. But then the AMPTP f***ed up. Big time" https://t.co/qPCoDFxjNv

[Mike D @Dewb]

@BigMeanInternet It’s very good and has multiple memeable moments. With day-of-week inflation, this has situationally replaced “Lemon, it’s Wednesday” for me

[Will Stancil @whstancil]

The right's two demands are, first, we stop trying to reverse racial disadvantage, and second, we stop talking about race at all. Discrimination is the crime; race-blindness is the coverup. It's totalitarian in its insistence that reality be reconstructed to serve the powerful.

[The Debt Collective 🟥 @StrikeDebt]

There is nothing surprising about John Robert's blatantly racist view that college is for white people and Black people should fight the wars

[Emmy Potter @emmylanepotter]

"I once asked Akira Kurosawa why he had chosen to frame a shot in Ran in a particular way. His answer was that if he'd panned the camera 1 in to the left, the Sony factory would be sitting there exposed, & if he'd panned 1 in to the right, we would see the airport" - Sidney Lumet

[Mike D @Dewb]

@_MichaelOswell_ @667miasma nor do I -- but his position definitely needs to be countered!

[Mike D @Dewb]

@_MichaelOswell_ @667miasma Look closely at this picture and tell me there's no relevant contemporary critique in the song. https://t.co/PSUS8Jqy0S

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Starship takes beings of Earth to Mars

[Mike D @Dewb]

@perpetua https://t.co/KcgdzNalw5

[Mike D @Dewb]

@theavalkyrie Castor and Pollux is the most-frequently-used oscillator in my rig for the second year in a row.

[Sarah Lazare @sarahlazare]

This whole railroad workers episode further clarifies that the "essential worker" discourse we've been bombarded with for almost 3 yrs is about disciplining workers to labor in perilous conditions, and not about respecting and protecting the people who do vital work.

[Ron Chrisley @RonChrisley]

The large no. of #ChatGPTfails wouldn't be worth mentioning if it weren't for the large no. of people who find an impressive non-failure and draw ill-advised conclusions about the model's suitability as a knowledge source. Here's me piling on. @mdahardy @GaryMarcus @MelMitchell1

[Mike D @Dewb]

Wish the discourse would judge AI/generative systems by how useful & accurate they are, rather than how convincing the output is on a lay inspection. The Turing Test was a thought experiment, not a utility metric. We have enough manual misinformation already without automating it

[Mike D @Dewb]

All of this isn't going away; the social graph, the brand, and the archive will have value in whatever fire sale concludes the arc.

But a product org is a living thing. A social scene is a living thing. You can't just kill and rehydrate it; it's going to come back different.

[Mike D @Dewb]

My prediction for this chapter of the bird site’s ownership journey was a sale within 18 months for <$15B, and I’m starting to feel like I need to revise both of those figures significantly downward

[Mike D @Dewb]

e.g. the feasibility of self-driving cars, everything about cryptocurrency, the length and severity of the COVID pandemic, the business and engineering skills of various celebrity industrialists...

[Jaana Dogan ヤナ ドガン @rakyll]

This captures the idea why you can't build very large systems over a week even a trivial one where you have domain expertise. It takes time to understand the failure patterns of your design. Scale and usage patterns are out of your control. https://t.co/Q5mHQs3vrT