Bæn

We should know less about each other

[Bæn @gumbojimboy]

"Some people were born just to be buried."- David Pollock about me probably

[W.E.B. DaBoi @Tyre_94]

Y’all are not prepared for what’s coming

[umichvoter @umichvoter]

Abdul "if you need a $60 million crutch to win, maybe you are not electable"

[Sol 🍂 @autumnpard]

It's interesting how many men are at heart Talibans: deep down they don't want women in public life, which is why they wail on women looking like "sluts" in the street/gym; women who appear in any pic are "thirst trapping" and so on. They just want to cajole women to disappear.

[. @TanaGaneva]

Why Mamdani will win every time.

This IS actually risky, because there *will* be lines, just like there were lines when the weed store opened, and the NY Post will run 9,000 articles about Soviet Era breadlines.

But he's doing it anyway. Because the Bronx and East Harlem need the kind of food Park Slope has, but at affordable prices.

This is what resonates with people in an era of evil vulgar opportunists: doing the right thing even if it's risky.

[Hot Rails — oz/acc @hot_rails]

This is the magnificent library @AnthropicAI amassed, before pulping it because it gave them a legal copyright loophole.

These people do not understand Civilization.

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

The Palantir consultant who was working for Haley Stevens isn’t remotely the only link the campaign has to the firm. The campaign’s fundraising firm Fulkerson Kennedy & Co. also runs a thing called the Innovative Future Collective, through several of their founders, which as Sludge has reported takes Hill staffers on luxury junkets to visit Palantir and other AI companies.

[Roan @bigmanroan]

“When everything burns the horses will run wild again” I mutter to myself after my 6th beer at 4pm

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

Every action hero having to be a hitman or Navy SEAL has been an annoyance of mine for a while. Bring back the Hitchcockian everyman who has to rise to the occasion! More Richard Kimbles and Alan Grants, please.

[Ole Lehmann @itsolelehmann]

btw anthropic's internal document on this literally said "we don't want it to be known that we are working on this.”

it was called project panama.

here's exactly what happened:

1: anthropic concluded that books were the cheapest way to build a world-class model because they gave claude curated facts, structured arguments, compelling stories, and writing “an editor would approve of.”

2: once anthropic decided it needed books at enormous scale, its first solution was piracy.

it downloaded 7m+ books from online libraries including libgen. the judge later wrote that although anthropic had legal ways to buy them, it chose piracy to avoid what dario amodei called the “legal/practice/business slog.”

3: that piracy created a massive legal risk.

so in february 2024, anthropic hired tom turvey, the former head of partnerships for google books, to find a legally safer way of obtaining “all the books in the world.”

4: turvey first contacted major publishers about licensing their catalogs.

those attempts didn’t produce agreements, so anthropic chose a route that required no publisher permission: buying millions of physical books through distributors and used-book retailers.

5: within about a year, anthropic spent tens of millions acquiring and scanning millions of books, including many rare and 1/1 titles. one vendor proposal targeted 500,000 to 2 million books in six months.

6: to scan that many books within months, the vendors physically dismantled them.

a hydraulic cutter removed each spine. the pages were trimmed to size, fed as loose sheets through high-speed industrial scanners, and converted into searchable PDFs. the paper remains were then sent for recycling.

7: these PDFs were fed into claude as training data.

the complete collection became a private, searchable anthropic library that the company planned to “store forever.” the scans aren’t available to the public and were never open-sourced.

[Club des Cordeliers @cordeliers]

Once books exist only in digital form, ruling class will find it easy to revise and censor them.

[Nick Kapur @nick_kapur]

Terrifying thread.

Due to a legal ruling which lets AI companies off the hook for copyright infringement as long as they destroy the original book, they're buying up millions of rare books, scanning them as AI training data, and then destroying them.

[Pinball🍎❄️🔻▐┛ @PinballWiz4rd]

“Wow does this mean we’ll finally get cool retrofuturistic atomic gadgets like in Fallout?”

“No it means Monsanto is going to put radium shavings in your food to increase shelf-life and maximise profits. Enjoy the birth defects.”

[Beff (e/acc) @beffjezos]

Anthropic are literally effectively burning books and want to be the exclusive source of truth in the future.

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

“To enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold … The height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.” — Moby-Dick

[Capn' Mordreds Emergency Commissions are open @ZloNoNameSov]

You're meant to expand what you love with your own work.
Just because something hasn't been officially updated in 2 decades doesn't mean it's over.

It will only be over when you decide it's over.

[Wambu⚓ @Wambulogy]

Bro why is Trump able to snap his fingers and make everything immediately worse, while Democrats need unanimous permission from the whole world to wipe their own asses?

[VGTimes @VGTimes]

⚠️ Project Zomboid Build 42 drops July 29 after a year and a half of testing

Here's what's been added:

— Official multiplayer
— Ragdoll physics and an updated physics system
— Expanded map with new towns, underground areas, high-rises, and realistic shorelines
— Pigs, sheep, chickens, deer, rats, and more wildlife, all with realistic behavior
— New cosmetics, weapons, tools, and crafting recipes
— Overhauled aiming, inventory, and UI
— Expanded crafting, blacksmithing, and sewing
— Updated sounds and music
— And a ton of smaller improvements, bug fixes, features, and items

More features are coming with the July 29 launch, including a full suite of modding tools

Heads up: saves from Build 41 won't work in 42. You can stick with the old version by selecting "Build 41 Legacy" in the game's properties on Steam

[Jason Bassler @JasonBassler1]

A man clapped once during public comment at a data-center zoning meeting in Emporia, Kansas.

They arrested him.

Remember... no dissent allowed!

Just be silent like an obedient domesticated taxpayer while they fast‑track a data center in your backyard.

[Eli_Lee @alexander22_eli]

@Uncle_Leaf There's so much hatred for the most desperate people that Kurt Vonnegut wrote about this phenomena 50 years ago: