🚀I'm S.A. Barton, and I worry about the future🚀

🚀SFF & stuff, FFS
📝Support the arts @ poverty @ c♂️ he/him
👉Giver of damns

[🚀I'm S.A. Barton, and I worry about the future🚀 @sabartonwrites]

Finally got around to making a link page for my ebooks, print on demand trade paperbacks, and the one published short that is still actually still online 🙂
It's a Google Doc with comments enabled, because why not 🤷‍♂️
Please share; money is tight
https://t.co/haJUbayfe1

[Nate @natebjones]

I don’t think most people want an AI assistant that feels like a new app.

They want their existing computer to stop being so dumb.

Find the thing. Watch the page. Fix the password. Build the shortcut. Pull the context. Remind me at the right time.

That is a much more Apple-shaped AI problem.

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

I see your profile picture. That’s Johnny Cash. My hero too. Arrested seven times. Smuggled 668 amphetamines across the Mexican border in 1965. Took every drug there was and drank like I did. Cheated on his first wife. Slept with more woman than I ever did. Hit bottom in a cave in Tennessee in 1968 trying to crawl off and die. And then he got up. He got clean. He spent the rest of his life singing for prisoners and addicts and the people the country threw away because he knew he was one of them.

That was the whole point of the Man in Black. He wore it for the poor and the beaten down. He wore it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime. He wore it for the ones who never heard a word of Jesus. He wore it for the addicted and the dying. He wore it as a standing witness that no one is past saving.

You picked his picture. You did not pick his message. Try listening to the words.

[S.A. Barton @Tao23]

__
*A Spiritual View of Demidocumented Era Late Prehistory in North America, New Old New York Press, New Old New York, 8626

[Rodrigo @QuartoSinistro]

Queridos alunos, pedimos trabalhos manuscritos porque vocês copiam e colam tudo de IA em trabalhos digitados. Ao pedir manuscrito, talvez você ainda se dê ao luxo de ler o que a IA cuspiu.

[🚀I'm S.A. Barton, and I worry about the future🚀 @sabartonwrites]

The students made it the only way to be sure that the work they are handing in came from their own mind.
The students wanted it this way, the students did what it took to make it this way, the students got what they wanted

[isra @naoeoisra]

onde já se viu pedirem pra entregar trabalho escrito a mão estamos no tempo das cavernas mesmo

[🚀I'm S.A. Barton, and I worry about the future🚀 @sabartonwrites]

But you have to have an AI query bubble that keeps popping up in the way of what you're trying to do, with helpful AI hints like 'are you looking for an Uber? Let's plan your transportation experience together'
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄/5

[Ed Zitron @edzitron]

Uber’s COO has said that it’s getting “harder to justify” its AI costs because there was no way to show a link between AI spend and any meaningful increase in useful features. This is the first time I’ve seen a company say this directly.

https://t.co/xUhZvtpwah

[🚀I'm S.A. Barton, and I worry about the future🚀 @sabartonwrites]

Damn, @CBS.
You a pack of petty btches

[chiky handler @chiky_handlr]

I’m not even kidding. Here’s proof

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

This has a clinical name. Revenge bedtime procrastination. And the ADHD version runs on a completely different mechanism than the neurotypical one.

A neurotypical person stays up late because they want more leisure time. The ADHD brain stays up because it spent every drop of dopamine it had on executive function during the day. Sitting in meetings, managing transitions, filtering impulses, remembering the thing you were supposed to remember. That burns through dopamine the way sprinting burns through glycogen. By 10pm the tank is empty.

But here's where it gets counterintuitive. The exhaustion is physical. The dopamine deficit is neurological. Those are two separate systems. Your muscles want sleep. Your prefrontal cortex is starving for the stimulation it was denied all day because it spent 14 hours on task-switching and impulse control instead of anything that actually felt rewarding.

The phone at midnight is the brain trying to collect what it's owed. Low-effort, high-stimulation content. Scrolling, short videos, rabbit holes. The exact profile of activity that delivers dopamine without requiring the executive function you already depleted.

The sleep researchers call this a "self-regulation failure." It's closer to a debt collection. You borrowed against your own reward system to function all day. The bill comes due at midnight. And the brain will not let you sleep until it gets paid.

[🚀I'm S.A. Barton, and I worry about the future🚀 @sabartonwrites]

Duumpa Luumpa?

[Trey @treydayway]

I just called Dua Lipa "Dupa Lupa" in front of college kids at work and now I need to find another job

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

Stephen Colbert got his band to play licensed music during his final show so CBS would be sued for using the music illegally.

“Oh no! I hope this doesn't cost CBS any money!”

[Andrew McCarthy @AJamesMcCarthy]

@jermzsatx @zone_astronomy AI is apparently much worse at spotting fake space photos than a professional space photographer

[Valerio Capraro @ValerioCapraro]

Something unexpected, and slightly worrying, is happening.

Ten days ago, I posted a preprint introducing the concept of LLMorphism: the biased belief that human cognition works like a large language model.

The preprint received an unusual amount of attention.

Hundreds of comments on social media and forums.
Reels on Instagram and TikTok.
YouTube videos.
Infographics for students.

And now it has even made it to Forbes.

It seems that I got some sort of zeitgeist.

Many people were already thinking about this.
Many people had already experienced it.
But they were missing a name and a theoretical framework.

So, here it goes:

LLMorphism is what happens when people start to see themselves as language models.

The psychological mechanism is analogical trasfer combined with metaphorical availability: LLMs become an available metaphor for cognition, and people project that metaphor back onto themselves.

The machine becomes the model of the human.

And this worries me because the risk is not only that we overestimate machines.

It is also that we underestimate ourselves: our embodied experience, our goals, our emotions, our responsibility, and our capacity for understanding.

*

Full paper in the first reply.

[UN Environment Programme @UNEP]

Humanity is exhausting natural resources at an increasing rate.

We must change our consumption habits and shift towards sustainable practices.

Discover ways to #ActNow for a healthier planet. https://t.co/ZFfR1aWIKj

[Thinkwert @Thinkwert]

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

[Johnny Profane Âû @johnnyprofane1]

Bears repeating...

I'm autistic.

I'm not the product of a #vaccine. Born 1953. Received exactly 1 vax pre-K, DTP. NEVER got MMR.

Flagrantly autistic from birth.

@RFKjr, I was not born to be fixed. Or pitied.

I was born to raise hell on your ass.

#ActuallyAutistic style.
.

[Matthew Todd 🌏🔥 @MrMatthewTodd]

Isn’t it great that we’re celebrating David Attenborough’s 100th birthday whilst ignoring the message he’s spent the last 20 years trying to get through to us:

[QC @QiaochuYuan]

this is kind of an amazing parable about scientific materialism. it speaks for itself but i'm going to autistically overanalyze it anyway, for fun -

the question pretends to ask about what a person would do in a social situation but it is actually asking for the "right answer," and the "right answer" involves looking at the situation "objectively," which means completely ignoring the relational texture of the little brother being upset in favor of an abstract argument (which the teacher's comments leave implicit) that he "shouldn't" be upset because the situation is "actually" "objectively" fair even if he doesn't feel that way

this is a very specific way of looking at the situation which school trains you to think of as universally correct, not even a choice that you're making, just the way things "really are." the kid's answer ignores all of this to interpret the question literally as written, maintain focus on the relational texture, and see the situation as a relational rupture they can repair through kindness. instead of teaching the little brother to prioritize abstract concepts over their feelings he teaches the little brother not only that kindness is real and that his family has his back but also that, since the older sibling finds it easy to give up their cornbread, perhaps the cornbread doesn't matter that much anyway

[🚀I'm S.A. Barton, and I worry about the future🚀 @sabartonwrites]

New and FREE on Patreon. Subscribe and give me a hand securing the little luxuries in life like dental care for the situation that has been developing for 2 years that may become sepsis at some point, or medical care, or time to do this more often
https://t.co/s6ZFx4tUVB

[🚀I'm S.A. Barton, and I worry about the future🚀 @sabartonwrites]

Today I learned that a cardinal will come to your porch and take a peanut to go if you're giving them out to the squirrels anyway. And he will talk to you while he does it

[Dr. Jen Wolkin | ADHD + Trauma Therapist @drjenwolkin]

“You’re too smart
to have ADHD”

is often said to people who are
twice-exceptional (2e)

high capacity ≠ consistent access

XO, Dr. Jen