Hilary Mason

In honor of visiting this city again, the Internet Archive has a Buyers Guide to San Francisco from 1923 and I wish I could visit THAT version of the city. Also cats have _always_ been great advertising! archive.org/details/buye...

God everything is so DUMB.

I like her way of speaking and presenting Right now on stage at Piano Academy Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com #academy #ai #aimed

The White House accord on AI that was signed by all the big tech oligarchs today misspells United States as “Unites States.”

"magestic horse" is the worst giphy search ever: giphy.com/search/mages... It was a genuine typo but I do NOT recommend.

There is nothing inevitable about today's GenAI companies or market or product design or power dynamics. It's based on decisions, made implicitly and explicitly, by people. To imagine a better way we must realize how arbitrary all of this is. And who it serves.

we put a bit of world-building magic on our homepage today hiddendoor.co

It definitely felt that way!

Also at 40.

Yesterday I flew LAS->NYC, noticed a white woman at the lounge with a sticker like the "I voted!" stickers but it said "I like ICE". Then she and her husband pushed aside wheelchairs to "preboard", announcing they were in first class Then they were rude to the flight attendants. The worst people.

If we held people personally and criminally liable for the "autonomous" actions of the AI systems they create and deploy, I bet the risky behavior would evaporate overnight.

It seems like there's a wave of cool advent calendar design (LEGO! jams! puzzles!), but do any companies make a version that isn't anchored on Christmas?

This is well-said, and the heart of this conflict is what drives status in any professional role, and how that ties into professional identity.

AI products are basically just software, but now it has moods.

I'm pretty excited about this: we're launching a ヽ(^O^)ノ paid ⎝(^O^)ヽ virtual residency at New_ Public for folks with big ideas for making the internet a better place. Got a big idea? 💡✅ Care about people and communities? 💖✅ Please apply and share! newpublic.org/eir

Excellent work from 404. Respect for books is such a basic value that signals so many things about people.

Has anyone curated a static download of the good bits of Wikipedia/YouTube/etc. for being able to learn or explore new things offline? We could call it "The Good Place".

Happy Zero Cool Day to all who celebrate #hackers

So much AI journalism feels like gaslighting if you know anything about machine learning pre-2020. Come. On.

I can't stress enough what a crisis this is. Trump's own intelligence agencies concluded that Iran attacked Minnesota's critical infrastructure and Trump is saying that it's Minnesota's own fault and denying it was Iran. The federal government won't defend blue states in a literal war.

There are smart people working at these companies, and yet they keep launching deeply ill-considered products. It's such an obviously bad idea if you think about it for even a second. I'm fascinated by this.

I have a headache today and I finally understand dark mode.

Help me bluesky — What’s the easiest way for me, a plant dummy, to grow these herbs at home? I love cooking with fresh herbs and hate not trusting my produce.

I miss being able to Google my more interesting typos to see how many people also made them

Is opening a fire hydrant and playing in the street a specifically NYC thing? Or an American city thing? This is a genuine question, I am talking to a friend from the UK who has no context for it. :)

I love our team @hiddendoor.co and we're all big readers -- we had so much fun sharing our favorite queer book recommendations and I hope y'all love them, too!

It feels like no matter what I've accomplished in my career, my current most valuable talent is that if you locked me in a desert cave with a computer and some GPUs I could Iron Man the shit out of that and emerge with a functional LLM using just what's in my own head. And that's really funny.

If walking costs you $1, we all pay $0.01. If biking costs you $1, we all pay $0.08. If bussing costs you $1, we all pay $1.50. If driving costs you $1, we all pay $9.20. Via study that still underestimates climate cost. This isn’t about choice. It’s about who pays for your choice. #citymakingmath

Boss move.

As Archbishop Tutu said about apartheid with regards to the Truth and Reconciliation hearings: "Those who claimed they did not know cannot very well say so now. They know.” Except we have internet. We have social media. People know now. We know. We cannot claim otherwise.

I’m really having trouble imagining anyone at any point in history saying the word “knickerbocker” with a straight face, it just has such a funny mouthfeel

BREAKING: the Massachusetts House just passed one of the best data privacy bills in the country. It includes a total ban on the sale of precise location data and includes a private right of action allowing people to sue Big Tech over data abuses. HUGE WIN! But there’s more work to do 🧵

This is really cool. I've been super into strandbeests since I discovered the Gakken kit (which was many, many years ago): www.japantrendshop.com/theo-jansen-...

Good story on the Knicks' subway entrance, the city's current spirit animal. www.fastcompany.com/91553148/kni...

I spent more time on this piece than almost anything else I've written in the last year. Building a better, more decentralized internet is an inherent necessity if you want a functioning democracy. I hope people find it a useful encapsulation of where we're at. www.liberalism.org/p/enshittifi...

This is a _hilarious_ self-own.

Good morning, Brooklyn, it’s sidewalk chalk season and the kids are awesome.

A beautiful graduation speech. I hope the students took heart.

Using Altas, I've been working with @marylowd.bsky.social to turn her Otters In Space books into a playable RPG. Soon you will be able to visit an otter space station, join a lovable crew of otter space pirates, and find out where all the missing tuna has gone!