The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma

@idreamof.coffee

She/They. Married white transgender dyke. Builds and flies rockets. Machinist and maker learning their craft. Loves cats, pour-overs, and sparky motors. Hates patriarchal systems. Primarily at https://orbital.horse/@emma.

198 followers527 following1.7K posts

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

“I have more money than god and decided to use AI to do something it learned how to do by stealing the skills crafted by human beings who used to be paid to do that work. I hope people will give me more money to watch that creative theft before deciding how they feel about it.”

The A.V. Club@avclub.com

Ava DuVernay's 14th, about the 14th Amendment, uses AI to animate old photos that are in the public domain, and the filmmaker wants people to see the documentary for themselves before deciding how they feel about it. tinyurl.com/c6nj6vf7

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

Politico wrote up Zohran playing basketball with the uncovering-a-big-scandal tone the same day the NYTimes wrote up "credible allegation that The President of the United States raped a woman" as a political strategy story. Broken media in a nutshell

Chris Sommerfeldt@c-sommerfeldt.bsky.social

New: Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a group of his friends have been secretly using the NYPD Police Academy’s gymnasium in Queens to play pickup basketball — scrambling some operations at the facility. w/ @grahamrayman.bsky.social & Joe Anuta www.politico.com/news/2026/10...

This reminds me of what happened to Qian Xuesen, a Caltech aerospace engineering professor who was hounded out of the US by Roy Coen (Trump's mentor.) He returned to China, where he developed rockets and missiles and is considered The Father of Chinese Rocketry. RFK Jr. is an idiot.

Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social

A 2025 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Omar Yaghi is the son of Palestinian refugees who grew up in Jordan. He just left the US to move to China after raising concerns about rising anti-immigrant sentiment, like the kind shown here. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/china-than...

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

Replying to @ezebones.bsky.social

"At long last, we have built the Mechanical Hound, but don't worry--it's not at all inspired by the Mechanical Hound from Ray Bradbury's classic novella 'A Society That Would Build The Mechanical Hound Would Be Deeply Fucked-Up And Use It To Hunt Dissidents!'"

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The internet can be pretty gullible about tech products, but congrats to everyone who called exactly what this was going to be used for from the first moment they saw it.

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The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

⚠️WOKE CONTENT⚠️™️ 🧵 In 19th-century Charleston, SC, urban slavery gave rise to a unique and chilling tool of control: Charleston Slave Badges. Who knew? 🤔 Pull up a seat🪑, my friends. #ProudBlue #ResistanceRoots #USDemocracy #Voices4Victory relicrecord.com/blog/charles...

relicrecord.comCharleston Slave Badges - RelicRecordCharleston Slave Badges, otherwise known as a “slave tags,” tell us that a slave was skilled and trusted enough to be rented-out for short-term work.

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

When I say I love Cheesecake Factory, I mean this cat who was found malnourished and wandering through a Bay Area mall parking lot. Cheesecake Factory has since been rescued and nursed back to health. He's now healthy, vaxxed, & sweet, but still needs a loving home www.petfinder.com/cat/cheeseca...

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

With AI, fixating on apocalyptic scenarios ignores real-world problems involving the actually already existing AI. We have proven methods to address disruptive technology, but for anyone who opposes them, apocalyptic fantasies can be a useful distraction. My latest, in @liberalcurrents.com:

liberalcurrents.comThe Plausible Techno-Dystopian FutureThe problems caused by AI development are widespread and multiplying, but none involves a digital demon that kills us all.

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

Replying to @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social

Sam Altman argues “the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefit of this technology." Of course he would. But the rest of us don’t have to agree that these people and their work are so special that, for the first time ever, law and public interest don’t apply. Full piece here:

liberalcurrents.comThe Plausible Techno-Dystopian FutureThe problems caused by AI development are widespread and multiplying, but none involves a digital demon that kills us all.

How is filing charges for documented bribery racially motivated? Oh that's right, because the current DA, trying to dismiss the charges, has been bought and paid for by Empower Oakland.

Shorter Matty Y: "Murdering trans people and immigrants is fine as long as Capitalism is protected from Internationalist movements."

Dan Mauler 🎃@meelar.bsky.social

I just think Matt's wrong about this. We're at a point in our technological development where a ton of problems spill over national borders--if Flavio Bolsonaro burns down the Amazon, that will flood houses in Miami.

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

I'm going to try to do this cleanly. Today's right wing governments are networked to each other. Those networks are well-documented. You can read about them in books. Following the elections in one node of that network is good practice for understanding the U.S. node.

Dan Mauler 🎃@meelar.bsky.social

I just think Matt's wrong about this. We're at a point in our technological development where a ton of problems spill over national borders--if Flavio Bolsonaro burns down the Amazon, that will flood houses in Miami.

Enabling ableism and anti-worker discourse instead of calling out the structural problems. Cool story bro.

House people instead making them play a game of virtue hoops.

Senator Mark Warner@markwarner.bsky.social

Housing costs are reaching record highs, putting even more strain on families already struggling with rising prices. That’s why I helped write and pass the ROAD to Housing Act that will make housing more affordable for veterans, renters, first-time homebuyers, and families across Virginia.

People keep saying Ramaswamy's lithobraked and don't understand that 1/3 of the country think raping children is a God-given right.

Kirsten Bladh@kerstanley.bsky.social

Over 2,000 alumni from Vivek’s all-boys catholic high school in Cincinnati have signed and circulated a petition demanding that he pull the ad and issue a public apology for “ignoring the moral responsibilities” of his Jesuit education. I think he’s pretty cooked.

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

When people like Anne Applebaum talk about the far-right they don't mean the Middle East because they exceptionalize the region so much that its developments exist outside time. The region is filled with far-right leaders that she happens to support.

Anne Applebaum@anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu

In one day, two politicians - Bolsonaro in Brazil and Vucic in Serbia - with ties to Trump have lost surprise elections thanks to high turnout. The rise of the international far-right is not inevitable.

Democrats could be working with trans people to get out the vote instead of making ads promising to murder trans people, but Democrats are shit.

Anat Shenker-Osorio@anatosaurus.bsky.social

So much to say about Brazil, not least of which is the role that Erika Hilton, a Black trans leader and most voted woman politician in Brazil, played in mobilizing folks for Lula. She was behind the critical, concrete, economic promise of shorter work-week. theprint.in/feature/erik...

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

“'You Can See Everything' is a hilarious, thrilling, fascinating, beautiful piece of art. What it certainly is not is a documentary, and it’s dangerous to pretend that it is,” writes Theranos whistleblower Tyler Shultz. https://bit.ly/4Bk2nDJ

statnews.comI was a Theranos whistleblower. In ‘You Can See Everything,’ Elizabeth Holmes is still lyingA more accurate name would be “You Can See Everything That We Chose To Point The Camera At,”Theranos whistleblower Tyler Shultz writes.

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

Lula winning is great for the planet, great for Brazil, and great for people who aren't revanchist assholes everywhere in the world, but let's not forget that it's also going to make some of the worst people on Earth extremely sad and mad. We should enjoy that, as a little treat.

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

something i have been thinking about recently: if fascism is a fundamentally aesthetic movement, what happens when that aesthetic starts looking bad?

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

I've donated to a few candidates before and so my name is on lists of folks who can be persuaded to open up their wallets for dems in close races. And it's true! I can! The magic words are "trans rights are human rights and I will not dignify weird creeps' obsession with teen girls' genitals."

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

I think it's pretty bad that people who don't enjoy doing the things that make us people are trying to reshape society to fit their antisocial worldview.

David Gura@davidgura.bsky.social

cool, cool

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

Just to be clear... Prop 40 is a ONE-TIME retroactive tax. It applies ONLY to billionaires and would tax just 5% of their wealth — which grew 30% in 2025. California's billionaires would still be worth $2T+ AFTER the tax. The revenue will fund healthcare for millions of Californians. Vote YES.

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Replying to @shallok.bsky.social

I guess if you suppose that "a sophisticated form of structured pattern matching, fundamentally bounded by the data distribution seen during training" is "reasoning", you would also say that 1960s ELIZA was sentient. The rest of us cannot be expected to assume your definitions of these words.

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

So how did Lula come from behind to defeat Bolsonaro? In short, turnout. Bolsonaro's vote share barely moved. But Lula banked millions of votes from those who didn't vote in the first round & won eliminated candidates' votes. A remarkable mobilisation. Second round turnout is usually below first.

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

I told a collaborator recently that the greatest dream of a sizable chunk of Sillicon Valley is to discard every part of their soul in the name of efficiency and become a robot.

A.R. Moxon@juliusgoat.bsky.social

Increasingly clear that these tech elites have become entirely detached from their own humanity.

The Weak Anthropic Conjecture at Camp Miasma reposted

It's really important to pay attention to the fact that Lula beat the fascist candidate not by compromising and trying to meet fascist voters in the middle, but by sticking to his guns, promising prosecutions for election interference, and mobilising his own voters to turn out in greater numbers.