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"democratization of skills" is a particularly insidious framing of # AI
🫐 Tyler Smith 🫒
Public posts from @plantarum@ottawa.place
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# Wildfire misinformation is mutating online, thanks to # AI slop https:// thenarwhal.ca/wildfire-misinfo rmation-2026/?utm_source=rss
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oh. it's just a steady stream of self-promotion and zero interaction with anyone. never mind then :/
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A question for # Photography folks on the fediverse: how do we feel about toots padded with blank lines such that the photo takes up the whole screen? It strikes me as being more than a little obnoxious, but maybe there's context or intent that I'm missing.
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On the other hand, here's a truly exciting application of # AI to concrete problems in service of human creativity, specifically # Photography # FreeSoftware https://www. darktable.org/2026/06/meet-dar ktable-5.6-ai-tools/ > Local. Nothing leaves your machine. No cloud inference, no telemetry, no “we’ll improve the model with your data”. Every model runs on your CPU > Curated open models. Every…
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Why # reading matters, and the case for treating our mental fitness the same way we do our physical fitness. https:// calnewport.com/why-reading-mat ters/
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This is something I've suspected from the early days of the AI boom. If this stuff was as good as they claim, it would be a closely guarded industrial secret. The fact they're so eager to get us to use it tells me it's primary value isn't what it can do, but what it can be sold for. Or, as Cory says, "Go Meta!". If you think about it, this is coming from a group of people who famously fetishize…
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Sad to report that my experiment with Mojeek has not gone well. Most searches fail to find me the results I'm looking for. Head to head comparison with # DuckDuckGo shows the latter is much more consistent. On the other hand, more limited results from # Kagi look *very* promising! Good, effective, and surveillance-free # search is worth paying for at this point.
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Editors: if you see authors and reviewers engaging in extended arguments over minor details, do you leave them to sort it out, or do you step in at some point? We've got a reviewer pushing us, for a third time, to add "a few words" to address their particular hobby horse. In our first two revisions we added a few words, and in our response explained that the issue is overstated, and more to the…
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Jacques Henri Lartigue: "Maurice Lartigue, Chateau Rouzat", 1911 # Photography
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Protip: as soon as someone requests your 'bio' for a presentation or event for the first time, put it in a file in your 'cv' folder. The next time you need one, check the folder - update, trim/expand, and keep both versions. I used to bash these out off the top of my head, but at this point I appreciate having a single place where I can look through what past me wrote. I need 250 words for a…
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TIL: getting a summary of keybindings in # Emacs via `C-h b` can be made much nicer by setting `describe-bindings-outline` to `t` (which I think is the default) and setting the regexp for `describe-bindings-outline-rules` to "Key translations\|Minor Mode Bindings". This will open the bindings buffer only the major mode section expanded. This is usually what I'm looking for, and it's tedious to…
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What does the hive mind think of # Kagi ? It sounds pretty great, particularly the endorsement from @ pluralistic . And somehow my little blog made it into their curated # SmallWeb list, so they clearly have excellent taste. I'll have to try them out when I get back to the office. I have set # Mojeek as my default search for the past month or so, but unfortunately the results haven't been that…
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# Ottawa folks: what do you think of # SparksStreet ? I am a big fan of pedestrian spaces, but this one always feels so blah. Outside of ribfest, whenever I've been there it's been pretty empty. Is it just for out-of-town tourists? Or am I missing the best times to be there?
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Refusing to read the article on principle is an especially small hill to die on
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More goldthread, one of my favourites from this trip. # botany # Photography # Makkovik
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Sweet gale, Myrica gale blooming in the sun # botany # Makkovik # Photography
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Coptis trifolia, goldthread, blooming in a shaft of sunshine that snuck through the taller plants. The white 'petals' are actually sepals. The petals are reduced to narrow clubs tipped with a golden nectary. You can see a few amongst the stamens. # botany # Photography
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> "Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. This nightmare is the surveillance advertising industry's fondest dream, a world where it's literally illegal to avoid their tracking, all in the name of saving kids…from them! @ pluralistic Spying on kids to save kids from spying is very,…
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Bog Laurel putting on a show. # botany # Photography