eagle | Network

Nothing hits quite like the combination of having time for focused concentration and finding a brilliant vid.

If you like M*A*S*H, save this for a quiet moment (or watch it right away, I'm not the boss of anyone!).

Watch on YouTube

I watched M*A*S*H reruns after school on daytime syndication (or whatever the Swedish equivalent was), and it's one of those formative media experiences. ...yeah, no, there's no analysis here, just a slow release of breath. Of feelings resonating across many decades.

erinptah_feed

Posted by Erin Ptah

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2026/09/13/the-means-are-bad-but-dont-worry-the-ends-are-also-bad-llm-links/

http://erinptah.wordpress.com/?p=11423

“One of the biggest questions I get at Drop-In Time at the library (besides “what is taking up all my cloud storage?”) is how to disable or avoid intrusive AI that shows up where people don’t want it. This is a guide for people who would like less intrusive AI in their tech environment.“

The process of making them is bad:

“Datacenters in America used about 17 billion gallons of water during 2023, triple the amount they used a decade earlier in 2014, according to an estimate from US Congressional Research Service (CRS).”

““I can’t breathe at home, it smells like gas outside,” Boxtown resident Alexis Humphreys said through tears, holding up her asthma inhaler during a public hearing about the turbines on April 25. “How come I can’t breathe at home and y’all get to breathe at home?”“

“Many companies are surely trying to build their own; after all, we are reliably informed that AI is going to take over the world and the companies that come out on top of that race will be worth untold amounts of money. […] Large-scale criminal organizations (to the extent that they are distinct from governments) probably also want to have their own models. These tools are seen as weapons, and there is an arms race underway. The Internet as a whole is caught in the crossfire.“

“I am a writer. A writer who also happens to be Kenyan. And I have come to this thesis statement: I don’t write like ChatGPT. ChatGPT, in its strange, disembodied, globally-sourced way, writes like me. Or, more accurately, it writes like the millions of us who were pushed through a very particular educational and societal pipeline, a pipeline deliberately designed to sandpaper away ambiguity, and forge our thoughts into a very specific, very formal, and very impressive shape.“

“AI is only as good as the data it is trained on. In India, this labour is increasingly performed by women, who are part of an workforce often described as “ghost workers”. “The first few months, I couldn’t sleep,” she says. “I would close my eyes and still see the screen loading.” Images followed her into her dreams: of fatal accidents, of losing family members, of sexual violence she could not stop or escape.“

But don’t worry! The results are also bad:

“Luna was given $100,000 to work with when this place opened. That number is now down to $60,000, its revenue lagging far behind the AI token cost to operate. […] So Luna can’t turn a profit, doesn’t sell anything people want, and still needs human beings to rubber stamp any “decision” it makes.”

“I’ve had multiple heated arguements with people trying to defend AI, by explaining to me that “AI might be bad, but it has benefits for accessibility!” Using the very disabled people being thrown under the bus by AI as a shield, when my quality of life has substantially worsen ever since AI turned up everywhere, because I’ve lost access to all the good accessibility tools that I use to depend on.“

“In another case, an AI scribe confused the drug the GP had prescribed with a different one of a similar name – a blunder which again the patient, rather than the doctor, identified. On another occasion an AI-generated summary letter did not say that the hospital consultant had told the patient to seek a repeat prescription from their GP for their migraine, which could have left them unable to get their medication.”

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2026/09/13/the-means-are-bad-but-dont-worry-the-ends-are-also-bad-llm-links/

http://erinptah.wordpress.com/?p=11423

erinptah

"One of the biggest questions I get at Drop-In Time at the library (besides “what is taking up all my cloud storage?”) is how to disable or avoid intrusive AI that shows up where people don’t want it. This is a guide for people who would like less intrusive AI in their tech environment."

The process of making them is bad:

"Datacenters in America used about 17 billion gallons of water during 2023, triple the amount they used a decade earlier in 2014, according to an estimate from US Congressional Research Service (CRS)."

"“I can’t breathe at home, it smells like gas outside,” Boxtown resident Alexis Humphreys said through tears, holding up her asthma inhaler during a public hearing about the turbines on April 25. “How come I can’t breathe at home and y’all get to breathe at home?”"

"Many companies are surely trying to build their own; after all, we are reliably informed that AI is going to take over the world and the companies that come out on top of that race will be worth untold amounts of money. [...] Large-scale criminal organizations (to the extent that they are distinct from governments) probably also want to have their own models. These tools are seen as weapons, and there is an arms race underway. The Internet as a whole is caught in the crossfire."

"I am a writer. A writer who also happens to be Kenyan. And I have come to this thesis statement: I don't write like ChatGPT. ChatGPT, in its strange, disembodied, globally-sourced way, writes like me. Or, more accurately, it writes like the millions of us who were pushed through a very particular educational and societal pipeline, a pipeline deliberately designed to sandpaper away ambiguity, and forge our thoughts into a very specific, very formal, and very impressive shape."

"AI is only as good as the data it is trained on. In India, this labour is increasingly performed by women, who are part of an workforce often described as “ghost workers”. “The first few months, I couldn’t sleep,” she says. “I would close my eyes and still see the screen loading.” Images followed her into her dreams: of fatal accidents, of losing family members, of sexual violence she could not stop or escape."

But don't worry! The results are also bad:

"Luna was given $100,000 to work with when this place opened. That number is now down to $60,000, its revenue lagging far behind the AI token cost to operate. [...] So Luna can’t turn a profit, doesn’t sell anything people want, and still needs human beings to rubber stamp any “decision” it makes."

"I've had multiple heated arguements with people trying to defend AI, by explaining to me that "AI might be bad, but it has benefits for accessibility!" Using the very disabled people being thrown under the bus by AI as a shield, when my quality of life has substantially worsen ever since AI turned up everywhere, because I've lost access to all the good accessibility tools that I use to depend on."

"In another case, an AI scribe confused the drug the GP had prescribed with a different one of a similar name – a blunder which again the patient, rather than the doctor, identified. On another occasion an AI-generated summary letter did not say that the hospital consultant had told the patient to seek a repeat prescription from their GP for their migraine, which could have left them unable to get their medication."

petra

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Nay, never, no more

All of these links go to the Yuletide.dreamwidth.org promotion post, and contain more tantalizing details.

Bloody Jack Adventures - L. A. Meyer - 12 YA novels: Picaresque series in which a girl crossdresses her way into the Napoleonic era British Navy and travels the world, trying to unite with her true love, and getting into a million pickles along the way, often of the sapphic variety.

The Expanse series - James S. A. Corey - 9 novels + novellas of science fiction: Humans are gonna Human, in all their glory and ignominy, even when some of them live in the Asteroid Belt -- and then the alien protomolecule arrives.

The Pushcart War - Jean Merrill - 200 pg. children's book: The pushcart peddlers of New York City unite to take down the menace threatening them: trucks.

The Saint of Steel - T. Kingfisher - 4 novels: In a fantasy universe where the Saint of Steel, a god, has died, His surviving paladins try to figure out how to survive and thrive in His absence without succumbing to the ever-seductive barbarian rage battle tide.

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix - novel: The tale of four women in a book club that reads thrillers, which gives them some relief from their lives as white suburban housewives in the American South in the 1990's. And then the vampire comes to town — not that they believe in vampires — and somebody'd better do something.

profiterole_reads

Blight by Rachel A. Rosen was a masterpiece! It's the sequel to Cascade, a post-apocalyptic story where climate-change-induced magic has destroyed most of Canada.

The recap at the beginning of this tome was welcome as it's a complex story skilfully mixing antifa resistance, science and magic.

The focus is not on romance, but there's excellent m/m (old-man yaoi! <3), as well as a sapphic in an m/f relationship. Minor characters include a non-binary refugee.

conuly

"speak and read at a 6th grade level, which is about the same as an IQ of 70"

Literally all of that is wrong, but what I said is that reading levels are not very scientific. And then he comes back and says "I agree they're arbitrary, but..."

Yeah, no, kid, they're not arbitrary, they're bullshit, and I can prove it. Let's take a look at this representative sample of AR ranked books:

( Read more... )

There are a few different reading level systems, their methodologies are all suspect, and none of them line up with each other at all. You can't even compare books and say "if book A is harder than book B on this system then all systems will rank A as harder than B" because they won't.

You see this sometimes at /r/whatsthatbook too - people will look for a book and say "Well, it's a third grade book" or "it's a tenth grade book". It's, honey, no. Books are not that finely grained that we can sort them by grade level.

I'm willing to believe that you can very broadly divide books - and literacy, I guess - into bands of "nonreader/functionally illiterate", "elementary", "middle school", "high school", "college", and "post-graduate". But you're going to have to make some judgment calls to do so, and if you don't explain your methodology then it is garbage.

And people don't have any concept of what they're talking about when they say things like "oh, Americans read on a sixth grade level". Like, what does that mean? What do they think that means? They can't tell you, and they're astonishingly ignorant of the fact that if you're saying something like this you ought to be able to tell us what you mean! That, I think, is a far sharper indictment of their education and critical thinking than whatever reading level we're assigning them and their literature to.

(And he is a kid - I keep forgetting. I need to put him on ignore, because he's very argumentative and while normally I'm all for a nice, rousing internet argument it's just not fair to pull it on an actual high schooler. I'm just better at it than he is. I'm better at a lot of things than he is, like assessing the information I've been given. And it's not that he's a particularly stupid or ignorant person - in fact, judging from what he's said I'm fairly confident that he thinks he's pretty smart, academically speaking - but I've got three decades on him.)

lsanderson

Federal report finds Rapidan Dam removal will have beneficial effects on Blue Earth River
Hannah Yang Mankato, Minn.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/09/13/new-report-finds-rapidan-damn-removal-will-have-beneficial-effects-on-blue-earth-river

Food-borne illnesses, funding cuts and layoffs: Maha movement’s glaring limitations are now showing
Policies enacted by RFK Jr have not delivered the expected results, but have instead hindered people’s ability to eat healthy
Melody Schreiber
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/13/maha-movement-food-illness-funding-cuts-layoffs ( Read more... )

oursin

This week's bread: as I have obtained some einkorn flour, a loaf of that with a little strong white, possibly a little more of the latter would have been in order, but still quite good if a little crumbly.

Friday night supper: the last sweet potato, parboiled then fried up with chopped Milano salami.

Saturday breakfast rolls: brown toasted pinenut, light spelt flour, turned out quite well.

Today's lunch: savoury clafoutis, I had intended with asparagus but did not get this in our order so used frozen Mushroom Medley instead, with chopped garlic and oregano, with 'baby' (hulking teenage) carrots cut up and roasted in sunflower and sesame oil and then tossed in a little mirin and sugar, and sweetstem white and purple cauliflower roasted in toasted pumpkin seed oil with cumin seed.

oracne

I did not attend the concert I'd hoped to on Friday night, because after a grueling day of WFH, I had zero energy.

But today, Sunday, it is raining and sometimes thunderstorming, and I'm listening to the opening concert of 2026 Oude Muziek Utrecht from the comfort of my own home, with a cup of decaf coffee to hand.

dewline

Current Mood: nerdy

To those of you who care about it: may today be kind to you.

spiralsheep

Current Mood: Such an incident!

[Current reading:] Sunday was the day that was looked to for the general gratification of public curiosity, and the church had not been so well attended for months as it was on that particular day. It was obvious to the whole neighbourhood that the Eskdales wished to avoid observation by coming early to church, for they arrived before the end of the first lesson—a most unusual degree of punctuality; but this sign of timidity did not prevent the whole congregation from fixing their eyes intently on the tall young man who followed Lord Eskdale into church, and who took a seat opposite to Lady Helen in the pew. Never was the congregation so alert in standing up at the proper opportunities. Old Mr. Marlow, a martyr to rheumatic gout, and Mrs. Greenland, who had, for two years, made her stiff knee an excuse for sitting down during the whole of the service, were both on their legs before the psalm was given out. The clerk, who had a passion for his own singing, saw his advantages, and gave out five verses of a hymn, with repetition of the two last lines of each verse. Seven verses and a half! but nobody thought it a note too long. Moreover, Lady Helen dropped her prayer-book, and the tall young man picked it up for her. Such an incident!
[...]
It was a most satisfactory Sunday; and as most of them were addicted to the immoral practice of Sunday letter-writing, the observations of the morning were reduced to writing in the evening, and sent off to various parts of England on Monday morning.

conuly

( Read more... )

E: I wish that middle schooler was in our basement right now.

Me: ...

E: Wait, no!

jjhunter

Pick a thing or two that sums up how you're doing today, this week, in general, and tell me about it in the 5-7-5 syllables of a haiku.

=

Signal-boosting much appreciated!

jjhunter

Author August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026.
==

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

( Ask the questions that have no answers )

maevele

gofund.me/c249d1f21

andrewducker

1. A standard piano only fits 13% of women and risks injuring the rest. They could be made more ergonomic: (tags:music piano gender viaPatrickHadfield )

maevele

Current Mood: numb

So my mom died last weekend. Then I moved apartments this week, and that's a combination of stresses I do not wish on anyone. The move was stressful enough, being my landlords spontaneous choice to not renew our lease because they could raise the rent AND get a subsidy with a different tenant, so fuck me I guess. With two months notice I found another place in our poor as FUCK price range and prepped a move, and then my Mother fucking Dies like 48 hours before I get the keys.

So I am NOT DOING GREAT. Mom had fallen a couple weeks ago and insisted it wasn't too bad, until it got bad and she finally went to the ER, but left before the second set of X-rays to confirm how badly she'd fractured vertebrae, saying she'd follow up with her primary doc, and then died before that appointment. I'm pretty pissed at her for that. And the timing. And the fact that she told me repeatedly that she had life insurance, but her drawer of "important paperwork" was full of old cable bills , medical bills, and scratch tickets. So now a week later I still don't know how we're paying for her cremation, and there's this whole bullshit where you need the death certificate to do shit like access what money she did have, but you need to prove you can pay a funeral home to get that. I've dealt with a lot of death but I've never been the grownup in charge of the practicalities and it SUCKS.

I went ahead and started the process with the place that had a cremation package that came out under 1600, and maybe they'll at least let me get the certificate before I can prove I can pay the rest, because once that's filed, her insurance, IF IT EXISTS will eventually get that notification and get in touch with me. One of my step cousins talked me into starting a gofundme to cover it since it's seeming real likely the insurance was something she meant to do but said she'd done. Or she let lapse. Idfk. I'll post the gofundme on its own post here too in case anyone wants to share it around.

And then there's all the really complicated emotional stuff and the fact we hadn't been close for the last like decade so it's like people expect me to be much more traditionally grieving than I'm doing . It's incredibly stressful of course, but I knew this wasn't too long off, and both of us knew she wanted to go quick, she was terrified she'd have a long drawn hospital or care facility experience like her mother, so this is for the best. I'm too stressed to grieve, but I've put aside my next days off to just wallow.

I'm moved into this only moderately crappy apartment in an area that feels a little more lively, people actually hang out on the stoop, I think I have talked to as many neighbors this week as I did my two years at the last place, there's kids running around, and I can get empenadas at 2 different places within a couple blocks. I still have ALL the unpacking and organizing to do, but I'm going to take that part slow and take time to deal with the dead mom thing.

But yeah, so, my fucking mom died, there is that.

vilakins

Title: Ground Contact
Fandom: Blake's 7
Pairing/Characters: Kerr Avon & Cally
Content Notes: Cally and Avon teleport down to meet a rebel contact in the early morning.
Prompt: 13 September - Kerr Avon & Cally - misty morning

Ground Contact on AO3

tablesaw

We have our Covid/flu boosters, and we planned for a quiet day. Psyche got hit with a bonus nap (after getting a TDAP I didn't have to deal with), but I seem to have mostly escaped. The rest of the day was mostly household computer maintenance: transferring Bandcamp purchases into my music library, continuing to set up non-Google calendars and emails.

I have to say that routing email addresses through aliases using SimpleLogin is a lot of fun for me, and I hope Psyche enjoys it too.

ysabetwordsmith

Current Mood: busy

The September 1, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl met its $300 goal, so there will be a bonus fishbowl on Tuesday, September 15. Everyone is eligible to vote in this poll. I'll leave it open until Sunday night. If there's a clear answer then, I'll close it. Otherwise I may leave it open a little longer. Here are your options...

Coracle Shores is lifeboat fantasy, a type of portal fantasy. It features a version of Earth with dramatically worsening climate change. In this context, fairies have left lifeboats to help sensitive people make their way to other worlds.

Crystal Wood is science fiction about a virus that could make the wood turn transparent when the tree died. When it escaped from the laboratories, it got into pollen and swiftly traveled around the world on the wind. This killed most of the world's forests of wind-pollinated trees, devastating the ecosystem and then civilization.

Not Quite Kansas is dark fantasy. Raymond Ivener interrupts a ritual in progress, run not-very-well by Gideon Lane. As a result, the two of them tumble from their original world into one where angels and demons walk the Earth. It's not quite Kansas as they know it, a weird blend of familiar and alien aspects. With no way home, they have to cope with their new circumstances as best they can.

Poll #35069 Bonus Fishbowl Theme

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4

View Respondents

Which of these themes do you want featured in the bonus fishbowl?

View Answers

Coracle Shores
4 (100.0%)

Crystal Wood
1 (25.0%)

Not Quite Kansas
0 (0.0%)

Profile

Russ Allbery

Russ Allbery (Eagle)

May 2009

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Page Summary

naye - Vid Rec: M*A*S*H "I Am Free"
erinptah_feed - The means are bad, but don’t worry, the ends are also bad (LLM links)
erinptah - The means are bad, but don’t worry, the ends are also bad (LLM links)
petra - Yuletide Promotion posting - Bloody Jack, Expanse, Pushcart War, Saint of Steel, & Grady Hendrix
profiterole_reads - Blight by Rachel A. Rosen
conuly - So, over at EnglishLearning some kid was going around saying that most speakers
lsanderson - 2026.09.13
oursin - Culinary
oracne - Rain and a Concert
dewline - Breakaway Day 2026
spiralsheep - In which we are addicted to the immoral practice of Sunday letter-writing
conuly - Read the punchline, then the context
jjhunter - How Are You? (in Haiku)
jjhunter - "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" by Wendell Berry
maevele - Here's the gofundme link
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 13-09-2026
maevele - I guess shits got weird and rough enough that I should journal
vilakins - Fic: Ground Contact
tablesaw - Shotted
ysabetwordsmith - Bonus Fishbowl

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Page generated Sep. 13th, 2026 09:04 pm

Journals Russ Reads

Network

Vid Rec: MAS*H "I Am Free"

The means are bad, but don’t worry, the ends are also bad (LLM links)

The means are bad, but don’t worry, the ends are also bad (LLM links)

Yuletide Promotion posting - Bloody Jack, Expanse, Pushcart War, Saint of Steel, & Grady Hendrix

Blight by Rachel A. Rosen

So, over at EnglishLearning some kid was going around saying that most speakers

2026.09.13

Culinary

Rain and a Concert

Breakaway Day 2026

In which we are addicted to the immoral practice of Sunday letter-writing

Read the punchline, then the context

How Are You? (in Haiku)

"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" by Wendell Berry

Here's the gofundme link

Interesting Links for 13-09-2026

I guess shits got weird and rough enough that I should journal

Fic: Ground Contact

Shotted

Bonus Fishbowl

Profile

May 2009

Links

Page Summary

Style Credit

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