rickken.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

It’s a good thing Congress isn’t alive to see this

submitted 2 days ago • 809 comments

A few years ago, I was involved in a frustrating researchers' debate over what legitimates an approach to knowledge & what could disqualify it as mere 'conspiracy theory.' @juliaserano.bsky.social has written a better account of this than I ever could have. juliaserano.substack.com/p/what-covid...

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

submitted 4 days ago • 556 comments

I expect that consumer-facing AI programs will continue to improve and they may become much more useful tools for everyday life in the future. But I think it was a disastrous mistake that today’s models were taught to be convincing before they were taught to be right.

submitted 4 days ago • 283 comments

This is it, folks. The regime is saying it can and will disappear, torture, and kill ANYONE it wants, and daring the Supreme Court to stop them. And they will keep doing this — in fact, Trump bragged about he plans to do it to "homegrown" Americans — until someone stops them.

submitted 69 days ago • 0 comments

NEW ESSAY! about last week's White Lotus episode & misconceptions about "autogynephilia," but mostly about GC/TERF rhetoric & their "grand unified theory" of transness! on Substack (no paywall): juliaserano.substack.com/p/the-white-... or Medium (friend link): juliaserano.medium.com/the-white-lo...

submitted 89 days ago • 12 comments

RFK is a eugenics freak first and foremost and everything falls downstream from that. he wants excess deaths. he thinks that only the "fit" should survive.

submitted 87 days ago • 1019 comments

“I want to be deadly serious about this: We are now the bad guys.” substack.com/app-link/pos...

submitted 88 days ago • 13 comments

This is a very important point. Breathlessly vague headlines and summaries of these executive orders created for the executive powers it does not have. This kind of press contributed to authoritarian regime change.

submitted 88 days ago • 92 comments

You must understand that Steve Harvey's turn at the Family Feud hosting wheel has subtly invented a new form of game-show host playbook: the punished. He is neither benevolent nor cruel to his guests. The point is what the show has done to HIM. He is Sisyphus, and he will never escape.

submitted 88 days ago • 9 comments

in all seriousness: one of the most important philosophical questions of our time

submitted 90 days ago • 128 comments

🔑 under-discussed point — why they were on signal:

submitted 90 days ago • 1497 comments

Who wants some good news? The overwintering monarch population, which had plummeted last winter, has doubled this winter! www.worldwildlife.org/stories/east...

submitted 97 days ago • 313 comments

Scientists have just cured pancreatic cancer in some patients with personalized mRNA vaccines. Pancreatic cancer. And this Trump administration wants to throw it all away. They’re throwing away a cure for cancer.

submitted 99 days ago • 625 comments

Fascism places emotion over reason. Words become just tools to achieve the vision of the Leader. In our post-truth world, this takes the special form of the inversion of meaning: fascists call other people "fascists" and antisemites call other people "antisemites" snyder.substack.com/p/antisemiti...

submitted 101 days ago • 51 comments

Extraordinary moment — Nancy Pelosi issues a statement calling on Democratic senators to reject the House funding bill, i.e. to defy Chuck Schumer. "Democratic senators should listen to the women," she says, referring to Murray/DeLauro who want a 1-month stopgap bill instead.

submitted 101 days ago • 1121 comments

AOC: It is almost unthinkable why Senate Democrats would vote to to hand the few pieces of leverage that we have away for free when we've been sent here to protect social security, protect medicaid, and protect medicare.

submitted 102 days ago • 818 comments

It looks like Senate Democrats are going to let themselves get played again, and I am so tired and so scared.

submitted 102 days ago • 0 comments

Trump is using the White House to make a commercial for the richest man in the world while Americans’ 401ks are plummeting.

submitted 104 days ago • 1360 comments

if you find yourself reluctant to support the guy at Columbia because you find some of the politics he espoused distasteful or even abhorrent, you should know that this is exactly the reaction that they hoped for in choosing him as a target for unlawful detention based on political speech.

submitted 105 days ago • 222 comments

Uh so I'm trying to start a StartPlaying account and try my hand at professionally GMing?? I don't know what people want to play, but I'm flexible on intro rates to build clients and I have a ton of GM experience and resources for a number of systems! startplaying.games/gm/cm7j3zn1u...

submitted 110 days ago • 1 comment

Al Green showing us what ALL Democrats need to be doing, immediately. "[Trump] uses his incivility against our civility." Every "reasonable" Democrat needs to wake the hell up and admit they've been getting played for years now ... and letting the American people suffer for it.

submitted 110 days ago • 0 comments

Note to self, the cooking cutscene in Wilds does not protect you from aggroing monsters.

submitted 112 days ago • 109 comments

Zelenskyy stayed in Kyiv while Russia was bombing the city and sending in hit squads to kill him. J.D. Vance fled to an undisclosed location because some peaceful protesters yelled at him while he was on vacation. This is why I believe victory over these people is still possible.

submitted 113 days ago • 98 comments

Obama and Biden may think they are honoring the office of the presidency by keeping quiet at a moment like this — if so that’s just preening vanity — they owe it to the office and to the Republic that until last month it served to speak up loudly and clearly and without relent.

submitted 115 days ago • 512 comments

[new draft post] A theory of Elons https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/02/25/a-theory-of-elons/index.html

submitted 118 days ago • 2 comments

[willem dafoe unprompted] now, this cookie monster. [toothy smile] what a creature, what a lust. it consumes him. [crosses legs] he’s really a tragic figure.

submitted 162 days ago • 104 comments