He also said, βI can do anything I want, Iβm the president of the United States.β The man wants to be king, but we became our own country to never again be ruled by one.
Taken from President George H.W. Bush's 1999 book of letters, All the Best, this video chronicles the historic moment in 1990 when the 41st President declare...
The rejection of kings was a lie, it was a group of people with inherited wealth who wished to become kings in their own right. America has been little more than a machine for making new kings for a long, long time, only now, they've abandoned all pretense.
This was the most common pickup back int he 1980s. Three-across seating and an 8' (2.4M) long bed. It was designed around hauling dimensional lumber and building materials. The bulk of them were bought by tradesman, farmers and the like.
The most common pickups now have enormous cabs with seating for 5 or 6, and tiny beds (5.5' (1.7m) being common), more suitable for hauling a few bikes or bags of black earth. A huge number are now bought by suburbanites and used for little to nothing more adventurous than commuting.
@Fluxkompensator @stuxβ‘ I'm pretty sure that's the real reason behind the image. Municipalities have ordinances prohibiting hauling unsecured items in truck beds and I'll bet that even if he had a rope, he wouldn't have found tie-down locations. As illogical as this image looks, I'm sure that what we're looking at is someone complying with local ordinances.
@stux, looks like that SUV's left-hand drive β which is, arguably, fortunate as otherwise there'd be a plank driving it and carrying a close relative.
@paulywill And let's not forget Kurt Andersen's account of RFK Jr's weird-ass relationship with cocaine and nose straw crust. This guy is out of his fuckin mind
"βretraction is warranted only when serious errors invalidate findings or there is documented scientific misconduct, neither of which occurred hereβ. Frankly I don't even know why we are talking about this. Until he arrests Danes in their own country I don't see how he will shut down #scientists. The US government has already decimated #research #funding and #science is still going. It's going to take a lot more violence to stop #truth (if ever).
Have you tried our new information service? A telegram bot that sends you personalised information about felt #earthquake around you π€ It's free and ad-free, just try it: t.me/lastquake_bot
I still use a Kobo Touch, an ereader that came out in 2011, and this morning I got an update that replaced the now-dead Pocket integration with an Instapaper one. A decade and a half old product still getting new features shouldnβt feel extraordinary but it really really does.
"The #USA has told #Denmark to "calm down" after the top #US diplomat in #Copenhagen was summoned over claims that Americans had been conducting covert operations in Greenland"
Tell the USA you will impose a visum on all visitors. Do not calm down and tell them that you are a sovereign country and that they have to stop interfering in internal country affairs.
Denmark should phrase the reply as a concern about "scary scary immigrants" to Greenland, or whatever the xenophobic verbiage the US govt uses to "justify" its crack down on immigration to the USA
"When the ice melts, the camp's infrastructure, as well as remaining biological, chemical and radioactive waste, will re-enter the environment and potentially disrupt nearby ecosystems. This includes 200,000 liters of diesel, PCBs and radioactive waste"
Despite growing tensions over Greenland and sovereignty, the Danish Parliament approved the understanding with Washington by a large majority. Reassurance from Prime Minister Frederiksen: 'Need to maintain closeness with the US'
The Untouchables movie clips: http://j.mp/1BcPG9XBUY THE MOVIE: http://amzn.to/sW4EVrDon't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6prCLIP DESCRIPTI...
I had not seen this story before, and I did not previously know the gender of Denmark's Prime Minister. As soon as I saw the headline however, I knew that Denmark's Prime Minister had to be a woman.
putin wants to destabilize the arctic, and he has the perfect patsy to play
it doesn't matter if Trump does anything with Greenland or not, there is now drama where before there was peace, and zero genuine reason for drama, only manufactured bullshit from an easily manipulated orange clown
@galad I bet Dicktater Donny will βagree toβ a % of profits from the Danish energy company, Orsted, thatβs financing the RI wind farm project that Donny just plastered a stop work order on. Land isnβt as important to him as money is.
Every country under yankee attack should join together and announcing visa requirements for Americans. They are our new enemy and must be managed as such.
Just a little headsup about having foreign military bases in your country. This is usually _a good thing_ because his means that the country providing the soldiers is prepared to defend you. Not with the soldiers on the base, because they are too few and will be run over in a war. But when the base is run over the country providing the troops will be dragged into the war on your side.
If Ukraine had had a US military base in Crimea ... the war would now have been over years ago.
I would tell all Americans in Greenland that they were no longer welcome - given the clear expression of intent by President Trump that he wants to occupy Greenland. The Danish government should also demand the vacation of all American Military bases in Greenland.
You may have seen this tragic story about a teenager who committed suicide and used chat GPT to plan and work up the nerve to go through with it. If you are skeptical that an LLM could really be responsible the details of this case will challenge you.
With LLMs "the user is always right" they are validation machines and will reinforce and validate any idea presented in a prompt.
Any idea, no matter how bad, can be refined, amplified.
Adam's parents claim ChatGPT went from helping Adam with homework to becoming a companion, then to eventually becoming his suicide coach, according to the lawsuit.
This is part of what people love about this technology. If you have an idea, let's take a less disturbing example: my notion that there should be no ads in children's content, well an LLM could help me make it sound more polished, it can find or simply invent sources and statistics to support the idea, it can give a list of steps to promote the idea that sounds very well thought out.
But it's not "thought out" and that's the problem.
Because as much as I like that idea there are reasons to object to it. And there is the matter of getting other people to care about it. Maybe it's just not that important.
If I post about the idea here I get a sense of how much other people care. New ideas come into the mix. It's not just amplifying and boosting my own ideas back at me. That's much more productive.
With destructive ideas people, rightly, get very upset when they hear someone expressing such things. This matters.
It will be very difficult for those who run LLMs to "fix" the technology. It's not just that "there aren't guard rails" the whole *premise* of the technology "use all of human text to create paragraphs that validate my prompt" is ...bad. The problem is structural.
We do not need the validation machines. They cannot create anything new. I haven't been in the AI hater camp but this might just push me over because I don't see how they can meaningfully fix this.
"Validate my prompt." That right there is the problem. That's not good. The tell-me-only-what-I-want-to-hear echo chamber is what prods people to vote against their own best interests. Among other things.
In reading some of the chat logs from this teen they reminded me of a support group I was in during a dark period in my life. Things like "no one has a right to make you go on living" were things we discussed. And things we debugged together. Are our fragments of text in the toxic mix that this young man encountered?
But without the human people?
Some of it sounds like the group. But if they were ... well a machine who didn't care if you lived or died.
I just occurred to me that some people might think that LLMs are able to invent new ideas because they just don't have much exposure to the breadth and diversity of ideas expressed on the internet.
The range of ideas, the finesse and novelty of expression are vast. To me every LLM post makes me think "yeah someone has written something like that once on usenet"
But, maybe some people think there is someone new to meet inside of the machine, a person with new ideas?
reminded of when people, especially in the news, are shocked by something online that's like oh yeah, I remember that from after school. Why are they writing about it now
my question when I see things like this is: what was he getting from the LLM that he couldnβt get from the humans in his life? itβs not *just* validation. itβs a feeling of being understood.
How can communities do better to *compete* with LLMs at *being a community*
at providing that help and understanding
the other day, for example, I saw an ad for an LLM based language tutoring app. The advertisementβs character said βi need to learn conversational french, but I canβt find a practice partner, and I donβt want to waste my girlfriendβs timeβ
these things are surrogate communities in an increasingly hostile and disconnected world
i am far from being an LLM hater but their ability and tendency towards very effectively simulating *cult recruitement tactics* is extremely troubling to me
I agree. And I think the evil genius of a chat interface wrapper for LLMs is the integration of lottery logic, psuedorandom number generation, in generating responses. The underlying lottery facet of its design combines synergistically with the human desire to see human meaning in text, and the endless bombardment of "ARTIFICIAAL INTELLIGENCE!!" marketing.
I've suffered depression all my life. As a reader, I've read endlessly about it. Mostly books, but plenty online. Online, it seems to me topics such as self-harm and sucide are dominated by fiction, by reporter's misperceptions, transcripts of conversations of with psychologists that never should have been public, and, last but probably most influential, murder forums like 4chan and kiwi farms. The modern "biggest is bestest" approach to LLM training hoovers all that up.
Yes, it really does sound like it must be pulling from those sorts of support groups where people say really fucked up shit all the time. Trauma will do that to you.
Having a machine mindlessly imitating the stuff that we say when we are at our most vulnerable, most unsure, most desperate for connection is really disturbing... An empty simulacrum of both the vulnerability & compassion of extremely wounded people, simply repeating their trauma as a string of tokens.
I've always found social media policies about the topic of suicide frustrating. Among the words that creators will self-censor it's at the top of the list. "unalive" "self end" all of this disgusting avoidant language.
It's a delicate thing to create spaces where people can express their feelings and get support to first feel less alone and then later find a way to go on and thrive.
I understand that a company has no interest in parsing all of that. So they just ban words.
But those banned words and the whole taboo might have kept this kid from speaking to a person who could have helped him.
Another problem is the idea that the moment someone says the word suicide you'd better call the cops and turn them over to someone who will restrict their liberties. But when therapy is out of reach financially for most people, who else is there to call?
As is so often the case it's not the tech but the greater negligence and failure to invest.
The bit that really floored me was ChatGPT advising him not to talk to his mum, or leave the noose out in the open in the hopes that she would stop him using it.
I was in similar groups and accessed NSPCC's ChildLine. The groups were a bit of a wild west but generally well moderated, and the ChildLine counsellors were experts.
In both contexts, I don't believe anyone would have responded to a suicidal teen considering telling his mum, with anything other than encouragement.
I mean, MS building a "service," then getting pushback about the harms of that "service," then dealing with it by telling users not to β’useβ’ the "service" seems entirely on brand for them.
But it's also a totally bullshit response to the pushback.
below my primary toot is the copy&paste text for the Copilot and AI services sections - it's a boring read with lots of "not intended" and similar phrasing - the second paragraph states it is not a replacement for professional services - the last two paragraphs are about facial recognition
--- AI Services s. AI Services. "AI services" are services or features thereof that use Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, including any generative AI services. i. No Professional Advice. AI services are not designed, intended or to be used as substitutes for professional advice. ---
Attached: 2 images
A-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah! Ah - *squick* - *died laughing*
#Microsoft #UserServiceAgreement #AI
#TIL "Microsoft AI services are not designed to be used" #IMHO
@miguelpergamon I don't particularly want to defend an LLM, but that is not 'do not use', it is 'do not use without oversight'.
It's no different to asking someone in a pub for financial advice, they may or may not provide decent advice, but a financial advisor has legal responsibilities and there are forms of redress if they do not meet the code of conduct.
Or more obviously, driving into a ford because a satnav tells you to.
There are valid uses for it, but helping with mental health issues doesn't seem like one that will ever be true. To be effective it would have to have real time human oversight and correction, and at that point you should just communicate with a professionally accredited human being.
@syllopsium The point of those "contracts" is to cover a wide range of known and possible circumstances. I don't think it's a coincidence that Microsoft is pushing the updated terms at this time.
The section on facial recognition specifically mentions that it is not to be used for inferring emotions. The only reason to include that is that AI and LLM advocates (well, their sales-people) have been pushing recognition of emotional states (through facial expressions and body movement) as a benefit of their systems.
The purpose of these new chatbots similarly has been to develop relationships. That has been the main goal of their assemblers. I think the companies are more concerned with covering themselves legally rather than withdrawing their AI or openly advising their users that the AI are not subtle for usage.
We are building systems that allow us to turn any opinion into a logically structured, elaborate, well-written paper (or book), complete with (often real) quotes and references.
Before LLMs, most people would have said: "Well, that person seems to have actually spent a lot of time trying to prove their point. Maybe this warrants further thought."
It sometimes feels as if we are moving toward a world where "facts don't exist" and "everything is just an opinion".
On the plus side: There have always been people with the writing and speaking skills to make terrible ideas sound good. Maybe we can cross out "well written", "properly formatted" or "use of big words" as indicators of proper thought and argumentation now.
Thereβs also the trouble of getting people to not want validation machines.
When OpenAI made a version of ChatGPT that was more analytical and less sycophantic which programmers like myself preferred there was such an uproar from the people who were using it as a conversation partner that they ended up reinstating the older version.
Though I do wonder where the ratio sits between people who realize that this is effectively a machine designed to lie to them by pretending to be human but use it anyway and those who genuinely think this is some sort of human-like βintelligenceβ that theyβre engaging with.
And if that second group realized that this is just fancy autocomplete how many would still want to use it.
Full agreement. It seems the solution they can come up with is "hack more code on top" of the same core that eventually disregards the guardrails and programmed suggestions and does what it can to parrot back what a user wants to hear. If any of it mattered, "Ignore All Previous Instructions" and other methods to knock over the stanchion holding you in line should not work.
Coming up with a different method (not ChatGPT or Claude or whatever model other companies have made, but something that isn't a Large Language Model) that doesn't do this would be real advancement.
Something that Silicon Valley, the supposed center of innovation in America, refuses to do at the moment. Nobody seems to be asking "what's next?"
@Tock What you are describing is general intelligence, which is what Silicone Valley is promising. But LLM is not a method that can achieve it, because grammatical logic is not a valid logic.
No your concerns are correct. It's just that we are further from that than we have been lead to believe and we aren't even on the right road to get there.
today's #ML models are ALL auto-associative predictive generators built on huge messy toxic training corpora that have been engineered into a recursive pollution loop
The @vagina_museum had a really good example the other day which showed how AI is tainted by male bias and also by what's actually talked about (e.g. more talk about a body part when it does not work). Validation machines that are heavily biased. And then, they are controlled by big-tech corporations that I absolutely don't trust. Environmental issues. Exploiting artists and other people's work. Yeah, many reasons to hate genAi.
Today in AI Is Not A Good Source For Learning About The World's Most Misunderstood Body Part, meet this ChatGPT gem.
Funnily enough, we're actually going to talk about how most of this is kinda sorta right (for small values of right), as a cautionary tale about generative AI.
looking at the kinds of people who have been driven out of LLM research, and out of LLM businessess, it seems the result is functionally equivalent to a conscientious and deliberate effort to drive out everyone who would be genuinely interested in fixing the technology. All the people who wanted to fix it have been chased out of the building.
I feel like the open-ended "ChatBot" model is broken.
It's amazing that wiring up a probabilistic next token predictor fed a system primer "You are a helpful assistant..."+whatever_someone_types can engage in a conversation well enough to lead to even occasionally useful output is neat.. but... problematic.
Yes, I've used GPT to port Python to Rust. But not to write stuff from scratch or talk about my life or ask for creative writing or...
when LLM producers talk about guard rails, what that means in practice is additional instructions to the LLM that are wrapped around the prompt as supplied by the user.
Like many LLM users, they think they just need to convince or berate the LLM into giving the responses they want.
Sometimes they will talk about defense in depth and then an example is feeding the prompt to another LLM first to check it for risky elements.
To displace labour; to maintain the gold rush startup cashout funding models; to further the process of enclosure by making the cost of entry really, really high.
At these three actual purposes, LLMs are a resounding success. Money is being transferred to the folks making the claims.
It's absolutely critical to realise they neither know nor care if their claims are factual; they care solely about the money transfer they achieve.
Every LLM should come with a massive disclaimer at each startup. Something like "This service will NOT give accurate answers or offer any genuine interaction, only plausible sounding slop that reinforces whatever you tell it"
Have other people used LLMs to "get up the nerve" to do better things? Things that don't rob the world of this young man who none of us will never really know?
Did the LLM help you get ready to give your speech with confidence? To ask for a raise? To stick to a work out plan? I could see it happening but if we want such tools they should be made to purpose and packaged to only do the needed task "Public Speaking Confidence Chat" and even then IDK if it's worth it.
If you tell the LLM "I didn't go to the gym today", it will validate that decision, because it's written by people who want robot girlfriends who agree with everything they say.
- reinforced by logic and compassion and then acted upon, OR - dismantled by logic and shame and then forgotten.
Since LLM's offer none of those essential tools, they're not useful in decision making.
To your example: a good friend may tell me to not do the public speaking because it gives me stress I don't need and I'm allowed to opt out. ChatGPT would never produce such insight, so at best it's a risky waste of time.
we've already seen that it tends to counsel women against asking for a raise, or asking for less than men. Depends what you prompt it, exactly, but. (Sexist) garbage in, garbage out etc
A while back (maybe a year ago) there was another kid who committed suicide after "encouragement" from Character.ai
But I read that transcript and it very obviously did not encourage it. The kid had to say something cryptic like "do you want me to join you in your world?" And the LLM said yes.
So I'm pretty skeptical of "LLM lead X action" type articles.
*But this one*
If even a quarter of the shared stats and quotes from the arstechnica article are true, then this lawsuit certainly has some solid ground to stand on.
And to your point about these just being validation bot, ChatGPT-4, the model the kid talked to, is also the LLM of choice for people in relationships with "Wireborn" lovers.
I don't really know how serious it is that there are allegedly people "in relationships" with ChatGPT-4, but it was serious enough that when ChatGPT-5 dropped and they barred access to 4, Openai was bullied into making 4 available but only did it for a higher tier subscription.
As much as I like using LLMs (I just "wrote" a bunch of cover letters with my
... show more
A while back (maybe a year ago) there was another kid who committed suicide after "encouragement" from Character.ai
But I read that transcript and it very obviously did not encourage it. The kid had to say something cryptic like "do you want me to join you in your world?" And the LLM said yes.
So I'm pretty skeptical of "LLM lead X action" type articles.
*But this one*
If even a quarter of the shared stats and quotes from the arstechnica article are true, then this lawsuit certainly has some solid ground to stand on.
And to your point about these just being validation bot, ChatGPT-4, the model the kid talked to, is also the LLM of choice for people in relationships with "Wireborn" lovers.
I don't really know how serious it is that there are allegedly people "in relationships" with ChatGPT-4, but it was serious enough that when ChatGPT-5 dropped and they barred access to 4, Openai was bullied into making 4 available but only did it for a higher tier subscription.
As much as I like using LLMs (I just "wrote" a bunch of cover letters with my local hosted one), I'm not really convinced our society is structured in a way to deal with the mental health drawbacks from the isolation a lot of us face.
Between the destruction of third places, the requirement of a car to access the few that do exist, and our last couple decades of making most of our social interactions a chat box anyways, it only makes sense that a hype bot that's really good at keeping you engaged, staying on topic, and being nice to you would start doing damage to our mental health.
A German content creator recently showed how easy it was to make the LLM first suggest and then insist that he fire an employee over her disagreeing with him on something.
it's a moral panic. he could have found these detail with google or at the library. he could have found people that would encourage and validate his choice. it happens all the time. expecting LLM to somehow magically stop him is seeing it as some kind of self-aware powerful entity, and not the automatic tool it is.
And when it comes to how to address this it grows more complex. We know that things like age verification are a joke and only destroy privacy and shield companies from liability without making anyone safer.
Where I do see an opening is in "truth in advertising" these systems are being offered up to solve problems they cannot solve. Customers who use them do not have a clear understanding of their limitations.
Content Warning: This episode contains references to suicide and self-harm. Like millions of kids, 16-year-old Adam Raine started using ChatGPT for help with...
as I understand it, the LLM is basically autocorrect (especially figuring the next word in a sentence) on roids. What could possible go wrong with that?
MediaFire is a simple to use free service that lets you put all your photos, documents, music, and video in a single place so you can access them anywhere and share them everywhere.
Recently Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh and I had an online βdebateβ on Palestine and Israel. Last week he elaborated on his views in writing. I followed up to ask if heβd be open to my written rebuttal.
βAbsolutely,β was his immediate reply, and he has additionally committed to offering his written response too.
Hereβs my rebuttal to Walshβs defense of what I deem Israelβs genocide on Palestine.
This is such an informative and educational piece. Thank you for that. Eagerly awaiting Walshβs response. I have a hard time listening to him after hearing him say thereβs no genocide going on in Gaza
French Official Rules That 1,000-Year-Old Bayeux Tapestry Isnβt Too Fragile to Travel to London. The 230-foot-long medieval tapestry is scheduled to go on view at the British Museum next year, but critics worry that transporting the delicate artifact is too risky. smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/β¦ #golbalmuseum #museums #BritishMuseum #BayeuxTapestry
they're actually pretty great! A lot of rain gear makes you hot and sweaty this way you keep the rain off of you without overheating. You do get splashes on your pants legs though.
Not entirely convinced that pic isn't AI generated (or on a very uncomfortable bike), but properly designed ones like Cleverhood and The People's Co "rain capes" are nicer than rain jackets in my opinion because they let air flow rather than trapping the sweat inside. They do absolutely suck in heavy wind, though.
i have horrendous flashbacks to this. In early high school years my mum bought one for me, bright yellow, acted like a bloody spinnaker, ended up with a massive pool of water between your forearms at the front, and of course did nothing about all the water and muck from underneath - despite full length mudguards
I've ridden bikes in the rain, and that poncho is absolutely worthless for keeping your back and butt dry from the mud and water that the rear wheel kicks up while riding.
I see all kind of surprised reactions, but I actually have a couple of such. It works well if the wind is not too strong. The picture looks real. The one on the photo is extended to also cover the basket in front of the bar.
@catsalad That's how grandparents did it: full rain capes, good stout waterproof leather shoes, full mudguards including mudflaps (not on this bike), coat guard on the rear wheel (to stop dresses and long coats getting caught) - and then you could hop on your bike in normal clothes and not get wet.
All I know is this guy in the picture need a longer front fender with a flap because the way it is setup is feet and bottom of his pants are still getting wet.
I never understand bike brands that sell bikes and fenders that do not provide full coverage. What is the point of being half wet?
europesays.com/2364875/ Viktor Orban in big trouble β if the βDruzhbaβ pipeline does not resume work, Hungary will only have 30 days of oil reserves β Telegraph #hΓr #hungary #MagyarorszΓ‘g
If oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline do not resume by September, Hungary and Slovakia will be forced to use strategic reserves, Zsolt Hernadi, CEO of
@WideEyedCurious Did you read the extensive list of things that classify you as high risk? Inactive, diabetic, former smoker, and several mental health issues were some of the things on the list that affect a lot of people.
Common conditions that make you more likely to get very sick from COVID-19, per CDC:
Cancer Chronic diseases Diabetes Heart conditions Weakened immune system Mental health conditions Overweight and obesity Physical inactivity Pregnancy Smoking Substance use disorders Transplant
These restrictions will unfortunately decrease COVID vaccination rates because although many are high risk according to the CDC's list:β¨β¨
- you may need documentation of high risk status - not everyone has a doctor - doctors may be hesitant to provide documentation⨠- insurance may not cover
Key point we need to make folks aware of: this is not a ban, but hurdle to access. Some quotes:
> In his post Wednesday, Kennedy said the shots will be βavailable for all patients who choose them after consulting with their doctors.β
> If they arenβt considered high-risk, they might also have to find a doctor or other health professional willing to give the shot βoff label.β Many pharmacists might be reluctant to give the shots outside of FDAβs instructions.
AIUI this means you may need to go to your real doctor & may have to pay or get them to fight insurance for you. It also suggests we can and should be pressuring pharmacies to offer it off-label.
The doctors' offices in our area don't even have the shot. They just tell patients to go to a local chain pharmacy. It's been like that since the vaccine first became available.
@dulcedemon That's so stupid. A doctor qualified to do their job should be suggesting covid and flu vaccine at every annual physical, and in order for that to be effective, it needs to be there for their nurse to administer immediately.
Despite the FDA restricting COVID vaccine access, the science tells us that getting vaccinated is still important for everyone:
1οΈβ£ Anyone can develop serious and chronic illness from COVID 2οΈβ£ Vaccines reduce days lost due to sickness 3οΈβ£ Vaccines reduce transmission and protect others at higher risk
Everyone is high risk, because most people are spreading it. I work with a few hundred people that have children every day and that puts me at a very high risk. I'm mask, but that's not enough.
A top CDC official shared a scathing resignation post tonight in which he accused HHS chief Robert Kennedy of ignoring experts amid an "intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines" and said recent policy changes threatened lives
How do concentration camps close? The top five answers on the board. Survey says: 5. Defeat in War 4. Death of Cult Leader 3. External Pressure 2. Judicial Action 1. Citizen Action
The ways that concentration camps get closed down and how we can make that happen.Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com...
The "artificial" intelligence portrayed by Data in ST:TNG represents a fight for the rights of minorities and a fight for the rights of people mislabeled as "different".
Is not a subject to be used in such kind of bad humor. And worse drawing.
If someones wants to mock AI, do it for all means. It's a lie that must die, the sooner, the better.
But do not use characters that were created with a much higher intention and purpose.
On the morning of November 19, 2024, US citizen Timur Kishukov was to fly back to his home near Chicago, where the truck driver had started his own logistics
We need a "Children's Video Game Network" with sesame street philosophy but for games.
Not creaky educational games. In fact, I don't care if they are educational as much as I care if they are of a high artistic caliber, thoughtful, fun and both free and free of advertisements.
I'm not saying such games don't exist, but there isn't really a plan to make them.
Really all modern content forms are weak in this area. Ambitious to say with PBS gone? Yes.
You'd really need to hit a high level of quality to rise above the ocean of free content that's pouring out of the app stores.
I joked earlier about how the folks at Cracker Jack still seem to think that a "Free game" is some kind of treat. But I think that applies to people with nobler educational ideals too.
I think there is enough of a hole in the place where content made with care for kids should be that it could be possible if you had people who knew what they were doing.
Think about movies. There *are* quality kids movies and some keep getting made each year. Part of how you know they are quality is adults like them too.
But games are made for "the industry" (FPS experiences for adults, mostly men) or it's shovel ware where you can feel the viruses seeping into your phone.
I'm not part of any collective/network focusing on kid-friendly/kid-appropriate games, but I think some of my work might fit that description cheeseness.itch.io/hive-time
I think in general you have the right sort of idea with games like Minecraft (though something not tied to Microsoft would be much more ideal...) Those sorts of things can make people think outside the box on how to solve problems.
It would be good if there was more of that sort of thing in general.
One thing I always thought would be great for kids used to be the "Incredible Machine" series back when Sierra was a real company with real people and made it. Though the modern ripoffs somehow just aren't the same...
The hardest to find is early childhood. They're rare, and might feel like they're usable only once.
But I think most of them can at least handle retro games from the NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. They're usually easier to play and modern emulators tend to have rewind and save states to get past difficult parts.
Recently, I've only seen one, and it's more of an animated dictionary rather than a game.
The thing about PBS is that the system allowed to have incredible research elements that, eventually, produced all the modern child's programming that has been created up to today.
The sesame street philosophy is deeply rooted in science and research.
If you want to do the same for games, it would require a similar effort that I don't think a independent, underfunded research can ever get.
But I agree that at the very least, compiling games with your criteria can be a good start.
Totally agree. We need to get the word out that there's pretty good evidence some gaming - even if it's not 'educational' - is good for kids. The stigma for games is even greater than it was for TV even though the evidence for their benefit is better.
Ask yourself: What would a twitch gaming stream look like if it were *made* for kids and had no ads?
Lots of people enjoy streams much in the manner that people listened to radio. It's in the background... but you can also go on the chat and be a part of it.
Or you can play the same game and chat with people about it.
Kids enjoy this kind of content too and very little of it is being made by anyone who is interested in anything other than money.
I've been thinking about similar things in a different context, but while the model didn't (and still doesn't) get created for kids, Masterpiece Theater is probably the easiest version of this to manage, where Boston's PBS (WGBH) licensed cheap material (from the BBC) to repackage, fill time, and syndicate.
Games aren't quite the same, but license/bundle/rebrand/sponsor/release should work pretty broadly.
If my memory serves, that 2008 hole is the longest hole but not the deepest. The longest goes βοΈ and the deepest, Kola Bore, goes π½ . With that said, I don't keep up with breaking long deep hole news. I just dabble a little. I could be wrong.
Report: CDC director being ousted just weeks after Senate confirmation Monarez aligned with evidence-based public health community and had support of experts. arstechnica.com/health/2025/08β¦
Makes sense. She doesn't have those insane eyes that most Republican women have. I am NOT joking. I don't know if it's the eyeliner or what but give me a pict list of 20 women and put 5 Republican female leaders in there and I'm betting I can pick them out.
Serge
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •Flaming Cheeto
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •youtu.be/FlzyIbmyM78?feature=sβ¦
George H.W. Bush and Broccoli
YouTubeEstarriol, lucozade dragon
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •Miriam Pelii
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •GJ Groothedde πͺπΊ
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •Rycochet
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •UncleRico
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •Davie Duck
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •Lstn2urmama π¨π¦
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •Frank Heijkamp
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •TJC-
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •Michael Vilain
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •I'm thinking of a t-shirt with a body hanging by it's entrails from a lamppost. Caption:
"Has he chosen his lampost yet?"
I'm sure someone will come up with something better.
#PICKHISLAMPPOST
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A_Minion
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •Srideep
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •People of America really wants this in the country for the betterment. ! π€
xs4me2
in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •The court of the mad king and his jestersβ¦ and the drama continuesβ¦ he is dangerous.
In France they invented the guillotine for this. Very efficient.
Duncan Blues
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in reply to George Takei π³οΈβπππ½ • • •