The Sir David Attenborough That Lives In My Brain: Being smaller-than-average presents an added challenge to foraging ... but necessity is the mother of invention. A little creativity turns a baguette into a tool, and voilà--

(paper towel roll falls on my face)

Content regulation algorithms tell me that sci-fi authors are overly generous in these depictions.

“Why did cop bot arrest that nice elderly woman?”

“It insists she’s the mafia.”

“It thinks she’s in the mafia?”

This is why a lot of people say AI are so dangerous. Not because they will one day wake up and be conscious and overthrow humanity, but that they (or at least this type of AI) are not and never will be conscious, and yet we’re relying on them to do things that require such human characteristics as logic and any sort of thought process whatsoever. Humans have a really bad tendency to anthropomorphize, and we’d like to think the AI is “making decisions” or “thinking,” but the truth is that what it’s doing is fundamentally different from either of those things. What we see as, say, a field of grass, a neural network may see as a bus stop. Not because there is actually a bus stop there, or that anything in the photo resembles a bus stop according to our understanding, but because the exact right pixels in the photo were shaded in the exact right way so that they just so happened to be statistically correlated with the arbitrary functions it created when it was repeatedly exposed to pictures of bus stops over and over. It doesn’t know what grass is, what a bus stop is, but it sure as hell will say with 99.999% certainty that one is in fact the other, for reasons you can’t understand, and will drive your automated bus off the road and into a ditch because of this undetectable statistical overlap. Because a few pixels were off in just the right way in just the right places and it got really, really confused for a second.

There, I even caught myself using the word “confused” to describe it. That’s not right, because “confused” is a human word. What’s happening with the AI is something we don’t have the language to describe.

Anyway what’s more, this sort of trickery can be mimicked. A human wouldn’t be able to figure it out, but another neural network can easily guess the statistical filters it uses to identify things and figure out how to alter images with some white noise in exactly the right way to make the algorithm think it’s actually something else. It’ll still look like the original image, just with some pixelated artifacts, but the algorithm will see it as something completely different. This is what’s known as a “single pixel attack.” I am fairly confident porn bot creators might end up cracking the content flagging algorithm and start putting up some weirdly pixelated porn anyway, and all of this will be in vain. All because Tumblr staff decided to rely on content moderation via slot machine.

I'm on a tour with my new book Enshittification: catch me next in San Francisco, Portland and Seattle! Full schedule here.

Remember when we were all worried that Huawei had filled our telecoms infrastructure with listening devices and killswitches? It sure would be dangerous if a corporation beholden to a brutal autocrat became structurally essential to your country's continued operations, huh?

In other, unrelated news, earlier this month, Trump's DoJ ordered Apple and Google to remove apps that allowed users to report ICE's roving gangs of masked thugs, who have kidnapped thousands of our neighbors and sent them to black sites:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/rogue-capitalism/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply

Apple and Google capitulated. Apple also capitulated to Trump by removing apps that collect hand-verified, double-checked videos of ICE violence. Apple declared ICE's thugs to be a "protected class" that may not be disparaged in apps available to Apple's customers:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/articles/big-tech-is-silencing-the-ice-watchers-plus-why-a-scholar-of-antifa-fled-the-country

Of course, iPhones can (technically) run apps that Apple doesn't want you to run. All you have to do is "jailbreak" your phone and install an independent app store. Just one problem: the US Trade Rep bullied every country in the world into banning jailbreaking, meaning that if Trump (a man who never met a grievance that was too petty to pursue) orders Tim Cook (a man who never found a boot he wouldn't lick) to remove apps from your country's app store, you won't be able to get those apps from anyone else:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/15/freedom-of-movement/#data-dieselgate

Now, you could get your government to order Apple to open up its platform to third-party app stores, but they will not comply – instead, they'll drown your country in spurious legal threats:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62025TN0354

And they'll threaten to pull out of your country altogether:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/26/empty-threats/#500-million-affluent-consumers

Of course, Google's no better. Not only do they capitulate to every demand from Trump, but they're also locking down Android so that you'll no longer be allowed to install apps unless Google approves of them (meaning that Trump now has a de facto veto over your Android apps):

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/01/fulu/#i-am-altering-the-deal

For decades, China hawks have accused Chinese tech giants of being puppeteered by the Chinese state, vehicles for projecting Chinese state power around the world. Meanwhile, the Chinese state has declared war on its tech companies, treating them as competitors, not instruments:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/03/ambulatory-wallets/#sectoral-balances

When it comes to US foreign policy, every accusation is a confession. Snowden showed us how the US tech giants were being used to wiretap virtually every person alive for the US government. More than a decade later, Microsoft has been forced to admit that they will still allow Trump's lackeys to plunder Europeans' data, even if that data is stored on servers in the EU:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/microsoft-cant-keep-eu-data-safe-from-us-authorities/

Microsoft is definitely a means for the US to project its power around the world. When Trump denounced Karim Khan, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, for indicting Netanyahu for genocide, Microsoft obliged by nuking Khan's email, documents, calendar and contacts:

https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-court-a4b4c02751ab84c09718b1b95cbd5db3

This is exactly the kind of thing Trump's toadies warned us would happen if we let Huawei into our countries. Every accusation is a confession.

The aim of the project was to travel 270 km / 168 miles between Helsinki and Turku in Finland, and to highlight the possibility of horse travel in modern society. Since then they've took to promoting horseback efforts in urban landscapes with several European collaborators and artists.

Yli-Vakkuri and collaborators first spent eight months practicing riding to become safely self-sufficient in saddle, and bought a Finnhorse gelding Toivottu Poika ('Awaited Son'). The route followed, as closely as possible, the old coastal royal country road of the premodern era, Kuninkaantie/Suuri Rantatie, and took 9 days.

Toivottu Poika is a very average example of his breed, standing at some 155 cm / 15.1 hh tall. The Finnhorse is a relative of for example the North-Norwegian Lyngshest breed, the Icelandic horse, the Swedish Gotlandsruss pony and the Estonian landrace horse and Tori horse breed. It is a mid-sized light draught and trotter, a sensibly realistic mediaeval country travel horse equivalent.

For more hardcore short-term treks, looking into competitive endurance riding can be helpful. Mongol Derby might be one of the most intense races, as it recreates the Chinggis Khan era postal system of swapping horses continuously over a 1000 km / 620 mile route.

By only including skilled endurance riders, keeping up a constant fast speed and swapping horses every 40 km / 25 mil, the Mongol Derby route only takes 10 days even though it's several times the length of the Trans-Horse project. This is the speed of highly organised imperial messengers with the supporting cultural infrastructure, professional marathon runners where Yli-Vakkuri and Toivottu poika were leisure hikers.

the last i checked, the map of roads stretches from Calais, France to Moscow, Russia west to east and from Košice, Slovakia to Tornio, Finland south to north. it doesn't cover all of Europe, for example Sweden and Norway are empty at the moment, but it is quite extensive and still being worked on! in addition to showing the old roads, you can calculate the distance and travel time from one city to another, and there are a lot of options:

and that's not all! here's a description from the site itself (emphasis mine):

"Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka's Hansische Handelsstraßen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways."

get a bit of hope, you get

a cute birb photo

go on an aimless bike/ride/walk - move your body, do it for as long as you feel like it, discover new places near you weather that is a frog or a cafe

watch a new movie/read a new book/listen to a new album - get inspired, excercise having opinions and longer attention span, break out of consuming content and make a choice about what you want to expirience

create something in a medium i haven't used in a while - get out of a habit, rekindle a flame you haven't been upkeeping, making a friendship bracelet counts

go have a fun new drink/snack - arguably most important, have a little treat without rush, slow down and focus on physical sensations, treat yourself in a way that isn't landfillcore

meet with friends and/or go to a place where you meet strangers - human connection is good for you, (maybe some casual sex if you like that/try something new with your partner)

make some bad art - create for the sake of creating without any expectations

play an instrument - this can be anything that makes you reach a kind of flow state

go see something you haven't yet - get to know the cultural/geographical map of your area, this includes events, places, or just anything that makes you go out of your way to expirience something new, can be like a viewpoint or it can be a museum exhibit, anything you find cool

Okay, let me stop you right there, because this take annoys me every time: "learning" and "degrees" are two different things.

There can be many purposes to learning, including "for its own sake." You can learn things out of curiosity, or to enrich your life, or to challenge yourself, to further human knowledge, or to gain useful skills, or to become a more informed person! In general, cultivating an open-minded curiosity about the world can give you a more fulfilling life. Learning doesn't have to have a concrete goal or specific purpose.

The purpose of a degree is to be an official documentation to some external authority (usually an employer or regulatory agency) that someone has (at least theoretically) mastered a qualification.

There's no such thing as useless learning. There's no such thing as useless knowledge. There's no such thing as useless research. There's absolutely such a thing as a useless degree.

And look, as critical as I am of educational systems, standardized testing, lack of recognition of alternative ways of learning, etc., I absolutely think that degree requirements have their uses. I'm much more comfortable being operated on by a surgeon who graduated from an accredited medical school with a degree than by someone self-taught. Sometimes, when someone is assigned a task, you want actual proof that they've mastered the skill set needed for that task, and for want of a better system, a degree can be a useful proxy for that proof.

But unless you're training for a specific job or role that requires specific proof of a specific skill set, there's no actual logical reason that your learning journey should be in the form of a degree program.

"I have a degree in something completely unrelated to my job, but it's still worth it because I learned so much!"

Great, I love that for you, but unless you specifically need the actual degree credential for an external verification purpose, you could've learned just as much from a course of study not centered on a degree.

"I use my art history degree in my marketing job all the time!"

Unless you were specifically hired for your art history degree, what you mean is you use your art history knowledge in your marketing job -- which, again, great, but doesn't require a degree program.

"My boss said it looked good that I have a liberal arts degree because it shows I'm not just looking for money!"

That's Employer for "I assume you're independently wealthy and won't demand a living wage."

"But lots of employers just want employees to have a college degree in any field and they don't care what!"

Yeah. That's. That's the problem I'm objecting to. What logical sense does it make to want an employee who has A Skill, but be completely indifferent as to what skill or what relevance it does or doesn't have to the tasks they're being hired to do?

The only reasons an employer would consider a candidate with a college degree in an unrelated field to be more qualified than a candidate without a degree is: *because they think that someone who could spend ~$45000 and ~360 hours on something is in some way A Better Class Of Person than someone who couldn't (this is classism), or *because they think the cognitive skills involved in pursuing a degree reflect some kind of "general intelligence" indicative of being Good At Learning In General (this is ableism and let's be real, also classism).

There is no non-ableist, non-classist reason for jobs to require "a degree" that isn't a specific degree related to the skills of that specific job.

"But what about Critical Thinking Skills and Cultural Literacy and Being An Informed Citizen? These are things that everyone should learn, not just people training for a specific job!"

If these are skills that EVERYONE should learn, then they belong in K-12 education (the universal tier of education that's free and For Everyone). Why put it in the Optional, Extra level of schooling?

I mean, historically, the reason is that the "everyone" who needed a core college education didn't mean "everyone"; it meant "Everyone in the upper classes who would be the next generation of leaders and are more culturally and intellectually refined than the commoners." Obviously, the working classes don't need "critical thinking skills"; their simple peasant brains probably couldn't handle them anyway. (Again. Classism and ableism are always intertwined.)

And the impulse to "democratize" that by giving "everyone" the educational experience of the upper classes is like. Well-meaning I guess, but almost a microcosm of how "democratizing" elitist institutions without critically examining them leads to some wildly skewed conclusions. "Everyone" can't achieve the lifestyle of the upper classes by achieving the education of the upper classes, because the lifestyle and education of the upper classes is defined by and supported by a command relationship to the lower classes.

"That's why the U.S. should make college tuition free like in [other country]!"

Look, I agree, but that's only addressing one of the many problems here. Tuition isn't the only cost of college (in a capitalist system where time is money, the time commitment alone is expensive), and even if those costs were addressed (e.g. with a student stipend), "Everyone should have access to a useless degree" doesn't make the degrees any less useless, and doesn't address the central question: If not for a specific credential for a specific job/role/position, why does voluntary learning need to involve a degree program?

"But what if I want to get a degree as a personal challenge to myself to prove that I can?"

I mean, look, you do you, but I'll point out that I also do this, and I don't think it's a good thing. I've spent months agonizing over assignments -- not for a grade, but because I wanted my teacher to think I was Smart. And that is a hell of a thing to still be internalizing as a whole-ass middle-aged adult who's written many critiques of behaviorism. I think that impulse in me is a product of assessment-reward-punishment indoctrination, and I need to kill the teacher inside my head. I'm not saying that's true for you. But I'm also talking about how we talk about education as a social and public policy issue, which isn't necessarily about any given individual's personal goals.

"But if people only study what they want to study, they won't encounter new things that they don't know will enrich their lives! Degree programs require students to diversify and broaden their horizons!"

Do they? Sure, this happens sometimes (although, again, I think this is really the role of K-12 schooling), but I think the reverse happens even more often: The grading structure of degree programs actively penalizes students for "broadening their horizons" beyond the degree requirements. If you're taking a class for a degree program, but the class itself isn't required for the degree, you have a strong incentive not to take anything challenging that might bring down your GPA. I've dropped classes for that reason, which was an entirely rational choice on my part. If I'd been "learning for its own sake" and "broadening my horizons" outside the context of a graded degree program, I'd be much more likely to stick with a skill I'm mediocre at, and possibly progress at least from low-mediocre to passable. People are more willing to try things they're not good at if there aren't tangible material consequences for "failure."

"Okay but why are you writing such a long post about it? Yeah, we can all tell you've spent too long in school, because you won't shut up."

Because academic credentialism and the conflation of learning and "degree programs" is classist and ableist in both intent and effect. And the more Trump&Co. attack universities and professors and students and experts, the more progressives cling to academic credentialism out of reflexive contrarianism, and start screaming about how "anti-intellectualism" is a real problem we need to be worried about, and gifted kids are marginalized for being too smart, and it can be cool and progressive to insist that everybody but you is just intrinsically stupid, because you're pushing back against "anti-intellectualism"!

Because the cultural movement I hate most -- reclassifying young adults as children -- relies heavily on this framework of postsecondary degree programs as a Developmental Stage for Children in 13th-16th grade, and if you argue that students should actually have some autonomy in their voluntary educations that, not for nothing, they're paying for, people will scream that you're an anti-intellectual who hates learning for its own sake.

Your thoughts and feelings aren’t as world-changing as you think you are. They aren’t a point in your direction or a black mark on your record. Nobody is keeping track.

Whether that’s depressing or hopeful depends on what you DO.

1) they reproduce asexually and the children are clones of each parent OR

2) Kermit and Miss Piggy are members of the same sexually dimorphic species, hence the split between their male and female children

In which Captain Amelia (left), an extra terrestrial anthropomorphic cat, had hybrid babies with Doctor Doppler (middle), an extra terrestrial anthropomorphic dog, whom also gave birth to the babies

post (YESTERDAY) it stopped at

the second Eggman

to mention Jake and Lady

Rainicorn’s puppies

Anthropomorphic sexy animals,

Interspecies romance,

Possible racism,

Muppet biology,

Spiritual rituals,

Kermit's family tree,

Shrek,

(somewhat) Beastiality,

Mpreg,

Acting roles,

Weed,

Adventure time,