David Thiel
@grumplicio.us
Infosec person focused on harm reduction in technology; fmr tech, data science and T&S research at https://io.stanford.edu & https://tsjournal.org
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0947-5921
Also music things + open data.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0947-5921
Also music things + open data.
"But strangely, Princess Mononoke might not have all the answers this time"
Well that's a first
Well that's a first
Did you hear about the deadly wave of bear attacks in Japan that resulted in 13 death this year? Well, it's a thing, and if you did know about it, you probably assumed the cause was human encroachment, right? WRONG. YOU FOOL. IT'S SO MUCH MORE COMPLICATED:
www.tokyoweekender.com/japan-life/r...
www.tokyoweekender.com/japan-life/r...
Japan's Surging Bear Crisis: A Surprisingly Complicated Problem
Bear attacks are at a record high in Japan currently, and while clearly a serious problem, the causes for it are often widely misunderstood.
www.tokyoweekender.com
December 13, 2025 at 2:43 AM
"But strangely, Princess Mononoke might not have all the answers this time"
Well that's a first
Well that's a first
Reposted by David Thiel
Don't let anyone tell you that the Commission's DSA enforcement against X is about speech or censorship.
That would, indeed, be interesting. But this is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring laws that would get bipartisan support in the U.S. (I bet similar bills *have* had that support.) 1/
That would, indeed, be interesting. But this is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring laws that would get bipartisan support in the U.S. (I bet similar bills *have* had that support.) 1/
December 5, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Don't let anyone tell you that the Commission's DSA enforcement against X is about speech or censorship.
That would, indeed, be interesting. But this is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring laws that would get bipartisan support in the U.S. (I bet similar bills *have* had that support.) 1/
That would, indeed, be interesting. But this is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring laws that would get bipartisan support in the U.S. (I bet similar bills *have* had that support.) 1/
I know I'm late on this, but this is the kind of spectacularly clever thing that reminds you computers can be fun and interesting:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWbl...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWbl...
A Mind Is Born (256 bytes)
YouTube video by lftkryo
www.youtube.com
December 4, 2025 at 5:32 PM
I know I'm late on this, but this is the kind of spectacularly clever thing that reminds you computers can be fun and interesting:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWbl...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWbl...
Disagree on the timeline and implications here. AFAIK Twitter did not ban an official gov account. It did delete tweets from @POTUS when @realdonaldtrump evaded his personal ban. It was also not first to ban Trump. That was Facebook, then Twitter, then YouTube, with half-measures in between.
I'm going to be real with you: the entire industry was holding our collective breath from 2016-2020 to see which of us was going to be stupid enough to fall on the grenade of banning a US government account first, and Twitter took one for the team (at almost the last second possible).
November 17, 2025 at 2:42 PM
Disagree on the timeline and implications here. AFAIK Twitter did not ban an official gov account. It did delete tweets from @POTUS when @realdonaldtrump evaded his personal ban. It was also not first to ban Trump. That was Facebook, then Twitter, then YouTube, with half-measures in between.
I honestly have no problem with such a policy, but if you can’t stomach enforcing it when it comes from prominent or powerful speakers, it’s inconsistent in the worst way.
"bluesky will suspend you for anything vaguely resembling a death threat" is maybe the single most consistent moderation policy they have I don't know why anyone is surprised by this one
yes, even if it's a reference to song lyrics
yes, even if it's a reference to song lyrics
The account owner of @sarahkendzior.bsky.social was suspended for 72 hours for expressing a desire to shoot the author of an article. The post, made 11/10, stated: "I want to shoot the author of this article just to watch him die." 1/2
November 15, 2025 at 11:58 AM
I honestly have no problem with such a policy, but if you can’t stomach enforcing it when it comes from prominent or powerful speakers, it’s inconsistent in the worst way.
Hour 4 of playing Baby Steps:
November 12, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Hour 4 of playing Baby Steps:
Reposted by David Thiel
The thing is, these bots were trained on every piece of sci-fi humans have ever written about AI, and then told “that’s you.” I don’t find it surprising they act like their source material when prompted in ways that call back to it.
October 25, 2025 at 6:23 PM
The thing is, these bots were trained on every piece of sci-fi humans have ever written about AI, and then told “that’s you.” I don’t find it surprising they act like their source material when prompted in ways that call back to it.
Related fun fact, outside the US most developed countries went “hey why don’t we make it against the rules to have salmonella in chicken or eggs” and now you don’t die from those things there.
Okay I all seriousness: chicken sashimi
What foods do you love that you fully acknowledge make you a pervert for loving them?
October 7, 2025 at 8:56 PM
Related fun fact, outside the US most developed countries went “hey why don’t we make it against the rules to have salmonella in chicken or eggs” and now you don’t die from those things there.
Not only was she not "canceled" herself, right after launching her Substack her acolytes in the Stanford College Republicans got a journalist fired just for being vaguely associated with Eli Valley.
It's amazing how everyone supporting her seems to forget she wasn't cancelled at all. She quit. And almost immediately was able to launch this new publication. How the hell was she cancelled?
Some people criticized shitty takes. That's not being cancelled.
Some people criticized shitty takes. That's not being cancelled.
As one of the countless people *actually* cancelled by Bari Weiss, via her vast favor-trading networks of fellow nepotistic gatekeepers in media and publishing, I think both of these asinine dipshits should go fuck themselves.
October 7, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Not only was she not "canceled" herself, right after launching her Substack her acolytes in the Stanford College Republicans got a journalist fired just for being vaguely associated with Eli Valley.
Lol Tokyo is the most rat-abundant city I’ve ever been in (they are very polite rats though)
"What are they doing in Tokyo, a population-dense city, that could be replicated in other cities?" a reader writes in Post Letters. https://wapo.st/42YYdl5
Opinion | D.C. is overrun with rats. Why isn’t Tokyo?
Flying rats and and conjoined turtles shack up in the animal house.
wapo.st
October 5, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Lol Tokyo is the most rat-abundant city I’ve ever been in (they are very polite rats though)
Since US press hasn't picked this up, a quick explainer regarding the "adultification" blowup that's been happening in Brazil over the last few weeks. It started with a YouTuber named Felca who posted this video (it has subtitles): 1/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpsC...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpsC...
adultização
YouTube video by Felca
www.youtube.com
August 28, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Since US press hasn't picked this up, a quick explainer regarding the "adultification" blowup that's been happening in Brazil over the last few weeks. It started with a YouTuber named Felca who posted this video (it has subtitles): 1/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpsC...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpsC...
"Sushi was mostly tuna"
No it wasn't. Tuna sushi was historically considered rather crap in Japan and wasn't a notable component of Edomae sushi until the mid to late 1800s. It wasn't particularly popular until after WWII.
Reductive Freakonomics-style tidbits misinform more than they educate, IMO.
No it wasn't. Tuna sushi was historically considered rather crap in Japan and wasn't a notable component of Edomae sushi until the mid to late 1800s. It wasn't particularly popular until after WWII.
Reductive Freakonomics-style tidbits misinform more than they educate, IMO.
Basically all Italian pasta recipes go back to a single cookbook in the 1960s. Fondue was invented as a marketing ploy by the Swiss cheese union in the same decade. Sushi was mostly tuna until a Norwegian guy invented salmon sushi to promote salmon exports to Japan in the 1980s
a lot of people who were recording 'traditional festivals' didn't realize that they were constantly being made up/based on popular culture/what the guy doing it thought would be funny
August 23, 2025 at 6:10 PM
"Sushi was mostly tuna"
No it wasn't. Tuna sushi was historically considered rather crap in Japan and wasn't a notable component of Edomae sushi until the mid to late 1800s. It wasn't particularly popular until after WWII.
Reductive Freakonomics-style tidbits misinform more than they educate, IMO.
No it wasn't. Tuna sushi was historically considered rather crap in Japan and wasn't a notable component of Edomae sushi until the mid to late 1800s. It wasn't particularly popular until after WWII.
Reductive Freakonomics-style tidbits misinform more than they educate, IMO.
@theorblive.bsky.social Live '93 being my most listened-to album of all time, this would personally be super disappointing. I hope you reconsider.
August 21, 2025 at 1:06 PM
@theorblive.bsky.social Live '93 being my most listened-to album of all time, this would personally be super disappointing. I hope you reconsider.
My chemistry teacher would come to school in blackface to read George Washington Carver’s biography to us “in character”
I know i should stop being shocked, but it is just amazing how mant adults who were allowed to teach myself and my peers turned out to be just totally unhinged mentally.
August 18, 2025 at 10:50 AM
My chemistry teacher would come to school in blackface to read George Washington Carver’s biography to us “in character”
This is violence against millennials
August 14, 2025 at 5:29 PM
This is violence against millennials
You know I would go out on a limb and say that a bot shouldn't do that to a 13 year old child either but I'm not a Meta AI policy person
August 14, 2025 at 4:26 PM
You know I would go out on a limb and say that a bot shouldn't do that to a 13 year old child either but I'm not a Meta AI policy person
This is also what gets me about anti-GMO sentiment: like your rice came from just smashing plants with radiation at a lab farm until something interesting happened, but if you carefully change plant genetics to achieve a desired result, that’s a bridge too far.
*Pink* grapefruit strains being created by bombarding regular grapefruit with gamma rays is the wild one for me
August 10, 2025 at 12:17 PM
This is also what gets me about anti-GMO sentiment: like your rice came from just smashing plants with radiation at a lab farm until something interesting happened, but if you carefully change plant genetics to achieve a desired result, that’s a bridge too far.
Like the adoption numbers for custom labelers and feeds are roughly in line with the percentage of the population that prefers manual gearboxes, and there’s probably quite a bit of overlap between those groups.
There are certainly cultural factors, but much of this comes down to people intellectually hating recommendation algorithms, ranked feeds and content from people they don’t follow, while actual user behavior indicates they do in fact want them.
Bluesky has a growth problem
Bluesky has hit 38M monthly users, up 8M since March
Once adding 5M users per month, it’s now slowed to 1.6M. A 60% drop
But post volume is falling—more users, less activity
It risks becoming a ghost town with a loyal but shrinking core
#bluesky #fediverse
Bluesky has hit 38M monthly users, up 8M since March
Once adding 5M users per month, it’s now slowed to 1.6M. A 60% drop
But post volume is falling—more users, less activity
It risks becoming a ghost town with a loyal but shrinking core
#bluesky #fediverse
August 7, 2025 at 9:53 PM
Like the adoption numbers for custom labelers and feeds are roughly in line with the percentage of the population that prefers manual gearboxes, and there’s probably quite a bit of overlap between those groups.
There are certainly cultural factors, but much of this comes down to people intellectually hating recommendation algorithms, ranked feeds and content from people they don’t follow, while actual user behavior indicates they do in fact want them.
Bluesky has a growth problem
Bluesky has hit 38M monthly users, up 8M since March
Once adding 5M users per month, it’s now slowed to 1.6M. A 60% drop
But post volume is falling—more users, less activity
It risks becoming a ghost town with a loyal but shrinking core
#bluesky #fediverse
Bluesky has hit 38M monthly users, up 8M since March
Once adding 5M users per month, it’s now slowed to 1.6M. A 60% drop
But post volume is falling—more users, less activity
It risks becoming a ghost town with a loyal but shrinking core
#bluesky #fediverse
Bluesky Reaches 38 Million Users, Though Post Volume is Declining
Bluesky’s growth momentum has slowed, but it is still growing.
www.socialmediatoday.com
August 7, 2025 at 6:06 PM
There are certainly cultural factors, but much of this comes down to people intellectually hating recommendation algorithms, ranked feeds and content from people they don’t follow, while actual user behavior indicates they do in fact want them.
The sheer depths of obsession revealed by the fact that only Heritage Foundation freaks know what a "privilege walk" is
If anyone is curious about the current list of search terms being used by right wing activist organizations to harass university professors, here's a public records request I received today from Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation. Not intimidating or meant to curtail by my speech at all, right?
August 7, 2025 at 10:55 AM
The sheer depths of obsession revealed by the fact that only Heritage Foundation freaks know what a "privilege walk" is
I have never understood why people just take it as read that RSS died with Google Reader. It's all over the place! I subscribe to like 50 feeds and it's my primary source of news.
RSS offers readers and writers a path away from unreliable, manipulative, and hostile platforms and intermediaries
July 31, 2025 at 4:43 PM
I have never understood why people just take it as read that RSS died with Google Reader. It's all over the place! I subscribe to like 50 feeds and it's my primary source of news.