lawrence
lawrence-s.bsky.social
lawrence
@lawrence-s.bsky.social
Progressive. Boardgamer. Atheist. #Childfree. #NYTXW, #NYTSpellingBee, #Wordle solver. #Nats, #Caps fan. They/them.

I've voted three times against this president, and started asking my Representative to #ImpeachTrump on January 21, 2017.
Reposted by lawrence
What I always hear: “We can’t afford to pay our workers more than $15 an hour.”

What I never hear: “We can’t afford to pay our CEO millions of dollars a year.”

Funny how that works.
December 7, 2025 at 10:01 PM
Reposted by lawrence
December 8, 2025 at 8:27 PM
Reposted by lawrence
too many people want to have kids but don't want to parent
some significant part of this is just catch-all fear for “this is not the child I ordered” I think
Oh, here's a big surprise. The transphobes don't believe in ADHD either.
December 8, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Reposted by lawrence
first time I've been sad bsky doesn't have an algorithm because how did it take a month for this to show up on my timeline
December 5, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Reposted by lawrence
Spotify has laid off thousands in recent years, while reportedly paying artists $0.003 per stream.

Spotify profits rose 28% in Q3. Its CEO is worth $9.8 billion. It's making money off ICE recruitment ads.

Don't you think it's time put a wrap on corporate greed and exploitation?
December 4, 2025 at 5:10 PM
Reposted by lawrence
There's a couple reasons so many IWW songs are set to the tunes of hymns and one is that the Salvation Army Band would show up and try to stop workers organizing by playing hymns to drown out speeches, so the Wobblies came up with words so they could sing along. SA has been trash all along.
It's that giving time of year again, so this is a reminder that no matter how they try to dress it up, the Salvation Army is not a charity.
December 3, 2025 at 2:09 AM
Reposted by lawrence
I realize everyone knows this, but you'll note that what he saw was two survivors trying to flip a boat over.

Which is a thing literally fucking anyone in a shipwreck would do.

The other stuff he said was fanfic he made up about them.
Q: What did you see in the second strike?

Cotton: "I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat -- loaded with drugs, bound for the United States -- back over, so they could stay in the fight."
December 4, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Reposted by lawrence
These are good moments to remember that the CEOs of all the biggest companies in America are happy to go to White House dinners and slap this guy’s back. They do not care about this. Remember this, years from now, when they want you to forget.
Trump: "It’s a hellhole right now. And those Somalians should be out of here. They've destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain. You have her. She’s always talking about the Constitution provides me with – go back to your own country and figure out your constitution."
December 4, 2025 at 12:13 AM
'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.
What is the quintessential Onion headline? The strong contender that just randomly popped in my mind is "Hank Williams Jr. Honored by Institute For Football Preparedness"
December 4, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by lawrence
This man may be the most racist president this country has ever had, and twelve presidents owned slaves
Trump: "It’s a hellhole right now. And those Somalians should be out of here. They've destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain. You have her. She’s always talking about the Constitution provides me with – go back to your own country and figure out your constitution."
December 3, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Reposted by lawrence
All of the companies that make the software I use are increasing their prices, to account for an "investment" in AI.

I'm sat here imagining how my clients would feel if I added 30% to each invoice, because I "really got into gambling".
December 4, 2025 at 8:41 AM
Reposted by lawrence
This Pluribus ad on a fridge caused a schizophrenic woman named Carol to be hospitalized.
December 4, 2025 at 3:08 AM
Add another to the list of people who absolutely must be prosecuted when reasonable people regain control of the government.
December 4, 2025 at 4:49 AM
Reposted by lawrence
Emphatically this.

Materially and directly harming a group of people and expecting them to be cool with it is madness at best and white supremacy at worst.

Being an ally means getting hit with the same blows we do *and standing strong*. Running means you were never an ally, just an opportunist.
You have the choice to sacrifice trans people. Perhaps it will save you.

But you don't get to ask trans people to accept the role as sacrifice. You cannot expect understanding, acceptance, forgiveness, or respect.

You made your choice.
December 3, 2025 at 12:41 PM
Reposted by lawrence
lol you'll never convince me a huge part of the reluctance isn't that there's no legal way to make UBI white-only.

Lotta white people in this country are happy to lose as long as nobody Black or brown wins.
I wish more people didn't get mad because "why can't I have $1000 a month for nothing!"
And instead went "why not universal basic income?"
December 3, 2025 at 7:49 AM
Look, I like the idea behind Giving Tuesday, because generosity should be encouraged, but I hate the fact that every charitable organization I have ever donated to, including the ones I currently give to monthly already, decided to send me upwards of four emails each today asking for more.
December 2, 2025 at 10:28 PM
Reposted by lawrence
"But it isn’t just Trump. His second term has made clear that there was no shortage of people waiting to put his ugliest impulses into action not despite what they themselves believe, but because of it." — @paulwaldman.bsky.social
This is what a white supremacist administration looks like
Also: Can Democrats pull off a huge upset tonight in deep red Tennessee?
www.publicnotice.co
December 2, 2025 at 9:14 PM
Reposted by lawrence
I will die before I let these avaricious fuckers deskill me for profit.
"All of this falls apart if humans don't adopt the tech. This is why you've seen Meta cram its lame chatbots into WhatsApp and Instagram. This is why Notepad and Paint now have useless Copilot buttons on Windows. This is why Google Gemini wants to "help you" read and reply to your emails."
Analysis: OpenAI is a loss-making machine, how can it survive?
Don't call it a bubble! Loss-making monster OpenAI is on the hook for $1.4 trillion (with a T) in compute commitments. How can this go on?
www.windowscentral.com
December 1, 2025 at 3:32 AM
Reposted by lawrence
man, those later animorphs books got a little sidetracked
November 30, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by lawrence
“[Eventually] humanities depts will be forced to accept AI-authored assignments, as part of revised university policy to cooperate with these billionaires. It's already happening, and our response needs to be decisive. Because our students' ability to *think* is at stake.”

really important thread ⬇️
An issue we're seeing at all levels of university is that many students are simply refusing to do *anything*. They aren't reading the syllabus, aren't following assignment guidelines, aren't engaging with material, ignoring deadlines. And this might seem like old news, but it truly has ramped up.
November 30, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by lawrence
The highest calling of journalism isn’t to tell two sides of a story.

The highest calling of journalism is to tell the truth.

And acting like a stenographer is a betrayal of your audience.
Unfortunately, in US journalism it is considered neutral to spread a lie, but it is considered "biased" to call out a lie. So, there is a structural asymmetry that rewards colorful lies with virality.
November 30, 2025 at 7:49 AM
Reposted by lawrence
This is my way of saying that virtually every toddler in human history has had better pattern recognition and mimicry skills than the most advanced “AI” model present today or possible in the next decade.
I don’t think many people realize how infinitely complex the human brain is and the difficulty level of many of the basic tasks it performs in relation to interacting with the world. With less data in less organized blocks than any LLM has ever received, human toddlers can speak multiple languages.
November 30, 2025 at 4:36 AM
Reposted by lawrence
The simple reality of gen-AI/LLMs is that this is all a lot of hand waving to attempt to get to AGI before the bubble pops. But the chasm between what these models churn out now and what a human-equivalent intelligence could create with skill is larger than the Pacific.
November 30, 2025 at 4:31 AM
Reposted by lawrence
If you see all the Gemini commercials showing examples of how it "helps" with work, it is people going "oh shit I forgot about this presentation/report, Gemini! Make it for me real quick!" And that undoubtedly error fueled mess would get an employee fired but an executive can just shrug it off fine
A study by Dayforce shows 87% of executives use AI for work, compared to 57% of managers and just 27% of employees.

I think this explains the massive disconnect we see in how CEOs talk about AI versus everyone else. It also raises the question of how useful it truly is for frontline work?
Execs are embracing AI more than their employees are, new research suggests
Research from HR software company Dayforce suggests that executives are leaning into AI far more than their employees.
www.businessinsider.com
November 29, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Reposted by lawrence
this is just gutter racism
Stephen Miller is now arguing that assimilation is fundamentally impossible and that certain cultures are not compatible with Western civilization
November 28, 2025 at 12:59 PM