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"brain rot
(n.) the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration."
(Oxford Dictionary).

This was word of the year in 2024.[1] Now in 2025 with more and more #GenAI assisted tasks, this becomes even worse, as a study suggests.[2]

It is not surprising; in tech we know something called #TutorialHell which discribes the state where you just follow along tutorials believing that you are learning somehting, but as soon as you need to solve a problem yourself, you realize that even after hours of tutorials you can't, because you actually never learned anything, even though you did everything by the letter.

I realized in ~2016, that I've been working in tech for over 10 years, and being so into it, that even for non-tech tasks I would think like I would when programming something and be even surprised if others did not. That was the moment, where I feared becoming what in Germany we call #Fachidiot (i.e. a one-track genious, that's an idiot in everything else).

To combat this, I picked up #日本語 (#Japanese). Just because I found it a real hard challenge. I think, doing something like this is essential: Learn something new, you've never done: a language, an instrument, a motor skill, or - if that is not your field - programming. Important is, that it get's you into doing something completely new, to animate your brain. Because, as it is well known: The brain works like a muscle: The more you use it, the better your mental and intellectual state gets - the less you use it, the more it deteriorates. And with the temptations of our modern world ( #socialmedia #GenAI #workoverload #populism #shorts #doomscrolling etc.) this has become more important than ever.

[1] https://boingboing.net/2024/12/02/brain-rot-is-oxfords-word-of-the-year.html
[2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872v1

#learning

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30.08.2025 14:17
faab64 (@faab64@freefree.ps)

Fucking TikTok can't even point out what community guidelines

NEVER FORGET
NEVER FORGIVE
HIND RAJAB

has broken, but deleted my comment anyway.

We really moving into a new level of fascism in the world.

#NeverForget #NeverForgive #HindRajab #Tiktok #TiktokCensorship #Gaza #Genocide #SocialMedia

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30.08.2025 14:00
2025 (@2025@markcarrigan.net)

The visibility of academics will be shaped through LLMs as much as social media in future

This observation by the tech journalist Casey Newton got me thinking about how LLMs are increasingly shaping the visibility of academics:

Thinking models have gotten surprisingly good at identifying potential sources — potentially academic ones. When writing about Grok last month, I wanted to talk to someone who had studied relationships between people and chatbots. ChatGPT led me to Harvard’s Center for Digital Thriving, and suggested someone to talk to, along with their email address. I wound up interviewing them for the piece. The fact that thinking models can quickly analyze the academic literature about any subject and identify prominent researchers on the subject, along with their email addresses and phone numbers, is beginning to save me a lot of Googling.

I realised early on that I was more visible in model responses (ChatGPT and Claude) than other academics of a comparable age, career stage and influence* which I assumed was because 6000 blog posts hosted on wordpress.com were gobbled up in training. It could talk at greater length, with more accuracy, about my work then it could about other academics because my online visibility translated into model visibility.

I suspect this also means I’m more prone to being suggested by the model for a topical discussion in the way that Casey points to when looking for experts to interview, though I’m unsure how to go about establishing this. The value of a long term blog also means that I figure prominently as a source for ChatGPT and software like Perplexity. Interestingly, I don’t recall ever seeing a single referral from Claude. In the last year I’ve had more referrals to this blog from ChatGPT than I have from Facebook or Bluesky, though interestingly LinkedIn drives more traffic.

In other words there’s a complex relationship between online visibility and model visibility. Given that online visibility is the key driver which led social media to be institutionalised into higher education in the UK, this is very significant for academic careers even if it takes a long time for it to consolidate into a widely recognised incentive structure.

What other factors lead to increased model visibility? Ultimately this is a matter of visibility within the training data, but the patterns of visibility produced by this are challenging to conceptualise. What are the positive and negative outcomes of increased model visibility? Casey illustrates one in terms of visibility to journalists but there are many others.

*I did this in a very impressionistic way but it would be interesting to do this as a robust quantitative exercise.

#CaseyNewton #GenerativeAIForAcademics #higherEducation #SocialMedia #socialMediaForAcademics #trainingData #visibility #wordpress

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30.08.2025 13:48
simsus (@simsus@social.tchncs.de)

Argentinien: Mutmaßliche NS-Raubkunst in Immobilenanzeige im Internet entdeckt | heise online https://www.heise.de/news/Argentinien-Mutmassliche-NS-Raubkunst-in-Immobilenanzeige-im-Internet-entdeckt-10624429.html #Nationalsozialismus #SocialMedia

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30.08.2025 13:22
ambientdread (@ambientdread@toot.io)

Zero Dread

#SocialSplatter #Sundries #Poems #posts #SocialMedia #YesterdaysRiff #writingcommunity #blogging #haiku

https://ambientdread.net/2025/08/30/aug-29-2025/

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30.08.2025 13:17
theguardian_us_lifestyle (@theguardian_us_lifestyle@halo.nu)

No moaning about the teachers and definitely no nudes! How to survive the school WhatsApp group https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/aug/30/no-moaning-about-the-teachers-and-definitely-no-nudes-how-to-survive-the-school-whatsapp-group #Parentsandparenting #Lifeandstyle #Socialmedia #WhatsApp #Schools #Family

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30.08.2025 13:16
tdn1 (@tdn1@mastodon.social)

"以下のツイート（「_」はハッシュタグ）を投稿した直後に、Twitter / Xアカウントが停止されました。通知メールすら届きませんでした。"

"Our Twitter / X account got suspended immediately after making the following tweet ("_" are hashtags.). We didn't even get an email notifying us."

~SOTD
_______________________
マジックナンバー
THE MAGIC NUMBER
https://mastodon.social/@tdn1
_mastodon _R18 _NSFW _nsfwtwtًً _nsfwtwtً _nsfwtwtًًًٌٌٍِّ _nsfwtwť _nsfwtwtًًً _nsfwtwtﾟ _nsfwtwtًًًٌٌٍِّْْٓb _nsfwfurryartwork

#twitter #twitterdown #censorship #r18 #nsfw #socialmedia