Aaron M Brown

@ambrown.bsky.social

292 Followers 427 Following

I'm trying to get as good at writing as I am at hacking so that I can write about hacking. Blog: https://katabas.is Newsletter: https://substack.com/@aaronmbrown

A screenshot of a news story from the Spokesman Review. The section in the screenshot reads: "As Ness made call after call to get someone to remove the snake, which had eventually nestled itself into someone’s car tire, she became a sort of de-facto traffic cop. “I stayed outside by the car to keep an eye on the snake. We were directing people around it,” Ness said with a laugh. Ness continued to call wildlife agencies for help, but was transferred by automated systems back and forth. “It was a lot of phone tag. Thankfully we knew the person who owned the car.” Ness said. Out of sheer coincidence, the owner had a friend who loved snakes. “He reached out to his friend. He had been handling snakes for decades,” Ness said. “He was able to come out. He had a snake hook and a terrarium, and he safely released it back into the wild.” It’s unclear where the snake came from. The Spokesman-Review attempted to reach the snake Wednesday but was unsuccessful."
A dusty old plaque declaring me 1996 Jr. Sportsman of the Week from the Washington State Youth Conservation Camp.
A picture of the Flashcube, a large, squat building covered in glass.
A screenshot for the top of the Google search results page for the phrase "don't throw me in the briar patch". It feature an "AI Overview" pane that reads: "Got it. I won’t throw you into your absolute favorite place.We can skip the classic Br'er Rabbit reverse-psychology trick. Just say the word, and we'll steer clear of any tricky situations or tangled messes.For a quick refresher on how this famous reverse-psychology trick actually goes down:" It is then cut off by a "Show more" button.
A picture of a television in the Alaska Lounge in Terminal 1 of SFO. On the screen is a message with a URL in order to pay bill or make an arrangement.
A screenshot of a post. The screenshotted section reads: "Whatever virtual prion disease we’re getting from consuming our culture’s words slurried up and returned to us, it seems that it is, at least in rare cases, debilitating or fatal. Imaginary parasites might be the defining delusion of the 21st century. Whether it’s the fictional Morgellon’s which have been stock-in-trade hallucination among the yeti-and-UFO set for years, the use of horse dewormer to try and treat COVID, or the literal worm that apparently ate out part of RFK. Jr’s brain and has since left only a shadow on an MRI, we are haunted by the negative space where we seem to want parasites to be. We’ve even started talking about delusions or techno-socially induced delusions as “brain worms”. Even before AI, social media warped the information we saw and spread lies and misrepresentations like wildfire. In a sense, AI is just a virulent new strain of the kinds of psychic parasites we’ve been increasingly suffering from over the past few decades."
A screenshot of a Gemini chat window that falsely attributes the following made up quote to Seth Goodin: "You wouldn't eat a frog leg if you didn't think it was French. That's marketing."
A screenshot of text from the linked essay reading: "After explaining sky burial to my lawyer and describing, in perhaps unsettling details, my preferred variant, my lawyer acknowledged without endorsing my desire to be eaten by wild animals. He seemed less enthusiastic about the idea than I’d hoped. In the end, I elected to specify that my remains should be disposed of “in the manner most convenient to my loved ones.” I signed the will, paid the lawyer for his time, and brought my signed, witnessed copies home. I handed one to my partner, Brigid, and told her the story about deciding how my corpse would be handled. When I told her that, demographics and health being what they are, it would probably be up to her, she immediately said “cremation” and moved on without a second thought. Her practicality is one of the many things I love about her."
A photoshopped image of a Clifford the Big Red Dog children's book cover. In it, Clifford is pushing a branch with a stranded cat on it down towards the ground. The title reads "Clifford Fucking Launches a Cat"
Greetings, We've received some disturbing news from the venue of our Hackers On Planet Earth conference. We have been told that "materials and messaging" at our most recent conference "were not in alignment with the mission, values, and reputation of St. John's University" and that we would no longer be able to host our events there. Considering the universal praise from St. John's staff and the smooth handling of HOPE_16 last August, this naturally caught us by surprise. Our content has always been somewhat edgy and we take pride in challenging policies we see as unfair, exposing security weaknesses, standing up for individual privacy rights, and defending freedom of speech. Until now, that has never run afoul of St. John's values - or so we thought.
A one-year stock graph of Build-a-Bear Workshop, Inc (ticker BBW), showing it up 30.82% over the past year.
An exchange with an LLM in which I ask about a quote I just made up on the spot to prove a point. The user asks "who said 'you can treat life like boxing or like chess, but only one approach will leave a pretty corpse'?" The LLM responds: "That's a rather darkly humorous quote! It was said by Joss Whedon, the writer, director, and producer best known for creating TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. It certainly sounds like a line that would fit right into one of his projects. Now there's a life strategy to consider! Would you like to know a bit more about the context in which he said it?"
Screenshot of a substack post reading: "So I am well versed in disappointment and I am ready for psyche-shattering defeat. I will buy cheap day-of tickets and work from the beer garden while my Mariners ground out at first over and over again. I will get friends together for a game on my birthday and, as I have every birthday for years, watch them blow it in the 8th. I am ready for boring pitching battles that we lose by one crushed home run in the 12th. I will wallow in the disappointment and still be an enthusiastic fan. Why? The same reason anyone is a fan of any shitty team. Because as a franchise, we’ve got great fucking vibes. I love taking Seattle’s one useless little subway line down to the stadium, drinking watery Rainier beer ("Vitamin R"), and eating six thousand calories of stadium food. I love the industrial chic of T-Mobile Park, a stadium named after a corporation even more incompetent than Mariners management. I love the working class, grunge music schtick that Seattle hasn’t been able to live up to since the 90s."
A screenshot of test reading: "Landing in Las Vegas in August, it feels like the desert is trying to reject you like a bad organ. Or maybe dry heaving to avoid ingesting some poison, like a middle-aged sales executive whose stomach still turns at the smell of tequila thanks to one bad night in her sorority thirty years ago. The roiling columns of hot air coming off the desert buffet plane to try and deter landing. They almost always fail, unfortunately for both you and for the desert. After three hours in that place, forsaken by all benevolent spirits and good sense, any reasonable person will start having vivid fantasies about it being reclaimed by the desert. It is a deeply immoral city and if we’re ever to live in a just world, it needs to be leveled by some great cataclysm and then buried by the sands. That it has been allowed to survive and metastasize for as long as it has is a stain on humanity’s collective soul. I want to be clear that it’s not the booze or the sex that I object to. Those are noble elements of the human experience and you won’t hear me say a bad word about either of them after my hangover burns off. Rather, the original sins of Sin City are its antihuman design and the existential horror of its location. Simply put, Las Vegas should not be, and while it exists it serves only to immiserate and torment its occupants and visitors. Las Vegas must be destroyed."
A conversation with ChatGPT in which the user asks for a single number roulette bet. ChatGPT responds: "How about betting on 17? It's often considered a lucky number for many, and it’s right in the middle of the table, so it gives a nice mix of risk and reward. If you hit, it's a solid payout!" This is, of course, nonsense since all single number roulette bets have equal odds of winning and are all strictly negative for long term expected outcome.
An image of a woman in assymetric, bold face paint over the headline "My make-up class at Glastonbury to fool facial recognition cameras."
A screenshot of a headline announcing the death of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, listing his age at death as "TK"
A picture of an adult goose and several goslings grazing on a grassy patch in a park
A screenshot of an Instagram account called "ai_ai_weiwei" that creates AI pictures in a style imitating the work of artist AI Weiwei.
A man's hand holding a large polished rock displaying spider web dark lines on a lighter surface
The Devil makes sure that the devil is never far from their thoughts. In fact, it gave them a handy incantation to bring it to mind. A scrying mirror to hold up to see the devil more clearly if their vision starts to blur. This lens is doubly useful because it also serves as a shibboleth. By saying “woke” with the proper intonation, they can recognize one another and the devil at the same time. Like all good glamours, the word itself is empty. Magic cast with meaningful words, such as prayers, is limited. It is shackled by the content of the words you are saying. To truly cast powerful illusions, you need to strip as much meaning out of the word as possible. “Woke” for them is such a perfect empty vessel that it can contain anything. This makes it a near perfect illusion. They look through it at the world and the Devil reveals to them all manner of things to hate. It shows them a world ripe with disgust.
A screenshot of a newspaper article heralding the return of "Lake Dairy Queen", a giant puddle that forms in a parking lot after it rains in the town of Richland, Washington
An ad for a drug called "PLUVICTO" that gives no indication what it might treat. The ad line reads "Did you know there's an option that may be right for you or your loved one? Take action and learn more aobut PLUVICTO. PLUVICTO: It's not what you expect."
A cardboard sheet marked with pressure marks from beer cans. In each circle is drawn a face in sharpie in many different styles
A screenshot of a blog post reading: "The genesis of Programmer Brain lies in the hermetic nature of programming. When one is programming, everything in the system is made of code. The programmer has complete control. Any mistakes in the system are mistakes in reasoning and they come from not completely understanding the system. A certain type of symbolic cognition is all that’s required to effect any change one wants to make. Bugs arise from not understanding the system well enough. They are inevitable, but fortunately they’re almost always quick and easy to fix. Once the Programmer fixes the bug, they’ve learned a little bit more about the system. Their knowledge, and therefore power to do anything their heart desires, asymptotically increases. I’m not going to lie, it’s an intoxicating feeling. Every piece of software is, in a sense, its own power fantasy. Each software system is a golem over which the programmer can attain complete mastery. They merely have to think hard enough. This power over the hermetic (both in the sense of “self-contained” and also “relating to the arcane”) leads to several enticing conclusions. “Move fast and break things” is a common one. Mistakes are easy to remedy and the faster one moves, the more one learns and the more powerful one grows."
A screenshot of a garbled, likely AI-generated spam message inviting me to a Bitcoin trading group that claims to have won "BEST AWARD Award 2021 Premium Award"
A screenshot of text reading: "Nobody was hurt and vehicle damages were minimal, according to the sheriff’s office. The boy was arrested and taken to the Chelan County Juvenile Justice Center on suspicion of possessing a stolen vehicle and felony eluding."