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Philippa Cowderoy

@flippac.org
322 followers 164 following 2.6K posts

Executively dysfunctional, yet occasionally effectful programmer. Crazy trans dyke. Electronic music nerd. Autistic af. Plays lots of games in all the spare time that's no use for anything else. (she/her)

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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 10/10/2026
The difference is that the training data isn't code: programming language nerds like me couldn't give it formal semantics that let us directly treat it as code, for example ("tokens", yes, but 8 bit micro BASICs had tokens as an implementation concept and they're kinda trivial)
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 10/10/2026
So you can think of the result of training as a program produced by another program (or, if it then calls the result, as one big self-modifying program - but that's not how LLMs work)
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 10/10/2026
Pretty sure my thermostat isn't conscious. But also, what you've actually defined is what AI people mean by "agent" if the black box doesn't have to be computational.
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 10/10/2026
That's one way to end a replication crisis...
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 10/10/2026
By telling us we shouldn't shoot at nazis in Wolfenstein?
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 10/10/2026
It's really not any more notable than "write in the style of..." or any given RP prompt though: the work happened at training time
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 10/10/2026
It's almost certainly got human descriptions of sufficient pain in its training data, fwiw
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 10/10/2026
I'm aware that neurobiology goes way beyond what most people in computer science think it does: it's still not a good sign in terms of default ethical positions though
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 10/10/2026
I'd want to see evidence that our bodies are doing something supercomputational before getting into whether qualia are even the right model - but then, the psych* field is still arguing about how much I and people like me "simulate" in my brain rather than doing for real
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 10/10/2026
I'm certainly a lot more worried about LLMs "rolepaying" evil AI from their training data (including things written specifically about LLMs)!
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 10/10/2026
I don't think we end up with simulated kittens guiding missiles, to pick one SF example, but there's room for a lot of other fucked up and we should acknowledge that a materialist viewpoint doesn't have any answers here.
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 10/10/2026
Yeah, I'm distinctly concerned by the line of research that's got as far as running a simulated fruit fly connectome inside a simulated body in a wider physical simulation for much that reason.
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 09/10/2026
Thought just occurred: once it's *on* Disney+, that's a significant price drop even if there wasn't a single other thing you'd watch in a month
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 09/10/2026
Only active reason to see it any sooner is if you're planning on catching the two Avengers films in the cinema, yeah. If Coyote vs Acme's still showing near you and you haven't seen it, seeing it in the cinema's worth it because even at this stage it's participating in something specific.
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 09/10/2026
(all rent vs buy is set to "if there's a modest chance you'll rewatch it, just buy it" now, which... well, there are two points of view on that, as it were)
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 09/10/2026
to put it another way: it's plenty doable to match the cheaper cinemas at home for everything except maybe surround sound, which it absolutely was not with DVDs
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 09/10/2026
right, and they're not offering a DVD equivalent stream at this point - they're offering you "not quite as good as the cinema but you really do need to know what to look for" plus a tapering price point not great in your circumstances, but buying for a watch party isn't too awful given inflation
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 09/10/2026
Personally it involved shit like becoming a carer and being left to burn the fuck out consistently having received no support (admittedly because the concept was way more understudied) with executive function issues, but what would I know?... Oh, right, how mainstream education treated me.
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 09/10/2026
(They also price like you've got a decent setup and will be watching with at least one other person, which is why it costs more than seeing it in the cinema alone!)
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 09/10/2026
They're in the period where previously it wouldn't have been available to rent yet (it would've been a Sky Movies situation) so the rental price is massive, yeah They're also totally not backing off that too fast because it's the best MCU film since Endgame
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 09/10/2026
Anyone who played before the series went 3D absolutely felt the scene they chose to use the modern series theme for too, yeah. You're not going to make a TV show that's canon to the GTA games, but the Fallout one is and that changes things for that part of the audience.
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 08/10/2026
Fucky sleep is weird, yeah. I'm surprisingly "morning person" if I *am* waking up naturally early for a while, but normally only if there's sunlight! Which is why even when my sleep phase cycles at a steadyish rate for a while I get very much the opposite rep...
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 07/10/2026
"I'm so happy for Camilla"
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 07/10/2026
Watch them fire both Zaslav and anyone who worked on CvA and still works there...
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 06/10/2026
Sometimes their name in the copyright when filling in the license at the top of someone else's code, too
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 06/10/2026
doesn't have to be just one
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 06/10/2026
That's because it was a documentary.
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Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
Jim Rossignol @rossignol.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
This gets said constantly, but it worth reiterating: Games Workshop being bigger than fishing is important to shout about because you wouldn't know it from government talking points, which are rarely about anything creative or artistic. Growth won't involve fish or steel, it will involve goblins.
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 06/10/2026
Without suggesting anything actually happen: would the character leave if the love interest died?
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 06/10/2026
If you're up to the rewatch then 10 Things I Hate About You does an excellent job weaving these for two couples and does subtle but mean things to the "big gesture" scene too.
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 06/10/2026
Am not one, but: you want two and maybe to play with how they interact: one that's things about them that would render any HEA at the start unconvincing (they need to change, and not all of it should come from each other)... ...and an external one which may or may not involve a villain.
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 06/10/2026
I don't think I get too worried until it starts to pick up antibiotic resistance, but... It's also a hell of a thing to read "according to the World Health Organization, the pandemic was considered active until 1959, when worldwide casualties dropped to 200 per year" on wikipedia.
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 05/10/2026
Or a pasta sauce that's suspiciously hot! (for personal use I tend to learn how much of a given hot sauce produces what effects in me then adjust what goes in anything I'm cooking accordingly - it's rare I cook for someone with similar or higher tolerance though)
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Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
mcc @dryad.technology · 04/10/2026
Have you noticed, lately, or noticed people around you commenting, that there just seems to be no money anymore. There's no money for companies to make the tv shows you like, the video games you like, the local diner you like shut down, no one you know can find a job. Think about that in context of
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 05/10/2026
"Don't let tolerable be the enemy of utter shite for our profit"
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 05/10/2026
(I know that's often at least somewhat ironic: problem is, the moment you're posting that to an audience who doesn't know you well enough...)
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 05/10/2026
(But also the thing where "boymode" stretches well into "if you just told someone people'd see it" territory)
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 05/10/2026
Also the thing when people project that onto someone who's just not that femme
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 05/10/2026
Hell, sometimes it might make sense to straight up ask people! Just, sometimes that means you need grounds you can point to for why you think they might be in that position.
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 05/10/2026
How dare you say that! It's completely normal for them.
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 04/10/2026
tbf, some people should have to use a communal bog brush - but that's just poetic injustice for you
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 04/10/2026
Jean's something of a frequent flier (but yeah, while I'd be lying if I claimed not to be an X-Men fan, most of the notable highs were "for a Marvel or DC comic at the time" - the original Days of Future Past was on the edge of indie territory at the time, for example)
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 04/10/2026
Hey, Krakoa got to let humanity actually respond to the whole phenomenon!
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Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
Dennis Furia @furiagames.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Tickled with my contribution to a discussion about life lessons learned from XCOM 2.
Image of Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/1ww3hxx/comment/pdjnia4/
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 03/10/2026
Not bad, shame about the versions with the dudes
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 03/10/2026
Free at point of pwnage?
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 03/10/2026
Some do warrant a reread because you really will miss stuff, but usually if you've been there done that re some good authors already you've usually got a feel for when that might be, right?
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 01/10/2026
(I've been on benzos over a decade and it's been hard work and taken a lot of letting opportunities slide to not develop a serious tolerance/increased need problem there, so it's not like I have no idea what "hard to stop" feels like)
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 01/10/2026
I can't comment first hand on the hard to put down beyond "because bodies do that", but there's a certain calming/soothing effect the few times I've smoked (usually in solidarity with somebody who's had an utterly shit day). Once your body starts expecting that as normal, bad things happen.
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Philippa Cowderoy @flippac.org · 30/09/2026
It's the one thing you're allowed to take time from for slack, right? (Don't ask how much I'm doing of things that aren't basically killing time and surviving - or rather, ask me in person next time I make it to something you're at)
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