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Brett Stalbaum

@stalbaum.bsky.social
31 followers 111 following 37 posts

Artist, long engaged in the internet and technology in the landscape and remote projects. Founding member Electronic Disturbance Theater and C5. Teaching Professor of Visual Arts, UCSD. Teaches video walls, digital signage, supercompute, electronics, code.

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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 1h
This is very likable. I think you are going to have to do a lot to explain for example black and gray hydrogen from green. And I am guessing you are doing this work somewhere. Right? Most hydrogen today is still essentially a fossil fuel. Personally I'd be fine driving on pink. But make the case.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 3h
So Democrats will certainly make a concession to bipartisanship and appoint some "courageous" Republican who criticized Trump one time and lost their senate primary. A calming choice. Because that is who Democrats are. You disagree? Did Biden release the #Epsteinfiles?
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 4h
If housing were a public priority homes would never have become the artificially inflated $ that a board of directors would seek to tap. We can build it. We have the technology to end this suffering. Culture may earn a win here and there, but first principles are to treat the underlying disease.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 15h
Sadly this is welcome. Late. But welcome. Someone do tell me, where shouldn't Democrats fight for hearts and minds? I guess they would have to establish such in themselves instead of following consultants?
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Are Democrats ever up to the moment?
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Not that stochastic parrots can't do some things, they can. But do they even have a desire for their own electricity? In that whole kind of fake Huggingface hack we saw agents throwing themselves the ship over some sense of a greater good. They are our quite different others, already dead, ghosts.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Hello, pretext.
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Reposted by Brett Stalbaum
Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Observation re teaching computing the past number of years: many students do not know what a file system is. Especially #mac users. I mean, #windows is a catastrophe, but users know what a file and a folder are. Sorry, Apple kids don't. They are keeping all their files in Downloads and using find!
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Observation re teaching computing the past number of years: many students do not know what a file system is. Especially #mac users. I mean, #windows is a catastrophe, but users know what a file and a folder are. Sorry, Apple kids don't. They are keeping all their files in Downloads and using find!
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Reposted by Brett Stalbaum
1337 $#!+ I did that @stalbaum.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026
Actually NOT totally totally unheard of but daytime temps in my nearby city of El Centro California are forecast to be close to 110F (43C) mid week next. Happy October everyone! @ai6yr
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
A few days left to see Data Tales at #UCSD, an exhibition/summer show by my Vis 141b students and guests at the Mandeville #Art Gallery #MAG #computerart #datavisualization #concretepoetry #python #digitalsignage youtu.be/U2Q-Gd_qZE0?...
youtu.be
Data Tales Exhibition Vis 141B UCSD Mandeville Art Gallery Spring 2026
YouTube video by stalbaum
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I don't know if anyone in #edtech or #AI cares, but I finished firing #canvas at my tier 1 this year and have made my classes radically local. The big lecture course is a challenge and the last to go (medium and small classes I took offline over the past three years...) Convinced this is the way.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I'll bet they let your bots on without pause:-) #deadinternet ain't just a river in Egypt.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I still want lidar. Waymo continues a significant lead in safety and I credit most of that to the AI being able to see so much better. I presume the computation in both will always hover around contemporary kit. And would I buy a Tesla? Not as long as a racist owns it. Our Bolt is good enough.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I don't know if anyone in #edtech or #AI cares, but I finished firing #canvas at my tier 1 this year and have made my classes radically local. The big lecture course is a challenge and the last to go (medium and small classes I took offline over the past three years...) Convinced this is the way.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I actually fired Canvas this year. All my classes are now radically local. (For an R1 anyway...) It does mean offering excessive office hours but it is the way forward, I am 100% convinced.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I believe the glitch movement sees it that way, quasi religious, but you could tell me better Jon! I do tend to work in an arguably overlapping philosophical frame of a Thousand Plateaus that lets me see it without any spiritualism, and that is fine too.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The #boomers had a phase of rear parking in the 1970s and 80s too. Some kind of weird return of a pretty lame identity crutch. For a time parking garages banned it due to the traffic jams it causes.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Of course. You have to be able to manufacture to be part of clean tech. And if you can't manufacture why are you going to design or educate engineers?
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The clinamen the swerve when the machine is creative on the terms of the machine.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
#Kamala2028. The stupid unelectable talk lays 100% at Joe Biden's feet for not getting out of the way. But #democrats fumbling again is on the table with #Newsom.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Naoero. There, I said it. #Naoero
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Coming from a #genai perspective, is it time for a pause? You know, to add some guardrails to humanity?
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1337 $#!+ I did that @stalbaum.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/09/2026
In #uspol this is wildly controversial because it is angrily rejected by all political parties. But it is turning out to be true and in retrospect, an obvious outcome (yes you can scroll me and find out.) Donald #Trump is doing more and FASTER for the #green movement through his incompetence […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
A few days left to see Data Tales at #UCSD, an exhibition/summer show by my Vis 141b students and guests at the Mandeville #Art Gallery #MAG #computerart #datavisualization #concretepoetry #python #digitalsignage youtu.be/U2Q-Gd_qZE0?...
youtu.be
Data Tales Exhibition Vis 141B UCSD Mandeville Art Gallery Spring 2026
YouTube video by stalbaum
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
It is kind of remarkable that these generations will finally show up strong against #Trump to protect entertainment for the wealthy. This after being totally OK with defunding artists in the 1990s. www.yahoo.com/news/politic...
yahoo.com
Protesters form human chain at Kennedy Center amid Trump's threats to demolish it
Protesters are demanding Trump be removed as the Kennedy Center chairman.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Vaccine hesitancy is increasingly suicidal and homicidal.
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Reposted by Brett Stalbaum
1337 $#!+ I did that @stalbaum.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026
Let just occasionally mark how clearly we knew what was going on so that #genX and #millennials can't lie to our children about not knowing. #trump #Iranwar #tariffs #idiocracy #uspol youtu.be/UIvc4-6O1Wo?is=DmbbctvZkKO…
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I think this Ed Sheeran fellow is kind of done before I even catch one of his earworms. Nice.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The #beeple work (I have not seen yet) seems like completely mainstream computer art. In fact, not really an #AI artwork at all. Rage is falling upon it. I'm going to call it, this is much more about poor art education with some AI rage bait actually serving it. www.channel3000.com/news/art-dir...
channel3000.com
Art director reacts to backlash against use of AI in piece at museum
MADISON, Wis. -- When the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art's Gabriele Haberland Director Paul Baker Prindle first saw 'Diffused Control' he was surprised himself with how encaptivating the piece was...
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The #beeple work (I have not seen yet) seems like completely mainstream computer art. In fact, not really an #AI artwork at all. Rage is falling upon it. I'm going to call it, this is much more about poor art education with some AI rage bait actually serving it. www.channel3000.com/news/art-dir...
channel3000.com
Art director reacts to backlash against use of AI in piece at museum
MADISON, Wis. -- When the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art's Gabriele Haberland Director Paul Baker Prindle first saw 'Diffused Control' he was surprised himself with how encaptivating the piece was...
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1337 $#!+ I did that @stalbaum.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/09/2026
As an artist, we have largely been left out of federal funding (as a function of individual grants from the NEA) for decades. My whole long career, scientists have been demanding we compete with them on grants to show our value to the University. We have no NSF, NIH. So losing the #Kennedy […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Probably a small model built specifically to this purpose... The kind of AI advertising has used since, idk, Google purchased double click and suggestions became ubiquitous.
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1337 $#!+ I did that @stalbaum.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/09/2026
Two new #Iranwar memes. One is that the Iranian/Houthies takeover of the Bab al-Mandab is a "Tet Offensive" moment for the United States and #Israel. One that screws all the world. Two is that Donald Trump partying at his convention as global shipping changes irrevocably is a sort of Jim Jones […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
AB 1709? Idk.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Friends need to follow @timnitgebru.blacksky.app
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1337 $#!+ I did that @stalbaum.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2026
Long awaited news, mixed news for many probably, but interesting to me! #Waymo is taking rides in San Diego! I remember almost two years ago as Los Angeles burned and our friends who came to speak at the #Getty had their talks cancelled. We enjoyed the most cognitively dissonant of all weekends […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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1337 $#!+ I did that @stalbaum.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/09/2026
I just want to run this by my shared intersection of #linux and #nba fans out there. Kawhi Leonard for the win? A poster with Steve #Ballmer under the jockstrap? Yeah? 👍 Always happy when an #oligarch $#!+$ themselves and #journalists win. #pablotorrefindsout
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 07/09/2026
People who are simultaneously so ignorant and confidently arrogant, which is usually such a white man thing to do, believe that while setting out to describe large language models, we should have also discussed reinforcement learning. This guy was saying Emily M. Bender wasn't doing science.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Funny what supporting research can do.
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1337 $#!+ I did that @stalbaum.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026
#Iran is bunkered up and using decoys just as everyone does. (I don't have a source, but I have watched Ukraine.) #Trump claims he is going to hit them hard but you don't have to have passed your freshmen year at West Point to know that part of asymmetrical war is bait targets. There is a […]
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Original post on mastodon.social
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
I have Gemma running - usefully for my project and yes slowish - in CPU mode on an Intel N150 mini PC. Ok to be fair, a cluster I made from N150s. Point is, your point is strong. Mine is, useful models can run on potatoes also! (And as always with performance, the question is for what application.)
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
"Model sprockets" (and quantization) make distillation very useful! Exclude frontier models if you want, sure, I see your point. But we are going to be living with an absolute zoo of models, and a zoo of algorithms and indeed selection models (models to pick appropriate models), so Zoo wins IMHO.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
I could be super corny and say "Models want to be free." Well I guess I did.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Distillation ain't just a river in Egypt. Open weights are iron strong for this kind of practical reason too. 💯 can't stop it with TOS. In historical mapmaking, phantom islands were useful for copyright claims only to a limited degree. The maps were still out there! And internet makes copies, fast.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Distillation ain't just a river in Egypt. Open weights are iron strong for this kind of practical reason too. 💯 can't stop it with TOS. In historical mapmaking, phantom islands were useful for copyright claims only to a limited degree. The maps were still out there! And internet makes copies, fast.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Rename it Lake #Epstein.
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Brett Stalbaum @stalbaum.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Rename it Lake #Epstein.
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1337 $#!+ I did that @stalbaum.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/08/2026
#Meta agrees to 17 billion settlement over killing teens and girls, so that Zuck and execs don't have to testify. To think I left #Facebook in 2017 over Cambridge Analytica, and to think so many stayed on after they knew of this child murder rampage. No wonder the nation, including Biden Admin […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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