Tootfinder

I was somewhat baffled why a commenter was so mad when I called him out on posting #AISlop in response to someone’s question. It dawned on me that it was fulfilling a physiological need to seem smart, without either having to either actually be smart or do the legwork to have a knowably good answer.

An anglers’ pressure group has won a landmark legal ruling confirming that the company building Hinkley Point C cannot refuse to answer environmental information requests simply because it is privately owned. https://www.wsfp.co.uk/news/environment-new…

Hinkley generation company must now respond to requests for information
Hinkley generation company must now respond to requests for information

Spagnola: Getting blitzed right out of Lambeau https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/spagnola-getting-blitzed-right-out-of-lambeau

How a rover sampling the South Pole - Aitken Basin on the #Moon - and delivering its haul to some #Artemis astronauts near the pole eventually - would answer many of the open questions of #selenology: the final slide of a talk by Bill Bottke right now (a recording of which will appear on https://sservi.nasa.gov/seminars/moon-joy soon) advertising the Endurance proposal https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/endurance-spa-traverse-and-sample-return.pdf

❝[This is] about who the economy is working for. In a general sense, it’s probably a safe bet at any time that the economy is largely working for people with capital. But in an economy driven by consumption, that at least ties back significantly to things people want. The simple reality here is that the AI boom is making huge amounts of money for people at the top of the economic ladder…while choking off investment in everything else.
…
We have this running debate about why people are so down on the economy when economic indicators either aren’t that bad or are really good. This is pretty clearly the answer. ❞
https://hachyderm.io/@jalefkowit/117474615137864061

#Wochenende!

Why the Jared Goff incomplete pass call against the Saints was correct https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7600823/2026/09/16/why-the-jared-goff-incomplete-pass-call-against-the-saints-was-correct/

#marswaterhistory

RE: https://phpc.social/@afilina/117482632536321266
Imagine, for a moment, that someone built a community playground out of salvaged wood. It would be pretty cool. Kids come and play, but then kids start getting hurt. The people who built it don't understand safety. Boards rot and aren't replaced.
More people come in, they help, and it's slightly better. But the whole thing was built on an old garbage heap. The sandbox is full of rusty nails and broken glass. Kids get cut when they dig.
People criticize it, and other people get mad because it's a community project. They put in a lot of effort. No one else did it. It was filling a need, a real need, and people were just criticizing it.
Other playgrounds are built, by other communities. They're actually safe. People are careful. They move more slowly. But everyone knows where the big playground is. It's easy to get to. Everything wants to just fix the playground. It's where everyone meets already. There are so many friends. It's not just the physical space, it's the social space.
I understand the drive to defend open source, any open source, as such. There's so much invested. There are so many relationships. There are so many good memories. So many people learned PHP as their first language and have never learned anything else. It felt empowering to just jump in and build something. Feelings will always be more powerful than logic, regardless of what anyone says.
The sunk cost fallacy is real, and so much more real when the investment has been so great. But not all projects are equal. The amount of effort it takes to keep a project going is not equal to quality of the output. Some projects just take more effort to keep going than others. Some projects take more effort than they're worth.
At some point, I think the effort of keeping up with the bugs will be greater than we can sustain. We will simply have to abandon PHP as a language (like so many already have) and move on. It will be hard. Some people won't move on. They will keep going until they break and give up on the entire dream of open source, of building a better world together. That will be a huge loss for us all.
I wonder what we can do to ease that transition, to support those who are experiencing such great grief and loss. What would a death doula look like for a programming language? For a community built around a programming language? How do you help someone let something go when it has become part of a person's identity?
I think we need to answer these questions, sooner or later.