Tootfinder

"Just following orders" is not a defense for war crimes (Judd Legum/Popular Information)
https://popular.info/p/just-following-orders-is-not-a-defense
http://www.memeorandum.com/260408/p40#a260408p40

The question of colleges and universities building their own LMSes in house is something I’ve thought a lot about over the years while seething at both Moodle and Canvas.
In this and the following post, @… hits on several reasons why that doesn’t happen.
1/
https://beige.party/@mayintoronto/116539107390472410

Managers have one job: articulating coherent intent on which their teams can execute. Unfortunately, they have been failing at this job for decades.
AI gave them a timely out. Now anyone can ship code without knowing what they're doing, why they are doing it, or how it makes money.
But it turns out that shipping code is not the end of the work...

Product teams struggled to create intent. AI let them think they could skip it.
Teams struggled to produce intent. AI let them think they could skip it.

Foreign Businesses Are Fleeing Cuba as Its Economy Collapses (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/foreign-businesses-are-fleeing-cuba-as-its-economy-collapses-f9b369bf?st=F9XCPf
http://www.memeorandum.com/260607/p12#a260607p12

I have some sketches of an essay that I need to write, but I think it's worth brain-dumping a bit more in the mean time.
#LLMs are an attempt to make tech grow forever. But like, how many "your mom/a friend, but done by a precarious worker instead" apps do we really need? Everything right now is in the AI grift hole, but there's almost nothing of interest (even if you ignore the ethical concerns). Like, no, I don't fucking want a robot to lie to me about my groceries. That doesn't sound like a useful feature. There's a lot of useless shit being pumped out to prop up the bottom line, and a lot of people just want to be able to use their old phone for more than a couple of years.
No one is happy with this. No one wants this. Except the billionaires who are forcing us all to drink the capitalism koolaid, because they'd rather exterminate life on earth than live in a world where they experience consequences.
Nothing grows forever. That's not how literally anything in reality works, or has ever worked, at all in history. Some people think that the universe itself may work like that, but that's only an educated guess. Finite things don't grow forever. Every organism, every society, every technology, every dynamic and adaptive system we have ever known goes through a growth phase and then goes in to a stabilization phase. Or, following a Malthusian pattern, grows until it reaches a catastrophic point and collapses. Like lemmings. Or reindeer. Or cancer.

Wow. Admittedly I still teach this, but didn't think remembering how to do long division would be all that difficult. This has got me curious. Do you remember how to do long division? (no answers from current students/teachers please) #poll boosts appreciated. Try 100÷4 if you want to try it out and see if it comes back to you

IDF Strikes Kill 8 in Lebanon After Netanyahu Says Deal Excludes Hezbollah (Zen Reading/Reuters)
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-04-08/ty-article-live/mda-three-children-lightly-injured-in-negev-following-iranian-rocket-fire/0000019d-6ad1-d940-a5bd-fedf1e030000
http://www.memeorandum.com/260408/p7#a260408p7

'They're spinning': Republicans, grappling with midterm anxiety, go negative (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/04/gop-allies-warn-white-house-its-positive-economic-message-is-falling-flat-00905945
http://www.memeorandum.com/260504/p105#a260504p105

Mullin refuses to commit to following court orders for DHS (Jennifer Scholtes/Politico)
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/06/02/congress/mullin-refuses-to-commit-to-following-court-orders-for-dhs-00946961
http://www.memeorandum.com/260602/p81#a260602p81

New Jersey governor is down to join redistricting wars, following Supreme Court gutting of Voting Rights Act (Brentin Mock/Democracy Docket)
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/new-jersey-governor-is-down-to-join-redistricting-wars-following-supreme-court-gutting-of-voting-rights-act/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260502/p61#a260502p61