Tootfinder

I think we can actually prove that this constraint is the *only* constraint that can preserve freedom:
1. There will exist actors in a system who will wish to take advantage of others. Evolution drives survival and one strategy for increasing survival in an altruistic society is to become a parasite.
2. Expecting exploitative dynamics, a system needs to have a set of rules to manage exploitation.
3. If the set of rules is static it will lack the requisite variety necessary to manage the infinite possible behavior of humans so the system will fail.
4. If the system is dynamic then it must have a rule set about how it's own rules are updated. This would make the system recursive, which makes the system at least as complex as mathematics. Any system at least as complex as mathematics is necessarily either incomplete or inconsistent (Gödel's incompleteness theorem). If the system is incomplete, then constraints can be evaded which then allow a malicious agent to seize control of the system and update the rules for their own benefit. If constraints are incomplete, then a malicious agent can take advantage of others within the system.
5. Therefore, no social system can possibly protect freedom unless there exists a single metasystemic constraint (that the system must be optional) allowing for the system to be abandoned when compromised.
Oh, you might say, but this just means you have to infinitely abandon systems. Sure, but there's an evolutionary advantage to cooperation so there's evolutionary pressure to *not* be a malicious actor. So a malicious actor being able to compromise the whole system is likely to be a much more rare event. Compromising a system is a lot of work, so the first thing a malicious actor would want to do is preserve that work. They would want to lock you in. The most important objective to a malicious actor compromising a system would be to violate that metasystemic constraint, or all of their work goes out the window when everyone leaves.
And now you understand why borders exist, why fascists are obsessed with maintaining categories like gender, race, ethnicity, etc. This is why even Democrats like Newsom are on board with putting houseless people in concentration camps. And this is why the most important thing anarchists promote is the ability to choose not to be part of any of that.

Last photos from that day in the #schwarzwald . We were pretty surprised when we came to the part shown in the last photo. The #moss was so thick there - like a real carpet! I've never seen such before. I found it pretty hard to get a photo that pays the situation justice. I hope it works for …

Just finished "I'm Awful, Thanks" by Lara Pickle. A good story that serves as a guide to managing emotions, although it's actually a cute story too, not just framing for the mental health discussion.
That said, I feel like it doesn't get far enough into the details of accepting self-control as our only form of real control vs. understanding that some events outside our control aren't fair or are others' attacks, and trying to manage our own emotions as our only response is a disservice to ourselves and others. Even further, I suspect that the HR resolution depicted here, while not impossible, is less frequent than much worse outcomes, which is part of a larger pattern of systemic assaults on our mental health that aren't totally solvable with individual emotional regulation.
Sure, leveling up one's control of ones own emotions and learning to accept and manage a range of emotions is super useful and it's a good thing overall, but the systemic problems of late stage capitalism are real, and making it seem like everyone is responsible for managing their own mental health in the face of these problems helps avoid confronting them.
Still, it's a good book overall, with vibrant art and a well-structured plot.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

PSA about food labeling in the US
We have a gluten detection service dog because many things that should be gluten free/say they’re gluten free are not actually gluten free.
Stuff gets contaminated when growing (e.g. next to wheat field), by shared equipment, in factories, from packaging, during transport and in-store.
Every US consumer should know:
1. The list of ingredients on food isn't exhaustive
2. Allergen labeling:
a) limited to just some allergens
b) manufacturers don't actually have to test
c) "certified" foods are tested—but not continuously
d) testing only works with enough contamination
Some certifications may require batch-testing, but usually they don't.
A "certified gluten free" product may e.g. contain oats which sometimes are contaminated with gluten—but as not every batch is tested it's impossible to know unless you test yourself (hence the service dog).
Even if the product is properly batch-tested, you might get a part of the product that has the allergen in it, whereas the tested part didn't.
Or the threshold was too low (our dog can detect gluten better than any available lab testing equipment; yes, dogs are amazing).
Food products also contain ingredients that do not have to be included on the label when they're "incidental" (included in an another ingredient) or if they're considered part of the manufacturing process but not of the final product (e.g. various coatings on factory equipment).
Don't need to list flavors or specific spices either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As for allergens, only those responsible for ~90% of food allergies* have to be specifically declared, and they're not tested for as it's simply based on the ingredients list.
Good luck if you have other allergies.
*milk, egg, egg, fish, Crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, wheat, peanuts, soybeans

i'm sOrRy i tHoUgHt tHiS WaS AmErIcA
#ShamelesslyStolenFromSomewhereElseOnTheInternetHonestlyICantKeepTrackOfThisStuffAnymore

Actually, I do want to come back to masculinity under patriarchy and whiteness under white supremacy because I think it's worth talking more about. The "man" under patriarchy (at least "Western" patriarchy) is represented as power and independence. The man needs nothing and thus owes nothing to anyone. The man controls and is not controlled, which is intimately related to independence as dependence can make someone vulnerable to control. The image of "man" projects power and invulnerability. At the same time "man" is a bumbling fool who can't be held accountable for his inability to control his sexual urges. He must be fed and cared for, as though another child. His worst behaviors must be dismissed with phrases such as "boys will be boys" and "locker room talk." The absurdity of the concept of human "independence" is impossible to understate.
Even if you go all Ted Kaczynski, you have still been raised and taught. This is, perhaps, why it is so much more useful to think in terms of obligations than rights. Rights can be claimed and protected with violence alone, but obligations reveal the true interdependence that sustains us. A "man" may assert his rights. Yet, on some level, we all know that the "man" of patriarchy acts as a child who is not mature enough to recognize his obligations.
White violence and white fragility reflect the same dichotomy. "The master race" somehow always needs brown folks to make all their shit and do all the reproductive labor for them. For those who fully embrace whiteness, the "safe space" is a joke. DEI shows weakness. Yet, when presented with an honest history adults become children who are incapable of differentiating between criticism and simple facts. *They* become the ones who must be kept safe. The expectation to be responsible for one's own words and actions, one of the very core definitions of being an adult, is far too much to expect. Their guilt needs room, needs tending, needs caring. White people cannot simply "grow the fuck up" or, as they may say of slavery, "fucking get over it."
And again, interestingly, it is *rights* that they reference: "Mah Freeze PEACH!" I find it hard to distinguish between such and my own child's assertion that anything she doesn't like is "not fair!" No, these assertions fail to recognize the fundamental fabric of adult society: the obligations we hold to each other.
At the intersection of all privilege is the sovereign, the ultimate god-man-baby. Again, referencing the essay (https://hexmhell.writeas.com/observations-on-domination-and-trump)
> This is where it becomes important to consider the ideology behind the sovereign ritual. Participation within the sovereign ritual denotes to the participants elements of the sovereign. That is, all agents of the sovereign are, essentially, micro dictators. By carrying out the will of the sovereign, these micro dictators can, by extension, act outside of the law.
While law enforcement is the ultimate representative of sovereign violence, privileges allow a gradated approximation of the sovereign. Those who are "closer" in privilege to the sovereign may, for example, be permitted to carry out violence against those who are father away. The gradation of privilege turns the whole society, except for the least privileged, into a cult that protects the privilege system on behalf of the most privileged. (And immediately Malcolm X pops to mind as having already talked about part of this relationship in 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo.)

It has occurred to me that a lot of data processing/transformation which is entirely feasible without highly trained LLMs and neural nets and GPUs is being handed over to such monstrosities in part because no one wants to do the app design. Like the current scourge of web-scraper bots, which seem to be doing #NLG with ultra-simple languages constructed by examining working URLs. It's a large project…

Finished Altered States (1980) and it's a cool movie, but I can't get over how ridiculous it is to suggest tripping and using a sensory deprivation tank would cause genetic changes 😂 Definitely has the feel of some almost paranormal type stuff. The worst part might be how badly he treats his wife 😒
https://boxd.it/1TBi

Altered States (1980)
A research scientist explores the boundaries and frontiers of consciousness. Using sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic mixtures from native American shamans, he explores these altered states of consciousness and finds that memory, time, and perhaps reality itself are states of mind.

It's shitposting time now that the serious part of the internet is down!

Final day of having the carpenter here. A lot of sawing. Built the dresser desk drawers, cut all the perspex into shape for the windowed doors that fit together now but still need gluing.
The dresser drawers are just about big enough to put the hairdryer in, so that's nice.
Still quite a bit for the other workers to do. Detailing for panels on the doors, gluing and hanging the window doors, handles and painting and touch ups. They reckon another 5 days work still, only two of which can be next week because I have stuff to do.
Must be weird being a builder and finishing your part of the job then never seeing it completed. He's done all this great work on it but will only see the completed work if he has to come back for something else. And he doesn't want to come back coz he's fed up of driving across London 😆

Got the 750 started, pulled around within reach of an extension cord, and fired up the ozone generator inside it. Looks like I have a dead lighting control module, which is just fucking awesome, given it was working when parked and it's an expensive part. I hope I don't have a sunroof drain issue dumping water in the passenger footwell. I don't see any obvious signs of that, but it's a common reason for LCM mortality.

Day 21: Aya Yoshinaga
I'm actually generally much less aware of the creators involved in the anime I watch, for a number of reasons, and the few anime directors I could name without looking them up were all men before I started this list. I've now got a short list of anime directors/writers who are women, and the first I'll include here is Yoshinaga, in part because she was pivotal to one of my favorite lesser-known anime, "Kurau Phantom Memory". It was actually one of the first anime I watched ever, but I didn't like it just because of that, since I've rewatched it at least twice and still regard it highly. It's got a pretty cool science fiction setting, an extremely cool barely-comprehensible alien race, a female protagonist who is not sexualized and not subjected to romance, and it centers a platonic relationship torn apart by technological hubris. Very "cool seinen stuff that wouldn't make it past the focus groups today" stuff.
Besides Kurau, Yoshinaga has worked on other great stuff like Golden Kamuy, Azumanga Daioh, Durarara, and Fullmetal Alchemist, and when you see a correlation like that between well-written shows and the same writer showing up again and again, it's clear there's talent there, even if most of these are manga-based.
Probably going to circle back to at least one more anime writer, but for tomorrow I'll move on to manga probably, since I want to space out all my YA enthusiasm a bit.
#30AuthorsNoMen

I was looking into the #DANDI archive, following a post of @… that mentioned it as a possibility for #Neuroscience data storage.. It looks like it could be useful i…

Following public outcry,
the U.S. Department of Education has restored funding for students who have both hearing and vision loss,
about a month after cutting it.
But rather than sending the money directly to the four programs that are part of a national network helping students who are deaf and blind, a condition known as deafblindness,
the department has instead rerouted the grants to a different organization
The Trump administration targeted the programs in …

Students With Hearing and Vision Loss Get Funding Back Despite Trump’s Anti-DEI Campaign
Following public outcry, the Department of Education has reversed its decision to cut funding for students who have both hearing and vision loss, opting instead to reroute grants to an organization that will provide funding to these students.

I keep realizing that one of my main differences in behavior is that I don't let fear of loss keep me from connecting with people nor existing comfortably in places.
It plays out in some specific ways. I'm usually the first to volunteer to lend something, and I'm willing to (and in fact most excited to) lend whatever it is to someone I don't know. I know I might not get it back. It’s _fine_.
I'm willing to leave my bike locked up in a part of the city where it might get stolen. It won’t, probably but it might. And that's fine. Annoying, but fine. It's cheap enough to replace. Expensive enough to suck but it's fine.
What I'm tilting at here though is that the constant vigilance to make sure things work out okay and the waiting for low-risk situations cuts us off from a lot of things. Better to have a bit of a "well fuck" budget. Go do the thing. It'll probably be fine. if not, well, it sucks, but ... it's fine.

Back to the HMCAD1520 FA.
This is sample 6A1 after initial partial decap. It's still covered in the north and easy because I guessed how big the die would be and apparently underestimated its size.
The good news is that it's gold ball bonded, so more time in the acid shouldn't risk damaging the bond wires at all.
Time to re-mount it with a bigger mask and try again.

Boston-based Teradar, which aims to launch a solid-state sensor for autonomous cars in 2028 that it says can outperform lidar and radar, raised a $150M Series B (Sean O'Kane/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/12/tera

Teradar raises $150M for a sensor it says beats lidar and radar | TechCrunch
Teradar's sensor uses the terahertz part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and combines the best traits of radar and lidar sensors without some of the drawbacks.

Who are going to be the five D senators who chicken out and sign a blank check to the trumpies?
These wimpy-D's are willing to give away what little power we have left to obtain magic beans - which are worthless promises that the R's will allow a vote on ACA subsidies. A vote? We know that the R's will roll over that vote, that el-cheato won't sign, and that even if enacted, will simply become a bag of cash that el-cheato will use for whatever purpose he wants.
…

Republicans try to end shutdown without health care fix
Senate Republicans are trying to end the government shutdown by preparing a bipartisan package of spending bills that they hope will win new Democratic votes. It's unclear whether their plan will work. Democrats have voted 14 times not to reopen the government as they demand an extension of health care subsidies, which aren't expected to be part of the legislation. Many say they will continue to hold out until President Donald Trump and Republican leaders negotiate with them on an extension. A …

In case you missed it (like me, up until this point): The "Made with Godot" Steam curator reached its limit (of 2000 games), so there's a second one now: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45715609-Made-with-Godot-2/

Steam Curator: Made with Godot - 2
List of games that are made with Godot Engine, maintained by Godot contributors. Part 2 of 2.

There are 3 fundamental freedoms outlined in Dawn of Everything:
(1) the freedom to move away or relocate from one’s surroundings;
(2) the freedom to ignore or disobey commands issued by others; and
(3) the freedom to shape entirely new social realities, or shift back and forth between different ones.
I think these can all be captured in one statement when reframed as a system constraint: for a system to be free, participation must be optional for all members.
People must be part of *some* system. Even individualistic survivalism is itself a system (if not a very good one). Then there is a corollary as well: any system that is not free, that is not optional, can turn optional systems into mandatory ones, and thus (adopted from the MLK quote) un-freedom anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere.
Edit:
I'm gonna drop the #Philosophy tag on here because apparently that's where I went with it. Challenges and push-back welcome.
Edit:
Aaaaand Its a blog post
https://anarchoccultism.org/building-zion/an-algorithm-for-liberation
As usual, comments, typos, and questions are always welcome.

Picture the human body. Zoom in on a single cell. It lives for a while, then splits or dies, as part of a community of cells that make up a particular tissue. This community lives together for many many cell-lifetimes, each performing their own favorite function and reproducing as much as necessary to maintain their community, consuming the essential resources they need and contributing back what they can so that the whole body can live for decades. Each community of cells is interdependent on the whole body, but also stable and sustainable over long periods of time.
Now imagine a cancer cell. It has lost its ability to harmonize with the whole and prioritize balance, instead consuming and reproducing as quickly as it can. As neighboring tissues start to die from its excess, it metastasizes, always spreading to new territory to fuel its unbalanced appetite. The inevitable result is death of the whole body, although through birth, that body can create a new fresh branch of tissues that may continue their stable existence free of cancer. Alternatively, radiation or chemotherapy might be able to kill off the cancer, at great cost to the other tissues, but permitting long-term survival.
To the cancer cell, the idea of decades-long survival of a tissue community is unbelievable. When your natural state is unbounded consumption, growth, and competition, the idea of interdependent cooperation (with tissues all around the body you're not even touching, no less) seems impossible, and the idea that a tissue might survive in a stable form for decades is ludicrous.
"Perhaps if conditions were bleak enough to perfectly balance incessant unrestrained growth against the depredations of a hostile environment it might be possible? I guess the past must have been horribly brutal, so that despite each tissue trying to grow as much as possible they each barely survived? Yes, a stable and sustainable population is probably only possible under conditions of perfectly extreme hardship, and in our current era of unfettered growth, we should rejoice that we live in much easier times!"
You can probably already see where I'm going with this metaphor, but did you know that there are human communities, alive today, that have been living sustainably for *tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years*?
#anarchy #colonialism #civilization
P.S. if you're someone who likes to think about past populations and historical population growth, I cannot recommend the (short, free) game Opera Omnia by Stephen Lavelle enough: https://www.increpare.com/2009/02/opera-omnia/

#Oakland #police chief announces intent to resign after less than two years since arriving from Lubbock TX.
"To be number 15 in the last 25 years, since I have been here. Every time a chief takes the helm, it is just a matter of time when it will occur. And that's the sad part of the condition of the police…

Oakland Police Chief Floyd Mitchell announces he's stepping down
Oakland Police Chief Floyd Mitchell announced he's stepping down, effective Dec. 5. "It has been an honor to serve the Oakland community, and I am grateful for the support I've received from the residents."

President Trump told reporters "it's imperative" for CNN to be sold: "Any deal it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it or sold separately" (Dominick Mastrangelo/The Hill)
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5643129-trump-warner…

'writing is more than just the process by which you obtain a piece of text, right? it's also about finding out what you wanted to say in the first place, and how you wanted to say it. this post existed in my head first as a thought, then it started to gel into words, and then i tried pulling those words out to arrange them in a way that (hopefully) gets my point across. ... i alone can get the thought out and writing is how i do that.'

Tasha, you are a criminal!! 😹

This is bizarre - I made a typo and accidentally ran a #Google search for a comma. Not the word, the punctuation mark.
And yet, somehow, Google thinks that is:
1. A valid enough search to be showing a bazillion results
2. A search that needs short-form vertical videos at the top from a bunch of white women (who are they? Why them? What in the world is relevant to a singular punctuation mark that makes them pull up these videos?)
3. A search with enough inferred intent to show me a whole Q&A interface?
I know we complain about the state of #search online a lot these days and I've been part of the #SEO industry for years but something like this is so blatantly ridiculous it's hard not to stop and wonder.... what the actual fuck?

Folks, Dr. Abdullah (@…), one of our Gaza Verified members, was working at the heart of the danger zone in Al Shifa hospital until the last minute.
He has now safely made it to the South, in part thanks to your donations during our Gaza Verified Emergency Appeal last week.
He still needs help… $500-$800 as he just told me for basic necessitie…

Day 20: bell hooks.
Despite having decided to continue to 30, number 20 feels important, and hooks gets the spot in part because I haven't yet included a non-fiction feminist author, which feels like an obvious thing to include on such a list. The one category of author being bumped out of the first 20 here is anime writers, but I'll follow up with one of them, along with more academics and mangaka who I've been itching to include.
In any case, hooks is absolutely legendary as a feminist writer for good reason, and as a teacher I've especially appreciated her writing on pedagogy like "Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom" and "Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom". These have challenged me to teach at a higher level, and while I'm not sure I've completely succeeded, they're important to me. They also pair well with Paolo Friere's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", but hooks always seems to be focused on very practical advice and it's incredibly direct in her writing, even though her advice isn't always straightforward to implement. In fact, that's one of the things I value about her writing: when the truth is complicated or the real work is messy interpersonal relationships that need to be negotiated with each student, she's not afraid to say so and give good advice for navigating those waters instead of trying to dispense simple-seeming platitudes or formulas for success that paper over the deeper issues. Her concern has always been truth, rather than simplicity or audience comfort and the popularity it might seem to entail, which I think is part of why her legacy endures so well.
#20AuthorsNoMen
#30AuthorsNoMen

And that's it, the #OpenSSLCon25 in Prague has ended. Fantastic organization, many great talks, and some funny ones, too. Recordings should be available in a few weeks.

#bedfellows The US sided with Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran to block part of a UN report about the dire state of the planet "because it called for phasing out fossil fuels, switching to clean energy and reducing plastics."

U.S. Helped to Weaken Report at U.N. Environment Talks, Participants Say
American officials joined Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran in objecting to language on fossils fuels, biodiversity and plastics in a report that was three years in the making.

I've had a few of these thoughts stuck in my craw all day because I watched this liberal historian talk about the Galleanisti.
https://youtube.com/shorts/93yHEn8BYE4
Basically, she says that "of course the government had the right to target them." Then she goes on to talk about how it became an excuse to carry out a bunch of attacks on other marginalized people. Now, the Galleanisti had been bombing the houses of politicians and such. I get where she's coming from saying that one of their targets "was in the right" to try to catch them. But there's some context she's not talking about at all.
These were Italian anarchists, so they were not white and they were part of an already marginalized political group. Basically all of Europe and the US was trying to wipe out anarchists at the time. Meanwhile, the sitting president at the time showed the first movie in the White House. That movie was KKK propaganda, in which he was favorably quoted. The US was pretty solidly white supremacist in the 1920's.
Like... A major hidden whole premise of the game "Bioshock: Infinite" is that if you went back to the US in the 1920's, and you had magic powers, you would absolutely use them to kill as many cops as possible and try to destroy society. There's a lot of other stuff in there, I don't want to get distracted, but "fuck those racists," specifically referring to the US in the 1920's, was a major part of a major game.
Those Italian anarchists were also stone cutters. They carved grave stones. But the dust from that can kill you, much like black lung for coal miners. So they were dying from unsafe working conditions, regularly raising money to support dying coworkers and then carving gravestones for those same coworkers.
Now, I personally think insurrectionary anarchism is a dead end. I disagree with it as a strategy. We've seen it fail, and it failed there. But of course it makes sense that they wanted to blow up the government.
...And that's the correct way to structure that. When you say, "of course they were in the right" you're making a very clear political statement. You could easily say, "the cops in Vichy France had every right to hunt down the French Resistance." You would technically be correct, I guess. But it would really say something about your politics if you justified the actions of Nazi collaborators over those fighting against the Nazis.
And you may say, "oh, but the Nazis didn't have justification for anything. They invaded a sovereign nation, so their government wasn't legitimate anyway."
To which I would reply, "have you considered a history book about the US?"

Disconnected large bifurcation supports and Cartesian products of bifurcations
Timur Bakiev, Yulij S. Ilyashenko
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07036 https://a…

Disconnected large bifurcation supports and Cartesian products of bifurcations
A bifurcation that occurs in a multiparameter family is a Cartesian product if it splits into two factors in the sense that one bifurcation takes place in one part of the phase portrait, another one -- in another part, and they are in a sense independent, do not interact with each other. To understand how a family bifurcates, it is sufficient to study it in a neighborhood of the so-called large bifurcation support. Given a family of vector fields on $S^2$ that unfolds a field $v_0$, the respect…

Israel has announced it will reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt in the next few days
as part of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire.
However, the border will only open in one direction:
for Palestinians to exit.
Israeli American human rights lawyer Sari Bashi says the move validates fears that
Israel’s goal is to “continue the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.”
This comes as a coalition of 12 Israeli human rights groups concluded in a new report that …

U.S.-Backed Ceasefire Is Cover for Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza & West Bank: Sari Bashi
Israel has announced it will reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt in the next few days as part of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire. However, the border will only open in one direction: for Palestinians to exit. Israeli American human rights lawyer Sari Bashi says the move validates fears that Israel’s goal is to “continue the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.” This comes as a coalition of 12 Israeli human rights groups concluded in a new report that 2025 is the deadliest and most de…

This is part of why I feel confident that I am in my last real job.
In 40 years of working, I've *never* gotten a job in IT/#InfoSec by applying for a publicly visible opening. I have had some interviews from *trying* to do it that way, but never made it to hiring. I think I may not mask or hype myself well enough. I suspect that this would be made worse by today's "AI" desolation.
I also stopped even trying to hide my professional cynicism some time ago...

Please sign this petition
I'm a chemist. As a grad student I was a TA and a tutor. I taught college chemistry classes.
That's teaching a subject, not communicating about a technical issue (yes, these really are different skills)
And climate change advocacy has highlighted how difficult communicating is.
I wish this proposal had been enacted when I was a student.
Please sign.

Solid list:
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2025/10/06/102-lessons-from-102-books/?ck_subscriber_id=389259318
Don't run through LLM, it's already a very concise list. Take time and look through it.

🦾 Humans sense a collaborating robot as part of their 'extended' body
#robots

Humans sense a collaborating robot as part of their 'extended' body
Researchers from the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Genoa (Italy) and Brown University in Providence (U.S.) have discovered that people sense the hand of a humanoid robot as part of their body schema, particularly when it comes to carrying out a task together, like slicing a bar of soap.

Played some of the demo of @…'s Pyrotoad - it's a total blast. Precision puzzle platformer - tough but do-able. Very challenging, really satisfying once you figure it out. Currently in biome 2, level 1- wow. That's the last pic here. Tough as hell. But fun! Try out the demo - the full game is out November 3.

I have to admit that Windows won this one. The Last of Us Part 1 looks and runs like crap on Linux, no matter what you try. And I declare an urban legend the rumours that the game could run on anything other than Proton 9.0.4 or the latest Wine (which excludes any version of FSR 4 or any kind of Optiscaler interventions). In comparison, the leaked DLL of FSR 4 works great on Windows, and the game looks and runs like a million dollars. It's a spit in the face, really.

The Oatmeal comic about "AI" "art" is great, but I have to critize the "I like AI, I use AI" part; there's a selection bias at work—he sees the generated "art" as very obviously for what it is, (dehumanizing low-effort slop) but doesn't make the logical conclusion that this is true for _any type of output_ (e.g. text); it always dehumanizing low-effort slop that's not worth looking at, listening to or reading.

Just look at the start of chapter 12 of “It can’t happen here” with an excerpt of the book of dear leader. Sound familiar, doesn’t it?
I'm still wondering whether Trump (or his writer(s)) could be sued for plagiarism?
#SinclairLewis #ItCantHappenHere

Complete and utter failure at X.com.
I use security keys on Twitter/X and I was only notified when I tried to log in on a new device in the last few week. If it weren’t for that, I would not have known the breaking change https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/12/elon

When a user doesn't understand your product, they can't use it. But when the team doesn't understand their own product, then NO ONE can.
We neglected the conceptual layer of software development, and products have devolved from a coherent experience into Proper Noun soup. To unwind this self-inflicted problem, we must stop "optimizing" for just one part of the job.
Here's how.
(this is a much deeper problem than "just UX vs UI")

When teams don't understand their own product
A usable product starts with the conceptual model, but designers have "optimized" that work out of the profession. It's time to bring it back.

I've been using multiple high resolution displays since the first non-passthru GPUs offered multiple outputs (heh, VGA or DVI) and WIndows 98 supported it properly.
Used to be the longest part of enabling/disabling external monitor support on a laptop was waiting for the CRT to warm up. Now, on my W11 laptop docking station it takes a full 20-25 seconds to change modes to multi-desktop. That's ridiculous. I know the things that happen (usb device enumeration etc.) but that'…

"Climate change is now warming the deepest parts of the Arctic Ocean"
#Climate #ClimateChange #Arctic

Climate change is now warming the deepest parts of the Arctic Ocean
While it is well known that climate change is heating the world's oceans, it was thought that the deep sea was safe from its effects—until now. Researchers have discovered that a rapidly warming part of the Atlantic is leading to the heating up of Arctic Ocean depths.

Did I mention IC reversing is absolute crack for AuDHD brains?
I should probably put down the EEPROM, at least for a while, and move on to other stuff. But I'm having too much fun.
This is the dangerous part, and the part I have the most trouble with... the problem is so big you'll *never* be done (especially doing it manually without any automation, figuring out what each cell is by hand, etc).
There's always more to discover. Nerd sniping to the 20th power.

Memo: People Inc., formerly called Dotdash Meredith and holding 40 digital and print lifestyle brands, is laying off 6% of its workforce, or 226 people (Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/10/09/people-inc-layoffs

People Inc. laying off 226 people
It's part of a broader effort to deprioritize parts of the business that aren't growing as quickly and focus on new areas.

Climate change is now warming the deepest parts of the Arctic Ocean #Arctic

Climate change is now warming the deepest parts of the Arctic Ocean
While it is well known that climate change is heating the world's oceans, it was thought that the deep sea was safe from its effects—until now. Researchers have discovered that a rapidly warming part of the Atlantic is leading to the heating up of Arctic Ocean depths.

It astonishes me that in all these years, humanity hasn't come up with an easy offline way to transmit a location from a mobile device to a car's navigation system.
I feel like it should be part of Bluetooth. Like, it should send a tiny file over bluetooth containing the address and/or coordinates.
Oh well. Time to type it all in…
#Automotive

So I don't think that readability is an issue in liquid glass? I think as part of a dynamic system it's always pretty much OK.
What I'm less sure of is that there are a lot of places where the UI used to disappear in various apps and now there's always something floating on the screen, that's moving in the corner of your eye as you scroll…
#iOS26

I am once again begging, begging everyone to hold these 3 thoughts in their head at once:
1. Plastics recycling is not very effective. It’s far, far better to not use plastic at all in the first place, and that failing, far better to reuse.
2. Plastics recycling is not worthless or pointless. Don’t just throw it all away because “iT dOEsn’T matTeR.” A miserable 5% reclaimed is still better than 0% reclaimed.
3. Plastics recycling is nonetheless part of a petrochemical greenwashing campaign, per @…’s post below. https://mastodon.social/@CelloMomOnCars/115650231600448649

#AdventOfCode Day 5: My stupid part 1 solution was too slow (because I checked each ingridient instead of compare the ranges). After fixing that it was fast and correct. I have a plan for part 2, but $job to do, so let's see when I get a round tuit (to quote an old #Perl saying).

@… my shouting and swearing at the sight of vi could have been an indication of how angry it makes me.
Nothing about vi makes me want to learn it. Nothing.
I'm dyslexic, maybe that's part of it.
I am NOT deliberately handicapping myself.
You describing my reactions as absurd is NOT the lesson that I need.
Again, you have no idea…

What are you going to do when the regime falls? After calling all your friends, after the great memes, after the parties, what are you going to do to make sure it never happens again? What world should we create?
Taxing billionaires is great and all, but we could build systems where billionaires are impossible. Is hoarding wealth and using it to control people even something we should consider part of a functional and humane system? Any system where one group of people doesn't have rights means that anyone can be stripped of their rights, like has happened with all the US citizens who've been illegally detained and deported by ICE. Does the concept of "rights" that must be defended with violence, that can be stripped away by people who can exercise more violence, even make sense? Or should the bedrock of a functional system be the obligations that we have to each other and to society, that cannot be severed or taken from us, that tell us we *must* defend regardless of whether systemic oppression will impact us or not?
Americans have been so restricted by the limitations of the two party system, only able to choose between options acceptable to different sections of the capitalist class. Would we even be able to imagine what we could do if those restrictions went away?
The fall of the Berlin wall was a surprise. The fall of Assad was faster than anyone expected. One day the government of Nepal was an unrepentant oligarchy, the next it was on fire. Everything can change in an instant, faster than anyone expects. No one can predict revolutionary change. Will you be ready if the opportunity presents itself?
The US cannot be fixed. The economic system is a ponzi scheme that has been patched again and again, but has finally run out of options. Racism, sexism, and Christian nationalism are baked into the system at every level. Trump gutted the system of soft power that held the US economy together, now there is only a slow decline. Even after he's gone, the damage is done. Once we let go of how to fix something that cannot be fixed, we can start to imagine something that cannot be achieved within the current system.
This is a time of opportunity. Do not burrow so deep in terror that you miss your chance to dream.
#USPol

It's pretty ironic that part of the promise of cloud computing & CDNs was some form of geographical decentralization of resources, only then to end up with seemingly half the internet involving us-east-1 alone...
#AWS #Outage

"Don’t get me wrong: My ego is not so large that I believe I played a significant role in putting Trump into office. What I mean is that it took the collective action of thousands of people in similar positions, working nine-to-five jobs, figuring out how they were going to pay for their kid’s daycare or fund their retirement, to get us where we are today. I was a part of that—until I decided I could no longer be."
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/my-last-day-as-an-accomplice-of-the-republican-party-miles-bruner

From Greta's book. 🎯

A Diffusion-based Generative Machine Learning Paradigm for Contingency Screening
Quan Tran, Suresh S. Muknahallipatna, Dongliang Duan, Nga Nguyen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04470

A Diffusion-based Generative Machine Learning Paradigm for Contingency Screening
Contingency screening is a crucial part of electric power systems all the time. Power systems frequently encounter multiple challenging operational dilemmas that could lead to the instability of power systems. Contingency analysis is effort-consuming by utilizing traditional numerical analysis methods. It is commonly addressed by generating a whopping number of possible contingencies or manipulating network parameters to determine the worst scenarios. This paper proposes a novel approach that d…

1. Have a simple job to do. Figure out #Makefile will do the job.
2. Think a bit about portability. Makefile becomes slightly more complex.
3. You're finally done. It turns out that some stupid implicit rule in GNU Make fires and adds a `rm` at the end that removes part of the output.
4. Use #Meson.
Just an average #Gentoo day.
[UPDATE: Now I regret using Meson. If you do anything that's not 100% boilerplate, it just keeps throwing obstacles in your way.]

Finally, a German opposition to a ban that I can support!
Germany wants to keep the names 'veggie burger' and 'vegetarian sausage'. The latter was invented by the 'greatest German of all time', Konrad Adenauer, so it should be considered part of German cultural heritage.
https://www.

Agrarminister Rainer gegen "Veggie-Burger"-Verbot in der EU
In der EU könnten Begriffe wie "Veggie-Schnitzel" bald verboten werden. Bundesagrarminister Rainer will sich dagegen einsetzen: Er hält die Debatte für "unnötig" - und sieht vor allem negative Folgen bei einem Verbot.

Who’s going to tell Germany that commiting genocide isn’t a fundamental European value? (I can see why they’re confused, of course.)
Deutschebags.
https://shrimp.vijf.life/notes/afvjl80c075vsdvy

sijmen (eepy) (@sijmen)
@aral@mastodon.ar.al > Germany, a major Eurovision backer, had signalled it would not take part if Israel was barred. Germany's culture minister Wolfram Weimer told the Bild newspaper he welcomed the decision. > > "Israel belongs to the Eurovision Song Contest like Germany be...

RE: https://mastodon.world/@afouxenidis/115583740362305127
Marx's metaphor of vampirism has itself become the subject of reflection in journals that are part of this system.* I now find it difficult to use. It is much more important to make clear wh…

In the 1980s there were a lot of television ads that showed how people might use technology in the future.
I remember one that showed a woman waking up in bed and (I think) speaking to the computer across the room to ask for the news and weather. The part that struck me odd then wasn't the use of voice command, it was the idea of wanting to interact with a computer right away in one's bedroom, before even having coffee or seeing sunlight. And now here we are.

Y'know that presser with Trump and Kennedy talking about autism? Hank Green explains how it's dishonest and misleading. Or at least, explains one specific part of it, it was a flood of dishonesty and misleading.
https://youtu.be/BdpSfrD3Nzs?si=Hw26W4StsWvqsp6u

Few know the lengths to which the Trump administration is paving the way -- and the part it's playing
-- in deregulating a highly regulated industry
to ensure that AI data centers have the energy they need to shape the future of America and the world
To say the nuclear people are bullish on AI is an understatement.
“I call this not just a partnership but a structural alliance.
Atoms for algorithms. Artificial intelligence is not just powered by nuclear ene…

‘Atoms for Algorithms:’ The Trump Administration’s Top Nuclear Scientists Think AI Can Replace Humans in Power Plants
A presentation at the International Atomic Energy Agency unveiled Big Tech’s vision of an AI and nuclear fueled future.

With any luck - Rush Limbaugh will soon have a new neighbor in the dustbin of long forgotten GOP mouthpieces who inflicted too much harm during their tenure.

The problem here, as the students make very clear, is not whether or not AI can be used in teaching. It's that you're selling them something they can get much cheaper and better without you.
Even if AI was the perfect teacher, this would still be a racket.

These death threats by the maga-klan create a real fear.
These kinds of statements especially as they are coupled to an increasing tendency on the part of our so-called government to move in the direction of these statements, creates a plausible defense that could be raised by the killer of Kirk and also by Luigi:
Self defense and defense of others.
Tyler Robinson and Luigi M. could well, and plausibly assert, that they were acting to defend you and me.
It's a def…

Day 30: Elizabeth Moon
This last spot (somehow 32 days after my last post, but oh well) was a tough decision, but Moon brings us full circle back to fantasy/sci-fi, and also back to books I enjoyed as a teenager. Her politics don't really match up to Le Guin or Jemisin, but her military experience make for books that are much more interesting than standard fantasy fare in terms of their battles & outcomes (something "A Song of Ice and Fire" achieved by cribbing from history but couldn't extrapolate nearly as well). I liked (and still mostly like) her (unironically) strong female protagonists, even if her (especially more recent) forays into "good king" territory leave something to be desired. Still, in Paksenarion the way we get to see the world from a foot-soldier's perspective before transitioning into something more is pretty special and very rare in fantasy (I love the elven ruins scene as Paks travels over the mountains as an inflection point). Battles are won or lost on tactics, shifting politics, and logistics moreso than some epic magical gimmick, which is a wonderful departure from the fantasy norm.
Her work does come with a content warning for rape, although she addresses it with more nuance and respect than any male SF/F author of her generation. Ex-evangelicals might also find her stuff hard to read, as while she's against conservative Christianity, she's very much still a Christian and that makes its way into her writing. Even if her (not bad but not radical enough) politics lead her writing into less-satisfying places at times, part of my respect for her comes from following her on Twitter for a while, where she was a pretty decent human being...
Overall, Paksenarrion is my favorite of her works, although I've enjoyed some of her sci-fi too and read the follow-up series. While it inherits some of Tolkien's baggage, Moon's ability to deeply humanize her hero and depict a believable balance between magic being real but not the answer to all problems is great.
I've reached 30 at this point, and while I've got more authors on my shortlist, I think I'll end things out tomorrow with a dump of also-rans rather than continuing to write up one per day. I may even include a man or two in that group (probably with at least non-{white cishet} perspective). Honestly, doing this challenge I first thought that sexism might have made it difficult, but here at the end I'm realizing that ironically, the misogyny that holds non-man authors to a higher standard means that (given plenty have still made it through) it's hard to think of male authors who compare with this group.
Looking back on the mostly-male authors of SF/F in my teenage years, for example, I'm now struggling to think of a single one whose work I'd recommend to my kids (having cheated and checked one of my old lists, Pratchett, Jaques, and Asimov qualify but they're outnumbered by those I'm now actively ashamed to admit I enjoyed). If I were given a choice between reading only non-men or non-woman authors for the rest of my life (yes I'm giving myself enby authors as a freebie; they're generally great) I'd very easily choose non-men. I think the only place where (to my knowledge) not enough non-men authors have been allowed through to outshine the fields of male mediocrity yet is in videogames sadly. I have a very long list of beloved games and did include some game designers here, but I'm hard-pressed to think of many other non-man game designers I'd include in the genuinely respect column (I'll include at least two tomorrow but might cheat a bit).
TL;DR: this was fun and you should do it too.
#30AuthorsNoMen

Less is More: Faster Maximum Clique Search by Work-Avoidance
Hans Vandierendonck
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22245 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.22245

Less is More: Faster Maximum Clique Search by Work-Avoidance
The maximum clique (MC) problem is a challenging graph mining problem which, due to its NP-hard nature, can take a substantial amount of execution time. The MC problem is dominated by set intersection operations similar to Maximal Clique Enumeration, however it differs in requiring to find only a clique of maximum size. As such, key to the problem is to demonstrate efficiently that a particular part of the search space does not contain a maximum clique, allowing to skip over major parts of the …

Databricks says it plans to integrate OpenAI's models, including GPT-5, into its data platform and AI product Agent Bricks, as part of a $100M multiyear deal (Rebecca Bellan/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/25/data

Databricks will bake OpenAI models into its products in $100M bet to spur enterprise adoption | TechCrunch
Databricks is on the hook to pay at least $100 million to OpenAI in this deal, even if customer usage falls short. It's a bet, but one that Databricks has already hedged.

The Shorts format on YouTube gets me 30 times more views and 2 to 3 times more new subscribers. It's fascinating. I think I could post any nonsense as a Short, and I'll still break my previous "record" :/
* I don't believe this is only due to the algo pushing hard the format (although it's a significant part of it). Besides conditioning people to favour Shorts so they would see "less" adverts, YouTube is tapping at a larger audience that would eventu…

Just finished "It's Lonely at the Center of the Earth" by Zoe Thorogood.
CW: Frank/graphic discussion of suicide and depression (not in this post but in the book).
It feels a bit wrong to simply give it my review here as I would another graphic memoir, because it's much more personal and less consensual than the usual. It feels less like Thorogood has invited us into her life than like she was forced to put her life on display in order to survive, and while I selfishly like to read into the book that she benefited in some way from the process, she's honest about how tenuous and sometimes false that claim can be. Knowing what I've learned from this book about Thorogood's life and demons, I don't want her to feel the mortification of being perceived by me, and so perhaps the best thing I could do is to simply unread the book and pull it back out of my memories.
I did not find Thorogood's life relatable, nor pitiable (although my instinct bends in that direction), but instead sacred and unknowable. I suspect that her writing and drawing has helped others in similar circumstances, but she leaves me with no illusion that this fact brings her any form of peace or joy. I wonder what she would feel reading "Lab Girl" or "The Deep Dark," but she has been honest enough to convey that such speculation on my part is a bit intrusive.
I guess the one other thing I have to say: Zoe Thorogood has through artistic perseverance developed an awe-inspiring mastery of the comic medium, from panel composition, through to page layout and writing. This book wields both Truth and Beauty.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

There's a type of guy whose only contribution at work is sheer volume of outputs, whether or not they serve any purpose. #AI tools ask us, "what if everyone could be that guy?"
It turns out that the result is bad for everyone. Systems lose their ability to evaluate whether outputs are fit for purpose. Shared intent disappears.
Scaling up trash only makes more trash. Work tha…

All your problems are people problems (Don't Just Do Things, Part 2)
If you want to do strategy, you must be willing to do process transformation first.

There's so much more to this too. Like, I have so much more time and space to consider these things. I mend clothes, when I can. I fix electronics. Part of that is having the privilege (of time) to be able to do that. How many things are broken, wasted, whatever because of all this pressure on people?
It makes the waste of the ultra rich even more stark. They have the time, the privilege, to not waste. They have the capacity to reduce their impact more than any of us, and yet they choose to use more than all of us.

Here's something new. Our train is delayed because the #PKP #InterCity train going in front of us is delayed. And apparently that train is delayed because the conductor decided to remove a passenger over him keeping his shoes against the seat opposite him.
And the real absurd part is that apparently said passenger removed the shoes upon being called on it. Yet the conductor decided to call the police to forcibly remove him anyway. On a single track line known to be filled with trains to the capacity. Causing series of delays for hours to come. With a bunch of connections on all major nodes that will cause further delays.
#rail

The Pentagon denied the AP and others access to a few news briefings, claiming they're orientation events for the new press corps, which now includes Matt Gaetz (David Bauder/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-pre…

Outlets that reach millions denied access to rare Pentagon news briefings
It's not often Pentagon officials hold briefings for the press, but they are this week — although outlets that reach millions of news consumers have been denied access. Instead, press meetings with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and press representative Kingsley Wilson are being characterized by the Pentagon as part of orientation sessions for newly credentialed Pentagon press. Most mainstream outlets exited the Pentagon this fall rather than agree to rules they worried would restrict them fr…

A federal judge on Wednesday shredded the Trump administration’s shallow defense for bragging about its rampant, warrantless immigration arrests.
In an 88-page ruling, U.S. Judge Beryl Howell wrote that the Trump administration had illegally lowered the standard for making immigration arrests
when it instituted a policy of “arrest now, ask questions later” as part of the federal takeover of Washington, D.C.
Howell documented how the Department of Homeland Security and Trump …

Judge Rips Stephen Miller as “Ignorant or Incompetent, or Both”
The judge said Miller had made erroneous claims about warrantless arrests.

Day 13: Patricia C. Wrede
If you know me you know I'm not exactly a fan of monarchy-praise, even (or perhaps especially) in "fairy tales" and adjacent writing, but even though Wrede's Princess Cimorene doesn't quite completely get away from that, I still love the character and her adventures in "Dealing With Dragons" and the sequels. It's honestly pretty cool that Wrede started out writing a trope-flipping fairy-tale adventure-comedy with a male teen prince protagonist, and then decided it was much more fun to focus on a princess who takes the trope-flipping to the next level and completely abandons most of the trappings of a fairy tale in order to both have fun with what's left of the genre and develop a story centered on wholesome friendship (with a dragon) and practical solutions to improbable problems.
I read these books as a kid, and then again as an adult, and then again out loud with my wife, and I'll be reading them again before long with our kids. I'm still on the lookout for more kids books with even better politics, but Wrede's work is definitely part of a solid childhood reading foundation from my perspective.
#20AuthorsNoMen

🫧 In controversial move, LADWP says it will shift its largest gas power plant to hydrogen
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-10-controversial-ladwp-shift-largest-gas.html

In controversial move, LADWP says it will shift its largest gas power plant to hydrogen
On Oct. 28, the board of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power approved a controversial plan to convert part of the city's largest natural gas-fired power plant into one that also can burn hydrogen.

For those interested in learning more about the Galleanisti, it's worth digging in to understand the context, IMHO. Like I said, I think that insurrectionary anarchism is generally a pretty bad strategy. I have quite a few critiques, that I won't go into now. But I also think it's worth understanding that part of history and how it all came together.
https://attackthesystem.com/2021/06/05/and-they-called-them-galleanisti/

This fascinates me. Probably part of the same brain structures that inform my love of history, and my love of figuring out how to get certain old guitar tones
How to Emulate Film Grain in Your Digital Photos | PetaPixel https://petapixel.com/2025/09/19/how-t

How to Emulate Film Grain in Your Digital Photos
It's time to make this complicated topic easy to understand for all photographers chasing a nostalgic feel in their edits.

I finished "Dear Wendy" by Ann Zhao a few days ago. It's a lovely platonic "romance" that deals explicitly with aro/ace identity, post-coming-out identity work as opposed to the initial realization journey, and Wellesley College student culture (although if unlike me that's not relevant to you, it's not like you need to be interested in this to enjoy the book).
It felt slightly weird to be reading a book by someone who I'm pretty sure could have been in one of my classes (but as far as I am remember wasn't). Probably would not have read it were it a normal romance, because that would have made character empathy super awkward. In any case, it feels useful to get an inside perspective on almost-contemporary student culture, especially the part that's a reminder of how many students love the liberal and progressive aspects of said culture, despite its flaws.
Super enjoyable and honestly pretty cozy book.
#AmReading

The A.C.L.U. challenge accuses the current administration of housing small numbers of men at Guantšnamo, rather then in U.S. facilities,
as part of a messaging strategy
“to frighten immigrants, deter future migration, induce self-deportation and coerce people in detention to give up claims against removal and accept deportation elsewhere.”
It has called conditions inhumane, and the detainees’ access to legal counsel inadequate.
The administration contends that the de…

Trump Official Says U.S. Can House Migrants at All of Its Overseas Bases
A Justice Department lawyer made the claim in response to a challenge to the administration’s use of the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to hold detainees designated for deportation.

In any case, day 2: Ursula K Le Guin.
As I've said elsewhere, part of her science fiction thesis is that "human" can encompass much more than what we mere Terrans think of it as, and that moral standing extends broadly throughout the universe. This is the antithesis of Tokens fantasy, wherein "race" is real and determines moral standing. For Le Guin, it's barely okay to intervene in complex alien politics unless you carefully ensure you're not causing systemic harms; for Tolkien, it's okay to ambush and murder orc children, because they are by nature evil.
Add to her excellent politics Le Guin's masterful worldbuilding and unparalleled range of plots, and you have the one author I loved as a decidedly liberal and naïve teen and love even more now that I'm an adult. She's an absolute legend and deserves a very high place on any list of women authors (or list of authors, period.).
For a short story, try "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" which you can read here: https://www.utilitarianism.com/nu/omelas.pdf
For fantasy "A Wizard of Earthsea" (also has a nice graphic novel adaptation), or for science fiction, "The Left Hand of Darkness" or if you want a more anarchist flavor, "The Dispossessed."
I'll close this with an amazing quote from her:
"""
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.
"""

"The US is the richest country in the world!"
Oh yeah? What does its balance sheet look like?
Obviously it's absurd to ask that question, as any economist will happily explain why national debts shouldn't be treated like real money.
But it's also absurd that it's absurd to ask that question, and there's a thread to pull here: is the US "rich" because many billionaires live here? That doesn't seem to improve the lives of most of the population. Is it because our median income is so much larger than many other countries? That's in large part a product of exchange rates, since costs of living are also higher here, so is the real reason the fact that the dollar has so much purchasing power? Why does it?
Well, at some level of abstraction, exchange rates boil down to: "How much confidence do the ultra-rich place in the stability of the country" which is intimately related to: "How much military/diplomatic power does the country have?"
So... The US is the "richest" country in the world because it uses its military dominance to bully other countries and keep them down, and it also uses the resulting economic dominance to do the same. We can see this happening via US-sponsored coups, International Monetary Fund bullying, and attendant multinational corporate looting of countries with little economic power (rampant in Africa and Central America, for example).

Just to hammer this home a bit more, I knew a guy who joined the army. I met him after he went AWOL. When he went into the recruiter's office, they asked him if he had any open warrants out for his arrest because they couldn't recruit anyone with a criminal record. He said he did, then they said, "oh, actually, we can help you with all that, don't get caught before we ship you out."
He was just trying to keep himself out of jail. That's not supposed to happen, but it does. IIRC it was on a drug charge, which, also, they're not supposed to take anyone who tests positive for weed... but they also just tell you how to prepare for a drug test.
Another friend joined because she wanted to be part Army Corps of Engineers. A good chunk of the folks I went to school with joined the military after graduation because the other choices were working at the saw mill or working at the canary. If you join the military, you get to go to college. (Or you get to stay out of jail... as long as you don't go AWOL.)

Just finished "Dreams from Many Rivers" by Margarita Engle. It's a Latin-American history of the United States, written in poems that take on the points of view of a number of both fictional and actual people. It starts with the arrival of Spanish colonists in Puerto Rico, which was in fact the first part of the present-day States to experience European colonialism.
Its super informative and a great read to appreciate the complexities of history that ICE and the US white supremacist movement are trying to sweep under the rug. Like how the fuck do you deport a person whose indigenous and then Mexican ancestors lived in Arizona for centuries but now that it's claimed by the US since they speak Spanish they're "foreign."
It's a pretty quick read since it's a lot of short poems, and it's got lovely illustrations by Beatriz Gutierrez Hernandez.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Day 26: Emily Short
If you know who Short is, you know exactly why she's on this list. If you don't, you're probably in the majority. She's an absolutely legendary author within the interactive fiction (IF) community, which gets somewhat pigeonholed by stuff like Zork when there's actually a huge range of stuff in the medium some of which isn't even puzzle-focused, and Short has been writing & coding on the bleeding edge of things for decades.
I was lucky enough to be introduced to Short's work in graduate school, where we played "Galatea" as part of an interactive fiction class. Short uses a lot of clever parser tricks to make your conversation with a statue feel very fluid and conversational, giving to contemporary audiences a great example of how vibrant interaction with a well-designed agent can be in contrast to an LLM, if you're willing to put in some work on bespoke parsing & responses (although the user does need to know basic IF conventions). While I didn't explore the full range of Galatea's many possible outcomes, it left a strong impression on me as a vision for what IF could be besides dorky puzzles, and I think that "visionary" is a great term to describe Short.
If you'd like you get a feel for her (very early) work, you can play Galatea here: #30AuthorsNoMen

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting agreed Monday to
fulfill a $36 million, multi-year contract with NPR
that it had yanked after pressure from the Trump White House.
The arrangement resolves litigation filed by NPR accusing the corporation of
illegally yielding to Trump's demands that the network be financially punished for its news coverage.
The argument, part of a broader lawsuit by NPR and several stations against the Trump administration,
focu…

And if you really want to push candidates left, you do what the Black Panthers did. You provide the service you want to see so the government is forced to play catch up. If you build the world you want to see, you force the state to follow you in order to remain relevant. You make enforcing unjust laws impossible while providing the service to believe should exist. THAT is direct action that wins.
Edit: and that is also shit that will get you killed. If you want to stop fascism, you have to do the real work. Voting can only matter if it's part of a larger strategy to force the system to do what you want. Otherwise you're just legitimizing the managed resistance.

Part of why #Trump has always been so hard to pin down politically is that he was always representing highly conflicting interests. Now, as that eats him alive, the GOP is fracturing in to two main groups: the Pinochet/Franco wing and the Hitler wing.
The Pinochet/Franco wing (let's call them PF) are lead by Vance. PF are also a coalition with some competing interests, but basically it's evangelical leaders, Opus Dei (fascist catholics), tech fascists (Yarvinites), pharma, and the other normal big republican donors. They support Israel, some because apartheid is extremely profitable and some because they support the genocide of Palestinian in order to bring the end of the world. They are split between extremely antisemitic evangelicals and Zionists, wanting similar things for completely different reasons. PF wants strong immigration enforcement because it lets them exploit immigrants, they don't want actual ethnic cleansing (just the constant threat). They want H1B visas because they want to a precarious tech work force. They want to end tariffs because they support free trade and don't actually care about things being made here.
The Hitler wing are lead by Nick Fuentes. I think they're a more unified group, but they're going to try to pull together a coalition that I don't think can really work. They're against Israel because they believe in some bat shit antisemitic conspiracy theory (which they are trying to inject along side legitimate criticism of Israel). They are focused on release of the #EpsteinFiles because they believe that it shows that Epstein worked for Mossad. They don't think that the ICE raids are going far enough, they oppose H1Bs because they are racists. They want a full ethnic cleansing of the US where everyone who isn't "white" is either enslaved for menial labor, deported, or dead. But they're also critical of big business (partially because of conspiracy theories but also) because they think their best option is to push for a white socialism (red/brown alliance).
Both of them want to sink Trump because they see him as standing in the way of their objectives. Both see #Epstein as an opportunity. Both of them have absolutely terrifying visions of authoritarian dictatorships, but they're different dictatorships.with opposing interests. Even within these there may be opportunities to fracture these more.
While these fractures decrease the likelihood of either group getting enough people together, their vision is more clear and thus more likely to succeed if they can make that happen. Now is absolutely *not* the time to just enjoy the collapse, we need to keep up or accelerate anti-fascist efforts to avoid repeating some of the mistakes of history.
Edit:
I should not that this isn't *totally* original analysis. I'll link a video later when I have time to find it.
Here it is:
#USPol