Tootfinder

Modders have been doing some amazing things lately.
YouTuber LeggoMyFroggo put a playable Game Boy Color into a wristwatch https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/youtuber-turns-watch-into-playable-game-boy-color-after-two-years-of-wor…

YouTuber turns watch into playable Game Boy Color after two years of work
A YouTuber has managed to cram a fully working Game Boy Color into a smartwatch, turning Nintendo’s console into a unique time-keeping statement.

Sources: the Trump admin is weighing a $100K fee for foreign students seeking to work in the US after graduation; a judge blocked Trump's $100K H-1B fee in June (Michelle Hackman/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy…

Now, I don't especially like the term "church" so I may use something else... like "coven." You can do what you want. But I happen to have already mapped out an example. (It is exactly that, just an example, so take if it's useful, change if you need, and don't stick to anything too closely.) Oh, this mapping also means that you would, for religious reasons, only be allowed to work under capitalism 4 days a week instead of 5.
Given the increases in productivity over the last 100 years, a 4 day work week is a completely reasonable expectation. If we have to annex Monday for the weekend by force of religion, so be it. It is rightfully ours anyway. If enough people try it, this will probably work. If it doesn't work, it just needs more people.
The Practice of Worship:
It is recommended to break down worship in to three sections: the functional, the communal, and the spiritual. It is also recommended to break these across multiple days. A common structure for some Christian churches is to take 10-15 minutes for announcements (Functional), an hour or two for services (Spiritual), followed by (Communal) coffee, tea, and cookies for an unspecified time up to two hours after. When starting or working with limited time a single compressed model like this may work, but it's not optimal.
- The Functional
The purpose of this section is to address the functional needs of the coven. Block out time (less than 90 minute blocks is recommended) to go through reports and updates from those involved in the Dispensary, Library, Works Committee (infrastructure), and Services Committee (providing services internally and, potentially, externally). Talk through any additional announcements, including those from other covens you may be federated with.
It is helpful to include unstructured communal time, such as shared meals, during or after functional meetings. As the federation grows, more time will be needed. It is recommended to break functional meetings, work parties, and such across multiple days. When a federation becomes sufficiently large, it is recommended to take every Monday, on top of Saturday and Sunday, as a third day of community and worship.
The scope of the functional spans 3 realms (which may be more-or-less fluid): the personal or family, the coven and federation, and humanity itself. It is up to each coven and individual to negotiate how to allocate the three days of the weekend once we have liberated Monday from the work week, but it is important to reserve it for one of these three. However, some people must work on weekends. Medical personnel, for example, cannot conform to a standard work week. While the work week should be universally restricted, which specific days are used will be up to the specific coven and their members.
A functional meeting can start with an agenda like the following:
Functional Invocation
Announcements
Report Backs
Dispensary
Inventory Check
What is low
What is empty
What is expiring
What is needed
Funds status
Library
Inventory Check and Items needing return
Library acquisition requests
Funds status and budget check
Works Committee
Upcoming projects
Subcommittee updates (Following the Works Committee agenda)
New committee formations
Funds status
Services Committee
New capabilities announcements
New needs requests
Subcommittee updates (Following the Works Committee agenda)
New committee formations
Funds status
Task Check
Breaking the Circle
This agenda is a suggestion for those who don't know where to start. It can be adapted or ignored as appropriate.
- The Spiritual
Spirituality is necessarily an undefined space. It is deeply personal. Each individual taking time to share their own personal spiritual experiences can help each connect with each other. This experience of connection can itself be a spiritual experience. It may also be useful to read esoteric, mystical, or philosophical texts together as type of "book club" and share thoughts. Others may draw from their own knowledge or traditions. This is something that must be defined together within a group.
- The Communal
The communal aspect of the practice of worship bind the coven and federation together. Within the community we find joy and release, connection and comfort. The coven is where we turn in times of need, and where we share our hopes and dreams.

Finally got the 100G core switch I was waiting on. The little half rack FS switches were a nice holdover (and I'll keep them around for port expansion) but not a long term solution, not enough interfaces.
This should be big enough to actually meet my needs for a while.
Probably won't have time to set it up until after work or overnight though.

As she prepares for retirement, Arscott is mostly looking forward to traveling and spending more time with her friends and family. After years of keeping the engine of the director’s office running, she leaves behind a legacy bigger than her work. Beyond her dedication to the museum’s operations, she leaves with respect from her colleagues. 7/7

RE: https://mathstodon.xyz/@paysmaths/117009766556032942
Just like it can be proved that both BEDMAS and PEMDAS work, but I'll be getting to that after the poll closes! 😂

@…
I thought it was a photo of a real bug, had to re-read the toot after @… answer.
Great work.

I've been working on a theory that my biggest issue at work is the demarc. When I was in telecom, we all knew just where the demarc was and who was responsible for what before and after. Now it seems every project has demarcs between departments or persons, and they all disagree on where that is. I keep getting sucked into projects that need me only to move a file from A-B because person A thinks is not their job to give the file but B doesn't think its their job to go get the file.…

Raiders Signed 2 Big-Time Free Agents Cowboys Wanted: Report https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/nakobe-dean-quay-walker-cowboys-rumors/

"In 1948, after an immensely costly war but also trade union and socialist mobilisation, the share of national income going to capital was 35 per cent, much lower than it had been the 1930s. Today it is back at 45 per cent. 35 per cent today would mean another £1.4 trillion for those who work, our services and communities."
Burnham’s got a long road ahead, and the left must keep up the pressure along the way | Morning Star

US senator Mitch McConnell is still not cleared to return to work, his office confirmed on Monday,
six weeks after he was hospitalized after a fall at his home.
An update released alongside a new photograph of the Republican lawmaker – one of the highest-profile figures in Congress, as a former Senate majority leader – said he was undergoing “intense physical therapy” and is “working hard” to get back to his duties.
In the statement, he said that he wouldn’t be able to make…

Mitch McConnell still not cleared to resume Senate duties, office says
Kentucky senator has been absent and not seen in public since mid-June after he was hospitalized due to a fall

I tried to sleep in a bit this morning but, alas, it didn’t work. Still awake soon after six. Working until 10.30 pm messes up my sleep pattern. I’m usually asleep by ten. Wife’s alarm goes off just after six. That’s it then, I’m awake.

Nice. <slow clap>
▶️ 'I'm going to make my husband work hard tonight!' | Jabeur reacts after her win | Eurosport Tennis
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ap1DzlbyG00&si=0va7NoOTjYM25bP2

I had to walk home from work yesterday, an impromptu necessity and always a slog after a full day in a physical job - 40 minutes all slightly uphill 😐
As I walked through the industrial estate I spotted some gorgeous looking blackberries so I tried one and oh man they were good. So I scarfed a load of those and got a disgusted look from a passer by 😄
I'd decided I could have a choc milkshake from the local dairy's vending machine I walk past 10 mins in, and that was delic…

Letter: WGAE withdrew its sponsorship of NY film festival Urbanworld after it unveiled a new programming section for directors using generative AI in their work (Brooks Barnes/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/movies/urbanworld-writers-guild-ai.htm…

Writers Guild Withdraws Support From Film Festival Over A.I.
Urbanworld, a New York event, has added a section for movies made with A.I. tools. The union was a sponsor but has been outspoken on the dangers of A.I.

HOW AM I ONLY NOW LEARNING THAT MARY PARKER FOLLETT WAS GAY!?
#MPF

I tried to write something up to talk about an idea, but it didn't quite work. I have a lot more I need to put into it. But I want to get an idea out, and, after talking with a person who pointed out some of the flaws in what I wrote, I think I can maybe write down the kernel of the idea here.
An acquaintance of mine did a deep dive on Operational Art and wrote his thesis (which prompted an earlier set of posts and an article I wrote for my professional-ish blog) on the intersection of the OODA loop and critical philosophy. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Kilcullen's Three Pillars model (after watching Andrewism's wonderful video) and Beer's VSM. The TL;DR of it is that there's a much better insurgency model. Of course, the insurgency model also works for a bunch of other things, because cybernetics lets you do all kinds of cool abstraction like that.
So as I was reading the essay of a comrade the other day, that model popped back into my head and I'm going to try to share what I can of it.
When colonizers came to the Salish region, they saw what they believed to be an untouched wilderness. They failed to see the ways in which Salish people tended the land. Indigenous fire practices were common on the northwest coast, and the suppression of those practices remains a problem. There is an interrelationship between an environment and the systems within it. Systems, like people, animals, and cultures, adapt to the environment. In doing so, those systems will also change the environment.
Social technology was invisible, so colonizers defaulted to either some kind of Rousseauvian or Malthusian model of these people. They were not, for the colonizers, people who had developed advanced social technologies to live in harmony with their world. They were, rather, people in "a state of nature."
The European influenced left continues to draw this Rousseauvian model, which continues through a lot of Anarchist revolutionary thought. European anarchists were heavily influenced by observations and theories around the behavior of indigenous people. The remnants of this thought still exist in the idea that the system must only be destroyed for us to be free.
This is the same obliviousness to social technology, that social technology actually exists, often informs both early colonizers and modern radicals.
It is through this obliviousness that we fail to recognize how capitalism is a social technology that is managed into existence and maintained, and how changes in the environment can threaten institutions that have become over-adapted to a specific version of that environment.
We can extend Kilcullen's metaphor of a "conflict ecosystem" through cybernetics into a much more rich model, populated by viable systems. The ecosystem itself has a fitness function, which drives adaptation within the environment. But all actors in the environment also affect it. Some try to manage the environment. Revolutions are often over who manages a social ecosystem, over who controls the social technology and what it does.
Once we see this dynamic at play, calls of "riot" and "revolution" make a whole lot less sense. Rather, the question becomes, "how do we change the ecosystem in such a way that it cannot be 'managed' at all?"
Graeber/Wengrow talked about Turtle Island indigenous social technologies in Dawn of Everything, such as the system of moieties and clans described in the book. So I have a good reading list as I think through this model, but I hope the "ecosystem" model is helpful (if not completely fleshed out).
I'd be interested in any critiques or thoughts to help develop this idea more.

U.S. Weighs $100,000 Fee for Foreign Students Wanting to Work After Graduation (Michelle Hackman/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/u-s-weighs-100-000-fee-for-foreign-students-wanting-to-work-after-graduation-d0bf43d9
http://www.memeorandum.com/260730/p82#a260730p82

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MorningShow
Caroline Polachek:
🎵 Welcome to My Island (PVA remix)
#CarolinePolachek
https://stereonuke.bandcamp.com/track/caroline-polachek-welcome-to-my-island-stereonukes-after-work-edit
https://open.spotify.com/track/4bp2wYweUPvsBrQfntdYcr

What is Brussels if not a metaphor, and the redevelopment of the Schuman roundabout into a stone dessert during yet another European heatwave the kriek lambic of the spontaneous political ferment that caps it all?
https://www.euractiv.com/news/new-schuman-

New Schuman roundabout is 'worst' possible outcome, says architect | Euractiv
The symbolic EU plaza has become a barren concrete lagoon, after three years of building work

Semi-subtoot: there's a certain kind of anti-genocide narrative that draws comparisons between the Gaza genocide and the genocide of Jews, queer, and disabled people during WW2, with an incredulous overtone, the subtext of which is: if the good nations invaded Germany to stop the Nazis' evil in WW2, it's hypocritical for this nations not to take action to protect Gazan civilians now. There are a couple of problems with this line of reasoning, but the most obvious from an anarchist perspective (which sees "good nation" for the oxymoron it is) is that it's ahistorical. The reasons for the various allies' entrance into WW2 are varied, but they weren't about good and evil, and in fact the full depth of the evils of the Holocaust *was not known* in allied countries until after the war. Nations never really do things to "fight evil" like some humans might; they always act out of a kind of (imperfect) self-interest. The motivations for many of the allies were simply "we don't want Germany to conquer and destroy us" (and the imperfection in that motive is amply evident in the appeasement that preceded the war). America was of course not swayed by that motive, and it was the Japanese that (thinking the issue would have to come to a head eventually and that a surprise attack was worth speeding it up) put America in a situation where it joined for similar reasons.
Why is this extra relevant right now? Because neither the US nor any European country is existentially threatened by Israel (or threatened at all in fact, quite the opposite they're all benefiting economically from the situation in Gaza). The lesson of history isn't "brave, good nations will stand up to fight against anyone who commits genocide or other major evils", it's "nations act in their narrow and twisted and often mistaken self-interest (the interest of the national entity, which is often counter to the interest of it's citizens), and they always mythologize their actions after the fact as having been a fight against evil, which sometimes by luck is partially true."
To double down on this point: in the European theater the U.S. war actions were pretty good overall, defeating an evil opponent through military force and being a fairly gracious victor to the civilian populations there. In contrast, in the Pacific theater the U.S. was one of two evil empires duking it out for global dominance at the expense of civilians on both sides. The Japanese empire was a vile regime and perpetrated horrors in China, Korea, and across southeast Asia. The U.S. was barely better, between Japanese internment camps at home, and mass targeting of civilians on Japan, both with the firebombing of Tokyo and especially the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So if your model of how we stop genocide is "convince the good guys to invade (or exert political pressure) and save the day", your model is wrong. That's not what happened in WW2. I'm not confident I know the perfect solution, but I do think it involves a mass of people making increasingly disruptive protest so that the cost *to rich companies and thus politicians* of falling to intervene is too high to stomach. That's a large part of what succeeded in South Africa, for example. Thankfully, there is already a vibrant protest movement to end the genocide in Gaza, and even though they haven't been fully successful yet, I'm optimistic that as things naturally (and through hard work) fall apart for various fascists politically, that movement will be able to succeed.
#gaza #genocide

Kayshon Boutte to attend Patriots minicamp after missing voluntary work amid trade speculation: 'I want to be in New England' https://www.nfl.com/news/kayshon-boutte-to-attend-patriots-minic…

Mailbag: Thoughts on team after minicamp? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mailbag-thoughts-on-team-after-minicamp

Fernando Mendoza shares message for Raiders fans after signing rookie deal https://raiderswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/raiders/2026/07/23/fernando-mendoza-excited-to-get-to-work-after-signing…

I have Copilot Premium through work and I was trying to use it to troubleshoot an issue with my home server, but it suddenly gave me a restricted error after posting the out put of a command it asked me to run. Go figure. #SelfHosting #AI

I promise I won’t annoy you with any more posts about the album/collection after this, but I just had to thank Mastodon people who came to the ‘Otherscapes’ listening party yesterday. It made all the work put into it feel better. That anyone would come is encouraging, but especially that some stayed for 5, 6, 7 hours into the 11 hour release. (And to see comments come in when I woke up again a few hours later was a fun indicator of my suboptimal hours of sleep in generall. 😆)
There’s …

OpenAI says it now has 10M people using Codex and ChatGPT Work, nearly doubling usage from earlier this month when the company announced ChatGPT Work (Shirin Ghaffary/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07…

One last example:
The first LLM code example that really made my eyes pop was early after the release of GPT, when somebody got it to combine Breakout with Conway’s Game of Life (a truly delightful idea). It worked!
Funny thing: the Breakout code and the Life code had a •completely• different style and flavor. Red flag. In about 15 minutes of web searching, I was able to find one of the projects (can’t remember if it was the Breakout or the Life half) which it had copied wholesale, with just a few variable renames. And the other half? It was in Python, but it used dictionaries where it really should have used objects — tons of `thing["prop"]` where it should have said `thing.prop`, and lots of other un-Pythonic stuff besides. It was a machine translate of code from another language, very likely Javascript.
The entire thing was a plagiarized Breakout and a plagiarized Game of Life, one transpiled, and all stuck together in a single run loop. To be fair, figuring out how to (1) run both halves of the logic from a single loop and (2) count the Life cells as Breakout bricks is work I'd cheer on from a second-semester intro CS student! It's not, however, quite what's being sold by these companies.
6/

from my link log —
A new suite of modern tools for editing and publishing IETF RFCs.
https://www.ietf.org/blog/new-tools-coming-for-editing-and-publishing-rfcs/
saved 2026-05-23

A new suite of modern tools coming for editing and publishing RFCs
After a number of years of work, the initial rollout of a modern suite of tools for editing and publishing RFCs, including an entirely new rfc-editor.org website, will take place in May 2026.

I do lots of long-ish horizon work (e.g. OpenSSL PRs I can't actually use for years after merging). Remarkable how bad LLMs are at even considering this as an option. Quick fix every time, even if there's a clear long-term right answer we should do instead. Does not bode well for the ecosystem...

I went to water the rose bushes after work. There was a cat napping underneath one. They moved out of the way and watched me from around the corner. Hopefully it cools them off. I presume that they went back into the rose bushes after I finished.

Kaleeshabi Mahaboob and Mahaboob Subhani are from Naadaswaram families. He stopped playing to work but resumed after seeing her concerts. Married, she helped him prep for a concert and they played together (only) for 25 years, until his death (2026).
https://www-thehindu-com.translate.goog/society/padma-shri-winners-sheik-mahaboob-subhani-and-kaleeshabi-mahaboobs-tryst-with-the-nadaswaram-padma-bhushan-awardee-krishnammal-jagannathans-efforts-to-promote-social-equality-through-land-reforms/article30703019.ece?_x_tr_sl=en&_x_tr_tl=te&_x_tr_hl=te&_x_tr_pto=tc

Back to work today after my first sick day in 18 months. Not at full power, still full of snot, but probably well enough to push gravel around on a tray #EnvironmentalArchaeology

Reuters' staff union files an unfair labor practices complaint with the NLRB, saying a producer's contract ended after he discussed Reuters' ICE ties internally (Angela Fu/Poynter)
https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2026/reuters-ret…

Reuters retaliated against a journalist for raising concerns about the company’s ties to ICE, union alleges - Poynter
The union says the contractor was investigated after participating in internal chats about Thomson Reuters’ DHS contracts

So I ran into one drawback to buying a "new" motorcycle that's left over from a couple years ago. Started getting "check battery" messages on the dash a couple days after bringing the Super Meteor home, then came out of work to a dead battery on Monday. Jumped it and got home, put it on the trickle charger and it took a charge, but not enough amperage to even start the bike. He's dead, Jim.
Don't get me started on the cost of batteries these days. I had …

Five people have reportedly been arrested for vandalizing Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in Washington DC,
with Donald Trump insisting repair work will begin “immediately”.
CBS News reporter Emma Nicholson tweeted on Sunday that an administration official told her five people had been arrested for vandalizing the pool
and another five issued federal citations,
bringing the total number of police reports filed to 14, including one related to an alleged 250ft gash in …

I will be so glad when the members are back from leave and we get the new person up-to-speed. Multiple Impact Assessments for several Change Requests and Request For Change. Regular on-call tasks. Forty-eight (and count) security requests. Multiple questions on several subjects for the system.
I AM NOT APOLOGIZING to anyone about the speed I am working at after ten hours of work (and at least four more to go). I have a triage list and if you are not in the top sixteen items on the…

I live near Monterey Park, a city that successfully banned data centers after a developer tried to build one there as sneakily as possible but this shit happens at such insane speeds I have a persistent fear that I'll wake up one day and the water and power just won't work because a data center took over my city over night

- Ordained ministers selected after completing prescribed courses of study
You've read through this whole thread. Congratulations, you're ordained! Wow, that was a lot of hard work. I'm glad you made it. Now you can call yourself "Reverend" or "Jedi" or whatever the fuck you want. Make yourself a little document in Paint with your name on it, print it out, and frame it.
Seriously though, it can be that simple. It just needs to exist and end with some kind of accreditation that's tracked somehow. That study can also be "forming the coven" and the tracking can just completely overlap with the legal paperwork needed for the whole "ecclesiastical government" bit.

One of the views of a recent hike. After quite a while I reached the ridge and finally got the south bound views.
I took some photos while having a little rest and then went on to the summit ...
That day I really noticed how great the rests work together with making photos. And also one of the things that I can hardly do when hiking in a group.
some more of the story:

Breakfast even more off kilter today, so it was just oatmeal with egg bacon tea coffee. A play tonight after work. #TogetherBreakfast https://photos.app.goo.gl/rWQPVqBdJhwuchEs8

The title: 'mothers are America's strength - women can lead boldly at work while restoring the honor of motherhood.' Sounds kinda nazi to me.
WaPo loses subscriptions and receives criticism after publishing Melania-bylined column - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/wapo-loses-subscriptions-and-receives-criticism-after-publishing-melania-bylined-column/

The wee one went back to preschool today after a week off.
I love him to bits, but my goodness, just having a few uninterrupted hours in which to work is amazing!
He was all clear to go back yesterday but husband was not yet up to driving him then. (The round trip takes about an hour - husband has to do it twice a day!)
#Grandparenting

Mailbag: Thoughts on team after minicamp? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mailbag-thoughts-on-team-after-minicamp

After a lot of work, some great inspiration feedback, and help, I can finally present to you
27 o'clock!
This album describes the feelings of the all-nighters I had to go through
The cover art was done by rockybird, huge thanks for the help!
If you download the album from Bandcamp, you will be able to see the bonus cover art included.
htt…

"The Air Force is scrambling to get employees across the service back online after weeks of rolling cybersecurity quarantines locked numerous troops and civilians out of their computers, sometimes for days."
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense

Air Force network lockouts hit troops and civilians
Air Force employees are being locked out of their computers as cybersecurity quarantines tied to software updates disrupt work across bases and the Pentagon.

Time-shifted to watch with my son, who was at work today. We managed, somehow, to stay spoiler-free. 🎉 🙌
Spain were the better team, by far, although the first half was relatively even. Any real hope Argentina had evaporated after Enzo Fernandez’s ridiculously stupid challenge. That late, while carrying a yellow?!? The only question was whether Argentina could steal it via PKs. The way Martinez was playing, you could see it.
Happily, it was decided in open play.

Seriously, this.
So what, you show up the first day and they’re like “welcome to Yale, here’s your AI ‘yAIe’ assistant who will be doing all your work for you” and I go fuck off drinking and perusing sex clubs for 4 years while hoping “yAIe” manages to get me a degree‽
Is College AI…
https://

jenny tightpants (@jtp.bsky.social)
after reading a bit about the state of college in the era of LLMs my honest reaction is what's even the point of college anymore. this isn't me saying LLMs are epic and replacing the need for college. but it sounds like it's just a place where you go to and play pretend now. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

In 2011, after Con/LD coalition came into government, Damian Green posed for photos showing him shedding the hard drives from the Labour government's ID card scheme. (Labour Junior Minister for delivery, one A. Burnham)
Over the next few years Conservatives introduced legislation making photo identity documents a legal requirement for citizens - right to work, right to rent, voting, tightened licensing meaning pubs and clubs introduced mandatory ID checks, so on. But no actual ID c…

The word for Sunday in Slavic languages (e.g. "niedziela" in Polish) stems from "do not work" which refers to how everything's broken after Friday's push to production.
#shitposting

"#Nobel laureate Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was born 116 years ago today. The legend among legends in #crystallography, she cracked the 27 atom structure of penicillin, and then the 181 atom structure of vitamin B12, and THEN the 788 atom structure of insulin. "
See "Monarch of Crys…

Monarch of Crystallography: Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin and the Structure of Large Molecules.
Two scientists.Two crystallographers.Both successful, but one died young after her most significant discovery was snatched from her, while the other lived to a ripe old age after a string of ground-breaking discoveries and a Nobel Prize. The former, Rosalind Franklin, is a household name. But the latter, in spite of the foundational importance of her work, has always remained on the fringe of our cultural perception: Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910-1994).  It is one of the truly frustrating …

Hey there! Long time no see. Haven't forgotten about fedi but I've had so much on my plate as of lately. I was fired alongside half of my team last month, which kind of took me off guard and made me change a lot of my plans. I hated my job, so overall it was something good, but after 8 years working at the same place it's hard to not feel lost now. I'm taking this chance to take things easy for a month, work on my projects, and hang out with my friends. After that I guess I…

In the first post of this series, I focused on the project foundations: what should I do to create a video from photos taken from the same position year after year? I dedicated the second part to aligning images. It wasn’t as easy as I expected. I stumbled upon new concepts, such as ORB and RANSAC.
In this third and final post, I want to tackle the #video creation itself, explain some "

I had the opportunity to write a chapter for the handbook *The Global Business of Education*, edited by Marcelo Parreira do Amaral, Sieglinde Jornitz, and S. Karin Amos.
“People Farming in Academia” analyzes how the increasing datafication of academia is increasingly modeling it after the platform economy as we know it - with all the accompanying phenomena: vendor lock-in, precarity, ghost work, geopolitical interference, and an increasingly questionable relationship with factual accur…

More #gitlab hate: If you open an issue^w work item I cannot use arrow keys or page-down to navigate the text. After I click into the description, it works. Why do devs actively break useful default browser behaviour?

MX Linux seems to be a very polished product in the sense that a lot of work has clearly gone into it - and into trying to make it pretty friendly. At least compared to how things used to be. On the other hand it also very much feels like late 90s Linux where everything is cobbled together from all kinds of bits and things are named after application names rather than features. It is kind of fun to have to figure things out this way. Mint/Fedora etc. are so polished these days, you rarely ha…

Moved a child out of her Boston/Brookline border apt yesterday-today, biked some stuff home last night after work, then drove over to pick up all the stuff that would not benefit from being rattled around on our lovely roads, then returned on bike to get all the large lumpy stuff that would be harder to fit into a Honda Civic.
Moved her to Boston like this two years ago (no e-assist), then moved from Boston to Brookline a year ago (with e-assist), now this year (again with e-assist).…

#Shitpost #Shitposting #ShamelesslyStolenFromTheOtherSite

Titans QB Cam Ward expects 'explosive year' from first-round rookie WR Carnell Tate https://www.nfl.com/news/titans-qb-cam-ward-expects-explosive-year-from-first-round-rookie-wr-carnell-tate

Little warm getting in the car after work today. 🫠

The DOJ withdraws subpoenas that would have forced three NYT reporters to testify about sources, after a federal judge criticized the DOJ for sloppy legal work (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/usmediatimesair-force-one-42429e4d4da8accc42b6c3…

Government withdraws subpoenas of 3 reporters for The New York Times
The government has withdrawn subpoenas that would have compelled three New York Times reporters to testify about their sources for articles about President Donald Trump’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet. The withdrawals in U.S. District Court followed a remarkable back and forth between a visibly irritated Judge Arun Subramanian and government attorneys. They come at a time when the Trump administration is vigorously going after news organizations whose reporting and coverage it doesn’t lik…

The family of US billionaire
James ‘Fergie’ Cox Chambers Jr.,
who was arrested in Ibiza at the request of the United States,
claimed on Monday that his extradition is the result of
“political persecution” by the Trump administration
due to the philanthropist’s support for the Palestinian cause.
The family has therefore called for action to be taken against his handover to the US authorities.

In a statement sent to EFE, the family reported that Chambe…

United States billionaire family denounces “political persecution” by the Trump administration after son’s arrest in Ibiza
Chambers’ partner, Stella Schnabel, states in the press release that the businessman is being imprisoned “because he uses his wealth to support Palestine and those suffering genocide in Gaza” and believes he is facing political persecution for his humanitarian work.

Intel stock jumps around 9% in premarket trading, after Trump said "Apple has agreed to work with Intel to design and build its Chips in America" (Kai Nicol-Schwarz/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/18/trump-intel-apple-chip-design-deal.html

Intel rises 9% after Trump says company will partner with Apple on U.S. chip design
The boost continues Intel's recent rally as the chipmaker bounces back from years of headwinds.

Yeah, 8,000 layoffs & 7,000 internal transfers tend to piss people off.
✅ Meta AI Reshuffle Sparks Employee Morale Revolt
https://winbuzzer.com/2026/06/21/meta-ai-reshuffle-sparks-reported-employee-morale-revolt-xcxwbn/

Meta AI Reshuffle Sparks Employee Morale Revolt
Meta's AI reorganization has reportedly deepened morale problems after 8,000 layoffs and 7,000 internal transfers, testing control over AI-support work.

Back to the salt mine tomorrow. It’s been a pleasant break. My wife is working today, and I’m having a quiet day indoors by myself. She’s going out with a friend after work, so I don’t need to make dinner.

Sports Illustrated deleted the profile and articles of writer Parker Loverich, after Sportico editor Dan Bernstein accused Sports Illustrated of plagiarism (Maggie Harrison Dupré/Futurism)
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sp…

Sports Illustrated Deletes Entire Author After Accusation of AI Plagiarism
Sports Illustrated deleted an author, and his entire archive of published work, after allegations of AI plagiarism.

My first task at work after a long weekend is to draft an answer to a complicated question. (Exactly what does your 150k node script do to these 5 files?)

Dak Prescott on George Pickens signing franchise tag, offseason work together https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/dak-prescott-on-george-pickens-signing-franchise-tag-offseason-work-together

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Caroline Polachek:
🎵 Welcome to My Island (PVA remix)
#CarolinePolachek
https://stereonuke.bandcamp.com/track/caroline-polachek-welcome-to-my-island-stereonukes-after-work-edit
https://open.spotify.com/track/4bp2wYweUPvsBrQfntdYcr

A proposed constellation of satellites has astronomers very worried.
Unlike satellites that reflect sunlight and produce light pollution as an unfortunate byproduct,
the ones by US startup
"Reflect Orbital" would produce light pollution by design.
The company promises to produce “sunlight on demand” with mirrors that beam sunlight down to Earth so solar farms can operate after sunset.
It plans to start with an 18-metre test satellite named Earendil-1

A US startup plans to deliver ‘sunlight on demand’ after dark. Can it work – and would we want it to?
Satellites beaming sunlight down to Earth sound like science fiction – and they have astronomers very worried.

Falcons QB Michael Penix not cleared for 11-on-11 work, James Pearce limited at minicamp https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7366104/2026/06/16/atlanta-falcons-michael-penix-james-pearce-minicamp/

Brazil takes its National Civil Defense warning platform offline after suspected hackers send an unauthorized alert to mobile phones in several states (Mariana Catacci/CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/20/americas/brazil-hackers-unauthorized-alert-latam

Hackers suspected to be behind unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil
An unauthorized alert bearing a mysterious message that was sent to cell phones in several states across Brazil on Saturday morning is suspected to be the work of hackers, the Brazilian government said.

The first record of the parable commonly known as the "Blind Men and the Elephant" showed up around 2500 years ago, in a Buddhist text from India. At this point it's pretty commonly known. I assume that most folks reading this will be familiar with some variation of it.
If not, it's essentially a story about people who have limited information making assertions about something: one man grabs a tail and says, "it's like a rope," another the trunk and says, "it's like a snake," a third the leg saying, "it's like a tree," and so on. Later variations are less kind to the men, having them not simply report their findings, but fight over them. The first English translation draws a parallel to religion.
This comes to mind for me, because social media has a tendency to incentivize us to make those hard assertions, to dig in, to argue our perspective as part of a spectacle. Free and federated social media isn't structurally that different from corporate media, so the incentive models built to maximize engagement by maximizing conflict tend to leak through the similarities in the user experience and the conditioning of other platforms.
I didn't really come here to critique the fediverse, but rather to remind everyone, "no one sees the whole fucking elephant." We are limited and there are necessarily some things so big they will never be individually comprehensible. Any system that relies on us all agreeing cannot possibly respond to those big things.
We can see that concretely if we look at the difference between "democratic unity" and "diversity of tactics." In the first model, everyone either agrees or gets forced to behave as though they agree (at least on some issues). That's how liberal democracy works. Diversity of tactics (which systematically described, for example, in the "St Paul Principles"), on the other hand, let's people align on goals without needing to agree on exactly how to achieve them. The reality being that often there are multiple "correct" paths, and sometimes those paths can only work if multiple paths are taken in unison.
No one sees the whole elephant. We won't even see the elephant later. People will still be arguing about the elephant long after it's gone. But if you want to get rid of the elephant, you're gonna need to accept that you can't comprehend it all and you're gonna have to figure out a way to work together that doesn't require a unified approach.

Managed to get just a little bit ahead in my classes, so I did a small bit of work on #Sunstone today after work. The feature I just added is bookmarks in the sidebar. Works decently well so far, but I'll eventually be adding a setting to choose whether it opens bookmark links in the current tab or in a new tab (right now it defaults to a new tab). There is a history tab in the sidebar w…

AI made it easy to start work.
It did not make it easy to finish it.
Daily Pull Request contexts per developer are up 67.4%.
Work restarts, tasks that return to in-progress after moving to another stage, are up 13.8%.
26% more in-progress tasks show no activity for seven or more days:
i.e. work was started, claimed capacity, and then stalled.
The developer productivity picture that AI tools present at the individual level is one of acceleration.
The w…

The AI Engineering Report 2026: The AI Acceleration Whiplash - Ten Takeaways
What two years of telemetry data from 22,000 developers reveals about AI's real impact on developer productivity, code quality, and business risk in 2026.

Indiegraf acquires News Revenue Hub's donation management tool RevEngine, its third acquisition in three months after Hearken and Stylebot (Angela Fu/Poynter)
https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2026/indiegraf-newsroom-acquires-revengi…

As funding dollars dwindle, newsroom tech companies are heeding the call for consolidation - Poynter
Indiegraf, known for its content management system, has made acquisitions a part of its strategy to help promote newsroom independence

Granta and the Commonwealth Foundation say they can't determine yet if AI was used to write a prize-winning short story after critics pointed to signs of AI use (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may…

Jim Schwartz on leaving Browns: 'A forced marriage isn’t going to work in the NFL' https://www.nfl.com/news/jim-schwartz-on-leaving-browns-a-forced-marriage-isn-t-going-to-work-in-the-nfl

Biggest Dallas Cowboys Winners and Losers After the 2026 Draft https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/onsi/biggest-dallas-cowboys-winners-losers-after-2026-draft

As of Friday, CBS News will no longer provide a syndicated radio news service
-- after almost a century on the air.
My grandfather built the CBS News Radio network and then the CBS Television networks.
The enterprise blossomed into the empire that CBS would become.
News had always been a primary focus of the Tiffany Network, as embodied by the work of Edward R Murrow, Walter Cronkite and programs like 60 Minutes.

Samsung Electronics rejects a labor union-accepted mediation proposal, raising the prospect of a workers' strike; a general work stoppage will proceed on May 21 (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05…

Mullin threatens states that refuse Trump's election demands
Mullin also repeated his threat of withholding Federal Emergency Management Agency grant funding to states that don’t work to “secure” elections.
“If they’re not willing to do it, it should raise serious questions.
It’s not that hard. This isn’t a partisan issue,”
the homeland security secretary said.
This also comes after the Trump justice department sent letters to election officials in every sta…

DHS chief threatens states that refuse Trump’s election demands after president’s widely condemned speech – live
Markwayne Mullin follows up on president’s unproven claims as Democrats accuse Trump of ‘working to rig the midterms’ in advance

Staff memo: Meta plans to limit employee token usage and encourage employees to use MetaCode, after internal AI spending forecasts reached billions for 2026 (Jyoti Mann/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/to

Tokenminimizing: Meta Moves to Curb Employee AI Usage as AI Costs Reach Billions
Meta Platforms plans to clamp down on skyrocketing AI costs inside the company by imposing limits on employees’ token usage, the company told staff in a memo on Tuesday, just weeks after it pushed them to adopt AI tools in their work. The company is building an internal platform to track ...

Granta and the Commonwealth Foundation say they can't determine yet if AI was used to write a prize-winning short story after critics pointed to signs of AI use (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may…

In Iran, at least 3,468 people were killed over several weeks of U.S.-Israeli strikes.
Recovery for Iran is expected to be costly after the strikes hit critical infrastructure like bridges, manufacturing, and oil depots, as well as civilian infrastructure like hospitals and schools.
As part of the agreement signed this week, the U.S. has said it would work with regional partners create a $300 billion reconstruction fund.
Meanwhile, in the U.S.:
as Trump seeks nearly $1.…

Trump May Be Drawing Down Iran War, But He’s Demanding Billions More for Bombs
The GOP is souring on Trump’s $1.5 trillion military budget as the president pushes for yet another reconciliation bill.

Sam Altman says OpenAI offered to invest $2M in tokens in each startup in the current YC batch; a source says the offer is in exchange for equity via SAFE (Jemima McEvoy/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/sam-altman…

Sam Altman Offers YC Founders $2 Million in OpenAI Tokens For Equity
OpenAI cofounder and CEO Sam Altman late Tuesday offered to invest $2 million in every startup currently in the Y Combinator startup accelerator program—not in cash, but in OpenAI tokens. “I am excited to see what will happen with tokenmaxxing startups, both for how they work internally and the products they can build,” Altman posted on X after unveiling the offer in a talk to YC founders

New York magazine is reviewing the past work of contract writer Ross Barkan after his story on Ben Shapiro appeared to copy a WaPo piece published days earlier (Bobby Allyn/NPR)
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/17/nx-s1-5824503/new-york-magazine-review-ross-barka…

Officially an engraver and accorded the lowly status thereof,
William Blake devoted his labors to realizing his elaborately idiosyncratic visions using images and words together in ways that no artist had done before.
Blake swam against the current “of modern human understanding, whose bedrock is the principle of specialization.”
Today, nearly two centuries after his death, that principle still obtains -- and in some ways more rigidly than ever.
But his work remains,

The Radical, Unclassifiable Art of William Blake
William Blake is a household name, or not far from it, but things get more complicated when it comes to professional description. He was a poet, a painter, and a printmaker, at least insofar as he wrote poetry, painted paintings, and made prints.

Source: Mistral AI and TML's founding member Devendra Chaplot, who was considered a marquee hire when he joined xAI in March, exited xAI after roughly a month (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/cursor-staff-meet-xai-emplo…

Cursor Staff Meet With xAI Employees as Layoffs, Exits Mount
Cursor is already starting to make its presence known at SpaceX’s AI unit, just weeks after Elon Musk’s firm got an option to buy the coding startup for $60 billion. Cursor staffers have been visiting xAI offices to meet with employees and discuss their work, according to two people with direct ...

Sen. Mitch McConnell on Sunday revealed for the first time that a fall led to his hospitalization,
breaking the silence about his condition after weeks of mounting speculation about the Kentucky Republican’s health.
McConnell, 84, said in a statement that he was “briefly unconscious” around the time he was first taken to the hospital
and has undergone a battery of tests to try and determine what led to his fall.
He said he was also treated for mild pneumonia and has b…

Sen. Mitch McConnell says a fall led to his hospitalization
Sen. Mitch McConnell has for the first time revealed what led to his hospitalization. McConnell, 84, in a statement Sunday said a fall was what landed him in the hospital four weeks ago. The statement comes after weeks of mounting speculation about the Kentucky Republican's health. McConnell explained his long silence as being hesitant to "share the vulnerability that comes with growing older.” McConnell said he will not be returning to the Senate “quite yet” but continues to work with hi…

Sources: in a reshuffle, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky will lead Microsoft's new Work Experiences Group, including Teams, after 35-year veteran Rajesh Jha retired (Tom Warren/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/tech/924931/microsoft-office-copilot-window…

Microsoft’s Office and LinkedIn chief now runs Teams in latest reshuffle
Microsoft is reshuffling its Microsoft 365 teams again. It’s part of a reorganization after the departure of long-time exec Rajesh Jha.

The Salt Lake Tribune drops its paywall, moving from a subscriber model to a member-driven one after turning nonprofit in 2019 and finding financial stability (Salt Lake Tribune)
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2026/05/15/why-salt-lake-tribune-dropped-its/

First, let’s talk about “grokking”.
In 2022, OpenAI published a paper showing that if you train a model on a simple dataset
(for instance, a simple mathematical operation like division),
and keep training it long after the training looks like it’s stalled out,
the model will suddenly make a massive jump in capability.
Why does this work?
The first stage of training is like rote memorization:
the model has to compress as much of the training data as…

Overtraining as the path to human-like AI

Sources: six months after acquiring Rivos, Meta is struggling to integrate the chip startup and halted development of a chip for training its largest AI models (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/meta-bought-rivos-accelerate-ai-…

Meta Bought Rivos to Accelerate Its AI Chip Push. It Isn’t Working.
Meta Platforms bought semiconductor startup Rivos last year to accelerate development of in-house chips and reduce its reliance on Nvidia as it pours cash into data centers for its AI ambitions. Now six months since the acquisition closed, Meta is struggling to make it work, beset by problems ...

The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed without evidence that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool’s peeling lining was the work of vandals.
An independent analysis has concluded otherwise.
After reviewing photographs and satellite imagery, and speaking with experts,
The Washington Post found that the extensive gashes in the pool liner were likely the result of improper application.
The Thursday report noted that the tears appeared in at least seven places

Reflecting Pool peeling probably caused by application flaws, experts say
President Donald Trump has blamed vandals, but a Washington Post analysis finds that the peeling tracks closely with stages of the renovation process.

Sources: Alibaba has banned employees from using Claude Code and asked them to remove all Claude models from their work computers, citing security concerns (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/alibaba-bans-employees-using-claude

Alibaba Bans Employees From Using Claude
Alibaba Group has banned employees from using Anthropic’s Claude Code, and asked them to remove all Claude models from their work computers, according to two employees with knowledge of the matter. Alibaba told some employees Friday that the ban is due to security concerns about Anthropic, after a recent controversy over Claude Code’s hidden code that was capable of tracking whether the user

As the implementation of AI disrupts dozens of industries,
it isn’t surprising that a crop of recent television shows and movies are depicting the villainy of this rapidly changing technology.
After all, screenwriters have been at the forefront of this fight. 
“We were on the front lines as both the people who are being stolen from,
and the people whose work is being used to eliminate them,”
Carolyn Lipka, who co-wrote Hacks’ QuikScribbl episode, told The Flytr…

Screenwriters Hate AI, and Who Can Blame Them?
The creative process is challenging for a reason—it makes stories better, and more human.

Sources: Cursor is building a general-purpose AI agent codenamed Sand, aimed at non-developers, that handles emails, texts, and documents to rival Claude Cowork (Grace Kay/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/cursor-developing-ai-a…

Cursor Is Developing an AI Agent to Compete With Claude Cowork
Cursor is developing a general-purpose AI agent meant to compete with popular tools like Anthropic’s Claude Cowork, two people familiar with the project said, part of a broader push by the company to diversify beyond coding-focused tools. Work on the new agent began after Cursor started leasing ...