Tootfinder

So there is a delivery company in Norway called Helthjem, which means something like all the way home or completely home. The idea being that so many delivery companies here actually fail to deliver to you home and make you pick up from a drop off point.
They just send me this text:
Hi! The package from GPN cannot be delivered to your home. It is being sent to Linderud Flower shop. You will be notified when it can be picked up. Tracking number: [redacted] Regards, Helthjem

Friday was an adventure in tech futility. Started with a gifted laptop, Dell Latitude, and the simple task of wiping its poor excuse for an OS and installing something sensible.
#Ubuntu wasn't it. OMG Ubuntu, what HAVE you done?! Tried first #UbuntuStudio then stock Ubuntu, 24.04, 25.04, 25.11, all the installers simply hung, no log, no journalctl, CPU chugging but nada detectable action, even hours later, just "Preparing…"
Net advice is old, of course, but points to the snap bootstrap service, fix has no effect but Kee-riced look at the mount table?! Snaps crackle and pop all over! Wtf, why? 🤯
And it is tedious. These 'DVD' iso files are 7GB, so, after 6 hours frustration, I thought, let's try something smaller to cut the turnaround time. #Debian13 simple bare-bones net-install seemed a good candidate …
And it was. Seemless install. 😊

Turned on #Christmas Pandora playlist for the first time this year. And of course the first song was all about it being ok to abuse peers for being different and having the authority figure ignore it until he needs you for something important for him, not because it's wrong.
The "Now that we know your difference is useful we'll stop treating you like shit and pretend it never happened" is a perfect topper.
Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a great lesson for children. /sarcasm
#autistic #neurospicy

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

Spot the difference from yesterday? More framSpot the difference from yesterday? More framework over the top by the ceiling and around the windows ready for the mirrored door blinds.
Bought more wood struts. Had quite a comedy farce trying to get the things into the house now the build cupboards prevent them entering the room. Had to carry them around into the garden then in through the back door and up into the kitchen to get the angle to enter the bedroom.
The company sending the new paint had emailed saying that they don't do varnish in the colours they had allowed us to order, so asked for whatever blues they do have. That did not arrive today. Nor did the extra wood that was set for "early" this week.
Making all these doors is going to take ages and I suggested that seems like something that could be done working from home. He's probably got a proper workshop there even. Carpenter suggests his boss won't allow such things though. 🙄 Bosses eh? They do like their staff to be monitored even if only by the client.ework over the top by the ceiling and around the windows ready for the mirrored door blinds.
Bought more wood struts. Had quite a comedy farce trying to get the things into the house now the build cupboards prevent them entering the room. Had to carry them around into the garden then in through the back door and up into the kitchen to get the angle to enter the bedroom.
The company sending the new paint had emailed saying that they don't do varnish in the colours they had allowed us to order, so asked for whatever blues they do have. That did not arrive today. Nor did the extra wood that was set for "early" this week.
Making all these doors is going to take ages and I suggested that seems like something that could be done working from home. He's probably got a proper workshop there even. Carpenter suggests his boss won't allow such things though. 🙄 Bosses eh? They do like their staff to be monitored even if only by the client.

Prompted by the inability to locate a dongle I _knew_ I had, I embarked on a major purge / organization of my tech accessories. What's the point of having something if you can’t locate it when you need it?
I was ruthless.
All power adapters < 15W GONE - life’s too short
All non USB-C cables GONE (I have a few adapters USB-C to just about every legacy USB plug and Lightning pictured)
Waiting on a couple bins to finish up, but everything will be in a labeled bin s…

After #Trump finally crashes and burns (I'm still saying I don't think he makes it to the mid terms, and I think it's more than possible he won't make it to the end of the year) we'll hear a lot of people say, "the system worked!" Today people are already talking about "saving democracy" by fighting back. This will become a big rally cry to vote (for Democrats, specifically), and the complete failure of the system will be held up as the best evidence for even greater investment in it.
I just want to point out that American democracy gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile, who, before being elected was already a well known sexual predator, and who made the campaign promise to commit genocide. He then preceded to commit genocide. And like, I don't care that he's "only" kidnaped and disappeared a few thousand brown people. That's still genocide. Even if you don't kill every member of a targeted group, any attempt to do so is still "committing genocide." Trump said he would commit genocide, then he hired all the "let's go do a race war" guys he could find and *paid* them to go do a race war. And, even now as this deranged monster is crashing out, he is still authorized to use the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
He committed genocide during his first term when his administration separated migrant parents and children, then adopted those children out to other parents. That's technically genocide. The point was to destroy the very people been sending right wing terror squads after.
There was a peaceful hand over of power to a known Russian asset *twice*, and the second time he'd already committed *at least one* act of genocide *and* destroyed cultural heritage sites (oh yeah, he also destroyed indigenous grave sites, in case you forgot, during his first term).
All of this was allowed because the system is set up to protect exactly these types of people, because *exactly* these types of people are *the entire power structure*.
Going back to that system means going back to exactly the system that gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile *TWICE*.
I'm already seeing the attempts to pull people back, the congratulations as we enter the final phase, the belief that getting Trump out will let us all get back to normal. Normal. The normal that lead here in the first place. I can already see the brunch reservations being made. When Trump is over, we will be told we won. We will be told that it's time to go back to sleep.
When they tell you everything worked, everything is better, that we can stop because we won, tell them "fuck you! Never again means never again." Destroy every system that ever gave these people power, that ever protected them from consequences, that ever let them hide what they were doing.
These democrats funded a genocide abroad and laid the groundwork for genocide at home. They protected these predators, for years. The whole power structure is guilty. As these files implicate so many powerful people, they're trying to shove everything back in the box. After all the suffering, after we've finally made it clear that we are the once with the power, only now they're willing to sacrifice Trump to calm us all down.
No, that's a good start but it can't be the end.
Winning can't be enough to quench that rage. Keep it burning. When this is over, let victory fan that anger until every institution that made this possible lies in ashes. Burn it all down and salt the earth. Taking down Trump is a great start, but it's not time to give up until this isn't possible again.
#USPol

New Banksy dropped in London.
I thought immediately of Oscar Wilde's "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
Perhaps it is a Christmas reference, to that star that was followed in the famous story.

I'd be interested find out if AI providers are considered responsible for any defamation their equipment generates and publishes. How much of the law assumes an intent that can't be applied to AI?
Is mens rea something that can be tested in LLM? Is that even a meaningful question? Is it all just libel through negligence?

AI-generated content wrongly accuses fiddler Ashley MacIsaac of being sex offender
HALIFAX - Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac says he may have been defamed by Google after it recently produced an AI-generated summary falsely identifying him as a sex offender.