Tootfinder

Hey folx! You probably see a lot of stuff from other social networks mirrored to Mastodon, how about we do it the other way around?
Recently, I've starred to mirror my posts to Instagram, Reddit, and other platforms, and I've had quite the success. My biggest post on Instagram, which is just one screenshot of a Mastodon post, has 44.5k likes and 256k views. My

Erik Uden on Instagram: "Babe, wake up. New man-made horrors beyond comprehension dropped!! In the end of the day, these companies probably realized that, just like with AI, they can somehow use scare tactics to attract venture capital. It's still a horrifying thing to think of, but possibly overblown to get money. The headline of the Science article reads: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing By restoring some functions to intact brains from deceased donors, the startup Bexorg hopes to create a better drug development test bed for neurodegenerative diseases, written by Sara Reardon, published on the 20th of May 2026. Though, reading this Science article made me think: aren't we the brain? Am I missing something here? Now, of course the devil lies in the detail and the article makes it clear that this startup only restores “some functions”, which is certainly more complex in action than it is in theory written here, but certain language of the article makes me question the author's understanding of what is a human. The article writes: “Just a day ago, the brain was in a living person. Now, hours after its owner died, it sits on a cart draped in tubes [...]” What do you mean “it's owner” — isn't the brain it's owner? Isn't that where it's owner is? I mean, certainly the brain had no more activity, the person must've been declared brain dead by all standards before being sent to this startup, still it's odd hearing someone donated their brain instead of saying they've donated... themselves? Also “using a set of proprietary brain-sustaining machines” is a terrible sentence I always thought the people who don't donate their full body to hospitals are religious lunatics, but this is the first time I wrote something on my organ donor card. They can take my brain, but not as one piece."
45K likes, 971 comments - erik.uden on May 21, 2026: "Babe, wake up. New man-made horrors beyond comprehension dropped!! In the end of the day, these companies probably realized that, just like with AI, they can somehow use scare tactics to attract venture capital. It's still a horrifying thing to think of, but possibly overblown to get money. The headline of the Science article reads: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing By restoring some functions to inta…

The thesis I was reading spent the majority of it's time focused on John Boyd's OODA loop as a tool for critical analysis in high pressure or constrained situations. Table top exercises could also benefit from using these steps to slow down the thought process, expose what's actually happening, and sharpen these tools.
So each step could start by observing (which is generally what the GM will tell you, but you may ask additional questions to refine observational thinking). What do you look for in any given situation? How do you gather data? What sources do you use?
Next you would orient. Talk through this out loud. What does that data mean? How this fit what you already know, or does it challenge your assumptions? Are you observing something related to a previous action? What does that tell you about your previous action or actions? How do you turn the data you observed into intelligence you can act on? How do your observations narrow the options for the next possible action?
Then you decide your action. But you're not simply deciding, you're coming up with a hypothesis that your action will test. Anything you do is an opportunity to learn something about the world, about your situation, about the accuracy of the model you're using to make decisions. What belief does your next action imply? How will you know if that action was correct or incorrect? What observations would challenge your hypothesis? What observations would confirm it? Are those mutually exclusive, or are there additional observations or actions you must make to clarify things?
Then act. Finish your turn by choosing your action or actions (individually or collectively). Perhaps take a moment to write down notes, like what your observations, your hypothesis, and if you think your previous hypothesis was confirmed or refuted. You can review these all later to refine your thinking.
By exploring these ideas in a safe environment, you can train your brain to run through the process at high speed when under pressure. This helps you avoid panic. It's a lot like slowly practicing marshal arts moves until they become muscle memory, which then just happen without thought when needed.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116946142636186759
So very much this: Even if you think AI is net-positive, we have a duty to expand well, not on top of the most marginalized as always.
The way we do it now is the way of paving natural beauty, discarding entire communities, and taking what is often limited resources from those who need them to live.
It is possible to build data centers that do not have these problems. It is possible to power with solar, to cool with a refrigeration cycle instead of evaporating water.
It just costs more energy. And therefore is only viable if we invest in solar, heavily, and require it.
One of the fundamental tenets embedded in capitalism is that if you can't represent it in the market, it doesn't have to be taken into account. Community and ways of life are those things.

from my link log —
Is TypeScript worth it?
https://blog.logrocket.com/is-typescript-worth-it/
saved 2020-01-15 https://dotat.…

Is TypeScript worth it? - LogRocket Blog
I would like the jury to know that I am, for the most part, a TypeScript fan but I do have some nagging doubts that I would like to discuss in this post.

Needless to say, do not sign up for W or give them your ID information no matter how simple they eventually manage to make it.
You simply don’t need to.
You’re already in a far superior – non-corporate, federated – space.
Do not sign up for W. And warn your friends.
The only time you have any power to stop this is now. If they succeed in gaining network effects, you will be as powerless to stop them as you are with X.
And yes, they’re just another venture capita…

So why, all the sudden, would it be really high in nutrients?
My guess is they refilled it with city water.
Washington DC like most major metropolitan areas, adds orthophosphate to the water for lead corrosion control.
It works beautifully for this,
but orthophosphate is also a bioavailable form of phosphate,
aka algae food!

blah blah blah knicks blah blah trump blah blah "we should all not go to work and fucking take this country back"
(okay, now you've got my attention.)
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:5o6k7jvowuyaquloafzn3cfw/post/3molwhnfl6c25

The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social)
“How do you feel about Trump?” KNICKS FAN: “I f*cking hate him… This shit right here? The revolution starts in NYC. Brunson is the Messiah— if we bring this energy to the pedophiles that run 🌎, we can do anything.” @nyknicks @NY_KnicksPR really going to the White House?😬

In all honesty, it is almost always difficult for me to post my music. In the end I make myself do it, not just in case someone derives an interesting [something] from it, but because practicing the decision is an investment into a feeling about world where people read such sharing charitably.
Even harder than sharing it is sharing *about* it. “Who wants to know?” But because I got so much from @…

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116603070039160133
Actually trying to find the source for this, it appears to be from one of those “1,000 things to do on the Web” books from the Y2K era.
I have some books coming to see if it’s in any one of them.
If you search online for this (in a real search engine, not Google) you will find a lot of random Reddit threads that all say it’s an “ad” despite it clearly not being an ad and all images of it are always this specific angled image, just with different crops.
Trying to find the truth where it’s from so stay tuned.

"Only you can be you. What a privilege! Nobody can reach what you can if you do it. So do it. We need your best, your voice, your body."
—Stella Adler
#acting #coaching #inspiration

my least favourite part of our garden is the hedge we share with the neighbour (who are extremely nice).
Thus, when I do maintenance of it... I tend to be a little more brutal.
like say.... cutting any branches on our side down to the stump.
it grows so fast! it also harbours evil ivy and holly bushes
#gardening #portalberni

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #DriveTime
DJB:
🎵 Won't He Do It (Tayo Wink Remix)
#DJB
https://djbhousemusic.bandcamp.com/track/wont-he-do-it-djb-mix-snippet-only-on-traxsource

I posted something in a public Discord, it was a joke, nothing offensive or anything. (it was to do with an upcoming wrestling show)
One stuck up 'nice person' had to chirp in with "I don't like that joke"
Here is an idea, ignore it. Don't react.
As Ronan Keating said "You say it best when you say nothing at all"
Not all jokes land with everyone, but FTLOG, there is more than just **you** on the server. Grow a spine!

Wrote a little intro post to my Fisk AI project, why, who for etc
Local friendly, privacy friendly, strong guardrails, doing just what you give it the ability to do etc
Hopefully a AI Harness for sceptics or just for better outcomes for those tasks you wish to do repeatedly.
Minimal dependencies, quick to get going, easy to configure.
Also the easiest possible way to do build MCP servers for other AI Agents

""Several times in my life I’ve tried to break in with a new social group. […] Pretty quickly I learned that the best and fastest way to join a group is to organize events where we do the group’s core activity. […] there is far more demand for social events and things to do than there is supply. […] I’ve found this true everywhere from niche online fanfiction discussion groups to vanguard intellectual movements directing hundreds of millions of dollars annually.""

I suspected they'd do that.
US extends sanctions waiver on Russian oil: Why it matters | Oil and Gas News | Al Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/19/us-extends-sanctions-waiver-on-russian-oil-why-it-matters?traffic_source=rss

@… @… thanks for all the work you've put into Tangerine! I was surely hoping for an update, but it's more than understandable that your hesitant to do it at this point. As others said before me: do what makes you happy and - aga…

You don't have to be good in everything. You can ask for help. You can also just start doing it in such a horribly bad way that someone will decide they can't look at it, and will do it for you.

There is both where you draw a line on spectrum and how you judge people on either side of the line.
If where you draw the line is much stricter then where other draw it then folks who do better then average but worse then what you expect become a group of people you have to make a decision about.
do you treat them the same as those who are below everyone's line? Or do you address them separately?

XDOF, which is building data pipelines, collection tools, and annotation systems for robot training data, emerges from stealth with $70M (Tim Fernholz/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/17/colle…

Collecting robot training data is dirty, unglamorous work. Some AI labs are already paying XDOF to do it. | TechCrunch
If physical AI is going to match the accomplishments of LLMs, there's a data problem that needs to be solved.

Logistics in the technical sense (part of supply chain management) is a subset of logistics in the vernacular sense ("the handling of the details of an operation"). You can explore this second and more general sense, and thereby build an understanding of the first and more technical sense, by iteratively asking the question, "how does one make that happen" and follow questions from there.
A big part of organizing is figuring out the (vernacular) logistics (and helping others figure it out). You want to organize a seed swap? Ok. How does one make that happen? Well, you need seeds, people, a place, and perhaps a time. How does one make that happen? You can forage seeds or you can buy seeds for a garden and swap extras. How do you get people to come? Well, figure out where you want people to come from and choose an accessible place. What's the easiest thing to do? Get people from your neighborhood. How does one make that happen? Well, maybe put up flyers. How does one make that happen? Well, print them on your printer if you have one, or at a library, then go post them up. Etc.
Keep asking questions until you either find a roadblock that you can't find a way around, or you find things you can do yourself (one of those things you can do yourself is asking friends to help).
If you practice the exercise of thinking about how things happen, you can start to find things that you can do yourself. You can start to understand what exists now, and you can imagine what's possible. By thinking about logistics, you can figure out how to replace things when they collapse or are dismantled. You can also identify things that can't easily be replaced, and try to figure out alternatives.
This practice is good for figuring out how to build, but it can also be a valuable practice for figuring out how to resist. Concentration camps and ethnic cleansing also require logistics. Mass displacement means moving people. How does one do that? People are generally going to be moved in planes or buses. How does one do that? Well, people get loaded on to planes or buses in specific places. Planes and buses need fuel. Planes are fueled at their airports, which may well be the same places where people are loaded on to them. There is a fuel depo and a fuel truck that makes flying people out of a specific place possible. How does the fuel get to that fuel depo? Well, that fuel is probably also delivered by truck. Someone drives those trucks. Someone fuels those planes. Someone clears the planes for takeoff. Someone fuels those busses. Someone drives those busses. And so on.
Logistics networks can be highly complex. The more complex the operation, the more possible points of failure and more possible points where pressure can be applied, where operations can be disrupted. Ethnic cleansing is a complicated operation. The logistics of disrupting complicated things tend to be much less complicated than the logistics of the complicated things themselves.
The Right has exploited this fact for a long time. Centralized social services are logistically complex. Public infrastructure is logistically complex. By destroying these things, they can loot public resources by privatizing the infrastructure and functionality.
But the things that support the Right are even more logistically complex. Oil, cars, AI data centers, internal paramilitary, these are extremely complicated and fragile. There are numerous pressure points, all of which can respond to numerous strategies.
If we want to win, we should reduce the influence of politics over the things we care about. We should focus on building distributed mutual aid networks that don't rely on state funding and aren't subject to the whims of politicians. This is also known as "dual power." That is, creating counter-institutions outside of the dominant political system. The Right already does this in the form of churches and corporations.
As we reduce our complexity, we can then press our complexity advantage against the things for which the Right *needs* the state: the apparatus of violence needed to maintain capital and enforce the dominant order.

Chatbots and AI summaries are making access to content increasingly personalized. But what if AI rewrites websites themselves to match your biases? My latest artwork explores what that shift could mean for public knowledge and cultural memory
https://blog.still-water.net/what-you-think-…

Do people actually hate Arsenal? Yes, they do. The real question is: why?
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/may/16/do-people-actually-hate-arsenal-yes-they-do-the-real-question-is-…

How do so many people keep using my email address to sign up for various services? Like, why? How? It's not even spam, as far as I can tell. It's real people that don't know what their own email address is.

Why do I want this stupid fucking "Commodore" phone? I never had or wanted a flip phone, and I don't long for the 1990s or 2000s (I remember them: they sucked).
I think I know why:
I wanted to be rid of my fartphone in 2018, and bought a Nokia KaiOS device. It wasn't all that useful because it lacked WhatsApp and Signal, making it unappealing to write a podcast client for it if I still had to carry around a second device to, you know, communicate with people.

Hi #Fedi - if I wanted to have a US phone number that would redirect to me in Aotearoa NZ - especially SMSs - how would you do it? Have any of you done it successfully (without being scammed by one of the legions of dodgy telco vendors)?

Inverse hybrid search has a balancing problem, and it's messier than it looks. Ravindra Harige is at #bbuzz26 to break down why, and what you can do about it.
Catch up on everything about this session: https://2026.berlinbuzzwords.de/session/the-three-body-problem-of-inverse-hybrid-search/

#EroticMusings 55. How do you show the initial spark of lust or love between characters? Share!
I realised while I enjoy reading slow burn written by others, I don't write it when writing erotica. If it's slow it's mostly offscreen and allows some leaps while the main story has some progress.
Mela and Camelia slowly falling for each other? They stare at each other u…

Bit into a chocolate truffle from a local candy shop that was a kind of hemispherical shape, perhaps made from a flat chocolate base that had a blob of filling put on it and then encapsulated in more chocolate.
And as I'm looking at the seam between the two segments the first thing that comes to mind is... Wouldn't it be cool to freeze one of these in LN2, cross section, polish, maybe ion mill, then do like SEM/EBSD to look at the cocoa butter grain structure around the weld li…

Today's Windows 10 Annoyance: I'd like to do a drive integrity check on an SD card without automatically fixing any problems it finds.
Why? Because based on the issues found/proposed fix, I might make some additional attempt(s) to recover data first.
I'd swear earlier versions of Windows let you do things like have it summarize any problems discovered without applying any fixes. The command line chkdsk sort of does this.

Alistair Davidson @… on 'How building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight': 'Build a web application that works on a playstation portable on a 3G connection - if you do, it will work for all your users, and it will still work 30 years from now'

How building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
My client was a utility company, and they had a big problem...

I'll be running a hands-on two-hour workstop on #firmware analysis at #DO_BYTE: https://fahrplan.do-byte.de/do-byte-20

❔ How can climate mobility function as a proactive strategy for women and marginalised groups? What influences decision-making processes to migrate or to stay? What do governments and stakeholders need to do to increase women's agency?
📝 New Paper Published:
Human mobility as a climate and disaster risk management strategy: Addressing intersectional vulnerability and enhancing women's agency
🔗

Just 10 months ago, NASA asked three companies if they could do something nobody had done before.
Could they build and launch a satellite to save a $500 million astronomy mission at risk of crashing back to Earth?
What’s more, could they do it in less than a year on a tight budget?
Katalyst Space Technologies, a startup founded in 2020, presented the most compelling solution.
“They came back with a response that was technically and programmatically plausible,
an…

A bold satellite rescue mission came together in record time, but will it work?
I consider this a success already, just from the fact that we're even going to try this."

Some of these are pretty reasonable! If you allow them for anyone, you probably make it so to compete at all requires everyone to follow suit. That's bad when those things have life-altering health implications.
But all of these things ultimately shape who is allowed to compete at the peak levels.
it's not always good! Honestly baseball is way less interesting to watch in the majors because everyone's great, all the plays are maximal capability, and it's kinda predictable. You don't end up with many of those "holy shit what just happened? that was awesome!" plays that are so much fun to watch. So as a spectator, these rules aren't always great. Sometimes you want to nerf the peak performance until the game is interesting. Sometimes you don't.
In F1, a huge part of the game is the nerding out about the rules and how to evade them cleverly to get peak performance. And the inside baseball on that is way more fun to watch than the race. The race is just cars going zoom and occasionally crashing, interrupted by amazing choreography in the pits.
There's a reason women's soccer is so much more fun for me to watch than men's. It's not been optimized so hard that the game isn't predictable in kind if not outcome. Plus the camaraderie shown is great.
But looking at all this, we gotta ask, what's sport's function in our societies? Why do we do this?

threadless having a sale again and far be it from me to tell you what to do but imagine the immense benefit to your life were you to be clothed in my nonsense
https://yawnty.threadless.com

If I could load all this AI nonsense in a spacecraft and drive it myself into the sun, I would it. That's the only neat thing to do.

I made a little very specific program that you probably only need if you are me.
I keep getting sidetracked during work. With nobody to judge me and nothing to interrupt my tangents I do a lot of interesting things throughout the day but none of them are the work I am supposed to do.
This little message will pop up at regular time intervals and ask me if I'm doing work right now. I have to answer honestly. The time interval is shortened/lengthened based on my answer.

Immortal life, it turns out, is utterly devoid of meaning.
And, besides: isn’t it a bit arrogant to presume that your particular life, your individual identity, is worth extending forever? Shouldn’t we make space, when our time comes, for those who come after?
https://plus.flux.community/p/the-myth

The myth of mind uploading
Minds are what bodies do

Hot damn, new NAS can burst, old one would do 100 - 170 items on average - max. The new one just boosted to 5 - 10 times that. Seen it write up to 200MB/s back to it. Measures in place to keep Raspberry Pi nodes in the thermal safe zone even kicked in. They did 1.8TB in 9 hours, old NAS would need the full day to handle this much traffic.

RE: https://zpravobot.news/@Rainmaker1973/116947607420994226
I've been saying this for so damn long.
Also, if you do cover our fields, don't do it continuously for many, many kilometers. Go patchy.

Playing some Gunvalkyrie for a gameclub. It is quite a bizarre game - but the most bizarre thing is the early 3D controls. Thankfully, you can remap them on a modern Xbox, so my dash button is now A instead of L3 and Y is flipped for right stick camera so left stick doesn’t do regular while right stick does flight mode. It was a rough combo. Slight tweaks to controls would have made this game so much better out of the box.

Android remains fucking awful.
I originally hated Android because I thought the UI/UX sucked. Admittedly that has improved in the past 2 decades, but since then my most frequent problem is "This is running some random Android version that I can't upgrade or change [because hardware locking & OEMs' crappy driver practices] , so I can't do this thing I need to do [like backing up to a webdav mount, or running some app that's built for newer android, or or or..]&q…

"Only you can be you. What a privilege! Nobody can reach what you can if you do it. So do it. We need your best, your voice, your body."
—Stella Adler
#acting #coaching #inspiration

Legit question, but my mother got me some cologne sampler thing for some reason (probably wants me to not be single and figures it will help) but apparently colognes are for things other than dates?
Do people wear this stuff during furry conventions and shit? I've never known any roomies during cons to do anything but shower and wear deodorant.

"But what would the anarchists do it they were threatened by a hostile nation or warlord?"
IDK, what did Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iran do to beat the US?
A deeper understanding of war shows just how critical politics are in the whole business, and how a politically savvy opponent (or even just a very determined guerrilla force) can remove enemy weapons from the battlefield by undermining or outlasting the will of the population that puts them there.
Much harder against an autocracy like Russia, of course, but not impossible. Definitely not unimaginable as do many defenders of the status quo (conscious and unconscious) would love it to seem.
#anarchy

Attack surface reduction and entropy myths: you don't need to "gather entropy" on Linux with extra software. Your kernel RNG is doing that already and it's fine (unless your kernel is very, very old). But if you do, you may get some vulnerabilities.
https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-securit

What's been interesting about watching Cloudflare do what it is doing against AI scraping is that, in an attempt to protect sites from crawlers, we are centralizing internet traffic through a single vendor bottleneck.
It's a real struggle between ideal and pragmatic solutions, and I don't know how to feel about it.
Cloud providers might need to acknowledge this issue sooner rather than later, but they are incentivized to charge customers for *any* traffic, including f…

What are people doing with OpenClaw?
I still don't really get it -- it sounds like it can do some really cool things, but is also super, super risky?
I'm trying it. I have a burner laptop, and have it set up and connected to a Telegram bot. I have it using my Claude Pro subscription (and I have an API key & credits -- with auto-renew turned off! -- so I can use that too).
It seems like all the super-automated AI agent stuff is just software development workflows…

Oh, here it is (July 2018). It's nice that this report back didn't include any names or initials so I didn't need to sanitize it:
Meeting Notes:
Table-top exercise scenario topic was state and far-right repression.
Responses:
Strong networks require redundancy, so no one person is a social connection, skills, or resource gatekeeper. These people are often targeted by the state, and if they get burned out and leave, it also weakens and jeoprodizes groups.
Ways to strengthen our networks:
Mentoring/sharing responsibility. Creating a culture of mentorship and support so new people learn skills, take on responsibilities, and are introduced to other folks. Reducing burden on a few key people too.
Chaos Monkey exercise: ask central people to step back from communications/organizing to see what happens.
Regular check-ins! & Delegates check-in with new members they sign up
Ask well connected folks to introduce people to build social redundancy.
Gaming (D&D, board games, etc) committee could support a more fun, and socially robust network.
Practical safety tool:
Burner phone. Not everyone needs one, but good to have access to.
TO DO LIST:
Make regular announcements at each meeting for people to check-in with folks they know (especially those they haven’t heard from in awhile!)
Start google doc for disaster preparedness zine
Why you should prepare (ideological argument)
What people should have (the basics)
How to prepare
Frame as questions, so people can find the answer that best suits themselves.
Such as “what are you preparing for?”
Where do you spend most of your time? (home? Office? car?)
Make it as easy as possible for folks to get the basics (list locations for supplies, etc.)

I've been liking Proton Sheets (from @… ) but the date formatting choices are not great.
I do (currently) live in the US but prefer ISO 8601/RFC 3339 formatting of YYYY-MM-DD and that's what I use in my spreadsheet.
I can type in that format but occasionally the date picker (which automagically shows up) changes it to the wrong for…

If I selfhost my mastodon. Do people expect it to be 100% online?

Got a new tube for the bike tire but I don’t trust myself 100% that I got all the metal splinters out of the carcass. So I guess I’ll have to do a few short exploratory rides to make sure it doesn’t blow again (and bring a pump maybe, just in case)

What If the Universe Had No Beginning? Part 2: No Boundary, No Problem - Universe Today
What If the Universe Had No Beginning? Part 2: No Boundary, No Problem - Universe Today https://www.universetoday.com/articles/what-if-the-univers…

My daughter spotted this 4’ central rat snake on the roof. Whoever did the addition did an absolutely incompetent job on the flashing. There are some gaps on each side where I feared pests could get in as well as the elements. Sealing it has been on my to-do list.
We watched buddy here slither down the gutter and slide on in behind the flashing. RIP to whatever is living within. Going to have to give it a few days for it to egress, fat and happy, and then get that sealed properly.

ok where gen-AI falls flat for images is it lacks intentionality. beyond what's prompted, everything is random and "average" in ways no person would do.
AI coding gets around this by having the agent first write out detailed intention-shaped documents that are basically different types of expansion of the prompt, which then become the cinematic universe of the prompt.
these intention-shaped docs are still uncanny, but they're enough of a simulacrum of intention …

Worthwhile read - and I will note one issue it does not address - the impact of increased CO2 concentrations on the global ecosystem - everything from #OceanAcidification to #PlantMetabolism to #HumanHealth

Worthwhile read - and I will note one issue it does not address - the impact of increased CO2 concentrations on the global ecosystem - everything from #OceanAcidification to #PlantMetabolism to #HumanHealth

meow!

Obviously it turned out Aeon was ok, but I wanted else. RakuOS and AerynOS didn't do smb ootb. Started the journey bcs I wanted to have a go at Dakotaraptor, see the link below. That's where we are heading, boys and girls. Amazing project! It's alpha, it didn't work out for me right now. Running the latest Bluefin now, tomorrow it'll head out with me to the job.
#bluefin

I totally understand why communities use Discord for hosting chat/announcements/etc., but when something goes wrong, it's a complete disaster and it seems there's nothing you can do about it except hope someone over there gets the error messages.
Just had to trick it into letting me use a public invitation (it complained about "invitation not valid" through the normal onboarding flow; had to use the app on my phone).
I wish IRC had just… kept up with demand. )-:…

Hmm I'm not sure what #strawberry 's 'dynamic playlist' is supposed to do - I'd been using that for a few months since switching from Rhythmbox and felt I hadn't heard some tracks for ages; so I switched to using 'all tracks' in 'shuffle all' - and it is playing tracks that I hadn't heard in the last few months. Weird.

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

Sharing from Julie S. Lalonde. This session is tomorrow; I've done it in the past and can recommend highly!
> May is Sexual Assault Awareness Month in Canada #SAM2026
> Why not take 1 hour out of the whole month to learn effective bystander intervention skills? It's on Zoom with cameras/muted, so ideal if you're shy or wanting to do a group watch.
> …

RE: https://mastodon.social/@tanukinomori_jp/116775972254947134
I am regularly horrified by what the Japanese do when adopting foreign words.
D(o)RAIBU S(u)RU for drive-through. Ouchy.
I mean - of course one can do that. It just makes …

The Placebo Button
The elevator in my building has a door-close button that does nothing. I learned this the way everyone learns it, which is to say I pressed it for years under the impression that it was speeding up my departure. The button lights up. It makes a small click when pressed. It provides every sensory signal of function. What it does not do is close the door any faster than the door was going to close on its own.

The Placebo Button | David Boles, Blogs
The elevator in my building has a door-close button that does nothing. I learned this the way everyone learns it, which is to say I pressed it for years under the impression that it was speeding up…

Legislation cares a lot about information #security these days. When do we laws that keep companies from tainting security's public reputation by demonstrably abusing it for their own commercial interest against the interests of consumers?
Just one example: Bank uses proprietary hardware over #WebAuthn

“Britain has been telling itself wildly inaccurate stories about itself for decades. The further those stories have drifted from reality, the worse their ability to govern has become”
https://www.thegist.ie/the-gist-britain-the-ungoverned-country/

“The way I often read non-fiction — snatches of twenty pages here, twenty pages there, putting a book down for two months (or two years) at a time — is not conducive to *finishing* books, but I do find it conducive to thinking. Rich texts can take a while to sink in, so I’ll jump to another book while I let the first one marinate.”
https://

some #aphids from the other day. not sure what the plant is tho, or what aphids they are.
#insects #nature

“Well, he said in public testimony that he would do it. He’s also under oath automatically in the sense that lying to Congress is a crime. So, he said he’s going to do it,” Van Hollen responded.
“My sense from Patel’s conduct overall is he may or may not do it, but I, unfortunately won’t be able to believe the results, because in that hearing, he did lie several times.”
Chris Van Hollen questions whether Kash Patel will take alcohol use test
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5882288-fbi-director-alcohol-test/

The incredible analytical work of John Burn Murdoch @… along with some other colleagues is one of the main reasons I subscribe to the FT. It's rather expensive but absolutely worth it.
https://fediscience.org/@Ruth_Mottram/116582689708855765
Ruth_Mottram - This is a fascinating and beautifully illustrated analysis, exploring convincingly why birth rates are crashing basically everywhere and while there are certain many factors, the smoking gun is actually a smartphone.
So what to do about it? I think I agree with the conclusions, housing and financial support is one element, equality between sexes in household tasks certainly another, but finally, perhaps our job as parents is to inculcate the habit of socialising with others into our kids, especially when they get to the teenage years.
Why birth rates are falling everywhere all at once - a limited 🎁 https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/8bf630d4-6e20-42c7-bb33-e98dd6a01571

"Why do I find it hard to write the next line"
Guitar, tenor sax, grand piano, drum kit, Tony's vocals & 5 dudes in really sharp suits...that'd play in 2026, wouldn't it, ladies? 😁
▶️ Spandau Ballet - True (HD Remastered)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=AR8D2yqgQ1

"Do you know of any unexpected pattern of emoji usage? For example I'd expect younger folks to use emoji more than older folks and private communication to use it more than business... But maybe my assumptions are wrong or there is something else interesting?" - Yes generally our studies show that younger ppl use emojis more than older (and women a bit more than men). But in class with my undergraduates, they recently often tell me "I don't use emojis at all". I must say I don't fully believe them (maybe they don't even notice all the little hearts anymore?) and I haven't been able to show this in studies, but it's an interesting anecdotal data point I'd like to know more about!
Also, a student of mine recently asked teenagers (13 and 16yos) about their emoji interpretations. And surprisingly to us, these almost entirely match the data we already have for adults. Even for some like 🙃 and 😉 that I thought were changing (and just told you that younger people see them differently 😬). So that was a bit weird to me 😅 #emojis #WorldEmojiDay #linguistics

It's also worth thinking about interpersonal conflict between marginalized people with different experiences. Who mediates? How? How do you account for your existing biases when mediating people with different experiences of oppression than your own?
Practice can help answer those questions before you have to "do it live." I'd personally love resources on this, because I had to "do it live" as an organizer, and that was awful.

I've finally finished pushing the latest update for #Gentoo Distribution Kernels, and requested their stabilization. This includes upstream releases 7.0.9, 6.18.32, 6.12.90 and 6.6.140; and Gentoo patch bumps 6.1.173_p1, 5.15.207_p1 and 5.10.256_p1.
All of these contain the v5 #Fragnesia patch. And yes, while the exploit is in the wild, upstream still hasn't merged a fix to the mainline kernel, let alone all the LTS branches. Of course, the patch keeps covering more holes, but it would really be preferable to do that as a followup instead of leaving people vulnerable and forcing us to keep rebasing it.
They also include a few reverts in 6.18 and 6.6 for broken PowerPC backports that upstream didn't apparently test. 🤷
We're doing our best, but I'd still recommend running the latest 7.0.x kernel, or LTS 6.18.x, because upstream is far from reliable with the backports.
#Linux

So, I'm still experimenting with locally run LLMs (powered by solar cells!) for writing some inconsequential data mangling stuff for my "vintage cameras" hobby; it's quite interesting how the development cycle with these LLMs sort of drives home that LLMs are completely useless for almost anything they're advertised for, like writing (for humans).
The thing is: coding is the use case that LLMs are by far most suitable for and they still largely suck at it.
There's immense amounts of training data of correctly functioning code, there's tons of documentation, a lot of code is in repositories that include the full history of its development including why stuff was changed in small bits, code itself is the simplest of "human" languages and mathematically non-ambiguous, code can be checked in small bits for correctness by just running it, in many languages simple code snippets can be written to introspect on the code (e.g. find out what methods an object supports, so an LLM can query the language or libraries themselves in addition to the user) and perhaps most importantly: code is always and has always been very similar to other, existing code as most software serves the ever same repetitive use cases, both in detail and on a high level.
YET… using LLMs to code requires countless iterations to get there, both internally in the LLM (to get the code even running in the first place) and together with the user to make it do the right thing. And even when it's "there" the code is mediocre at best, and often veering into appalling.
And this is expected to just work on the first try on much more complex issues like writing for humans? Transcribing doctors? Having legal opinions? Identifying fraud? lol, sure

“People are tired of hearing what government can’t do.
They want to hear what government can do,”
Lewis George said in an interview before the DC city’s primary,
where she defeated her Democratic opponents and positioned herself to win the general election in November in a city dominated by Democrats.
Lewis George’s victory signals a break with a quarter-century of centrist governance in Washington,
and it puts her in the vanguard of democratic socialists who h…

Democratic socialists are winning major mayor's races
Janeese Lewis George is making waves in Washington, D.C., with her progressive agenda as she aims for the mayor's office. Her plans include subsidized childcare and increased homebuyer assistance. She also promises to challenge President Donald Trump's influence. Her Democratic primary victory was a shift from centrist governance in the nation's capital and aligns with a broader trend of democratic socialists gaining traction in urban politics. While some cities still favor moderate candidates,…

EU folks: What are the tax etc. implications if I, as a non EU resident/citizen with no existing business connection to the EU, want to offer a paid training at a conference in Europe? Do I have to collect VAT or sales tax or something along those lines? Or if I'm not a European citizen/business or collecting less than X million EUR in the tax year am I tax-exempt?
Is this such a paperwork nightmare I shouldn't even attempt it unless an existing EU entity wants to handle all of…

People, why do you keep talking about superpowers?
Russia is losing the war it started against Ukraine. Moscow is burning.
The US just capitulated to Iran, after starting a war that only empowered its target.
There are no superpowers. That's 20th century talk. Today, there's just decaying corpses of former superpowers, nothing more.

I wrote this function to do some math, and I got it working, tested it, but now I have to explain it to someone and...
Well, that's the difficult part!
I knew the input and desired output and built up how to get what I needed but making it explainable is a bit of a challenge...
Which is good though, as it's forcing me to double-check my work.
(And I am *not* good at math!)
#teaching

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."
—Bruce Lee
#acting #coaching

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #DriveTime
Tayo Wink:
🎵 Won't He Do It (DJB Mix)
#TayoWink

It's amazing how much just one (1) alcohol fucks up your next day. I'm exhausted. How do people manage to be alcoholics? They must have unbelievable stamina!

Do not appreciate being able to see the air. #NYC #Smoke

"I mean, me and my wife have been fasting, and there's a lot of benefits, including one of those benefits is saving money on groceries," Gerald said."
He voted for Trump and now can't afford food. He'd do it again - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-supporter-2676913763/

The "AI Industry" (to the degree that it exists) has burned billions of dollars with no real hope of recuperating that. Models offered by services, charging huge amounts for inference, don't really offer much, if anything, above open source models run locally. Many of the claims made by these companies, and their supporters, have turned out to be lies. It seems as though the whole thing is a huge grift.
Investments will likely never be recovered. We've already seen a bail out in the form of military contracts. We will see much more public money dumped in to these technologies. In fact, threatening workers and suppressing labor strength is so strategically valuable that I expect LLMs to just be publicly funded (by being folded into the military industrial complex).
On these grounds, it can be easy to reject the technology outright. After all, how can anything useful not be profitable?
Even for radicals, capitalism can cloud our lens. The fact is, the dominant technologies of our age tend to not be profitable. Or rather, they are "publicly funded, privately profitable" (/hums in propagandhi/). Just like oil.
Outside of Saudi Arabia, oil is mostly not profitable to get out of the ground. Even there, it had only historically been profitable because of massive global military investments. The oil-centric world we have today is largely built on, and kept in place by, massive government subsidies. Roads, street parking, and direct subsidies to oil companies are all massive investments that tie populations to the resource at the heart of the military industrial complex: oil.
Oil was strategically important, because you can't run a modern military without it. The fossil fuel economy doesn't exist because fossil fuels are so cheap, but because modern militaries are only really possible by militarizing the population.
Unprofitable things *are made profitable* to serve the strategic interests of authoritarian systems. Though we have better alternatives to most oil-based products, it would be hard to argue that oil is not a useful resource. We can acknowledge it's strategic importance while also recognizing that the elimination of oil is essential to the survival of humanity.
Returning to "AI," we're seeing the same type of thing but it's more obvious. After the crypto grift, this seems to just be another way to transfer money into the pockets of the rich.
But crypto wasn't exactly a grift. It had a strategic function to power. It wasn't what we were told it was. It didn't free us from central banks. It wasn't a new way to invest. It wasn't anonymous. But it did create a new way to bribe politicians. It did make it easier to funnel public money into the pockets of the far right.
"AI" can similarly be mostly a grift. It can fail to do most, or all, of the things it claims, and it can still fulfill strategic functions. If we dismiss it as "just another grift," I think we miss a lot. "Just a grift" isn't something sustainable. It is something that will die out. It's something we don't need to resist because it is self limiting. But a strategy is something different. A strategy is more complex. A strategy will be sustained, at any cost. A strategy must be actively resisted.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #DriveTime
Tayo Wink:
🎵 Won't He Do It
#TayoWink

Basically we need to make transit free because our local government is too fucking dumb to figure out how to handle fares. #NYC #NY #MakePublicTransitFree

Jehiah (@jehiah.cz)
Absolutely ridiculous way to do enforcement. MTA should never delay a bus to do fare enforcement. "The agency’s fare enforcement “EAGLE” teams are ramping up an initiative where they halt buses for about five to 10 minutes while they scan riders’ phones or OMNY cards to check if they paid." [contains quote post or other embedded content]

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

Although a whole lot of Americans increasingly use AI in their daily lives,
most of them have neutral to negative views about it, new research reveals.
Only 16% of Americans think that AI’s impact on society during the next 20 years will be positive, Pew says,
while around 40% say that it will have a negative impact.
A vast majority of people (67%) don’t believe that the U.S. government will do anything to meaningfully regulate AI.
A similarly skeptical cohor…

Only 16 percent of Americans think AI will have a positive impact on society, a new study shows | TechCrunch
Although Wall Street loves AI, every day Americans are significantly less optimistic about the industry, a new report from Pew Research shows.

Here are some notes I've found also (not ours, but I think we distilled some ideas from these):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tz0mNWt01Fbc78m3waYzviM3exjDY2aj/view
This is related to FEMA stuff.
Edit:
Apologies in advance for the google link. It's not our doc. But also, we did use google drive. I wouldn't do that today.

I was biking near the queens zoo today, and adjusting the pedal-assist all the way up to 4 (which I never do). Thinking to myself, "Jesus fuck, is this headwind really that strong or is this heat just making me weak?"
I look over at the sidewalk, and someone is walking backwards to deal with the wind. "Oh, it's actually the headwind."
#BikeTooter

Senator Susan Collins of Maine said in a new interview that she did not “regret” her vote to confirm Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018
but was “disappointed” that he later helped overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.
“I do not regret that vote,” Ms. Collins, widely seen as the most vulnerable Republican senator up for re-election this year,
said when asked about the episode by News Center Maine.
“I do disagree with Justice Kavanaugh’s…

Susan Collins Laments Roe’s Fall but Doesn’t ‘Regret’ Confirming Kavanaugh
Ms. Collins, a Republican in Maine facing a tough re-election battle, defended her vote to confirm Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh as Democrats look to capitalize on it politically.

I keep seeing the "cars replaced horses" thing related to "AI."
People keep comparing "AI" to cars (positively) without thinking about the fact that cars were forced on people (AAA bought up and destroyed tram lines, there were massive protests, etc), and are the primary driver of climate change that is currently on track to make complex human society impossible. Meanwhile, cities that weren't destroyed for cars, or that have reversed most of the damage, are some of the most desirable places to live.
Maybe we could take the car analogy as a warning. Maybe it could be a reminder to think about how forcing technology on people against their will can reshape society in a profoundly negative way.
The answer for cities has been to right-size transit. Eliminate cars wherever possible, maintain emergency vehicles and mobility aids, and find more efficient alternatives (bikes, trams, metros, and trains) where possible. I feel as though we can extrapolate from the metaphor.
We do not have to repeat the mistake of reshaping society around a single, oversimplified, solution in order to benefit a tiny minority. Perhaps we can actually choose the right technologies based on use cases, rather than hype or dogma.
Cars didn't replace horses. Cars replaced walkable cities, tram lines and mass transit, and children playing in the streets.
"Cars replaced horses" to the benefit of a small group of elite men, at tremendous cost to literally everyone else. When people say, "AI is the new 'cars replacing horses'" they are saying something very specific about their privilege and intentions.

#Seattle folks who are interested in #DisasterPrep organizing might also be interested in the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods matching funds (closed for 2026, but thinking forward to 2027). We talked about getting grants, but I don't think we ever applied.
#Amsterdam has one too. We don't have to do everything ourselves. It's OK to use money like this to build capacity if we can find good targets. At least, that's my take.