Tootfinder

Dear USians,
How about you don’t call a Middle Eastern guy “white” and go on to tell him he’s “no better than any other oppressor we encounter” simply for trying to warn his Palestinian friends to not take any unnecessary risks and to be careful on Mastodon?
Also, apparently Divya has blocked me for this, which sucks because it has made it impossible for me to keep boosting her fundraiser, which you should, of course, still follow and support (link below).
I’m not going to …

@… @… I also use DuckDuckGo. This does the same as the DuckDuckGo embed - if you open the link in a browser or session where you are not logged into YouTube. I built it explicitly for sharing YouTub…

I use Rogue Amoeba’s software daily. They make kickass products that revolutionize how I use my Mac.
https://mastodon.social/@RogueAmoeba/115577778426778740

Having just watched #Jaws for the first time in ages, I was stunned by the famous opening sequence ... but not by its cinematography or acting or editing - but by the never-ending chain of in-your-face #continuity errors in lighting once the girl enters the water: one moment we have a low Sun and a red sky, then we have the Sun near the zenith (with a day for night effect) then low again and so on, for several cycles.
Now #Spielberg, is there supposed to be some hidden message here? Well, there isn't.
(Once it's day, fortunately, this problem is gone, and a great movie unfolds, still fresh after 50 years. And I know, you shouldn't mess with a masterpiece, but Lucas added characters to Star Wars IV, and Cameron corrected a wrong star pattern in Titanic, so may be Spielberg could just, for an anniversary special edition ... o.k., I shut up. ;-)

Recipes are full of directions like “when the top starts to brown” or “when it is firm to the touch but not hard.”
Very often, the thing the directions are taking about is not the actual important trait, but a •proxy• for something important you can’t see directly. Maybe the inside of the bread is fully baked when the top starts to brown. Maybe dangerous bacteria are killed when the quiche is firm to the touch. (I am making this up; don’t @ me about quiche.)
Proxy indicators, heuristics, rules of thumb, call them what you like: they’re essential in cooking.
2/

Good Morning #Canada
Are you still looking for that perfect Christmas gift? Years ago I found myself shopping for my wife's Christmas present on December 23rd. Never again. For those of you still shopping it's inevitable that you're going to be standing in front of the Gift Card rack and mentally convincing yourself that the recipient will love a full gas tank or a Timmies coffee and donut. Canadians will buy close to $12 billion in Gift Cards in 2025, with a lot of that in the next 5 days. Recent changes to legislation have made it illegal to charge processing or activation fees on cards purchased with cash and there is no expiry date. That last point is important because companies are betting that a certain percentage of cards are never redeemed and it's estimated that approximately 40% of all cards are never used. I personally like getting a gift card as it allows me to choose something I want, and I always thank the gifter once I've used it.
#CanadaIsAwesome #GiftCards
YES, I love giving and receiving Gift Cards
NO, I'm not happy when I have to buy or get a Gift Card

I just woke up from a dream. For every parent there is a time when, with shame, we have to explain how the world actually works... when they become a little too old to keep saying, "I'll explain it when you're older."
Amsterdam is full of reminders of the occupation, of the Holocaust. It's impossible to pretend there hasn't been a great evil here... One that's not in the past, but still very alive in the present.
At some point things will have to change because fascism can't last forever. It is a thing which necessarily contains its own downfall. We will, at that point, have an opportunity to make the world one that we can be proud to tell our children we created. We can stop short and reestablish the status quo that got us here, or we can build a world that we will no longer have to explain to each new generation in shame.
What would it look like?
(Shout out to the comrade who prompted me to be thinking about this.)
There was also a sign in my dream that said, "we created the bike, therefore we can do anything." This may or may not be related.

One of the top stories on Hacker News today was a post arguing that Mozilla shouldn't accommodate any usage of AI in Firefox because (understandably) people were mad at Big AI companies for all the horrible things they've done to users and the internet and society. But I think people are ignoring the reality that *hundreds of millions of users* are using LLMs today, and they need to have tools from platforms that will look out for their interests.

I’m not saying that this is good, but it recalled for me the ancient times when the phone company (there was only one) sent everyone a fat (in urban areas) book in tiny type on thin paper with everyone’s phone number, alphabetically by surname. Businesses were in their own book. You could also go to the reference section of the public library and use the book with all of the numbers in your area in numerical order.
Ancient times. The 1990s @…

if you see me posting with random double spaces between words its not bc I'm ancient and don't know how to type it's bc SwiftKey just REALLY wants to double space all the goddamn time for some reason

Re: discourse about #FediSoWhite
I'm a white man. Was on Twitter throughout #BLM and gained an awful lot of free education from Black folks on there. That was the start of me consciously following diverse folks which is a strategy that's improved my life immensely.
Back on Twitter before the Muskening, there was a lot of diversity. Black Twitter was a thing, and not just first-world (anyone else remember "O jewa ke eng?"). When I went looking for people to follow to diversify my feed, I found them in abundance.
That's why it's so clearly false to me when people claim that the fediverse is secretly diverse, and why anyone making that claim sounds suspect to me. Sure there are a ton of great Black and other POC folks you can find on here, if you look hard. But it's nowhere near the levels of diversity and community that were on Twitter. Which you would know had you been following those people before, so now I have to assume you weren't, and wonder why you feel qualified to make statements about diversity even though you haven't made an effort to engage with diverse voices before?
Also, if you were actually following some of the excellent POC voices on here, you'd know that across different servers and interest groups, almost every group has had a discussion of #FediSoWhite at some point. If all the Black people you follow are independently talking about the lack of community and diversity here, you've either got to believe them or start putting on your clown makeup, and the later is absolutely a choice.

Believe it or not, I've never actually submitted an academic paper for peer-reviewed publication before, and I'm a lil nail-bitey.
Is there anyone here who's active in ACL (the Association for Computational Linguistics) who wants to swap papers with me for a deep critique of methods/code/conclusions? I have a fun classic ML model that will entertain you, I swear.

I wanted an accurate digital angle device for my Faceting machine. Having it display down to the hundredths would be perfect.
That's all I originally wanted, a digital angle device that displayed to 0.00° and was accurate. Waited almost a full year as the manufacture of my machine kept saying he had something incredible coming soon. Apparently vaporware is all that is coming .
Which would not work for me.
Here is what I created for my own use. It does what was origin…

𝐀𝐭𝐞 𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲: (1) Did you know I'm a sucker for kitsch? (2) Or that I'm a Yankee who can't get enough of grits?
Not half bad but they could have given me more shrimp and my doc would be shaking his head about the sodium...
#food #sliceoflife

@…
So to reiterate this conversation:
You: Passkeys don't have problems A, B, C and D!
Me: Actually B is still a problem.
You: Yeah well, B is also a problem for passwords! And so is F and G!
Me: Yes, but B is still a problem.
You: But if I hacked the pentagon, then Z would also be a problem for passwords!
I'm not a…

It's funny because when I captioned NPR's audio I realised the transcript on their website is wrong.

David Simon does not say:

"You mentioned that."

He said:

"You imagine that?"

As NPR likely use "AI" for their transcripts, this adds an extra layer of irony.

2/2 Reflection on #citizenship:
I do not treat the concept of “#democracy" lightly. I was born into the aftermath of centuries of totalitarian oppression that ended suddenly, leaving the nascent Ukrainian state of the late 90s and early 2000s floundering in the turbulent whirlpool of hopes and fears felt by millions of people who were finally allowed to ponder: how to build a free democratic state in the place of Soviet and imperial ruins?
I was taught the words "democracy", "citizen", "freedom", "voting", “liberty" (and more) by people who, less than two decades prior, weren't allowed to leave the borders of their country. I was told about self-determination by people whose political choices were ridiculed, punished, and eviscerated form most of their lives. The duty of governing ourselves felt to us ephemeral - a nice fantasy, akin to a fairytale or a utopia from fictional works.
And then I saw those same people fight with their bodies and souls once the previously unfathomable democracy was threatened. Protests in 2004, then again in 2014, then the unthinkable war against foreign invasion in 2022. Democracy no longer felt abstract or silly. It became as tangible as saying "I love you".
I write of Ukraine as I reflect on becoming a citizen of another country because the history and values of my adopted United States feel as real as the skin on my legs, the significance of its legacy lays as heavy as the weight of my waist-long hair, and the desire to uphold the freedoms of its Constitution burns my throat as harshly as dehydration after a long day in the sun.
People have asked me why I even want to join this country, when the present moment is shrouded in impenetrable darkness. And I answer: because I've felt the warmth of a newly lit fire of freedom breaking through shadows that for centuries looked like solid walls. I have seen kindness, and solidarity heal the fear and hate of oppression. I've seen liberty emerge from nothing but the human soul.
I am not a religious person, but I have faith. Faith in the ideals at the foundation of the American project. Faint but powerful recognition that "we the people" now includes me.
I love #America. And I hope to keep loving my home for the rest of my life.

„How do you lovingly care for an aging parent who treated you like shit?
[…]
You lovingly care for an aging parent by making sure that the way they treated you stops with you. You lovingly care for an aging parent by learning how to love others, and by letting them love you.”
This is a cathartic piece that resonated with me. My parents do not treated me like shit but I resonate with the
somewhat disconnectedness.

Every 5 years, I need to have re-education for my Code 95 (allowing me to drive lorries commercially).
This, they say, is to "improve road safety"...
And then you see Karen from HR not know basic traffic rules and whine at you like you're the one at fault.
I'm pretty sure the lorry driver isn't the biggest hazard on the road. :')

You know me. I love some #Steam games - especially when it's:
- cheap
- plays on macOS
- has 𝖆𝖊𝖘𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖙𝖎𝖈
Found a new one. Very few reviews but _man oh man_ is it an environmental -vibe- when you're playing
It's amusingly self-tagged "Relaxing" and I'm ... not sure about that? Like ... watch the trailer. You hear that background hum? That's the RAIN. The death from above. And it's in stereo and directional. The rain *hums*. It gets louder when you're in danger. And it kills. And it's coming down from above while you're trying to smash and accomplish goals. You get .... twitchy
For $5 tho? Totally great.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3570540/RAIN_KILLS/

I love how, on most Linux distros, you can just do an update and upgrade despite not having touched them for a long time, and you just wait for a little bit, potentially optionally reboot, and there are no nags or new things someone wants to sell you or settings that have changed back to vendor defaults. You just get on with what you wanted to do with shiny, freshly-updated software.
Arch-based distros have been the exception from the experience above for me, but I guess that’s the co…

One of the things that made organizing a lot easier with the GDC was a thing called "GDC in a box." It was a zip file with all kinds of resources. There was a directory structure, templates for all kinds of things like meetings and paperwork you had to file (for legal reasons) and "read me" files.
We had all kinds of support. There were people you could talk to who had been there. There were people you could call to walk through legal paperwork (taxes). Centralized orgs are vulnerable and easy to infiltrate. They're easy for states to shut down. But there are benefits to org structures.
I think it's possible to have the type of support we had with the GDC, but without the politics of an org (even the IWW). I hope this most recent essay has some of the same properties. I hope that it makes building something new, something no one has really imagined before, easier.
This whole project is something a bit different. It's a collective vision and collective project, from the ground up. Some of it has felt like a brain dump, just getting things that have been swimming around in my head down somewhere. But I hope this feels more like an invitation.
Everything thus far written is all useless unless people do things with it. Only from that point does it become a thing that lives, a thing with its own consciousness that can't be controlled by any individual human.
Tech billionaire cultists want to bring a new era of humanity with AGI. That is definitely not possible with LLMs, and may not be possible at all. But there is a super intelligence that is possible, though it's been constrained by capitalism: collective human intelligence.
The grand vision of the tech dystopians is that of the ultimate slave that can then enslave all humans on their behalf. I think we can build a humanity that can liberate itself from their grasp, crush their vision, and build for itself a world in which people will never be enslaved again. Not only do I think it's possible, I think it's necessary. I think there are only two choices: collective liberation or death.
And that's what I plan to write about next time to wrap this whole project up. Today things often feel impossible. But people talked about the Middle Ages as though they were the end of the world, and then everything changed in unimaginable ways. Everything can, and will, change again.
"The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."

I'm developing some thoughts on the steam machine: it's the best console and the best PC out on the market (soon), but it's not for me.
As a gaming apparatus it's the best because windows sucks, and the other consoles are so locked down that you are not allowed to move away any more once you buy a few games and then you get fucked over by a generational upgrade. In summary you are not in control.
Ad a deskop it's the best because the only two real alternatives, …

Fundamentally, mastodon (and twitter, bluesky, etc etc) doesn't really work for me. I'm just remembering the sense of confusion when I first joined twitter - the idea that you subscribe to a feed of everything that someone says, and not to topics or threads is just a bit bonkers. It must sort people into groups with weird niche common collections of interests. I've tried running more than one account for different interests but it doesn't really work for me.

I always know @… wil have a clear view.
https://www.readtpa.com/p/the-rules-of-grief?publ…

STM32MP2 bringup update: after fixing some weird linker things with weak symbols that per documentation should never have worked and yet somehow never bit me until now, I have a C stub running on the M33 out of RAM (no flash boot, you have to JTAG/SWD load it for now).
It turns on three of the four LEDs on the devkit, for reasons currently unknown the fourth LED doesn't work. My only guess is that it's in the VDDIO3 domain and I might not yet have turned that on due to PMIC c…

'the focus on creating is just the little capitalist devil sitting on our shoulders telling us to produce more.
...
the most radical act today is to just make something. Especially if you are not good at it or if it’s a bit of a struggle. Draw if you’re not good at it. Play the piano even though you’re not great. Make something just for the fun of being in this world, touching it, being in it. Becoming you. Let this radicalize you a bit.
Fuck creation. Love making.'<…

Thinking about hosting my own mastodon instance for some art projects. And I'm sure you all would appreciate me not spamming my art from this account 😉
Digging into it, I'm confused about #relays. Obviously, I don't want to go for the biggest #relay since it's a self-hosted…

Kimi Onoda, Japan's new Minister of State for Economic Security, is a 43 year old half-Irish ex-game industry PR femcel with an extensive history of defending her exclusive attraction to anime boys on twitter

Daisy.

Sometimes hacking a computer means a whole different thing...
In this use, I'm actually hacking (with a hacksaw) the case apart to add an I/O shield (custom made) so I can fit an older motherboard that was not designed for this case.
And thank you to Gateway for making me do this by not using a removable shield and instead stamping every hole they needed and covering them with a sticker if they weren't on this model. 🤦‍♂️

Sorry for not offering this earlier, but if you're a parent of a Brown student and they need help (a ride, a coffee, whatever), please email me and I'm happy to try to help.
https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Contact/

In case you missed it, my piece yesterday on the 176 CISA employees fired last Friday, which will not go behind the customary archive paywall.
It's critical to note that sources told me more RIFs are in store for the nation's embattled cybersecurity agency.
https://www.

Temporary exception to this: Rail replacement bus service #Aaaarggh
So I'm hoping to clear some tabs on my phone instead. Watch out for some cool links...
1/n
https://fediscience.org/@Ruth_Mottram/115366463584341325
Ruth_Mottram - Not that this is getting this proposal written. If you see me on here the rest of the day, tell me to go and write....

Something else that bothers me has just been added to my list:
Spam phone calls.
I've not long got back from picking up a supermarket click & collect order. For the second time tonight.
Why? Well, I've had so many spam calls to my mobile this week, I've got in the habit of just declining them. Except one "spam call" was actually the click & collect guy calling to let me know he'd found another tray in the van. But, because I declined the call, I only discovered this when I got home and unpacked.
So, yeah. Spam phone calls - you bother me!
https://cjhearn.co.uk/that-bothers-me

I do, in fact, not have time for a 15 minute call, so I've drafted a form letter that I'll try and send to every single one of these emails starting now.

@… I’m playing catch-up on your weekly updates (you no longer shows in my feed or alerts even though I follow you, which is hella annoying and I still have to debug) and think you were messing with me by generating the abstract of my Atlass post with an LLM.
If so, well done and I’m sorry I’m just seeing it.
If not, then I guess I need bet…

Fundamentally, mastodon (and twitter, bluesky, etc etc) doesn't really work for me. I'm just remembering the sense of confusion when I first joined twitter - the idea that you subscribe to a feed of everything that someone says, and not to topics or threads is just a bit bonkers. It must sort people into groups with weird niche common collections of interests. I've tried running more than one account for different interests but it doesn't really work for me.

No, it's not. I've been signed in for 21 years until you logged me out just now. But for some reason, almost every site I have a login for has decided I've logged out, on multiple unrelated machines even. Sure GMail/Google but also Apple, Mastodon, bluesky, GitHub, reddit, even some TV channels I stream. Not all at once, but over the last few days. Is this something I didn't hear about?

The most interesting type of replyguy is the meta-replyguy (as in the greek prefix, not the tech company).
Here's a typical interaction:
Me: [Question] Please only reply if you know the answer.
Someone: I googled it for 5 seconds, here's the answer. [It's not the answer.]
Me: Did you not read my post? I only wanted replies if you know the answer.

Meta-replyguy: You're an asshole.
???

Just noticed Firefox was guzzling around ~750MB when opening Apple Music page. This led me down a rabbit hole of building a custom music client and its so bad.
1. You need Apple developer account (99USD/year) for API access.
2. Linux is not a native target meaning having to use MusicKit JS library with Electron, GtkWebKit or QtWebEngine.
3. Legal issues.
Spotify is such a saint in terms of third-party client support. Also, I have Amazon Prime which gets me Amazon Music…

For whatever it's worth
If the question is how long you will stay in the painting and grieve, for me it was not that long. I'm always moving forward.
#expedition33

It is watch day but not for me. I bought a watch for my wife (left) and my daughter (right). No special occasion and they are not super fancy or expensive. I just, you know, buy watches. 🤷

Brutal similes
Using #AI is an ethical choice.
I know that there cases when an #LLM could make my job easier. Which doesn't mean I'll use one. Just like I won't be buying cheap junk gadgets that could help me with some random stuff a bunch of times before they'll end up on a trash pile.
Yes, sometimes I am curious what an LLM could come up with. But then, there are people who are curious how many donuts they can eat before throwing up. A waste of good donuts.
What world would you rather live in? One where you put a little more effort in your job? Or one where LLM helps with with your job, but you can't enjoy your free time anymore because the capitalists are using LLMs to turn every single aspect of your life into a nightmare, and eventually your employer just makes you do more and more until you're thrown out? But at least you will get a monthly trial of a statistical "friend" to "talk" about your trouble to.
Yeah, you can claim that training models does the most harm, and that's already happened, so not using them doesn't change much, and all the energy spent on it would be wasted. Or use the traditional "others" fallacy — others will use it anyway, others will fuel the vicious circle, so why renounce convenience. It's like when you learn that your dinner is human meat, and you decide to eat it anyway, because not eating it won't bring that human back to life, and if it's wasted, then their death will be for naught.
#AntiCapitalism

WOW, did you know texting currently prohibits PETTING CATS unless you see a kitty in person? Hang out with ME to PET cute kittens!

Series C, Episode 08 - Rumours of Death
SULA: I'm not deaf, Hob.
HOB: Just not listening, is that it? I'm not fighting my own men to protect Servalan. Or to protect anyone else, for that matter. D'you understand me, Sula?
SULA: Perfectly.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/308/394

Did you know that the Learning With AI toolkit has a speakers bureau for AI and education? Filter for expertise like "agents administration" or "data bias," then click on presenters to watch recordings that demonstrate their presentation styles.
Have a speaker to recommend who's not on the list? DM me and I'll send you a form to submit a name, specialty, and recording of any events for consideration.

Anonymous help:
#OpenSource #FreeSoftware

Finished "Lobizona" by Romina Garber. I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. It's a powerful depiction of the fear of living as an undocumented child/teen and it has interesting things to say about rejection, belonging, and the choice between seeking to be recognized for who you are and wanting you blend in enough to be accepted as normal. However, it's also an explicit homage to Harry Potter, and while it doesn't include antisemitic tropes or glorify slavery or even have any anti-trans sentiments I can detect, to me the magical school setup felt forced and I thought it would have been a better book had it not tried to fit that mould. Also, it would have been a super interesting situation to explore trans issues, and while it's definitely fine for it not to do that, the author's praise of Rowling's work has me wondering...
There's a sequel that I think could in theory be amazing, but given the execution of the first book, I think I'll wait a bit before checking it out. By putting her main character in opposition to both ICE in the human world and the magical authorities in the other world, Garber explicitly sets the stage for a revolution standing between her protagonist and any kind of lasting peace. But I'm not confident she's capable of writing that story without relying on some kind of supernatural deus ex machina, which would be disappointing to me, since "a better world if only possible through divine intervention" is an inherently regressive message.
Overall, #OwnVoices fantasy centering an undocumented immigrant is an excellent thing, and I've certainly got a lot of privilege that surely influences my criticism. However, #OwnVoices stuff has a range of levels of craft and political stances, and it can be excellent for some reasons and mediocre for others.
On that point, if anyone reading this has suggestions for fiction books grappling with borders and the carceral state, Is be happy to hear them.
#AmReading

If you installed the latest #Manjaro stable update and instead of a booting system you now have one getting stuck at
"symbol grub_memcpy not found"
you may want to go into your BIOS and change the boot device order. For me in addition to "Windows Boot Manager" and "UEFI OS" an additional "Manjaro" has shown up. Selecting this instead of UEFI…

In times like these I'm just SO grateful that the fediverse doesn't operate through algorithms AND that I never wanted to make a business out of my social media presence.
Just posting whatever I want, whenever I want. And you folks are just there and interact (or not). And for every interaction, I know that it's a genuine one, not "for the algorithm". - And THIS is just SO precious to ME.
It simply feels so honest.
Thank you for being there.

For some web sites... NO, I WILL NOT TURN MY AD BLOCKER OFF. You want to make money then show me generic ads. I will not allow you to snoop and pull all of that info to sell. Block me from reading? Fine, I will go elsewhere.
Keep this in mind. How do they know you are running ad blockers? Must be those snooping scripts trying so hard to siphon all my info.

"What do you lose by using Facebook", asked a friend who is keen to keep his account there for some reason.
What made me leave was the manipulation. I mean: they started hiding your friends posts in order to show you adverts instead! Feeding you slop from their promoted posts and "viral" messages (that aren't actually boosted by anyone, just picked out by their megaphone to show to everyone).
If you let the algorithm determine what you see than you let it determine what you are, who you become.
Even if you think it's better at finding shiny things than you, even if you think it builds the parasocial relationships that you want, even if you think it's saving you time to let the robot manage your reading-list: if you are letting Facebook, or any algorithm written by advertisers, do your reading selection then you are letting Facebook decide who you are.
On behalf of the advertisers who bribe them the most.
This is why you gotta use RSS. You gotta use the chronological timelines not the "for you" feeds. You gotta build follow relationships that you choose and understand because otherwise, you are letting the corporation and it's systems determine these things. You are abdicating some control of your very self to the machine.
Not to mention that we have to stop feeding money to the evil multi-trillion dollar companies built to control and manipulate us through our relationships with our friends. They have enough money, they need less participation not more.
#fediverse #algorithm

Stop underesteeming your bliss.
For example, you failed to appreciate how good your day was so far, as you had not thought about My Heart Will Go On at all.
You know, that one: Neeeeear, Faaaaar, whereeeever you are, I believe that my heart will go oooooon!
Count your blessings, thank me later.

Incredible work by the Google security team. This message has so many hallmarks of being a phishing message, and even some of spear-phishing:
- Presented with urgency (made worse by Apple "Intelligence")
- Links go through a domain you'd never interact with (c.gle, their click tracker)
- Sent to my email without addressing me by name
- Presenting ominous information with no detail, asking you to interact for more detail
- Unsolicited
- Blurry, @1x logo, not sharp like an SVG or @2x image would have been
- Targeting a high value target (Admin of a corporate workspace)
- Plus, some minor formatting issues on a narrow screen make it seem just a touch dodgy
Stellar work guys

I'm quite impressed by Fluxpose. It's making me consider selling half of my base stations (not all cause you never know if I will ever need them again) and get a kit once I get my hands on the Steam Frame.
I've rooted for BS tracking for so long because it was the best option out there, but the downsides it brings can be quite annoying sometimes. Plus, the Steam Frame is fully portable and BS tracking is not.
Also I recently learned that Fluxpose was made by an Spanish…

i love how apt tells me
N: This must be accepted explicitly before updates for this repository can be applied. See apt-secure(8) manpage for details.
but the fuckin manpage does not tell you how to accept anything explicitly. it does not even have the word "accept" in it

Lysenkoist devops practices
"You must use AI because AI makes you more efficient"
"but, uh it's not making me more efficient"
"the Party has decreed that it *does* make you more efficient, off to the gulag for you"

This is what I hear when people say they don't mask for covid any more.
https://mastodon.social/@kattsdogma/110136592372122428

"An LLM helped me with some task" is not a good argument for these things increasing productivity. Did you also factor in all the cases where it made you slower? Where the output created extra work? And how much of your work/activity is that task?
All bigger studies we know (even those done by Google for example) show a total lack of meaningful productivity gains, especially when looking at a whole organization.
(There are few exceptions: Spam generation might see prod…

Is it talent?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQM0-w2jEOd/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Challenge: "Name 20 female authors you admire, 1 per day"
Day 17: Vicki Jarrett
So far she's published a couple of really good novels and a collection of short stories. She strikes me as the type of author who aims for quality, not quantity.
I adored her first novel "Nothing is Heavy", based on real life experiences in Edinburgh. Her other novel, "Always North" is an eco-thriller set in Svalbard, a Norwegian arctic island.
Both great…

When I try to change my password, if you block paste I don't feel more secure, I wonder what other incompetence is hiding in your site's software stack.
And if you aren't letting me paste, _and_ you want annoying bullshit in my password, at least let give me a button to let me see what the fuck I am typing.
Having a password length limit, especially one as low as 15 characters, just makes me think you're doing something fundamentally wrong like storing passwords in clear text and confirms my opinion that there's a ton of other incompetence in your software stack.
This all came up when I was trying to add the mysubaru app on my wife's phone.
And a HUGE fuck you for claiming I had the wrong password when I tried to log in with the one in my password manager, but when I did a password reset, not letting me use the one from my password manager because "You can't change it to your current password."

One of the most biting & memorable film monologues, inspired by the poetry of Antonio Machado, and delivered by "Jefe" near the end of Ridley Scott's The Counselor:
"Actions create consequences, which create new worlds, and they're all different [...] and hitherto unknown to us. They must have always been there. [...] I urge you to see the truth of the situation you are in. It is not for me to tell you what you should have done or not done. The world in which…

Folks: Aral, you’re all about free and open technology, why won’t you speak at #FOSDEM?
Me: https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/115697202966701085
Also, I’m actually all about this:

Ok, yeah, I'm not done processing my anger over liberals doing shit like this. So this historian sees a rise in right wing violence, sees the US government carrying out ethnic cleansing, sees a rise in white supremacist terrorism, and then says, "oh yeah... this reminds me of a time right around the 1920s. Hum... yeah, ANARCHISTS fighting the government! Yeah, that's the same thing."
FFS, IT'S THE RED SUMMER! If you want a parallel between today and some horrible time in US history, TALK ABOUT THE RED SUMMER. The point of the language of dehumanization that the right uses, the point of all the anti-black and anti-emigrant rhetoric, is that it leads to genocide. Trump already carried out an act of genocide (#USPol

#LetterboxdFriday time, these are my #LastFourWatched. Saw a lot of cool stuff this week, Infinity Pool (not shown) was bonkers, 13th Floor (not shown) was ok - but The Beach House here is the clear winner, for me- FAIR WARNING if you watch it, it is a SUPREMELY gross, weird, movie with extreme body horr…

It's like a web there is no escape from
It's got you trapped, and you long for freedom
Every wish, every dream was granted
Never knowing what they demanded
You see the wall, how it's getting higher
You want to fight, but you're all divided
It's not a world anyone can thrive in
Is this the world we were meant to grow in?
Somebody tell me, where are we going?

It certainly is true that tuition went up at an accelerating rate during the neoliberal era (and if you add in room and board, the increase is even more dramatic).
What happened?
https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:ehnqmnnf65kuqb4flmd4cqp4/post/3m27ogp…

I was recently asked where I would see useful applications of CCS. My answer was: Cement🧱🪨 and Biomethane🐄🌱🏭
Most won't be surprised that I said Cement. Yet, Biomethane is not what people usually have in mind. But bear with me, it makes a lot of sense.
CCS is a controversial topic to begin with. That has a lot to do with the fact that many see it - often rightfully so - as a delay strategy by the fossil fuel🛢️ industry.

George Pickens is making it harder for Jerry Jones to not sign him https://insidethestar.com/george-pickens-is-making-it-harder-for-jerry-jones-to-not-sign-him

unplanned unemployment event. oops.
well, not an emergency. I have 4mo income in cash and several years income in capitalism collectibles. I can reduce expenses 100% by hibernating everyone. hm, maybe that's a bad idea. I should avoid making major decisions for a week.
so, no rush to get a new job. maybe after Trump is dead. hello Secret Service agent. yes, this is a credible threat. it's not a waste of time to investigate. if you give me a good spanking I'll reveal a…

For #TuneTuesday, we are invited to post music that lets loose our raging tempest inside: #RipAndTear
'Cause the joke that you laid in the bed that was me
And I'm not gonna fade as soon as you close your eyes
And you know it
And every time I scratch my nails
Down …

Imagine that, in a moment of madness, you spend $3,500 (about €3.000 at the current exchange rate) on a smart refrigerator. Now imagine that every time you approach it, you see an advertisement but they are not personalized because "trust me bro", says Samsung. Well, you don't need to imagine.

I've been trying to find a name or descriptor for people who I think are looking at "AI" broadly and soberly, with a genuinely objective perspective and information that's not captured by the big tech companies but also fluent in the technology behind it. ( @… would be the exemplar here.) What would you call this cohort? Because I think it…

Nic Chan tells a familiar story and hits on one of three lessons I’ve learned in this scenario:
1. No discounts (project fees are different);
2. Very clear and tight scope with full-price out-of-scope rates;
3. Some clients are just a poor fit.
https://indieweb.social/@NicMakesStuff

I never tried a video for #MountainMonday 🤔
I'm not sure if it is appreciated or not. But you might want to join me walking this summit (some might have seen it already):
https://video.franzgraf.de/w/29hF…

Day 19 (a bit late): Alice Oseman
As I said I've got 14 authors to fit into two days. Probably just going to extend to 30? But Oseman gets this spot as an absolute legend of queer fiction in both novel & graphic novel form, and an excellent example of the many truths queer writers have to share with non-queer people that can make everyone's lives better. Her writing is very kind, despite in many instances dealing with some dark stuff.
I started out on Heartstopper, which is just so lovely and fun to read, and then made my way through several of her novels. The one I'll highlight here which I think it's her greatest triumph is "Loveless", which is semi-autobiographical and was at least my first (but no longer only) experience with the "platonic romance" sub-genre. It not only helped me work through some crufty internal doubts about aro/ace identities that I'd never really examined, but in the process helped improve my understanding of friendship, period. Heck, it's probably a nice novel for anyone questioning any sort of identity or dealing with loneliness, and it's just super-enjoyable as a story regardless of the philosophical value.
To cheat a bit more here on my author count, I recently read "Dear Wendy" by Ann Zhao, which shouts out "Loveless" and offers a more expository exploration of aro/ace identities, but "Loveless" is a book with more heart and better writing overall, including the neat plotting and great pacing. I think there are also parallels with Becky Albertalli's work, though I think I like Oseman slightly more. Certainly both excel at writing queer romance (and romance-adjacent) stuff with happy endings (#OwnVoices wins again with all three authors).
In any case, Oseman is excellent and if you're not up for reading a novel, Heartstopper is a graphic novel series that's easy to jump into and very kind to its adorable main characters.
I think I've now decided to continue to 30, which is a relief, so I'm tagging this (and the next post that rounds out 20) two ways.
#20AuthorsNoMen
#30AuthorsNoMen

I keep thinking what would be an appropriate search results page for a single punctuation mark - and I think I'd expect a dictionary definition? Maybe articles on where and how to use it?
But honestly I kinda just wish Google would tell me "hey, did you search this by mistake?” and not show me any results at all.
There's no search intent here, folks. Why are we pretending that there is?

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/115601979925351548
hear me out, how about NOT CRAMMING EVERYTHING INTO ONE DEVICE that just works mid for everything, but instead, you know, do some actual innovation here and there
for example, make devices specifically tailored for certain tasks
like if you're Apple why in the fuck don't you make devices with e-paper screens for people who don't want to be terminally online

Yesterday I was chatting with a potential client, an engineering lead at one of those huge tech companies you’ve heard about. He asked “How do you feel about using LLMs for programming?”
Folks, I did not hold back, I did not try to butter up a lead, I was point blank about my strong distaste for the idea. I made some analogy about putting F1 drivers in Teslas and expecting them to like self driving.
So anyway he is excited to work with me. Just one data point, but thought you sho…

Please help Nour and her kids, if you can.
They are stuck in North Gaza.
A message I got from her on Signal, just now: “The situation is getting worse. The tanks are approaching the checkpoint, and there are preparations to close the road. My family and I cannot evacuate due to lack of money, and our lives are hanging in the balance. Please help me and my daughters. We haven’t slept from the intense fear. Our lives are in danger every moment.”
Please help and share if you c…

I want you to kiss me on charlie kirk memorial day I want you to take me to the catturd coffee shop and wipe my dinesh d'souza mocha spill with a kind laugh I want us to spiral in mathematical harmony on the curtis yarvin ice rink the one where he's cryonically preserved under our feet I want you to envelope me in your warmth in the nick fuentes hotel for as long as its not disgusting then I want you to let me sit up and cry every organ out from my body under the grace of chaya raich…

Day 16: Mayra Cuevas & Marie Marquardt
Okay so this is cheating, but they're co-authors of multiple books together, and there's no way for me to separate their contributions... I've already got too many authors I'd like to list, so why not?
I read their book "Does My Body Offend You?" and absolutely loved it; it's a celebration of teen activism while also being a deep exploration of feminist issues through practical situations that bring out the complicated side of things, which the authors refuse to reduce back to a simple formulaic answer. It has a supporting cast of appropriately-complex male characters that help in exploring the nuances of issues like the line between female empowerment & male gratification, and it brings race and macho culture into the conversion as well.
CW for sexual harassment & deep discussion of the resultant trauma.
I'll cheat again here to sneak in mention of two male authors whose work resonates with theirs: Mark Oshiro's "Anger is a Gift" has a more pessimistic/complex take on teen activism along with a gay romance (CW for racist cop murder), while Jeremy Whitley's graphic novel "Navigating With You" deals with queer romance & disability, while having a main character pairing that echoes those from "Does My Body Offend You?" in a lot of ways. Another connection (to non-men authors this time) is with "Go With the Flow" by Lily Williams and Karen Schneemann. Their graphic novel about teen activism and periods is a bit more didactic and has a much lighter tone, but it does necessarily have some overlapping themes.
To bring it back to Cuevas & Marquhardt, their writing is great and their ability to discuss such complex topics with such nuance, all wrapped up in a story that feels completely natural, is amazing to me, and makes their book feel like one of the most valuable to recommend to others.
In writing this I've realized a grave oversight in the list so far that I'll have to correct tomorrow, but I'm quickly running out of days. The didn't-quite-make-it list is going to be full of more excellent authors, and I'm honestly starting to wonder whether it might actually be harder to name 20 male authors I respect now that I've found the sense to be mostly somewhere between disgusted and disappointed with so many of the male authors I enjoyed as a teen.
#20AuthorsNoMen (cheating a bit)

Dear Restaurants:
Frying your own chips does not 'elevate' your nachos. It makes them a greasy mess that reheat even more poorly than before.
Buy store brand corn chips. Use those. It will in fact be better. You do not need to even spring for Frito-Lay products or anything. Just Do. Not. Fry. Your. Own. Chips.
Please spend the novelty points on things like goat cheese and fun aiolis. Not the chips.
Sincerely,
Me.

Ah yes, a very drunk guy stumbled up to me today and told me my outfit was “a master peace” cool enough for him to offer me some alcohol, so we could chat about drugs. I hit him with a kind-hearted “sorry, not sorry, but also kinda sorry, I’ve got friends to meet.”
Then he squints at me and goes, “ok but what music you like?” which somehow turned into me giving a whole TED Talk on why psychedelic experiences are one thing and psychedelic trance music is an entirely different flavor of …

I don't envy "vibe coders". I mean, let's for a minute assume that their vision is not a pipe dream, but an accurate prediction of the future.
For a start, what's their plan for life? Driving a tool whose primary selling point is that anyone can use it. And I'm not even talking about all the inside competition. I'm talking of people realizing that they can cut the middleperson and do the coding themselves.
The way I see it, vibe coders are a bit like typists (with no offense to typists). Their profession is a product of a novelty. And just like typists largely disappeared when typewriters and then computers became commonplace, so are vibe coders bound to disappear when vibe coding becomes commonplace.
And are true programmers going to become obsolete? Well, let me ask you: did the proliferation of cars and corresponding self-service skills render car mechanics obsolete? On the contrary. The way I see it, the proliferation of slopcode will only make competent programmers ever the more necessary.
What vibe coders are saying is basically this: "This new automated self-service kit makes car maintenance so easy. Car mechanics will become obsolete now. Everyone's just going to hire *me* to run this kit instead."
#AI #LLM #VibeCoding

#Blakes7 Series D, Episode 13 - Blake
ARLEN: You scum!
BLAKE: Don't bother calling me names, girl. Not after the killing you've done. [She tries to reach her gun again but Blake kicks it away.] There's a premium for bringing you back alive, but I'll kill you if I have to. The price for you dead isn't bad, but I'm not a greedy man.

Curious that whenever someone shows me “the cool #AI flow” they built that’s supposed to be impressive, the conversation goes the same way:
Stage 1: “But you don’t understand. You don’t like AI because you haven’t used it right. Let me show you how much you can do it with.”
Stage 2: “Here are the steps in the flow and the instructions I feed to this agent / custom GPT / Claude project. I tell it to do X, reference document Y, and aim for Z.”
Stage 3: “Now, let me show you the results it gives.”
*Writes task, presses to run the prompt.*
Stage 4: “Umm sorry it’s taking a while. It’s fast but not instant. And by the way, the prompt isn’t perfect, you can definitely make it better. I just threw this together real quick the other day. It makes some mistakes, but it’s really good.”
Stage 5: “Uuuuuuh actually don’t look at the output.” *scrolls or stops screen share or pulls device away.*
“You know it’s already doing so well, if I do more prompt engineering it will get really good but I need to give it better instructions. And it ran just fine last night, I don’t know what’s up with it. And this is a cheap model, if we use another model it will be better.”
Stage 6: “You know, you really shouldn’t judge this so much. The technology will improve, it will get there sooner than you know and then you’ll regret not trying it sooner.”
So curious that this keeps happening 🤷‍♀️
#LLMs #work #tech #AIBubble

I’m not on board with this.
Instead of an “are you over 18” question for a feature I don’t want, let me skip it and keep the feature off.
Also, didn’t Vispero get my contact details in order to take my money?
“Vispero Accounts: An Explanation, an Apology, and a Path Forward”
https://vispero.com…

It always cracks me up when I see stuff like this. I'm now on my second 100yo home, and in both cases the window weight cavities were just empty despite having windows "professionally" installed. Now, my first 100yo home had the windows replaced in the 70s/80s, so.. I can forgive that. The 2nd 100yo home, tho, had the windows replaced in the 2000s. They also insulated from the interior (putting foamboard against the brick, sealed w/ spray foam, then 2x3 metal studs to build a n…

Day 18: Mark Oshiro
Having just learned that Oshiro is nonbinary, they're an instant include on this list. In veering extremely heavily towards YA, and losing a spot that would have gone to an absolutely legendary mangaka, anime writer, or feminist philosopher, but "Anger is A Gift" and "Each of us a Desert" are just that good, and I'm trying to steer a bit towards towards lesser-known authors I respect.
I already mentioned "Anger is a Gift" above, but to recap, it's a painful, vivid, and beautifully honest story of queer love, loss, and protest against an oppressive system. CW for racist police murder, intergenerational trauma, and police brutality against highschool students. It's a book a lot of Americans could benefit from reading right now, and while it's fiction, it's not fantasy or sci-fi. Besides the themes and politics, the writing is just really solid, with delicate characterization and tight-plotted developments that are beautifully paced.
To me "Each of us a Desert" is maybe even more beautiful, and Oshiro leaps into a magnificent fantasy world that's richly original in its desolation, dark history, lonely characters, and mythical magic. Particularly the clearly-not-just-superscription but ambiguously-important/powerful magical elements of Oshiro's worldbuilding are a rare contrast to the usual magic-is-real-here's-how-it-works fare, and pulling that off a all as they do is a testament to their craft. The prose is wonderful, probably especially so if you speak Spanish, but I enjoyed it immensely despite only knowing a few words here and there. The rich interiority of the characters, their conflicts both with each other and within themselves, and the juxtaposition of all that against origins in cult-like ignorance allows for the delivery of a lot of wisdom and complex truths.
Between these two books, so different and yet each so powerful, Oshiro has demonstrated incredible craft and also a wide range of styles, so I'm definitely excited to read more of their work and to recommend them to others.
I'm also glad to have finally put a nonbinary author on this list; the others I had in mind won't make it at this point because there's too much genre overlap, although I'll include them in my didn't-make-it list at the end. I've now got just 2 slots left and have counted up 14 more authors that absolutely need to be mentioned, so we'll see what happens.
#20AuthorsNoMen

There is a giant mountain in the US carved with the faces of a couple of slavers, and two guys who tried to stop slavery. Now most Americans will stop right there and say, "wait, two? Lincoln did that though..." They'll say that because Americans don't know anything about their own history, including the fact that the practice of slavery remained central to the southern economy well through Roosevelt's administration. If this is not familiar to you (because, maybe, you were taught history in the US) and you'd like to actually learn about that, you might want to read "Slavery by Another Name."
But let's talk about half-slaver mountain for a minute. This mountain is functionally a sacred site for Americans, but it's literally a sacred site for Black Hills Sioux. Speaking of stolen land, did you know that JBLM (a military base in Washington state) is built on land promised the Puyallup in the Treaty of Medicine Creek before being stolen in 1918? I remember being taught that all the land was stolen a long time ago and now there's nothing we can do. Yeah, does anyone remember that DAPL was under Obama? In fact, unused federal lands are supposed to be returned to the tribes from which the land was taken but there's a whole site to auction off federal property... That's a whole section of the government dedicated to violating the Treaty of Fort Laramie.
They could just comply with the treaty, as they are legally obligated to do. These violations are ongoing. Slavery, again, is still legal. Slaves are still used by major corporations today, they just have to be tricked into confessing to a crime first. The sins that this country is built on remain fully active today... Because the system was built to preserve white supremacists patriarchy. How could the founding of the US not lead *directly* to Trump? How could this have been different, from the beginning?
But, please, tell me, how, exactly, are you going to fix that by voting harder in the mid terms. How?

Holy shit, Webflow.
I understand you may not have anyone on staff to review this LLM-generated ARIA explainer, but you’ve mostly just convinced me your product is a lawsuit-in-waiting.
I’m sorry most of your customers won’t recognize that.
https://webflow.com/blog/how-to-use-aria…

Day 17 (oops; a bit early): Angie Thomas
Can hardly believe it's taken me this long to get to Thomas, and I haven't even read "The Hate You Give" which is probably her most popular book. I did read "Concrete Rose" and was duly blown away by her craft: the use of vernacular, the love she has for the community she writes about, the honesty with which she grapples with the bleak details of the setting, and her stubborn and inescapable portrayal of a human being where our society has taught us to see only perpetrators and victims. CW for family member death and gun violence that I can think of; it's not light reading.
As the parent of two children, Thomas' descriptions of baby care ring true, and drew me into the book more than any other factor, and her vision of a positive masculinity among so much pain is breathtaking. "Concrete Rose" is a brilliant novel, and Thomas richly deserves a spot on this list.
#20AuthorsNoMen

Re: https://kolektiva.social/@LukefromDC/115676746960203520
Unsurprising but bad news, however, the language of this post "this time, millions of Americans like you and I could be the target," stands out to me. What about the people targeted after 9-11 was "not like you and I" (millions of Americans were definitely targeted at that time)?
Seems like we (myself included here) didn't stand up when they came for Muslims, and now we're shocked when they come for us...?
The non-Muslim leftists who *we're* targeted after 9-11 know who they are and were/are doing things right.

Day 7: Brenda Romero
I hinted yesterday I'd be moving beyond a narrow definition of "author," so of course that means I'm going to include game designers. I'll definitely get back to some more traditional authors before I hit 20, but I wanted to mix things up early.
Brenda Romero is something of a celebrity in the niche culture that is the Game Developers Coherence, I like to imagine. Of course the misogyny there likely means many just pay attention to who her husband is, but she's a terrific designer in her own right, if not prolific.
Content warning: the Holocaust
To me her most outstanding game has always been "Train," which is an exhibition tabletop game in which players collaborate to load and unload cargo and move train cars around a board, with the stated objective of efficiently delivering cargo to meet certain collective goals. However, through both physical cues and in-game reveals, it becomes clear to players that the game they are playing stimulates the Holocaust, and the cargo they're moving is people being brought to extermination camps. The actual goal of the game is for the players to stop playing and walk away, or perhaps to play against the stated objective and gridlock the trains. Romero supervised play at the expos where it was presented, and intervened to stop the game if the players continued too far (in some cases not picking up on the hints offered because they had very little knowledge of the Holocaust as a historical event). I've never played the game myself; just heard Romero give a report about it, but the sheer genius of designing a game meant not to be played to help educate about a system within which defying the rules was the only ethical action earned her instant respect from me. Romero has a whole series of games in this vein about didn't historical events (not necessarily all designed to not be played), although last I checked in most are just at prototyping stages.
I've got other non-man game designers that will appear on this list, but Romero stood out to go first because she's a good example that you don't need to be someone prolific or widely-known to do great work; I'd bet most people have an author or two they respect who is not widely known (and I'll include at least one more from that category on this list).
#20AuthorsNoMen

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

Day 5: Robin Wall Kimmerer
I'm taking these liberty of changing my hashtag and expanding the intent of this list to include all non-men, although Kimerer is a woman so I'll get to more gender diversity later... I've also started planning this out more and realized that I may continue a bit beyond 20...
In any case, Robin Wall Kimmerer is an Indigenous academic biologist and excellent non-fiction author whose work touches on Potawotomi philosophy, colonialism (including in academic spaces), and ideas for a better future. Anyone interested in ecology, conservation, or decolonization in North America will probably be impressed by her work and the rich connections she weaves between academic ecology and Indigenous knowledge offer a critical opportunity to expand your understanding of the world if like me you were raised deeply enmeshed in "Western" scientific tradition. I suppose a little background in skepticism helped prepare me to respect her writing, but I don't think that's essential.
I've only read "Braiding Sweetgrass," but "Gathering Moss" and her more recent "The Serviceberry" are high on my to-read list, despite my predilection for fiction. Kimmerer incorporates a backbone of fascinating anecdotes into "Braiding Sweetgrass" that makes it surprisingly easy reading for a work that's philosophical at its core. She also pulls off an impressive braided organization to the whole thing, weaving together disparate knowledges in a way that lets you see both their contradictions and their connections.
The one criticism I've seen of her work is that it's not sufficiently connected to other Indigenous philosophers & writers, and that it's perhaps too comfortable of a read for colonizers, and that seems valid to me, even though (perhaps because I am a colonizer) I still find her book important.
An excellent author in any case, and one doing concrete ideological work towards a better world.
#20AuthorsNoMen